If you’re gonna be a bear this winter…. Be a grizzly
How do you tell a brown bear from a grizzly bear?
Climb a tree and...
A. If the bear climbs it and eats you, it s a brown bear.
B. If the bear KNOCKS THE TREE DOWN and eats you, it s a grizzly.
 
As you sit reading  this, what image just came to your mind?
Chances are it was a gigantic, imposing  grizzly with extraordinarily powerful muscles and a frame to match. As the cold weather rolls in, it's historically been the pattern of  bodybuilders and  strength athletes to start piling on the clothes, eating  bigger training heavier, and seeking to  gain as much mass as possible, to "become a bear" if you will. If this sounds like you, or if you've been on a quest to become a bear but you seism to end up looking more like a soft, cuddly little teddy bear than the "fear of the forest," maybe you could use some advice from a grizzly - a human grizzly by the name of Art Atwood.
Art wasn't always a grizzly. He started training with weights when he was twelve to increase speed and power for football and track, which he competed at through high school at a bodyweight hovering around 180 lbs at 5’11". Later, while at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Art met his now good friend and first "nutritional mentor" Tony Frontier. Tony told Art he had an excellent training program but his calorie intake and nutrition were too weak for the effort he was putting forth. At the same time that Tony had Art eating huge quantities of food, he encouraged him to enter the Mr. Wisconsin. Art entered the teen division and won the light-heavyweight and overall title at a shredded 185 lbs.
After winning the 93' Teen Wisconsin, Art didn't compete again until 1999. During those six years Art managed a number of fitness clubs and nutrition stores, finished his degree in Exercise Kinesiology at UWM, and learned all the information that he could about bodybuilding, nutrition, and supplements.

Flash-forward to 2001 and the NPC Nationals in Atlanta, where at a competitive weight of 244 lbs, Art earned his pro card by decisively snatching the super heavyweight title out of the hands of such fierce competitors as the 6'6" giant Noah Steere, and Delaware's walking freak show, Al Fortney. 2002 was no leisurely walk through the forest for his competitors either, as Art felled the biggest tree around when he toppled the "German Giant" Markus Ruhl, fresh off a win at the Night of Champions, to take the IFBB Toronto Pro International in his pro debut.
Today, just ten years after his first contest, Art's off-season weight hovers at a lean and vascular 325 lbs, with 23' 1/2" arms, 33" legs, a 455 x 15 incline bench, and a 1,500 x 12-15 leg press. On the contest stage, he's earned the respect of even the most seasoned veterans with a current competitive weight in the mid 270s - a gain of neariy one hundred pounds of solid muscle!
So if you're tired of being a teddy bear, or even worse, the guy in the opening story that climbed the tree only to get eaten, be a grizzly; eat and train like the human grizzly - Art Atwood.
Mass gain tips straight from the mounth of the bear:
■ Sleep at least 8 hours every night.
■ Work the muscle groups that you want to grow quickly twice per week.
■  Each muscle group should be worked with higher reps once per week and heavier one time per week.
■ Allow  sufficient  recovery for delts, triceps, biceps, and chest (48-72 hours).
■ The sets do not include warm-ups so add 1 set of a light warm-up for each exercise. Rest about  90   seconds between sets.
■  Make sure you are doing plenty of compound movements for most bodyparts (they help you grow  the most).
■ Biceps are worked with the back on Monday, so you really don't need a lot of extra sets to make them grow. However, make sure the few sets you perform for biceps are good ones.
■  Really try to make each set & rep count for each  exercise. Of course go to failure when possible.
■  After three weeks  of following this workout, change things up! Change the order of bodyparts worked each day. Change  rest  periods to either sixty seconds or two minutes. Change repetitions on each day to either a couple reps higher or a couple reps lower.
■  Remember, you're body wants to stay comfortable, so in order to make it grow, you've got to make  things uncomfortable. In other words, a new level of mass needs a new level of intensity.