Im Skinny And Want To Gain Muscle – Here’s How To Do It!

I know how you feel so what I’m going to outline here for you today is the “must do” list of things that you should incorporate into your daily lifestyle.

Muscle doesn’t grow on everyone the same, if you’ve been hitting the gym and have put together a nutrition plan but you’re still not gaining a pound then get ready to throw what you know out and let’s start fresh.

Being skinny is one thing, but having a super fast metabolism is whole different beast…

Your metabolism is the primary X factor as to why you can’t gain muscle. Does this mean you won’t be able to gain muscle mass? Absolutely not, but it does mean that you will have to put in some hard work toward your goals. You need a clear understanding with what is required of you to achieve your muscle building goals. There are too many conflicting diets and programs which can become too much to know.

Im skinny and want to gain muscle – Understanding body types

Not everyone will be able to build muscles as fast, for skinny guys it’s more work and the reason for this is because of body types. There are 3 different primary categories in which one of us fall into and this is the first thing you should know when it comes to being skinny and wanting to gain muscle.

Ectomorph: An ectomorph is what can be classified as the “hardgainers”. It’s the skinny guys who can’t seem to gain weight or muscle and have a naturally fast metabolism that works against them in trying add mass to their frame. Some of the characteristics that ectomorph’s portray are very lean muscle mass, skinny long muscle frame, thin, and a naturally small body frame.

Mesomorph: This is the ideal body type that everybody would want to have. Mesomorph’s are generally more on the athletic build body type and have the ability to gain muscle quickly with weight lifting. Mesomorph’s are a perfect fit to get started with bodybuilding as results will show fairly quickly. Some of the characteristics you will find with mesomorph’s are athletic build, strong and muscular, can gain muscle quickly but can also gain fat easily as well.

Endomorph: Being an endomorph is the least likely body type you would probably want due to naturally being more fat and having difficulty with reducing the fat. Endomorph’s are usually medium to large boned and have larger joints, getting rid of fat is the hardest for this body type. This is the opposite of your ideal ectomorph.

You might not be classified as a particular body type and that is because you might find yourself to be 2 out of the 3 body types. Sometimes more one than the other. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t be strictly an ectomorph and find it extremely hard to put on muscle or gain weight.

So if you’re a real ECTOMORPH, how do you get past your inherited skinny genes?

With your nutrition…

This applies to all three body types, but since we’re talking about adding more muscle for us naturally built skinny guys then our nutritional needs are always quite different. Simply put, for skinny guys to gain muscle you will need to eat calories. There’s no if, and’s, or but’s about it!

You will need to eat more than your maintenance intake. Usually this is about 15 times your body weight. What you will need to do is up your daily caloric intake to about 18-20 times your body weight so a 160lb man would consume 2880 calories a day to begin gaining weight 18 x 160 = 2880.

Now the tricky part about this is that you will have to monitor how much muscle you have or have not gained, if you find yourself not gaining much at all this means you have a very fast metabolism, which would mean you would have to increase your daily calories up about 500-1000 for about a week to see if that gives you the added push for muscle growth. Monitoring and adjusting accordingly is a must to find an even balance.

However, if you are putting on significant amount of fat while on your weight gain diet you will have to adjust your nutritional plans to help lower the fat while still consuming the same amount of calories. This would mean you have the endomorph or mesomorph body type mix as well. Not to worry though, with some added high intense interval training you can help take care of the added fat while your taking in added calories.

Im Skinny and want to gain muscle – Gym routines to help add muscle mass

You can’t go on a weight gain diet with high calories and not expect to hit the gym hard! Now don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean 2 hours in the gym. Hitting the gym hard means intense, rigorous workouts that put your muscles to its full capacity.

If your looking for a solid workout to follow, go here: Gym routine for building muscle

The whole idea of lifting weights to gain muscle is to start off at a certain amount of poundage that you can handle until your sets and reps are completed. This means lift the heaviest amount that you feel you are comfortable with, with out sacrificing proper movement and form. You want to be able to control the weight in a nice even slow motion.

It may take you a couple of workouts to see where you feel comfortable, once you have everything logged and set up, your goal is to either increase the amount you lifted while doing the same amount of sets/reps or be able to increase the reps. All this is done by keeping the same length of rest periods in between sets and total gym time (for example 45 minutes).

The whole point here is to use progressive overload to force your muscles to keep adapting to add more muscle mass. You stress your muscles, your body responds and believes it has to grow to support the added stress and then you become stronger with added muscle size. You want to be able to keep pushing yourself and make sure your putting to use all those added calories into your muscles.

Im skinny and want to gain muscle – Simply speaking…

In simple terms for us skinny guys wanting to gain muscle comes down to eating the right amount of calories, and having a gym routine which you can use to help build muscles and support those high calories your eating. You simply can’t eat small and expect to grow.

With that being said, eating high protein meals, with well balanced complex carbohydrates and good fats is what is needed, not just any high calorie foods such as sodas, cookies, chips and all junk food.

Also, be sure to ALWAYS, ALWAYS rest and recovery fully! I can’t stress that enough, you must allow adequate amount of time to let your muscles heal and become stronger. 8 hours of sleep, and sleep before midnight to get the full muscle building potential out of your program.

Eat BIG, gain muscle, and get BIG.. next thing you know you won’t be saying “Im skinny and want to gain muscle” instead you will say, “Im gaining muscle and look amazing!”