5 tips for skinny people who want to be bodybuilders

Health Fitness

Ectomorphs are called hardgainers because, well, they find it hard to gain muscle. Having a taller, leaner body with small joints in the wrists and ankles is a dead giveaway that your frame isn’t genetically optimized to build and build a lot of muscle, but that certainly shouldn’t stop you when it comes to becoming a bodybuilder. , because EVERYONE can build and maintain lean muscle mass!

Here are 5 weight gain tips for skinny guys and girls who want to be bodybuilders:

Hardgainer Tip #1: Have Realistic Expectations

Ectomorphs will never win the Mr. Olympia title, but neither will 99.999% of other bodybuilders. All over the world there are bodybuilders who work hard in the gym for a thousand hours a year while eating well, sleeping well and taking all kinds of supplements and performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), and at that level you need everything to be on point. – including your genetics. But building muscle, having a great body, and looking great in the gym or on the beach can be achieved by hardgainers, even without gorilla genetics or truckloads of PEDs.

Most likely, you already have a huge advantage over other bodybuilders: very little body fat. Generally, a hardgainer has a fast metabolism and is not genetically more predisposed to store a lot of body fat than he or she is to build muscle. So as you visualize the body you want to build, imagine yourself with slightly less body fat than you currently have and with more muscle mass. How much more? That is going to be up to YOU: how relentless you are in your pursuit of a physical bodybuilder.

Hardgainer Tip #2: Train smart in the gym

As a skinny guy trying to build bigger muscles, you need to train smart and stick to proven principles. Make sure most of your workouts focus on the big compound lifts: squats, deadlifts, incline rows, bench presses, and overhead presses. Yes, you’ll want some isolation exercises for your arms, abs, and calves, but focus most of your energy and time on the lifts that are the best proven muscle builders. And keep your ego in check: constantly attempting new Personal Records (RPs) will put a damper on your earnings. Endomorphs and some mesomorphs can gain noticeable muscle size from weightlifting workouts, but most ectomorphs will just get much stronger without getting much bigger with that style of training.

Instead, try to do 5 to 10 sets for each exercise, with 8 to 12 repetitions per set. Don’t rush through your sets, but do each of your reps for 1-2 seconds on the concentric part of the lift and 3-5 seconds on the eccentric part. (You can always tell what the concentric part of any lift is: It’s the part where the muscle you’re working shortens and contracts. Consider the upward motion of squats, deadlifts, rows, etc., and the downward motion of triceps curls, etc.)

Rest between sets is also important. You’ll see a lot about time under tension (TUT) suggesting you keep rests within the set to 30 or 40 seconds max, but that’s not always the best advice for true winners: Resting 30 seconds between sets burns 50%. plus. calories than 3-minute breaks according to Dr. Jim Stoppani. While a high volume of sets and 3-minute breaks per set would take too long, try to rest about a minute between sets.

Keep your form tight and use weights that allow you to get 10-12 reps on your first sets without breaking form, but only allow you to get 6-8 reps on your last two sets. If, on those last two sets you can’t get 6 reps, then the weight is too heavy. Conversely, if you still hit ten reps on your last set, keep failing on that set, then increase the weight for your next workout until you’re back in that 6-8 rep range for your last set.

In many if not most cases, the fast metabolism of hardgainers allows their bodies to repair themselves fairly quickly. So be sure to work each body part at least twice a week; in fact, a full body workout on 3 non-consecutive days is usually ideal.

Hardgainer Tip #3: Eat Clean, Eat Healthy, and Eat MORE

Anyone trying to be a bodybuilder needs to consume a lot of calories every day, and weight gainers need to consume a LOT more clean calories than others. Yes, you have tons of energy. That’s courtesy of your faster metabolism and your habit of burning glucose, glycogen, carbs, and protein to stay supercharged. But put aside the concept that ‘you can eat anything’: that’s a common myth among those who gain weight because they don’t store much body fat on a poor diet. He needs to understand that too many simple carbohydrates on a regular basis can dull his insulin receptors. Not only can that lead to type 2 diabetes later in life, but insulin is the main transporter of glucose into the muscles, where that glucose is stored as glycogen and used to fuel muscle activity.

Instead, plan to eat a cleaner diet with lots of protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. Start by calculating your daily needs using this simple formula: You want to consume 15 calories for every pound you weigh, so at 150 pounds you’d start with 2,250 calories per day. You want at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, and in our example, that 150-pound person would eat 150 grams of protein, which means 600 calories would come from your daily protein intake. Twenty to twenty-five percent of your calories (450 to 560 calories) should come from healthy fats, which means the remaining 1,090 to 1,200 calories should come from carbohydrate sources such as yams, brown, red, or black rice, oatmeal, and vegetables .

Remember, though, that your goal is to become a bodybuilder with a lot of lean muscle mass, which means you don’t want to stay at that 150 pounds. Once his nutrition is on point as detailed above, he can start adding more calories. Start by adding 500 calories to your day and wait a couple of weeks to see results. If you’re building muscle without adding belly fat, add another 500 calories the following month, etc. If you have trouble eating larger meals, get the extra calories by adding one or two meals to your day: eat 4 or 5 times a day instead of 3 times a day.

In most cases, those who have difficulty gaining weight do not eat well and do not eat enough. Don’t be that boy or girl – pay attention to proper nutrition and make sure you consume all the required calories every day!

Hardgainer Tip #4: Get Enough Sleep

A big truism for bodybuilders is that muscles are built in the gym, fed in the kitchen, and built in the bedroom, while you sleep. Not getting enough sleep will keep you from being a true bodybuilder. Remember, as an ectomorph, you need everything to go right in your routine. There’s no point in putting a ton of effort into your workouts and tearing your muscles apart if you’re not going to fuel them properly and then get enough sleep to allow your body to repair and rebuild those muscles, making them bigger to meet your needs. anticipated progressive resistance that they will face in the future.

In today’s real world, very few people can sleep 8 or 9 hours every night, but you can certainly get close if your goal as a skinny guy or girl is to become a bodybuilder. You don’t NEED to be on social media for hours every night, you don’t NEED to text your friends late at night, and you DON’T NEED to hit the clubs every weekend. A busy social life won’t give you the muscles you want, but smart training, proper nutrition, and 7-9 hours of sleep each night will. It all comes down to how much you want it, right?

Hardgainer Tip #5: Strategic Supplementation

Walk into ANY pro bodybuilding supplement store and you’ll find more than enough options to completely empty your wallet, melt your debit and credit cards and leave you in debt. Fortunately for you, hardgainers can skip all but 3 or 4 of them…

For example, they will most likely have a large selection of pre-training potions and pills. But with your fast metabolism and all the carbs you’re eating, you already have more energy than you know what to do with, along with a determination that you’ll do WHATEVER it reasonably takes to pack on bigger muscles.

So what should you consider?

First, find a good whey protein or whey isolate powder. I don’t advise getting one of the high calorie protein mixes for weight gain as most are packed with simple sugars. Instead, find a good clean source of whey and choose a flavor you like. Mix it with water or 2% milk and take one every morning when you wake up, as your body has no dietary protein left at that time. Then have a protein shake an hour before your workout and as soon as reasonably possible after your workout. Remember that most of your protein needs should come from whole foods: chicken, eggs, turkey, fish, lean beef, etc. – so you’re only increasing that protein at times when your body can make the best use of it.

Second is creatine. Creatine is probably the most studied bodybuilding supplement, and scientific study after scientific study has shown it to be a very effective muscle building aid. Take a teaspoon of creatine in a glass of water and drink it at some point during the day on rest days, and both before and after your workout on training days.

Rounding out the big 3 are the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), namely leucine, isoleucine, and valine. The purpose of supplementing with them is to help build your muscles, and it is believed that they also help prevent your existing muscle mass from being cannibalized during intense workouts. Get the pills or the powder and take it before, during and immediately after your workouts.

Additional tip for hard gainers:

Perseverance and patience should be your guiding lights throughout your bodybuilding journey. As a skinny guy or girl, it will take you longer to build muscle mass, and you have to be consistent; while others may see gains by skipping workouts, deviating from diet, etc., you need to be reasonably tough on yourself. But fear not, follow Hardgainer’s 5 tips above and you’ll get the results you’re looking for in due time.

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