Health  GYM ADVICE for skinny/lean guys?

Devilicious

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Oct 11, 2015
Messages
137
Hey guys!

I've decided I've had enough of being skinny/lean and started going to the gym 4 times per week. I'm currently doing ok, not crazy skinny, as in I look good without a shirt, but with one on I still want to be ripped.

Since I'm sure ya'll are more advanced than me here, I'll listen to your advice :) Because I have an irrational fear that I'll stay lean no matter what I do..

Thanks in advance :)

Cheers!
 

Fluxcapacitor

Modern Human
Modern Human
Joined
Dec 17, 2018
Messages
780
@Devilicious dude! If you want to look good in a t shirt wear a smaller one :') if I wear a typical t shirt it can hide my frame and physique so much that people don't realise and they get a surprise when it comes off so I go for a slim fit or muscle fit to really show my physique.

Actually building muscle can be easy or difficult depending on a lot of factors. If we look at it in its simplest form, work out your muscle to stress it/ break it down and it will grow and become stronger. Muscle is created with protein, if you don't have enough protein to feed the muscle to help it repair it won't grow as well.

Roughly speaking its 1 - 1.5g of protein per 1lbs of your bodyweight.

You mostly recover over night while you're sleeping when your metabolic rate slows down, so adequate sleep is required.

You describe yourself as skinny. If you're really skinny (ectomorph) you have a fast metabolism which makes it harder to grow because your body burns calories faster. To counteract this I recommend eating more later on (not to much because this will impact sleep) but while your metabolic rate slows down it will keep the calories for longer, giving your body the fuel it needs for growth and repair. It's a cheat I've used to gain size and advise it for hard gainers.

For working out, you need progressive overload. You need to be lifting heavier or more every time. When you're a beginner you'll do this easy, the more advanced you become the harder this will be. Don't be misguided by this, you will have better days where you hit personal bests and other days where you'll struggle. You'll hit plateaus and have to shake your workout up to progress past it.

Compound moves are your bread and butter but I'm an advocate of isolation moves. These can improve compound moves by isolating the weaker parts and strengthening them and in return compound moves will reward isolation moves.

I recommend cycling your training between strength, size, and other (time under tension) endurance, myriad, German volume, just isolation etc) to maximise results.

Typically speaking training for size is hypertrophy. The aim is 3 sets of 8 reps with adequate warm up sets of 1 - 3 depending on the weight you're lifting.

More advanced _ Different body parts respond better to different rep ranges. Your triceps (10 - 12 range) will usually require more reps than your chest (8 - 10 range) but you can still see results in the 8 rep range. Legs usually respond better to higher reps (12 - 15 range) but you can vastly improve strength in the 5 - 8 range and this can boost size. This is possibly more information than you need to begin with.

You can look at full body, upper/ lower split, push/ pull split or body part split. Each training has its advantages. If you're going 4 times a week I'd avoid full body. Your intensity will dip to compensate this.

I could go on and on, bore you, confuse you, lose you. There's a lot of stuff mentioned above. There's great articles on here about building your physique, there's great YouTube channels dedicated to the stuff and a lot of guides on the internet. If you want more information about anything I've mentioned feel free to ask dude!
 

Devilicious

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Oct 11, 2015
Messages
137
@Devilicious dude! If you want to look good in a t shirt wear a smaller one :') if I wear a typical t shirt it can hide my frame and physique so much that people don't realise and they get a surprise when it comes off so I go for a slim fit or muscle fit to really show my physique.

Actually building muscle can be easy or difficult depending on a lot of factors. If we look at it in its simplest form, work out your muscle to stress it/ break it down and it will grow and become stronger. Muscle is created with protein, if you don't have enough protein to feed the muscle to help it repair it won't grow as well.

Roughly speaking its 1 - 1.5g of protein per 1lbs of your bodyweight.

You mostly recover over night while you're sleeping when your metabolic rate slows down, so adequate sleep is required.

You describe yourself as skinny. If you're really skinny (ectomorph) you have a fast metabolism which makes it harder to grow because your body burns calories faster. To counteract this I recommend eating more later on (not to much because this will impact sleep) but while your metabolic rate slows down it will keep the calories for longer, giving your body the fuel it needs for growth and repair. It's a cheat I've used to gain size and advise it for hard gainers.

For working out, you need progressive overload. You need to be lifting heavier or more every time. When you're a beginner you'll do this easy, the more advanced you become the harder this will be. Don't be misguided by this, you will have better days where you hit personal bests and other days where you'll struggle. You'll hit plateaus and have to shake your workout up to progress past it.

Compound moves are your bread and butter but I'm an advocate of isolation moves. These can improve compound moves by isolating the weaker parts and strengthening them and in return compound moves will reward isolation moves.

I recommend cycling your training between strength, size, and other (time under tension) endurance, myriad, German volume, just isolation etc) to maximise results.

Typically speaking training for size is hypertrophy. The aim is 3 sets of 8 reps with adequate warm up sets of 1 - 3 depending on the weight you're lifting.

More advanced _ Different body parts respond better to different rep ranges. Your triceps (10 - 12 range) will usually require more reps than your chest (8 - 10 range) but you can still see results in the 8 rep range. Legs usually respond better to higher reps (12 - 15 range) but you can vastly improve strength in the 5 - 8 range and this can boost size. This is possibly more information than you need to begin with.

You can look at full body, upper/ lower split, push/ pull split or body part split. Each training has its advantages. If you're going 4 times a week I'd avoid full body. Your intensity will dip to compensate this.

I could go on and on, bore you, confuse you, lose you. There's a lot of stuff mentioned above. There's great articles on here about building your physique, there's great YouTube channels dedicated to the stuff and a lot of guides on the internet. If you want more information about anything I've mentioned feel free to ask dude!
Thanks a ton brother, I appreciate it!

I especially was wondering about what to pay attention to when eating, your ~30g protein per lbs answers that (60g per kg, had to convert it ;) ).

I recall Chase mentioning he'd eat a lot of chicken breast and eggs nowdays to get enough protein or something. I'd rather not use supplements if there are alternatives, but that got me into that train of thought that 'it would take me forever to get buff the natural way', even though I never considered not going natural haha.

My workout plan is very similar to the one on the main site, (pulling muscles, pushing muscles session) and I end up doing each muscle twice per week.

Onwards!
 

Fluxcapacitor

Modern Human
Modern Human
Joined
Dec 17, 2018
Messages
780
@Devilicious dude! The main issue with most supplements is they're usually equal in carbs as they are protein. When you take a 22g protein bar or shake there's about 22g of carbs. If you don't cut the carbs elsewhere you're increasing your calories, not actually hitting the macro you intended and unless you were only consuming maintenance calories chances are you'll gain fat...

Another issue dudes run into is you can only absorb about 22g of protein in 2 hours. Dudes that double scoop and add more protein than they can use end up using it as waste product cause you can't store protein, you can however store those extra carbs....

You can increase cardio but you can't out train a bad diet. Getting really into the science of this becomes very difficult to balance your calories and you get defeated trying to get a perfect diet to grow in size and lose fat which is possible. This is usually why body builders bulk and cut.

A good macro to grow is usually 50% carbs, 30% protein and 20% fat - throw in dairy and this can cover all the above Haha. Your body might respond better to fat than carbs so you can increase your fat intake and drop carbs but you'd need to cycle to find out what works.

Typically a dude should consume 2500 calories a day, if you're trying to gain size 3000 is usually the starting range. The rock is on like 7000 currently.... this takes time to train to, his muscle mass alone needs a lot just to maintain it. Check out what your typical intake is and review from there what changes you want to make.

At the beginning you'll make progress anyway without getting to involved with the details of this stuff.

You can easily consume all this naturally. I'm on 4000 and have dropped the supplements this year. I use beef/ chicken/ any meat really, milk, there's a lot of stuff. Depending on intake depends how easy this is and what adaptations are needed.
 

Toby2030

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Sep 1, 2019
Messages
312

Rakkum

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Apr 2, 2017
Messages
198
Lots of great advice here! A few more things to consider:
  • Even though it's a bit of a hassle, either track your macros or prep your meals precisely to fit your nutrition goals. This will give you an idea what a day's worth of food actually looks like or how accurate your prior assessment of your macro intake was.
  • Work through a book instead of going for Youtube channels for your primary source of Information. Books tend to be more condensed and there i a structure to them. To each their own but this worked better for me.
 

Velasco

Modern Human
Modern Human
Joined
Nov 11, 2019
Messages
1,059
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EfZ-Us8X0AYHRIw
 

Zorba

Rookie
Rookie
Joined
Dec 25, 2019
Messages
6
Man, consistency is the single most important thing. If you're just getting started, you have a decent amount of muscle you can pack on before you plateau. All you have to do is work out and not stop for a month or two and you will notice quick results.

Eat more than you think you can. Every skinny person says they're a "hard gainer" but then come to find out, they're eating 1200 calories a day and think it's a ton.

Give yourself plenty of time to rest. If you notice yourself getting headaches or huge cortisol spikes, you're working out too hard and it will work against you. Start out doing one day on then two or three days off, then as your muscles develop, you'll be able to work out closer and closer together.

Heavy weight / low rep tends to build strength, low weight / high rep tends to build volume. Try to work in an exercise that does each of these for each body part each workout.

Good technique is more important than heavy weight.

Don't feel self-conscious at the gym, nobody is looking at you and if they are, they remember when they were skinny as hell and they want you to succeed.

Come up with a solid menu of meals you can throw together in 20 minutes and just make them on autopilot every day. I alternate either protein+fat or protein+carbs each meal. So, red beans and rice + chicken, which takes about 10 minutes to make, then eat eggs and a frozen salmon filet about three hours later. Both of these meals cost about $2 to make and have around 30g of protein each.

Just build habits and a routine and stick to it.
 

killerman

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Dec 8, 2014
Messages
452
Been lifting on and off for the past 6 years. If I'd put all my time lifting together it would come to about 3 years of solid lifting. Putting muscle is EASY. It wasn't in the beginning but that's because I wasn't doing everything right. Number 1: You want to put on mass. So basically you need to aim for 8-10 reps or 10-12. Make sure it's heavy but not too heavy that you cant complete the 8-10 reps or 10-12 reps. Only increase the weight when the current weight you/re on you can do for the full 10 reps or 12 reps and it's not too difficult. Needs to be a challenge but when you feel you can go up go up. Make sure you switch exercises regularly. I'd recommend changing exercises once every 6 weeks. That way your body is always getting shocked. Target a different muscle group each day. I'm currently lifting 6 days a week. This is my routine:

Monday: Legs
Tuesday: chest and arms
Wednesday: Back
Thursday: shoulders and arms
Friday: Legs
Saturday: chest and arms.

So basically you want to do a split routine where you do a different muscle group every day then rotate and do it all over again.

Number 2: Nutrition. This is very important and the reason why when i started in 2014-2016 i saw poor results. You need to make sure you're getting not just enough protein but enough carbs and fats. For protein calculate your weight and eat 1 gram of protein for every pound of your body weight. So if you weight 190 pounds you must consume 190 grams of protein. Dont go way over what you need as you'll put on too much fat. Carbs, here's a good calculator to calculate how many carbs you need: https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calcarbs.htm. like with protein dont consume too many carbs as you'll put on too much fat. And then fats. Here's a good calculator to calculate how many fats you need to put on muscle: https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/fats_calculator.htm. Try to get your fats and proteins and carb intake as close as possible to the recommended amounts as you want to put on mass while putting on as little fat as possible. Everyone says it's obsessive to make sure you've got to get the exact amount of fat and protein and carbs in and using a calculator to make sure you get the exact amount of nutrients in every day but the truth of the matter is you NEED to be obsessed and highly detailed as the small details will make sure you get the results! Nutrition is the big one. Use the back of the packet where it tells you how many grams of carbs, protein and fats there is per 100grams. Use a calculator to calculate how many grams of carbs, fats and proteins youre getting from the rice and potatoes and all the other food sources and if it's not enough and doesnt hit the recommended intake you need to increase your food intake until you hit the numbers recommended. I used to think i was eating enough, then realised I was only consuming about 50 grams of fat when i added all the fats I was consuming throughout the day from fish, olive oil and chicken. Now I know im hitting the 82 grams i need from my olive oil, fish, chicken and eggs as I use a calculator. Its important to eat not just enough but enough fats, carbs, proteins and also fibre.

Also cardio, i currently do moderate cardio 3 times a week for 30 minutes to keep my body fat as low as possible as I build muscle mass. Also make sure you drink 3 litres of water every day and get enough sleep. 7-9 hours of sleep a night should do it.
 
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