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| How Skinny Body Can Build Muscle Quickly: Workout & Diet Plan |
How to Gain Muscle Mass Fast: Workout & Diet Plan for Skinny People
Don’t be one of those guys who spends all his time tweaking his bicep burls and researching the best whey protein powder. Instead, focus on these big-picture topics to help ensure you gain the most muscle possible.
How to Gain Muscle Mass Principle #1: What to Eat to Gain Muscle Mass
You already know that to gain muscle mass you need to eat more calories, and specifically, more protein.
here’s something to keep in mind:
Most guys overestimate how much they need to eat.
Eat more, but don’t overdo it.
If you want to gain muscle mass, the important lift you do will be lifting a fork full of healthy, protein-packed food like this to your mouth. Over and over.
For some reason, a man hears the word “bulking” and immediately takes that as an excuse to eat everything in sight, from Doritos to Oreos to Cherry Garcia.
That’s not bulking, gentlemen. That’s getting fat.
The best place to start, when trying to gain muscle mass, is to eat 500 extra calories per day.
That should be enough to gain about 1 pound per week.
Don’t overestimate 500 calories. It’s the equivalent of about one additional small- to a medium-sized meal.
Eat more carbs and protein and less fat.
If your goal is to learn how to gain muscle mass, then you’ll need to focus on eating more protein and carbohydrates.
These 2 macros are the most important when it comes to giving your muscles the nutrients they need to rebuild themselves to be bigger & stronger.
It’s still important to get some healthy fat (for hormonal reasons), but don’t overdo it. Keep fat to 30% of your calories at the most and focus on protein & carbs.
(This is why you should focus on lean protein sources, so you don’t overdo the fat and end up with way too many calories.)
How much protein do you have to eat?
That’s probably a touch of an excessive amount of meat.
Recommendations vary wildly, but the foremost common advice is to consume about 1 gram of protein per pound of weight per day.
You probably don’t need quite that much in fact, studies show that 0.8 grams per pound of body weight per day are nearly certainly enough. except for simplicity’s sake, attempt to get around 1 gram/pound of body weight/day, or a touch bit less.
So if you weigh 200 pounds, that might mean getting 160-200 grams of protein/day.
If you weigh 185, get 148-195 grams/day.
You get the thought.
Protein is vital because it's, literally, the building block of muscle. Your body wouldn’t be ready to make new muscle tissue without the amino acids you get from protein.
Eating enough protein also allows your body to remain in a positive balance, which ensures that your body hast
Drink whey after workouts; otherwise, eat real food.
Whey protein & whey isolate powders are extremely popular among lifters, and permanently reason. It’s the foremost bioavailable and fastest-absorbing source of protein you'll get.
But does that make it better than eating real food, like chicken, fish, & steak?
No.
Well, let’s take one step back. there's one situation during which whey protein is superior, and that’s immediately after lifting weights.
After lifting, your muscles are going to be weakened and in desperate need of nutrients. this suggests they’re primed to soak up new amino acids to rebuild themselves to be bigger & stronger.
So after lifting you would like to form a bond to get protein to your muscles ASAP. And whey protein is the fastest-absorbing protein you'll get.
Moral of the story: drink a whey protein shake immediately after you lift weights.
Other than that, though, attempt to get your protein from real foods. Chicken, fish, beef, and so on.
At the end of the day, real foods will beat powders whenever. Real foods contain vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and everyone that other great things to assist fuel your body in ways in which powders can’t.
In fact, you don’t actually need whey in the least. It’s nice to possess after getting to the gym, but if you don’t want to drink any protein shakes, you don’t need to. Just eat an enormous protein-heavy meal right after your workout.
Drink enough water.
Being dehydrated by even 1-2% can cause a huge decrease in strength.
So drain the cup.
And remember: if you are feeling thirsty, meaning you’re already dehydrated. It’s best to drink before you get thirsty so you never get dehydrated in the first place.
It’s an honest idea to drink an enormous glass of water before getting to the gym, and sip on a bottle (or just hit up the fountain) regularly while you’re understanding.
How to Gain Muscle Mass Principle #2: The Best Muscle Building Workout
Most guys make these 2 killer mistakes.
Make no mistake: to build a massive amount of muscle, you need to lift weights.
Unfortunately, 90% of guys do this wrong. For starters, they follow routines like this:
- Monday: Chest
- Tuesday: Shoulders
- Wednesday: Arms
- Thursday: Lats
- Friday: Abs & Calves
- Saturday: Quads
A workout split like this will do absolutely NOTHING for you.
You could follow this routine for 5 years and at the end of that time, you won’t be any bigger or stronger than you are now.
The other thing most guys do wrong is done the wrong exercises.
In other words, they do easy exercises.
Instead of squatting, they do leg press (or, even worse, leg extension)…thinking it’s the same thing.
Instead of pull-ups, they do lat pulldowns.
Instead of deadlifts, they do hyperextensions.
Instead of the overhead press, they do shoulder raises.
You get the idea.
The RIGHT thanks to lifting for muscle mass.
What you would like to know is that when it involves building muscle, there are 2 main stages:
Stage 1 is building a raw mass. this suggests adding new muscle by getting stronger.
Stage 2 is refining your physique. this suggests rounding out your weak areas and losing fat to reveal your muscles. (Note: Step 2 comes AFTER step 1. Not before.)
Mehdi from StrongLifts explains this idea really well:
Unfortunately, most guys put the cart before the horse… and that’s sort of a sculptor trying to carve out a masterpiece from a small piece of clay – you only don’t have enough mass to figure with. Similarly, split routines won’t work unless you’ve spent years building muscle mass. which requires getting strong first…
In other words, exercises like shoulder raises aren’t getting to do any good unless you initially build up some raw muscle mass in your shoulders.
This means that 99% of men who want to realize muscle mass got to specialize in one thing:
Getting stronger in key lifts.
By “key lifts” I mean compound movements, most of them employing a barbell.
Key lifts include:
- Squat (back & front variations)
- Deadlift
- Bench Press
- Barbell Rows
- Barbell Overhead Press
- Weighted Pull-Ups
Notice there isn’t a single bicep curl or ab raise to be seen in this list.
That’s because those exercises are WORTHLESS if you want to gain muscle mass.
Here’s the sort of routine you ought to be following.
Instead of breaking your body out into 5-6 different splits (like shoulders, arms, abs, calves, etc.), you ought to structure your workouts like this:
Option A: Do full-body workouts.
Don’t know full-body workouts. they're going to kick your ass and gain slabs of lean, mean muscle.
I love full-body workouts for a few reasons:
- They force you to specialize in compound movements like deadlifts & overhead press.
- They allow for max frequency, if you are doing 3 full-body workouts/week, you’re hitting all of your major muscles 3x/week.
The only downside to full-body workouts is that you simply don’t have time to try an entire lot of volume; instead, you’re probably watching a few heavy sets of the large compound lifts.
(And for many folks, that’s exactly what you would like .)
Option B: Do upper-body & lower-body workouts.
If you would like to feature a touch extra volume to your workouts, split your upper & lower body.
- The advantage of this is often that you simply can spend longer hitting each half of your body. (For example, rather than just doing barbell rows for your back, you’ll have time to feature chin-ups or cable rows.)
- The downside is that your training frequency per muscle group goes down. (While 3 full-body workouts will hit your legs 3x per week, splitting up your routines like this may hit your legs just one .5x per week on average .)
Split routines like this work for more advanced trainers, so if you’re a beginner, stick with full-body workouts for now.
Option C: Do lower-body, upper-body pushing muscle, & upper-body pulling muscle workouts.
This is the foremost that I might recommend splitting up your workouts. it's like this:
- Workout A: Upper body pushing (bench press, overhead press, etc.)
- Workout B: Legs (back squats, front squats, lunges, etc.)
- Workout C: Upper body pulling (rows, pull-ups, deadlifts, etc.)
Here are the pros & cons of this sort of workout routine:
- This split allows you to really specialize in your upper body in each workout; you’ll have time for bench press, overhead press, and a variety of related accessory movements like shoulder raises, chest flies, dips, etc.
- The downside, once more, is that you’re reducing your training frequency (unless you're employed out 5-6 days per week, which is perhaps too often for many people).
My recommendation: start out with a full-body routine. specialize in getting stronger within the most vital lifts. this is often the fastest thanks to building muscle mass.
Focus on consistent strength gains.
When you lift weights, you ought to specialize in one thing and one thing only:
Getting stronger within the key compound lifts.
If you squatted 275 pounds for five reps in the week, next week attempt to get 275 for six. Or 280 for five.
Just get stronger.
Strength = muscle mass, gentlemen. tons of articles will attempt to filter “strength” from “hypertrophy” as if the two were completely various things.
They’re not.
Strength is where you get your foundation. Your mass.
Sure, doing 8-12 reps could be good for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. But you recognize what?
A weaker guy might only be ready to bench 185 for 8-12 reps. A stronger guy is going to be ready to bench 225 for 8-12 reps.
Which one among those guys goes to possess more muscle mass?
The strong one, obviously.
So don’t overcomplicate it.
Your goal within the gym is to try to be better than you probably did last week.
Rinse and repeat.
And a year from now, you’ll be a beast.
How to Gain Muscle Mass Principle #3: Recovery & Other Muscle-Building
Let me know if you have more questions and I’ll add them to this section.
Do you need supplements to build muscle?
For the most part, you can skip the supplements.
The only ones worth checking out are whey protein, creatine monohydrate, and a few vitamins/minerals like vitamin D and magnesium.
All those NO2 powders, testosterone boosters, and anything else that claims to help build muscle?
It’s a scam.
Keep your workouts short & intense.
When lifting weights, 60 minutes is the maximum amount of time you want to be in there.
And 45 minutes is probably a better goal.
Too much time in the gym is counterproductive. It creates too much cortisol, which leads to muscle breakdown.
Make your workouts short, sweet, & intense.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
This is what actual muscle building looks like.
This is important.
Your muscles don’t grow when you’re in the gym. They grow afterward when you’re resting.
And the best rest you can get is good, deep sleep.
Getting 7 hours at night is the absolute minimum, and 8-10 is much, much better.
And if you can?
Squeeze in a nap here and there.
Bodybuilders do it all the time because it works.
Sleep is CRITICAL, guys. Don’t overlook it.
For more tips, check out my blog post on post-workout recovery to help your muscles recover even better after intense sessions at the gym.
What about cardio?
A lot of guys are under the impression that cardio is the enemy. That it will cause you to lose all your precious muscle gains.
And to an extent, that’s true. You don’t want to be running 60 minutes a day if your goal is to gain muscle mass.
But a little cardio, especially some HIIT done on non-training days, is a great way to help keep the fat gain to a minimum while also keeping you in good shape.
Measure your progress if you want to improve.
Tattoos don’t help build muscle mass, but they do help you look like more of a badass.
Is your mass-gaining program working or not?
The only way you can tell (and the only way you can tell if you need to change something or not) is by measuring your progress.
Many guys choose only 1 metric to track…and that’s a problem.
Because if you only track 1 metric, you can easily miss the big picture.
So instead, you want to keep track of ALL these metrics. It’s a little more work, but it will give you a much more complete picture of how you are progressing.
- Scale – are you gaining weight? Ideally, you will track not just weight but body fat, so you can be sure that you’re gaining muscle as opposed to fat.
- Mirror – do you look bigger & stronger? I highly recommend taking before & after pics. Trust me: 3 years from now, when you’re a muscle-bound monster, you’ll wish you had an old picture of yourself to see how far you’ve come.
- Strength – are you lifting heavier weights in the gym? This is a really important one. Use an app such as FitNotes to keep track.
- Measurements – at least measure your arms, shoulders, chest, thigh, and waist. Your goal should be for everything to grow except your waist.
( By PureGym ).