By Ben Greenfield
I used to be skinny. Really skinny. In
high school and up to my first year of college, I was a complete stick -- until
I made the decision in my freshman year that I needed to put some muscle on.
Eventually, by my senior year of
college, I went from just “putting on muscle” to actually becoming a
bodybuilder – standing on stage and posing 35 pounds of muscle above my
original starting point.
If you were born skinny, you may not
have the potential to gain the bulk of an NFL lineman, but it’s completely
possible for a skinny guy to put on muscle. The bonus for you is that your body
fat levels are naturally low, so when you do gain muscle, you’ll be able to
achieve a very ripped look, which bigger, bulky guys often envy!
Here are seven things I learned from
my own journey.
Supplements
Normally, you can get from food all
the nutrients, vitamins and minerals that you need. But if you’re trying to put
on significant size and you’re exercising at a level that is constantly
stripping your body of fuel, you’ll need help from supplements.
For calories and upping your protein
intake, a protein powder is important. If you don’t want the typical gut
distress that comes from eating protein powders, don’t just settle for any
version of protein powder. Try to choose one without added soy and corn, with
no artificial sweeteners, and with added digestive aids such as digestive
enzymes and probiotics.
Other supplements that can effectively
help a skinny guy gain muscle are:
- Creatine: 0.3 g/kg bodyweight for 5-7 days followed by 5 g/day.
- Carnitine: 750 mg, 2,000 mg/day, in 2 doses.
- Citrulline: 6-8 g, 30-60 minutes before exercise.
- Beta-Alanine: 2-5 g, 30-60 minutes before exercise.
None of these supplements are a
substitute for lifting frequently and lifting heavy, but they will certainly
help to enhance results.
Eat
Frequently
Strength training is very glycolytic,
which means it burns a high amount of carbohydrates. Because of this, you
shouldn't go into any muscle building workout without having eaten about
300-600 calories of a carbohydrate-containing meal two to three hours prior.
This meal can include sweet potatoes, yams, oatmeal, quinoa, brown rice or any
other healthy carbohydrate source. If you eat another similar meal after your
workout, you’ll be able to put on size more quickly, as your muscles will
rapidly absorb the sugars more quickly after a workout.
In addition, timing your protein
intake with several small 20-25-gram portions split up through the day will be
far more effective for gaining muscle, compared to a giant protein shake at the
beginning and end of the day.
Ultimately, a skinny guy trying to put
on muscle should be aiming to consume a pre-workout meal, a post-workout meal
and at least four to five additional meals. This may seem like a lot of eating
and food, but this is what it takes to build significant muscle if you’re
skinny.
Use
Amino Acids
A big secret among bodybuilders and
strength training enthusiasts is a type of supplement called “branched chain
amino acids” (BCAAs). These are special protein-building blocks that are
rapidly absorbed and easily used by muscles during exercise. They’re cheap,
easy to find and can be consumed without stomach distress both before, during
and immediately after your workout, and can significantly increase muscle gain.
You should not train for size without
amino acids in your bloodstream, and since digesting a steak can be tough
during a hard workout, BCAAs are a good way to go. To gain muscle more rapidly,
you should aim for 10-20 grams of BCAAs, consumed before, and then every 60-90
minutes during, your weight-training workouts.
Eat
Meat
Skinny guys who are vegans or
vegetarians may cringe at this advice, but meat is muscle fiber, and it’s chock
full of fats, proteins and hormonal precursors that help you to put on size
more quickly. While you certainly can get adequate proteins from plants, it’s
far more difficult to go the vegetarian route, and the volume of food you must
eat is going to be very daunting and a bit distressing to your gut.
To maintain muscle, you need to eat
about 0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight, and to build muscle, you
need about 0.7 grams per pound. In addition, you’ll need to eat an extra
500-1000 calories each day over and above your basal metabolic rate. This high
volume of food and protein should include foods that naturally increase
testosterone, including grass-fed beef, eggs and seafood (other lower-calorie
testosterone-supporting foods include garlic and broccoli).
Mix
It Up
The advice to mix it up should not be
misinterpreted. I don’t mean you should change up your workout every day (which
is actually good for fat loss but not very effective for gaining muscle).
Instead, you should stick to the same workouts each week for three to five
weeks, but you should use different types of strategies during your sets to
challenge your muscles. These strategies can include bouncing, explosions,
quarter reps, ladder reps, stripping, supersets, super slow reps, forced reps,
negatives and cheating.
Lift
Heavy
Most skinny guys do not lift
adequately heavy weights to build significant muscle. This is one reason why
having a personal trainer or workout buddy at the gym will help you put on muscle
faster -- you can lift more weight when someone is there to help you if the
weight gets too heavy for you to safely handle.
While lifting with slightly higher
sets (like 4-6 sets) and higher repetitions (like 10-12 reps) will help you
build muscle faster than using low sets and low repetitions (which are better
for power or brute strength), you still need to use weights that completely
exhaust your muscles by the end of a set. For example, if you’re going to be
doing 5 sets of 10 repetitions of a barbell squat, you should barely be able to
stand for the last 3 repetitions. That is the kind of tough stimulus a skinny
guy needs to build muscle.
Lift
Frequently
Once you put it on, muscle is much
easier to maintain than big lungs or good endurance. A runner begins to lose
oxygen capacity within about three days of laying off workouts. But muscle only
requires one workout a week for maintenance.
However, muscle is hard to put on
initially, and for skinny guys typically requires 4-6 workouts per muscle group
to build (you can build even faster if you lift twice a day, but if you do
that, you’ll need to take a full recovery day at least once a week, and allow
at least four hours between workouts).
So what does it look like to lift
frequently? One popular split that works very well is to exercise your chest
and back on day one, your shoulders, biceps and triceps on day two, your legs
and core on day three, then take one day of rest, and repeat.
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