The Skinny Guy's Struggle: How Do You Get Bigger?
It’s been a problem for many guys for their whole lives. Being skinny, but not knowing how to gain more weight and muscle and KEEP it on.
I bet 99% of you reading this have always been the skinny guy. Always having that underlying anxiety of going into a gym and lifting weights, because you know you’re weak.
You tell yourself if you could just gain about 10lbs of muscle, you’d have the confidence to live the life you always wanted to: Being confident talking to girls, having no fear of taking your shirt off at a pool, having other people give subtle looks at your arms because they’re popping out your shirt....trust me I know what you’re going through because I went through it too.
I believe the reason some guys are chronically skinny is pretty easy to understand, and the fix for that is simple, but not easy.
To me it’s like the chicken or the egg argument, it’s hard to tell which comes first.
You’re skinny because you don’t eat enough. You don’t eat enough because you’re not hungry. You’re not hungry because you have a low body-weight and don’t need many calories to stay the same size. And you have a low body-weight because because you don't eat enough.
Do you see how this loop is continuous?
Now, how do you break one of the links in that chain of mediocre gains? How do you overcome these barriers? There are 3 things that can help.
#1- Track Your Food Intake
You MUST know how many calories you consume EVERY DAY if you are serious about gaining weight and putting on size.
Saying that you “eat enough” means nothing when the scale isn’t moving. It’s a matter of calories in vs. calories out. If you are in a caloric surplus, you’ll gain weight. If you are in a caloric deficit, you’ll lose weight. Your emotions towards that concept don’t matter, the results speak for themselves. Let me explain further.
Let’s say you need 14,000 weekly calories (2,000 daily calories) to remain 150lbs. Here’s how a surplus/deficit works.
Surplus:
To be in a caloric surplus and gain weight, you could up your calories to 2,200 daily calories, which totals 15,400 weekly calories.
You could also have a couple days where you eat more calories than others. For example, Monday-Thursday you eat 1,800 calories, then on the weekend you go out to eat each day and consume 3,000 calories on Friday-Sunday. Your weekly calorie total would be 16,200.
So as you see, there are many ways to go about being in a caloric surplus. But the only way to know that is to TRACK YOUR CALORIES.
Deficit:
To be in a caloric deficit and lose weight, your calorie total would need to be less than 2,000 daily or 14,000 for the week.
You’re probably wondering how this applies to you since you are reading this to learn how to gain weight. Well, just like how there is more than one way to eat to gain weight, there is more than one way to eat to lose weight.
If Monday-Friday you try to be in a surplus and eat 2,200 calories each day, that’s already 11,000 calories. Great job! BUT...what happens when you sleep in late and are lazy on Saturday and only eat 1,500 calories? Then on Sunday you play video games most the day and didn’t feel like cooking, so you only ate 1,000 calories that day. Guess what that means? For the week, you only consumed 13,500 calories!
If you recall in this example, you need 14,000 calories in the week to stay the same weight. So if you only eat 13,500 calories in the week, your weight won’t change (it might even go down).
This is why tracking your food intake is crucial to your success. It is very easy for skinny men to over estimate how much they eat. Once again, almost every skinny dude I've helped tells me that they eat all the time and can't gain weight. As soon as they start tracking their food, they realize they were wrong.
Use MyFitnessPal to track your calorie intake. Here's a quick review on some of the features of MyFitnessPal: MyFitnessPal Tutorial
#2- Progressive Overload In The Weight Room
Weight training is something that every skinny man needs to do in order to build muscle and get bigger.
I know that right now you may be nervous and intimidated by the thought of stronger guys and beautiful women seeing you not knowing what to do and being weak in the weight room.
From my own personal experience, I can tell you that the only way to get over that fear is to go all-in towards that fear. Realize that everyone that’s in the gym had a “first day” at some point in time. Nobody knows exactly what to do without trying first or having it taught to them. Literally everyone starts as a beginner.
Once you have made it into the gym finally, you need to train, and train HARD.
Progressive overload is the concept of each workout trying to challenge the body more than the last. That can be done with more reps, more weight, more sets, less rest periods, or better form.
More Reps:
Let’s say you start with 95lbs on the bench press for 3 sets of 8 reps. Progressive overload with reps means the next workout you need to try to do 95lbs for 9-12 reps each set.
Another way to think about it is if you can even do ONE more rep for the entirety of that bench press session, that is still improvement. If you get 3 sets of 8, that’s 24 total reps. On the next workout can you get 25 total reps between all 3 sets?
More Weight:
Using the same bench press example, once you have done 95lbs for 3 sets of 8, the next workout try to do 105lbs for 3 sets of 8.
If you are unable to get 8 reps with all 3 sets with 105lbs, you could keep using that weight each workout until you are able to complete all the reps. You will know you’ve built more muscle because you can now do all the sets with heavier weight.
More Sets:
More volume is usually a good way to get more muscle growth. Adding in an additional set is a great way to progressively overload the muscles.
If you can now bench press 105lbs for 3 sets of 8 reps, but you don’t feel confident jumping to 115lbs yet, you could do an additional set.
Now your goal is to do 4 sets of 8 reps with 105lbs. Stick with that goal until you can do it, and you will build more muscle.
Less Rest:
Decreasing your rest periods is a great way to increase the intensity of your workout. If you are resting 90 seconds between all 4 sets of 105lbs x 8 reps on the bench press, see how you do dropping to 45 seconds rest.
You will now be asking your muscles to produce force even in a fatigued state. The muscles will be forced to adapt, and that adaptation will lead to muscle growth.
Better Form:
The last way to progressively overload the muscle is to have better form. If you’ve been doing 4 sets of 8 reps with 105lbs on the bench press with 45 seconds rest, the next step could be cleaning up bad form.
If you go from your reps being sloppy and using a lot of compensation like your legs flopping around on the bench, to now being solid and pressing efficiently, your targeted muscles are now working harder. You will have better development over a long period of time and will reduce the chance of injury.
So as you see, there are many ways to progressively overload the muscles. Now that you have this knowledge, start to implement this during your next workout.
7 Habits That Are Killing Your Gains
#3-Recovery
Did you know that muscle isn’t built during a working out? Muscle is built from RECOVERING from workouts.
This is an important factor to always remember. You can train like an Olympic athlete 7 days per week, but if you don’t recover from your workouts, you won’t build much muscle and your results will plateau.
To recover properly, you need to get quality sleep, reduce stress, and have adequate water intake.
Quality Sleep:
Even if you lay in bed for 8 hours each night, that doesn’t mean you are getting quality sleep. Your body needs to be able to go through the full sleep cycle to take advantage of REM sleep. This is where the most recovery happens during the night.
Failing to get REM sleep is a rookie mistake. It is one of the most important things for your health as well as muscle development. Turn the phone and TV off and get some sleep.
Reduce Stress:
Most of us live stressful lives. The unfortunate thing is that your body doesn’t like to be stressed out. It will limit muscle development and look to store fat under stressful conditions. So when your goal is to build muscle, decreasing stress should be a priority.
Look for healthy ways to drop the stress: Taking a walk, meditate, get in a sauna, read a book, watch a funny movie, get a massage, etc.
Water Intake:
The last easy fix to help you recover from your workouts better is to drink more water. Not more liquid...more water.
If you are habitually dehydrated it will affect your ability to push hard during tough workouts, you will get fatigued more easily, and even worse it will slow the recovery of your muscles when they get damaged from the workouts.
There is no exact amount every person needs, but it is good to aim for a gallon of water a day for most men. Start out by just adding an additional glass of water to your day. Even that little change will help your recovery tremendously.
As you see, there are a lot of factors that can be easily overlooked when a skinny guy is trying to build muscle and size. While none of it is necessarily difficult individually, if you miss optimizing any of these areas, you’re leaving results behind.
There are 6 phases to maximizing muscle growth. To see what they are, click here:
https://www.blewisfitness.com/pl/221257
Brandon Lewis is an A.C.E. Certified personal trainer that specializes in muscle and strength development for skinny men.
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