4 Best Tips For Skinny Guys To Gain Muscle

Greeting from Vizemen!

If you are reading this article, you’re probably are an ectomorph. The human physique is divided into 3 categories based on the amount of fat percentage (somatotypes) namely ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph. Among them, ectomorphs are the ones with the lowest fat percentage (which is a good thing) and those who have the hardest time gaining muscle mass, we often call them skinny. Welcome to Visemen and here are 4 reasons why your muscle mass isn’t growing.

#1 You do not have a proper diet

If you are skinny, the first thing you need to know to grow muscle at an optimum rate is that muscles need protein to grow. More precisely, 2 grams of protein per kg of your body weight every day. For example, if you weigh 50 kg right now, you’ll need 100grams of protein daily. But completing your daily protein goal isn’t the only thing you need to do. You need to consume enough carbohydrates because carbs are partially converted to glycogen, which is a form of energy stored in muscles. This energy helps to power your workouts.

Apart from proteins and carbs, you need vitamins and minerals like vitamin D which helps the body absorb calcium and phosphorus. Calcium is essential for muscle contractions, while phosphorus is involved in the synthesis of ATP, the useable form of energy in the body. Vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant helps metabolize carbs for fuel and protects the body from exercise-induced oxidative stress. Other minerals like zinc, copper, iron, selenium also have a major impact on building muscles in the most optimum way possible. Hence, you need to have a proper diet first to build muscle mass.

Your deit contributes a massive 80% when it comes to build muscle mass, while working out contributes only 20%

#2 You are working out too hard

For a skinny guy, you need to have a calorie surplus in your diet in order to build muscle mass. People often make a mistake by working out too hard in their initial stages and burning more calories than they are supposed to. They might think that the harder the workout, the greater would their muscle mass, if you are among those people, I’m afraid to tell you that you’re wrong. If you are a beginner, that’s not the equation you want to follow! You need workouts that are short and of high intensity. The longer you workout, the greater calories you’ll be burning and you’ll have a harder time achieving your 1800–2000 calorie surplus.

You might ask how long should you work out for the best results. Well, according to experts, a one-hour workout is enough to elicit muscle activation in the body.

A one-hour workout is enough to elicit muscle activation in the body

#3 You are not getting enough sleep

Let me explain to you how muscles grow.

The main motive behind working out is to reach muscle activation level. Muscle activation level may be defined as the number of active motor units, and the frequency of action potentials they receive. To help you understand in simple terms, an optimum muscle activation level is reached when all the muscle tissues of a bigger muscle have been activated while doing a particular task which causes some muscle tissues to break down. This breakdown of muscles needs repairing which would make these muscle tissues grow. This repairing of muscle tissues takes place when you’re sleeping more specifically when you’re in your deep sleep.

So how many hours of sleep do you every day to fully repair and grow your muscles? The answer varies from age to age. If you are a teenager you’ll need around 6–7 hours of sleep every day to attain optimum muscle growth and repair. If you’re older, you’ll need a solid 8 hours of sleep every day. Having a good sleeping habit has a lot more advantages than you might think of. For instance, completing your daily sleeping goal helps you maintain healthy testosterone levels which are also important for optimum muscle growth.

#4 Your workout plan is not working out for you

If you have a good diet plan, you are working out for not too long and you are also having a good sleep every night, chances are you are still lagging behind when it comes to muscle growth. Often, the reason behind this is that the workout plan that you’ve chosen for yourself isn’t giving your muscles enough stimulus to reach optimum levels of growth.

This might happen when you hit all your muscle groups only once per week. If this is the case, you need a change in your workout plan. Try a workout plan that hits all your muscles twice per week. This is because muscle repairing of a particular muscle group completes within 48 hours of work out and to get the most out of workouts gym-goers around the globe hit every muscle group in the body twice per week to reach optimum levels of muscle growth.

The workout plan most of them use is called a push-pull-leg plan. According to this plan, you do all the exercises that involve pushing on day 1, do all the exercises that involve pulling on day 2 and do all the leg workouts on day 3 followed by a day of rest and continue the same scheme for day 4,5 and 6.

If your workout plan isn’t working for you, you can try this routine.

I hope you learned something new by reading this article. Just reading this won’t be enough you need to take action regularly. If you are skinny but you really want to gain muscle, then work hard and follow everything we discussed. Working out is very good for your health. The only condition is that you don’t hurt yourself in the gym. Use all the equipment wisely. Stay healthy, stay safe and don’t forget to drink water. Keeping yourself hydrated is also an important thing you need to consider while building muscle mass. Peace.

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