Why Skinny Guys Struggle To Build Muscle

Okay skinny guys, listen up: You can build muscle. That’s right, you, skinny guys, can build muscle. And it’s not nearly as difficult as you might imagine.

Outlined below are some common reasons why skinny guys don’t see muscle gains with their routines, and how to help the skinny build muscle.

Working Out Too Much

If you’re skinny, build muscle by conserving calories and maximizing your workout sessions. Do not, I repeat, do not spend hours in the gym doing tons of reps with light weights. Your body grows when it’s resting, contrary to what you might think, and if you spend hours burning calories and not enough time resting, you won’t give your body a chance to recover, repair your muscles, and grow.

Choose a few effective, compound exercises, find your maximum weight per exercise, and knock out no more than 10 or 12 sets per workout until you start to build muscle and bulk up. Only then will you be able to add more sets and be able to expend more calories without waning away to nothing.

Doing the Wrong Exercises

Isolation exercises are not the way to go from skinny to building muscle. Skinny guys cannot afford to expend the calories needed to do these fairly inefficient exercises. Stick to compound, multi-muscle-group exercises like deadlifts, barbell squats, dips, push-ups, chin-ups and any other exercises that involve more than one muscle group and move more than one joint during the exercise. Conserve your calories and maximize your workout time.

Wasting Calories with Cardio

Sure, you are skinny now, but you say you don’t want to be fat, either. If you struggle to gain weight then you should not worry about this at all. Don’t worry about spending time on the treadmill right now in an effort to avoid getting fat.

With the smart lifting you’ll be doing, and the smart foods you’ll be eating, becoming fat will be the last thing you need to worry about during your quest to build muscle. Besides you can always tone after you have gained some mass.

Not Eating Right / Not Eating Enough

Eat. Eat again. And eat the right foods! Fill up with lean proteins like meat, fish, poultry and eggs, complex carbs for glucose (muscle fuel) and take it easy on fat (but include some good fats to keep your body running properly and burning fat instead of storing it). Try to avoid the beer, fried foods and sugary sweets; this type of eating plan will help the skinny build muscle.

If you want to throw a protein powder into the mix, you should still aim to get most of your protein from your food, because a protein powder really is a supplement. No more than three shakes per day is a reasonable amount if you eat six times a day, but for most people that is excessive if you are eating right and getting protein from your food sources. In short, protein powders as a supplement are fine; protein powders alone will not make the skinny build muscle.

Rest and Relaxation

Your body needs downtime to repair its systems--not only your muscular system but your immune system, cardiovascular system, endocrine system--you name it, it needs rest to repair itself and function properly. In terms of muscle growth, your muscles need rest time to give the fibers a chance to grow, and if you hit the gym too soon after your last workout, you’ll damage those new fibers and you won’t see the muscle gains you’ve been working so hard to achieve.

Improper Technique

You can put all the weight in the gym on your barbell and hoist it up and down, but if you have to rely on momentum, chances are you’ll be laid out with a back injury before you know it.

Be smart about your technique and the amount of weight you use to go from being skinny to building muscle quickly and effectively. Challenge yourself enough to see results but not so much that it compromises form, and always be aware of your movements and you’ll see results.