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End Scrawny: 5 Fixes to Gain Muscle Mass for the Skinny Guy

How to Gain Lean Bulk for the Skinny/Underweight Male

Guys who are skinny are skinny for either one of two reasons.

1. They are young, somewhat active, and still experiencing growth

OR

2. Most skinny guys haven’t learned how to eat properly

The author with a 50 lbs difference in body mass

The author with a 50 lbs difference in body mass

Consuming food is easy, while consuming nutrients takes dedication.

Because most underweight males are at their weight due to lifestyle choices, we should focus on certain quick fixes to help gain some success and confidence. First I will discuss a few quick fixes, then I will relate the reasons why it is fundamental to create new eating habits.

Quick Fix# 1: Breakfast 

This is simple and it should be happening at least 6 out of every 7 days. Sure I can speak for days as to how breakfast enhances human metabolic processes… but you just need to do it.

  • Smoothies (berries / milk / protein)
  • Oatmeal (milk / whey / almond butter or peanut butter / or coconut oil)
  • Shake (fresh juices, vegetables, fruits, powders)
  • Eggs + vegetables
  • Many possibilities

Quick Fix# 2: Allow yourself a minimum of 20 minutes for breakfast

Okay, so the first two MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU CAN DO are both related to breakfast. That should give you a glimpse as to how extremely valuable this time is for your body.

You cannot rush through breakfast and expect to have healthy digestion and consumption.

Go to bed 20 minutes earlier the night before if you must.

Quick Fix# 3: Eat Big Carbs before / after workout

To gain muscle mass, you want to increase the energy storage within the muscle. Carbohydrates, particularly glucose or food that readily converts into glucose are the muscles preferred sources of energy.

This guy understands the benefits of healthy carbs.

This guy understands the benefits of healthy carbs.

As muscles adapt to training stimuli, the overall amount of glycogen stored within the muscle will be increased.

Let me put it this way: The more lean, athletic muscle you possess, the more carb-based energy will be stored within the muscles. This is one reason that gives the muscles a larger physical size/appearance. It also means you have the potential to be more powerful than most other people.

Quick Fix# 4: Consume Protein before / after workout

Protein contains bonds of amino acids which are essential for the body. Powerful body-strengthening mechanisms are activated by protein.

After your workout, your muscles will be increased sensitivity to uptaking carbohydrates and glucose. When the muscles uptake glucose more readily, it has a carryover effect of uptaking protein as well. In other words, carbs help attract muscle building amino acids into the actual muscle tissue.

Quick Fix# 5: Take Omega-3 Fatty Acid supplement 

Some people eat Wild Alaskan Salmon three times per week — and they might not need an Omega-3 supplement. However, most people, especially skinny guys NEED the nutrients and will utilize Omega-3’s to support anabolic processes.

You will cripple your progress unless you consume adequate omega-3s.

You will cripple your progress unless you consume adequate omega-3s.

A lot of people talk about the health benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids — I know all about them. If you want to know more, google that. Let’s talk about the MUSCLE BUILDING and ANABOLIC properties that omega-3’s possess.

  • Improved insulin sensitivity (translates to –> more protein/glucose IN your muscles)
  • Joint lubrication (translates to –> less achy joints, quicker recovery time from exercise)
  • Supports Inflammatory process (translates to –> inflammation is regulated to improve adaptation to exercise)
  • Brain health (translates to –> you learn skills /exercise form quicker and can progress faster)

Gaining Lean Mass requires Lifestyle Alteration

Regardless of genes, your lifestyle is the reason for why your body looks the way it does. In order to enhance the muscularity of the body, you must also enhance the internal health.

I take a strong holistic approach towards gaining weight in a healthy way. You must pay attention to the bio-feedback and signals from your body in order to truly achieve a state of wellness.

A few things to consider during your journey:

  • The role of gut health / bacteria in nearly all realms of human health condition
  • Sleep and other cycles
  • Hormones, how to optimize male / human hormones to exist in a muscle building state
  • Stressors — your ability to adapt to everyday stress
  • Coping strategies. Example… health = exercise. Unhealthy = smoking / drinking.
  • Antioxidants and intracellular optimalization

Muscle mass must be earned, every day. every week. and every month. 

The best things in life don’t come for free. The requirements to achieve greatness will always come with sacrifice and character building opportunities.

You can choose to make excuses… or you can force mental adaptation (lifestyle change).

Some perspective…

Exercise: 3-4 hours per week

For the other 164 hours of the week, you need to be owning up to habits which promote healthy metabolic functioning. And in your case, that means forcing physical adaptation through recovery methods (sleep, nutrition, unstress, and soft tissue work).

Stay tuned for the next post for an Exercise Routine to help the skinny guy. 

Nutrition, Immunity, and Digestion Physical Fitness by Dre
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Why Bodyweight Training is Essential for Fitness

Bodyweight exercise has existed before any other kind.

Whether humans were running along the fertile ground near rivers or performing feats of strength as ritual, the ability to have control over one’s body is more human than any other training.

These guys didn’t wake up one day and do a handstand… no — they trained for it.

Rediscover the benefits of bodyweight exercise

  • Exercise in a natural range of motion
  • Metabolic boosts, calorie burning
  • Improved recovery capacity and less stress on the central nervous system
  • Typically supports joint health and muscles which stabilize the joint
  • Lean muscle tone

Why don’t more people do bodyweight training?

Even though there are many subcultures of fitness which are entirely dedicated to bodyweight training, the truth is that most people have a failure to appreciate the difficulty of bodyweight exercises.

The Planche is a static hold requiring tension throughout the entire body. This is an advanced position requiring many months of progression and exercises as well as a lean physique with low body fat.

The result, however, is an incredibly fit individual. This is just an example of how bodyweight exercises can increase in difficulty by changing the levers of the exercise. What was once a push up position now supports the entire body in the air.

The cons of bodyweight exercise

Gaining the strength, skill, coordination to perform advanced variations is difficult enough. Moreover, most people simply don’t have the physique (at this point in time) to be able to perform advanced exercises.

So most people are forced to begin with simple variations on bodyweight exercises and they feel very humbled by how much trouble they have. Instead of doing bodyweight exercises, many gym-goers go off and use implements such as dumbbells and machines. People with large body mass or people with significant excess body fat will have difficulty performing bodyweight exercises.

“Older” guys can do it too. Jack Lalane showing his fingertip push up skills.

On the flip side, people with very LOW body mass (skinny people) may have more trouble building muscle mass from bodyweight exercises alone because their bodies are not forced to move as much weight. For example, if a 130 pound guy does 20 chin ups, versus a 200 pound guy who does 15 chin ups — who do you think will have bigger arms and back as a result of chin up practice? Most likely the larger guy.

Embrace the challenge

This man realized the benefits of bodyweight training in association with weighted implement training.

The more I learn about the human body, the more I realize that bodyweight exercises should be foundational and not supplemental. The joint health benefits alone are significant enough, and then you should also remember the coordination and functional benefits as well.

Physical Fitness by Dre
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Natural Health and Muscle Recovery Secrets

For all of those who possess a passion for real training.

Even if I wasn’t in the gym, I would make time to train. Real training results in physical and mental empowerment. The beauty is in it’s simplicity.

Learn skills. And,

Develop precision and power.

Motivation to train is inherent. Physical recovery far supersedes the time spent training and involves everything from meal planning to quality sleep and hormonal balance. Here are some tips from the natural side of things.

Top 3: Recover from Exercise/Physical Activity:

1. Ginger

Inflammation can be chronic or acute. Either way, you want a tried and true ally on your side. Ginger’s effect on inflammation is based on strong evidence and more than a millennium of wisdom. Additional gut health benefits.

Root power

2. Turmeric

Supporters of Turmeric may question why ginger is ranked number 1 on my list and that’s me being partial to the benefits fresh juiced ginger. Turmeric is likely a more powerful COX-2 inhibitor and has been shown to induce apoptosis/destruction of harmful cells.

Powerful Powder of Turmeric

3. Cherries

Cherries are more much more than the pits! This berry has unique antioxidants which may have detox effects on the joint while promoting healthy inflammation. The antioxidants in cherries help process uric acid and flush the joint structures of excessive inflammatory compounds. Meanwhile, natural sugars refuel muscle glycogen and support repair process of lean tissue.

Good things come in packages like this.

Recovery from exercise, anti-aging?

To some people anti-aging is a broad marketing term, but in reality anti-aging is all about promoting healthy, efficient processes in the body.  Physical activity should invigorate people. Their bodies ought to return with increased capacity and ability.

Tip: Recovery methods are most effective within 30 minutes of exercise so utilize that time window!

Nutrition, Immunity, and Digestion
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Are Performance Enhancing Drugs and Steroids considered Cheating?

Steroids

There’s no tricky street names like many other drugs. Everyone knows them as steroids. Technically, the class of drugs are known as Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids (AAS).

Sometimes it’s made in a basement, other times it’s labeled veterinary grade.

Gym Rat vs. Professional athlete

Fans across America, including the politicians in Washington D.C. have condemned performance enhancing drugs over and over. The argument is that it creates unfair competition and sets a poor example for the youth of America.

However, most people who take steroids are NOT professional athletes. Typical steroid user is male between ages of 20-50 years old and uses for physique enhancement. The question that has been going through my mind is whether or not steroid use by regular joe’s “ruins it” for the those who try to improve their physique naturally.

Unrealistic Expectations and Psychological Issues

Nowadays, we all know that the bodybuilders on the cover of hardcore magazines are obviously ‘roided up and have gone through many cycles of exogenous steroid injections. But, what surprises most people is that even some of the guys you see on Men’s  Health and Men’s Fitness have allegedly cycled as well.

Really, I can gain 10 lbs of muscle in one month with your nitric oxide supplement… are you frackin’ kidding me?

The problem here is that these magazines are promoting certain diets, natural supplements, and training programs even though the fitness model used 10 weeks of testosterone injections to build mass, and then another cycle with specialized gear later on to get extremely lean. Consider this: some muscular body types can be achieved with 10-15 years of natural training whereas it can be achieved in only 3-5 years with steroid cycles. And if you want to get HYUGE, then you are going to need a reliable supply man for your steroid use.

Steroid addiction

Let’s say someone takes steroids for 10 weeks and gains 15+ pounds of LEAN PURE ROCK SOLID muscle. When their cycle ends, no matter how good their post-cycle-therapy is, they will undoubtedly lose strength, muscle, and ability to train as hard. Thus leading to the never ending cycle of needing to go on another cycle to gain more muscle and feel that high you only get from external hormonal modification.

Muscle mass gains instant respect

Nobody wants to mess with a big dude (except drunk bros). Let’s face it, having big muscles will gain some sense of admiration or jealously from other males — either way there is definitely an effect on the social status. So in a sense, when people say that steroids are cheating, it means that they are cheating the natural hierarchy of men.

However, the strongman Mariusz Pudzianowski would be a man among men irregardless of his steroid use.

Big muscles come at a cost

People who use steroid cycles will always defend the safeness of steroids, but in reality there is not much research on the long-term effects of steroids.

Steroids + Human Growth Hormone which causes enlargement of internal organs and pushes up against the abdominal wall.

Potential side effects are well known:

  • Shrinkage of testicles (one patient was reported to have lost his testicles completely after steroid abuse, the sack was literally empty)
  • Gynecomastia aka manboobs
  • Mood effects (depending in particular on the type of steroid)
  • Aggression
  • Increase LDL cholesterol
  • Stress on the tendons/ligaments (because steroids grow muscle and allow heavier weights, but they do nothing for the other connective tissues)
  • Injection issues, including HIV, transmittable disease, and infection at the site.

Before and after surgery to treat Gynecomastia. Some bodybuilders will undergo multiple surgeries for this condition as it arises from additional cycles.

Now, obviously the side effects of steroids are not much a deterrent for a lot of people. Why? Because having big muscles comes with a big reward: social status, power, and strength.

Bottom line: Steroids aren’t going anywhere

Every man who trains seriously with weights will have to make the decision whether or not to use steroids. The allure of a perfect, muscular, ripped body can be very appealing. And if the benefits outweigh the costs (such as surgery to repair steroid induced male breast development), then people will continue to inject.

The dialogue continues…

We HAVE to talk about steroids. I don’t think it does the fitness community any good to keep stuff like this underground.

The truth that many steroid users neglect is that long-term side effects are simply unknown. When 1970’s famous bodybuilders die from heart attacks, they look for other reasons. When Arnold had heart surgery, they look past his rampant steroid consumption. When players from the football teams of the 1960’s silently pass away at 40-50 years old, no one talks about it.

Unfortunately, there is almost guaranteed to be some 17 year old football player taking steroids right now to get bigger. What will become of him?

Natural vs Unnatural

Chronic steroid users are some of the most educated people with regard to the physiological effects and dosage protocols of steroids. Yet, when the conversation comes up of Natural vs. Steroids, they often shut down and berate people who have chosen natural. So are performance enhancing drugs cheating? Steroid users will say no, but aren’t we — as men — always in competition. Of course.

Remember, women love muscle — but it has to be proportionate fellas!

I wonder if I’ll get some interesting comments from the internets on this post…

Cheers…

Blog & Personality
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Are you Inspired? How to Reach Goals by Growing from Others

Think of any lesson which you have ever learned.

Have you touched a hot stove or how quickly would you learn NOT to touch a hot stove?

That’s why they invented tools.

Consider the emotional experience resulting from flesh burning and physiological distress. Lessons are the representations of meaningful memories and experiences.

Lessons are powerful

The human experience contains rhythms of knowledge & discovery. Perhaps we should all seek to unlock deeper and more enriching realities. We must bring to light to those that matter.

It’s good to be a winner.

How to Find Value and Inspiration in other people

Pause for a second and think about a moment when you called upon your own strength to overcome a new challenge. You should  enjoy the memory of an experience which accompanies the feeling of accomplishment.

So look for that in people. Bring encouragement to the vulnerable part of a person who just wants their pain go away and for recovery to be achieved.

Believe in the Journey… Envision the Outcome.

You have to wake up every day and make choices. Those choices are not mere Yes or No’s… actually it becomes who you are. Life is a huge opportunity. Take pride in yourself, for the way you have experienced your fitness journey.

Take on challenges with open arms

Envision your perfect body despite imperfections. Maybe there’s a mole, or a wart, or something you wish you’d never seen… think about the way that your own thoughts can make you feel proud. Embrace that which you are most self-conscious about.

See your vision…

Feel your vision…

And,

Be your Vision.

Blog & Personality Power of the Mind