Bodybuilding For Skinny Guys – 3 Bodybuilding Tips to Help Skinny Hardgainers Build Muscle Fast
When it comes to bodybuilding for skinny guys, or “hardgainers” as we’re affectionately known in the bodybuilding world, we often have to swim against the tide of much of the bogus information that flies around in locker rooms, magazines, and online.
Here I’ll show the most important things to include in your bodybuilding for skinny guys program, so that you can build muscle mass and get the body you know you deserve.
Significantly Increase Your Calorie Intake
Insufficient caloric intake is often the single biggest reason why skinny guys fail in their bodybuilding efforts.
In general you’ll need to add an additional 1,000 calories or so of high quality calories to your daily diet. So, for an average skinny guy looking to build muscle mass, you should be consuming at least 3,500 calories per day.
Look for nutritious calorie dense foods like nuts, lean meats, oatmeal, eggs and dried fruits to reach your daily calorie requirements. It goes without saying that you should avoid fatty foods and processed fats, that contain little to no nutritious value – so no super-sized Big Macs and fries! 🙂
Increase Load and Lift Heavier Weights
Lifting heavy weights for lower numbers of reps and consistently increasing the load is a real key in bodybuilding for skinny guys.
High reps on lower weights may get you “pumped” and looking impressive while you’re at the gym, but it does little to increase your muscle mass.
Muscles only grow when they are forced to lift ever increasing loads…so keeping a record of your lifting progress and always aiming to do better than last time is a must in your bodybuilding for skinny guys program. Aim for around 3 sets of no more than 8-12 reps per exercise.
Reduce Your Cardio Sessions
Cardio is great for burning fat and keeping your heart healthy, and if you’ve come from an athletic or sports background then it’s probably in your blood to do long intense cardio sessions.
However, cardio increases the rate at which you burn calories and so forces you to consume even more to continue to build muscle mass.
Reduce your cardio sessions to 2 twenty minute sessions per week in order to maximize your muscle building efforts in your weight training workouts. Cardio can be increased later on when you’ve gained muscle and want to shave off the last few pounds of body fat in order to get the “ripped” look.
