Skinny guys, often referred to as “ectomorphs,” typically have thinner bones, narrower frames, shallower ribcages, or lankier limbs. Unlike most people who aim to lose weight, ectomorphs often desire to gain it. They may struggle with eating enough, making it challenging to bulk up. This article provides a comprehensive guide to help ectomorph men effectively diet and train for muscle growth.
Understanding the Ectomorph Body Type
The term "ectomorph" originates from old psychological pseudoscience, but the body type classification gained popularity in the bodybuilding community. While the psychological aspect is unfounded, the body type descriptions remain useful for tailoring workout and diet plans. Ectomorph is often used interchangeably with “hardgainer,” referring to someone who struggles to consume enough calories to gain weight.
Key Characteristics of Ectomorphs
Ectomorphs possess distinct characteristics that set them apart from other somatotypes:
- Slim and Lean Physique: Ectomorphs naturally have a slender build with low body fat and muscle mass.
- Narrow Shoulders and Hips: Their smaller bone structure results in a narrower frame, giving them characteristically narrow shoulders and hips.
- Fast Metabolism: Ectomorphs burn calories at a higher rate, making it challenging to gain weight, whether it's muscle or fat.
- Small Joints and Bones: It's not uncommon for ectomorphs to have smaller wrists and ankles than other somatotypes.
- Difficulty Gaining Weight: Ectomorphs may struggle to put on muscle mass and fat, even with increased caloric intake and strength training.
- Less Muscle Mass: Compared to other body types, ectomorphs have a lower percentage of muscle mass, which can impact their strength and physical performance.
- High Energy Levels: Their fast metabolism often translates to higher energy levels but can also mean they need more frequent meals to sustain their activity levels.
It's important to note that not all skinny individuals are ectomorphs, and not all ectomorphs are skinny. Some naturally thin individuals learn to build muscle and bulk up, retaining their thinner bone structures but becoming strong and athletic.
How Being an Ectomorph Affects Workout Style
If you're an ectomorph looking to put on a little more weight and muscle, you're going to want to focus on two core areas:
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- Diet: Ectomorphs tend to have high metabolisms and require more calories to gain weight. Adding calorie-dense foods, such as peanut butter and cheese, can help increase your calories, but ensure you include plenty of protein to help build muscle and carbs to provide energy for workouts.
- Weight Training: Lifting weights will help build muscle mass and strength, areas that ectomorphs can lack. Prioritizing compound exercises like deadlifts and squats will help build full-body strength and muscle, while some hypertrophy work can help with muscle mass.
Tailoring Training for Muscle Growth
Ectomorphs need to train differently from the average person because they want to prioritize building muscle. They don’t just want to get stronger for their size; they want to get bigger and stronger. Hypertrophy training, which focuses on muscle growth, is ideal.
Key Principles of Hypertrophy Training for Ectomorphs
- Prioritize Free Weights: Working out with free weights is usually best. While it’s possible to build muscle with bodyweight training, free weights make it much easier. Using dumbbells or a barbell for most of your training is ideal.
- Choose Appropriate Lifts: The lifts should match your strength and skill level. This makes training safer and allows for stimulating more muscle growth. Opt for simpler variations if necessary, such as goblet squats instead of front squats for beginners.
- Select Growth-Stimulating Exercises: Choose lifts that challenge your muscles under a deep stretch and stress your muscles instead of your joints. Use a mix of classic strength training lifts, such as bench presses, deadlifts, and chin-ups, as well as classic bodybuilding lifts, such as triceps extensions and biceps curls.
- Incorporate Compound and Isolation Lifts: Compound lifts stimulate the most overall muscle growth, but they don’t challenge all muscles enough. Include isolation lifts to target specific muscles. For instance, the bench press isn’t very effective for bulking up triceps, the barbell row isn’t very effective for bulking up biceps, and the deadlift isn’t very effective for bulking up hamstrings.
- Use Moderate Rep Ranges: Perform most of your lifting in moderate rep ranges (6-12 reps).
- Manage Rest Periods: Use a mix of longer and shorter rest periods. For big compound lifts in moderate rep ranges, rest 2+ minutes between sets to allow your cardiovascular system to recover, enabling you to lift heavy on subsequent sets.
- Train Frequently: Train each muscle 2-3 times per week. Research shows that this frequency maximizes muscle growth because a workout stimulates around 48 hours of muscle growth.
- Maintain High Training Volume: Ensure your training volume is reasonably high.
- Train Close to Failure: Most research indicates that stopping just before muscle failure still builds as much muscle as going all the way to failure. Novice lifters, however, may benefit slightly more from training to failure.
- Lift Explosively, Lower Under Control: Both the lifting and lowering portions of the lift stimulate muscle growth, so make the most of both.
- Focus on Progressive Overload: Gradually increase the weight, reps, or sets over time. Keep a workout log to track your progress and ensure continuous improvement.
Workout Styles for Ectomorphs
The following are the best workout styles for ectomorphs and a good starting point if you're looking to build muscle and strength:
Compound Training: Ectomorphs should incorporate heavy, compound lifts such as squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and rows. These exercises engage multiple muscle groups, promoting overall muscle growth and strength.
Higher Volume Workouts: To increase muscle mass, known as muscle hypertrophy, opt for a high volume, moderate weight approach:
- Repetition range: Aim for 6-12 repetitions per set with moderate to heavy weights.
- Sets and frequency: Perform 3-4 sets per exercise and train each muscle group 2-3 times per week for good muscle growth. For example, big groups like the back and chest should be trained twice a week (2x back sessions and 2x chest sessions).
- Progressive overload: Gradually increase the weight lifted or the number of repetitions to keep challenging the muscles.
Focus on Progressive Overload: To put on weight and muscle, you must regularly challenge your muscles by gradually increasing the weight you lift. This principle of progressive overload is crucial for muscle gain.
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Limit Cardio Exercise: While cardio is essential for overall health, too much can make it harder for ectomorphs to gain muscle and weight, as it increases the calories expended each day. If you are planning to train cardio, try to keep the sessions short and infrequent. Remember, strength training should be your main focus.
Adequate Rest and Recovery: Don't neglect your rest days! Make sure you allow sufficient rest between workout sessions to help muscle recovery and growth. Ectomorphs, in particular, should avoid overtraining, as their bodies can require more time to recover.
Sample Exercises for Ectomorphs
Most ectomorphs struggle to put on weight and muscle, so a workout that focuses on muscle hypertrophy and strength training is a great place to start. Below are a few basic exercises designed to build muscle and strength - but the real benefits come when these are paired with a personal training program and a proper diet plan.
Compound Exercises: Compound exercises are an effective way to build full body strength and promote muscle gain. Exercises include:
- Squats
- Deadlifts
- Lunges
- Bench presses
- Rows
- Overhead presses
Isolation Exercises: Isolation exercises focus on one muscle group at a time and can help to build targeted muscle mass and strength. Examples of isolation exercises include:
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- Bicep curls
- Leg extension
- Leg curls
- Lateral raises
Functional Training: Functional training is a great addition if you're looking to improve your athleticism and functional strength while still improving muscle growth. Functional training focuses on exercises that mimic everyday movements.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
Prioritize Muscle Growth: Ectomorphs need to prioritize muscle growth over general fitness. Unlike overweight individuals who can sometimes achieve a muscular look by simply burning fat, ectomorphs typically lack the underlying muscle mass.
Bench Press Alternatives: The bench press is excellent for building a bigger chest but can be challenging for ectomorphs due to their long arms and thin ribcages. Push-ups are a viable alternative, offering similar muscle growth stimulation, especially for new lifters, and training the abs and serratus muscles simultaneously.
Powerlifting Modifications: Ectomorphs aren’t necessarily built for powerlifting, which favors thickly built individuals. However, if pursuing powerlifting, consider modifications such as:
- Deadlifting with a wide sumo stance to take advantage of longer arms and stabilize the torso.
- Squatting with a wide stance and a low-bar position to minimize back strength requirements.
- Bench pressing with an ultra-wide grip to minimize the range of motion.
The Ectomorph Diet: Fueling Muscle Growth
Nutrition plays a crucial role in an ectomorph's ability to gain weight and build muscle. Consuming enough calories, prioritizing protein, and incorporating healthy fats and complex carbohydrates are essential.
Key Dietary Principles for Ectomorphs
- Calorie Surplus: To gain weight and build muscle, you must consume more calories than you burn. Aim for 300 to 500 additional calories per day.
- Prioritize Protein: Protein is essential for building and repairing muscle tissue. Ectomorph body types should consume about 1.6 g of protein for every kilogram (or for every 2.2 lb) of body weight. Plant-based options like tofu, lentils, or quinoa also work well. Protein powders like whey or plant-based blends (e.g., pea or rice protein) are excellent for hitting daily protein goals, especially post-workout.
- Incorporate Healthy Fats: Fats are an essential source of energy and aid in hormone production, which is crucial for muscle growth.
- Choose Complex Carbohydrates: Complex carbs provide sustained energy for your workouts and help with muscle recovery.
- Eat Frequently: To support muscle growth, aim to eat every 2-3 hours throughout the day. This helps ensure a consistent supply of nutrients for muscle repair and growth. In order to increase calorie and protein intake, you should eat 6 meals per day with a maximum of 3 hours between each meal.
- Hydration: Adequate hydration is also important for optimizing recovery and muscle growth.
It’s also important to listen to your body and adjust your diet accordingly. This plan is merely an example. The quantities of food presented can vary depending on gender, age, weight and individual health status.
Foods to Avoid
To gain muscle mass in a healthy way, people with an ectomorph body type should avoid eating food that could delay their health goals. It is important to avoid consumption of alcoholic drinks (like beer or wine) as alcohol is high in calories and will lead to fat gain. Alcohol can also decrease circulating testosterone levels, a hormone that is important for muscle gain.
Supplements
Some supplements like whey protein, BCAA, or casein help with putting on muscle and therefore can be indicated for people with an ectomorph body type.
Additional Considerations
- Rest and Recovery: Getting enough rest is essential for muscle growth. Allow sufficient rest between workout sessions to facilitate muscle recovery and growth. It is best to leave 48 to 72 hours between sessions that train the same muscle groups.
- Healthy Sleep Habits: Healthy sleep habits are important for optimizing recovery and muscle growth.
- Individual Variation: Not all ectomorphs are the same. Starting points, circumstances, and goals can vary significantly. Some ectomorphs may enjoy being relatively thin, while others may be clinically underweight and eager to gain size and strength.
Sample 60-Day Skinny Man's Transformation Plan.
To steal a line from strength coach Greg Nuckols: “To get stronger, you need to get bigger. And to get bigger, you need to get stronger. So in this routine, you’ll perform only a handful of big-muscle movements: squats, bench presses, and deadlifts. You’ll do these a lot. Every. Single. That doesn’t mean you always have to “go heavy” with each exercise, every workout. But you won’t stray from them for 60 days straight because these are the movements that force your muscles to grow. You might be thinking, Doing the same exercises over and over again sounds boring. And, sure, it might be. But exercise ADD doesn’t work. Boring works. Are you ready to say bye-bye to the skinny guy? Then let’s get started. But first, some ground rules.
- Limit your “cardio” to 1 to 2 per week. I’d never say to omit it altogether, but if putting on size is your goal, expending more calories is not going to help you. Performing one or two 30-minute sessions per week is more than enough.
- Eat! No, you’re not eating enough.
- Do the 60-Day Skinny Man's Transformation Plan on the next page. Don’t alter the program in any way. Don’t add anything or take anything out.
Perform each pair of exercises as a superset. Do one set of the first exercise, rest for the prescribed amount of time, and then do one set of the second exercise. Rest if noted, and then repeat. When you see a letter without a number next to it-such as “D”-do the exercise as a straight set. Rest at least one day between workouts.
- A1.
- A2. Chinup: 2 sets of AMRAP (as many reps as possible). Rest 1 minute between exercises.
- B1.
- B2. Dumbbell Single-Arm Row: 3 sets of 10 reps per arm. Only rest when needed.
- C1.
- C2. Only rest when needed.
- D.
- A1.
- A2. Chinup: 2 sets of AMRAP (as many reps as possible). Rest 1 minute between exercises.
- B1.
- B2. Barbell Bent-Over Overhand-Grip Row: 3 sets of 5 to 6 reps. Only rest when needed.
- D.
- A1.
- A2. Rest 1 minute between exercises.
- B1.
- B2. Only rest when needed.
- C1.
- C2. Only rest when needed.
- D. Week 5: Follow week 1's rep/set protocol for superset A1-A2 for days 1 to 3, but use a heavier load.