If you are reading this frustrated, I feel your pain. This used to be me. If you saw me now, I am confident that you wouldn’t label me as skinny. Sure, I have areas that I want to grow in, but that’s just down to my now, bodybuilding mindset.
I played sports all the way through my childhood up until I was injured just before I went to uni. At the time I would have described myself as ‘athletic’ rather than skinny. I was strong for my age and I was fast, but in hindsight, from a bodybuilders point of view or anyone who enjoyed training, I was skinny.
Even when I was playing sports, I was into the gym, but the level I was playing at was all to do with speed and strength exercises, not building muscle and getting massive. It was only when I got to university and joined an old school bodybuilding gym that my interest in building muscle really started to grow. I was probably around 12 or 13 stone and 6 foot when I joined university, I’m now just under 16 stone. Not bad for around 5 years of lifting and being natural. I would even go as far as saying only around half of those years were spent training properly, once I had fully learned to apply nutrition, recovery and programming to my training.
What I’m saying is it's not impossible to go from skinny to fit. Fit meaning in shape and aesthetically pleasing by the way. The term isn’t to be confused with cardiovascular fitness, which I certainly had. I was just missing the muscle mass to go with it.
If you follow the steps below, as I did, with consistency and application then you will be well on your way.
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Perform the big exercises and get good at them – This means plenty of barbell work, squats, deadlifts, military press, bench press. Make compounds the meat and potato of your workouts and isolation exercises the veggies.
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Focus on getting stronger – Every time you enter the gym, your sole focus should be to be stronger than your last session. This can be done by either performing more reps at the same weight or increasing the weight. This is known as progressive overload.
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Eat in a healthy, controlled calorie surplus – you can train all you want but without the right nutrition you won’t grow at all. You need to be in a calorie surplus to grow new muscle, around an extra 500 calories a day will do the job. Make sure most of your meals are full of nutritious food and plenty of protein. Avoid ‘dirty’ bulking as this can quickly lead to a high calorie surplus and unwanted fat gain.
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Keep it simple and stick to it – By this I mean choose a handful of exercises, both compound and isolation and perform them multiple times a week, with the aim of getting as humanly strong as possible on them. Do this consistently for years and you can’t go wrong. -
Learn to rest – When you start getting into training, I know how high motivation can be. It feels like you want to train all the time and you may be mistaken thinking more is better. However, this isn’t the case. Your body needs rest and grows outside of the gym. Listen to your body, rest days and deloads should be a part of your program and help you avoid injury as well as supporting muscle growth and strength gains.
As you can see, it’s not rocket science. Apply yourself, be smart with your training and diet and you will start to see results in no time.
