For skinny guys wanting to pack on muscle, they encounter obstacles that the average lifter doesn’t. It is harder for skinnier guys to put on weight. They will swear by eating a ton of calories yet barely seeing the scale move. On the flip side, they don’t tend to put on a lot of fat. Any weight they do put on looks like lean muscle tissue. So rather than looking at the negatives of being a hard-gainer, I like to use what we have to our advantage.

The Lifting Program

As far as training goes, it doesn’t differ from the basics. If you want to put on size, regardless of your genetics, there are certain rules you should follow. One of which is focusing on the compound lifts. Use exercises like the squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press, bent-over row, and pull-ups. These 6 exercises hit every muscle in the body. They are the most bang-for-buck exercises you can choose to gain the most muscle. Not only that, these lifts allow you to add the most weight, which down the road will provide the progressive stimulus to keep growing muscle. Of course, technique is important, but ultimately, we need to get stronger over time if we expect to see any changes in our body.

Frequency

The traditional way of lifting used to be a body part split. That’s one body part each day. While you can lift this way, I tend to favor a more full-body approach. My reason for this is a couple things. For one, if you miss a day with a body part split (let’s say leg day), then that means you’d have to wait an entire week just to hit your legs again. How can we ever expect to consistently grow muscles if our program hinges on NEVER missing ANY workouts? This is very hard from an adherence and sustainability standpoint. Let’s work smarter, not harder. By utilizing a full-body approach, even if you miss a day, you will most likely still be hitting that muscle in a day or two.

I like to incorporate the full-body approach 2-3 times a week. This allows you to not have to wait an entire week just to hit each muscle once, but it also allows you to hit those exercises when you’re fresh. In a traditional split, you might do a bench press, cable flys, and incline bench in one workout. By the time you get to your third exercise, your weight is going to drop significantly because of fatigue. Imagine instead, spreading those exercises over three days. Now you get to hit that exercise when you’re more fresh, allowing you to potentially use more weight and thus gain more muscle.

Progression

As far as progression goes, you want to strive to do more than last week. For example, 1 more rep or 5 more pounds than the week before. As I said, if you want to grow, there ultimately needs to be progression over time. We can’t expect to lift the same weights from week to week. The whole concept of muscle growth is based on the idea that the muscle is becoming bigger and stronger in anticipation of receiving heavier external stimulus, preparing itself to handle the larger load. So give it a reason!

Rep Range

Rep range doesn’t have to get as complicated as you think. I would focus on a certain rep range, just so you can see how your body responds to it, then switch over to another one. For example, spend the first 4 weeks of your lifting program in the 5–10 rep range. Then try 10-15 for the next four weeks and 15-20 for the last four weeks. From here, you can get a better idea by the end of it of how your body felt going through each phase. From there, you can mix and match rep ranges based on how each exercise feels in a given rep range. But this is way farther down the road as you become a more intermediate-to-advanced lifter.

Nutrition

The final piece here is just as important. Make sure you’re eating 1g of protein per pound of your ideal body weight. This is the building block for growing muscle and is key if you want to add size. Whenever I hear guys say they can’t add on size, I check their protein intake, and it’s almost always low in protein. Once we fix this, they start to see their strength go up. Eat enough carbs and fats to put you in surplus above your maintenance. So, make sure you are eating enough calories that you can see the scale move up from week to week. It may take a couple weeks of tinkering to see how many calories that is, but you want to shoot for 2-3 lbs of weight gained a month.