DISCLAIMER: This post is based on both scientific and anecdoctal knowledge, peppered with my experience.
Getting clear on whom:
This datasheet is directed at Ectomorphs, but have some other principles that can be applied by anyone.
That being said, how do you know if you’re an ectomorph? Well, an ectomorph is a skinny guy. We have a light build and small joints. Most of the times ectomorph’s have long and thin limbs and narrow shoulders.
Remember, there are different levels of ectomorph manifestations, and a pure ectomorph’s are usually hard to see. You can be ecto/meso, ecto/endo... With various levels of balance between those manifestations for example: 70% ecto/30% meso, 60% ecto/40% endo (skinny fat)... But that’s just for curiosity sake’s.
You should also pay attention to why are you skinny. If you eat like crap and very little, you have an eating and diet problem, you can be a mesomorph and be skinny if you don’t eat. Which bring us to our first step on getting out of the stickman existence.
Step one, EAT:
Simple right? Not so much, your body will show what you eat, if you eat like crap, guess how you’ll look.
Many ectomorph’s fall on the trap of just eating a lot of food, of whatever comes their way, that’s an effective method and you will gain weight, but it’s not the optimal way, I have done it, but I’ve learned from my mistakes and I am here to make sure you get the best results, on the best time frame possible, one could say it’s hard for a beginner to get it all right from the start and that’s true, but I’m not a guy who likes to work for mediocre or normal results, I like to do my best to get the best that I can, and if that’s not for you, that’s okay and you can still follow this datasheet your way and get benefits from it. Here’s a couple quotes I’d like to share before getting to the How phase of this post.
“It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.” - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
With that in mind, let’s proceed.
Before we get to the training, you have to understand that eating it’s the single and most important part of living a healthy lifestyle and looking good. There is guys at the gym that workout for years and still look like crap, that’s because they don’t eat right. Being an ectomorph you might feel tempted to eat whatever since you can’t gain fat anyways. But you have to use your strengths at your favor (I’ll get to that later), so eating clean it’s important to maintain your body fat levels as low as possible while you’re putting mass, you don’t want to be over 12-15% when bulking.
EATING FOR MASS
Foods to eat:
Carbs: Potatoes, Rice, Pasta, Beans, Fruits…
Protein: Ground beef, Chicken, Eggs, Steaks, FISH…
Fat: Olive oil, Fish oil, Avocado, Cheese, Butter…
Remember to always eat veggies; all of you can eat on a healthy amount. Broccoli, Lettuce, Spinach, Carrot, Beetroot, Tomatoes, they go a long way on helping you keep healthy.
Bonus: Whole milk is a great source of carbs, protein, and FAT plus has a good amount of calories to help you hit your daily goal. All types of yogurt too, and of course dark chocolate if you want to give yourself a treat. I try to stay away from gluten as much as possible, so I don’t eat oats, bread and try to avoid anything that has gluten from my daily diet. I won’t get in meal strategy details because I would derail this post, but here’s a good thread for ideas: thread-43745.html
Here comes the fun part, you will have to eat a lot, no, I mean a LOT. Especially if you’re eating clean, some days you’ll have to force yourself into eating. But even then it’s way better than being hungry most of the day, so be glad about your genetics. (If you’re skinny fat, don’t worry too much, as you build muscle the tendency of your small fat storages are to get smaller as long as you don’t overdo your carbs).
The not so fun part is that you’ll have to weight your food, and count your macros, but, as I said previously I want you to become your best on the best time frame possible. Google: MyFitnessPal, create an account and start logging your food there, after the first few times it’ll get quicker as the program will remember your meals. Make sure you calibrate your macros as such: 50% carbs 35% protein 15% fat. 18-19 kcal’s per pound of bodyweight are a good measure for the amount of calories you should be getting, but the app will probably calculate that for you, if it doesn’t you can make the adjustments quickly.
You will also need a food scale, there are very cheap ones out there, WEIGHT your food, I can’t stress how important this is, if you can’t get your head around it, do it for 2 weeks, after that you’ll be able to eyeball it more or less, but if you want to know exactly it’s better to weight. All of that will take you 10-15 minutes a day on the first week and after that not much more than 5 minutes.
Do this for a whole week before you start going to the gym, I can guarantee you that you will feel changes in your body before even hitting the weights. If you already workout that’s fine too, no need to stop it for a week.
Supplements
I'm not really a big fan of throwing money out, but. They can sometimes be helpful, but not at all a necessity. You might be tempted by the big bucket of mass gainer 15000, I know that sounds cool but usually they’re just a bunch of dextrose+maltodextrin and some of the worst whey protein they make. You can make a way cheaper home weight gainer with better carbs and fat’s. That helps you get all your calories and macros in if you’re not a big eater. (I can share that recipe, if you want it, hit me a PM)
Creatine is indeed a helpful tool, and it’s good to hold a little water on your muscles and improve your workouts, definitely worth your money.
Multivitamin and Fish oil are great, and I’d recommend you take those if your diet is not giving you what you need, but if you have the cash, going to a doctor and getting blood work done to know what vitamins you are deficient and manipulate only those that you need is better.
Glutamine and BCAA’s are a good source of aminoacids too, but only if you have money to spend.
I’ve made my most gains in periods where I didn’t take any of those.
Now that you’re eating like you should, let’s get to work.
Step two: TRAIN
Now, each body has its own particularities and quirks, but there is one thing all ectomorph’s have in common, they use a shitload of calories just by breathing. You have no business on staying at the gym for an hour+ at a training session, which means, you’ll have to get intense. Intensity is the key for you to grow, no need for volume when you have 11.5 inches arms. As you grow your volume can grow proportionally, but that’s way down the road.
There are a lot of workout programs out there, and only with time you will find out what’s best for you. For me a ABCDE routine gives me time to put on 4-5 exercises per body part with 20-25 sets per workout and all of that with completing my training sessions within 50 minutes to an hour. But I’ve been working out for some years, when you are starting you have almost no muscle mass, and a ABC routine with 3 exercises (10-12 sets) for big muscles and 2 (6-10 sets) for small muscles will work perfectly for a beginner ectomorph, that gives you enough stimuli to grow and enough rest days to eat well and recover.
You can see that I am talking about bodybuilding routines, powerlifting is a great sport, and you should incorporate the Bench, Deadlift, Squat and Overhead Press in your routines, but remember, you have small joints and those exercises put a lot of pressure in them, so focus on the contraction and feeling the muscle work while you do this exercises, don’t go too far with the weight so that you’ll lose your form, that’s just counterproductive and you’re setting yourself for a injury. That said, you should always strive to be getting stronger on these exercises, progressive overload is the best way to measure your muscle growth because 90% of the times a stronger muscle is a bigger muscle. And who doesn’t want to bench 300 pounds?
Isolation exercises are great to help you fatigue and/or pre fatigue the muscle before going to a compound exercise in case of muscle imbalance. They’re especially good for ectomorph’s because they usually are friendlier on the joints.
Give 100% of yourself at the gym, when you are there, you are there to work, don’t play on your cell phone, you need intensity and the only way to get that it’s by training hard and resting little (45-60 seconds max between sets) remember the 60 minutes workout rule. You might game chicks if you want, but I wouldn’t make that a habit, because it’ll hurt your workouts. Don’t pay attention to the other guys, don’t compare yourself to them, each person have a body and you can have the same height and weight and bf as another guy and you’ll probably look very different.
Step three: Consistency
You can see that I didn’t put that on caps lock, because consistency it’s not about energy, but patience. Patience and good results walk hand in hand, the first couple months will be a wonder for your gainzz, but they will slow down with time, and this is where most guys fail. They don’t have the patience and mindset to be consistent, with anything big that you want to achieve in life, comes a price, and with that price most time comes the requirement of being consistent, be it game, fitness, education or business. If you’re not consistent you won’t get far, you’ll be just another regular guy. And I’d like to think that you’re reading this to achieve excellence.
There will be bad days, there will be days where you won’t be able or won’t care to do everything perfect, but go through those days keeping your mindset of consistency and making it right the next day and you’ll get where you want.
Also I’d like to say you should have one or two days a week where you let yourself go and have a drink, eat a burger, pizza ,whatever you want, after all, you’re not a professional athlete. And believe me; you’ll learn to cherish those things when you restrain them to once or twice a week. The good part of being a ectomorph is that those things will have almost no effect on you, perhaps a little weight loss because of the booze but negligible.
Conclusion and Using your strengths
As a thin guy with narrow shoulders, and small joints you’ll never be the bear walking around unless you get on some serious anabolic steroids, and even with them, unless you have enough muscle mass you’ll be wasting your money and hormones, they need receptors to work, and the more muscle you have more receptors and better the drugs work, that’s a rule for body fat too, the lower the body fat the best the anabolics will work, but I digress..
As I was saying, you won’t be the bear, but you have the lines, when you get to a certain level of muscularity your muscles will look round and defined a you’ll look great without a shirt because of those same small joints and waist, the small joints give the illusion that your muscles are bigger, and so will your waist to shoulder ratio.
Work your shoulders, that’s the reason phil heath keeps getting sandows, he knows that he may not be the widest, but he builds himself in a way to LOOK the widest, and shoulders are a great part of it. The main reason that I advocate a clean diet for ectomorph’s is because if you get too fat, you’re giving away your genetic advantages for a little bit more of volume on your shirt. And you can always work more on your traps and forearms, if your traps and forearms are big enough, people will know you are built even if you’re wearing a sweatshirt.
Hopefully I was able to give you a general idea of what you have to do to grow out of this skinny boy body, and become an aesthetic man. I’ve tried to not be too specific because this datasheet would be way too long, that being said there are a lot of particularities and variables, but if you follow the basic guidelines to this post I guarantee you, you’ll change your body and your lifestyle.
Good luck and good gains.
Getting clear on whom:
This datasheet is directed at Ectomorphs, but have some other principles that can be applied by anyone.
That being said, how do you know if you’re an ectomorph? Well, an ectomorph is a skinny guy. We have a light build and small joints. Most of the times ectomorph’s have long and thin limbs and narrow shoulders.
Remember, there are different levels of ectomorph manifestations, and a pure ectomorph’s are usually hard to see. You can be ecto/meso, ecto/endo... With various levels of balance between those manifestations for example: 70% ecto/30% meso, 60% ecto/40% endo (skinny fat)... But that’s just for curiosity sake’s.
You should also pay attention to why are you skinny. If you eat like crap and very little, you have an eating and diet problem, you can be a mesomorph and be skinny if you don’t eat. Which bring us to our first step on getting out of the stickman existence.
Step one, EAT:
Simple right? Not so much, your body will show what you eat, if you eat like crap, guess how you’ll look.
Many ectomorph’s fall on the trap of just eating a lot of food, of whatever comes their way, that’s an effective method and you will gain weight, but it’s not the optimal way, I have done it, but I’ve learned from my mistakes and I am here to make sure you get the best results, on the best time frame possible, one could say it’s hard for a beginner to get it all right from the start and that’s true, but I’m not a guy who likes to work for mediocre or normal results, I like to do my best to get the best that I can, and if that’s not for you, that’s okay and you can still follow this datasheet your way and get benefits from it. Here’s a couple quotes I’d like to share before getting to the How phase of this post.
“It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.” - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
With that in mind, let’s proceed.
Before we get to the training, you have to understand that eating it’s the single and most important part of living a healthy lifestyle and looking good. There is guys at the gym that workout for years and still look like crap, that’s because they don’t eat right. Being an ectomorph you might feel tempted to eat whatever since you can’t gain fat anyways. But you have to use your strengths at your favor (I’ll get to that later), so eating clean it’s important to maintain your body fat levels as low as possible while you’re putting mass, you don’t want to be over 12-15% when bulking.
EATING FOR MASS
Foods to eat:
Carbs: Potatoes, Rice, Pasta, Beans, Fruits…
Protein: Ground beef, Chicken, Eggs, Steaks, FISH…
Fat: Olive oil, Fish oil, Avocado, Cheese, Butter…
Remember to always eat veggies; all of you can eat on a healthy amount. Broccoli, Lettuce, Spinach, Carrot, Beetroot, Tomatoes, they go a long way on helping you keep healthy.
Bonus: Whole milk is a great source of carbs, protein, and FAT plus has a good amount of calories to help you hit your daily goal. All types of yogurt too, and of course dark chocolate if you want to give yourself a treat. I try to stay away from gluten as much as possible, so I don’t eat oats, bread and try to avoid anything that has gluten from my daily diet. I won’t get in meal strategy details because I would derail this post, but here’s a good thread for ideas: thread-43745.html
Here comes the fun part, you will have to eat a lot, no, I mean a LOT. Especially if you’re eating clean, some days you’ll have to force yourself into eating. But even then it’s way better than being hungry most of the day, so be glad about your genetics. (If you’re skinny fat, don’t worry too much, as you build muscle the tendency of your small fat storages are to get smaller as long as you don’t overdo your carbs).
The not so fun part is that you’ll have to weight your food, and count your macros, but, as I said previously I want you to become your best on the best time frame possible. Google: MyFitnessPal, create an account and start logging your food there, after the first few times it’ll get quicker as the program will remember your meals. Make sure you calibrate your macros as such: 50% carbs 35% protein 15% fat. 18-19 kcal’s per pound of bodyweight are a good measure for the amount of calories you should be getting, but the app will probably calculate that for you, if it doesn’t you can make the adjustments quickly.
You will also need a food scale, there are very cheap ones out there, WEIGHT your food, I can’t stress how important this is, if you can’t get your head around it, do it for 2 weeks, after that you’ll be able to eyeball it more or less, but if you want to know exactly it’s better to weight. All of that will take you 10-15 minutes a day on the first week and after that not much more than 5 minutes.
Do this for a whole week before you start going to the gym, I can guarantee you that you will feel changes in your body before even hitting the weights. If you already workout that’s fine too, no need to stop it for a week.
Supplements
I'm not really a big fan of throwing money out, but. They can sometimes be helpful, but not at all a necessity. You might be tempted by the big bucket of mass gainer 15000, I know that sounds cool but usually they’re just a bunch of dextrose+maltodextrin and some of the worst whey protein they make. You can make a way cheaper home weight gainer with better carbs and fat’s. That helps you get all your calories and macros in if you’re not a big eater. (I can share that recipe, if you want it, hit me a PM)
Creatine is indeed a helpful tool, and it’s good to hold a little water on your muscles and improve your workouts, definitely worth your money.
Multivitamin and Fish oil are great, and I’d recommend you take those if your diet is not giving you what you need, but if you have the cash, going to a doctor and getting blood work done to know what vitamins you are deficient and manipulate only those that you need is better.
Glutamine and BCAA’s are a good source of aminoacids too, but only if you have money to spend.
I’ve made my most gains in periods where I didn’t take any of those.
Now that you’re eating like you should, let’s get to work.
Step two: TRAIN
Now, each body has its own particularities and quirks, but there is one thing all ectomorph’s have in common, they use a shitload of calories just by breathing. You have no business on staying at the gym for an hour+ at a training session, which means, you’ll have to get intense. Intensity is the key for you to grow, no need for volume when you have 11.5 inches arms. As you grow your volume can grow proportionally, but that’s way down the road.
There are a lot of workout programs out there, and only with time you will find out what’s best for you. For me a ABCDE routine gives me time to put on 4-5 exercises per body part with 20-25 sets per workout and all of that with completing my training sessions within 50 minutes to an hour. But I’ve been working out for some years, when you are starting you have almost no muscle mass, and a ABC routine with 3 exercises (10-12 sets) for big muscles and 2 (6-10 sets) for small muscles will work perfectly for a beginner ectomorph, that gives you enough stimuli to grow and enough rest days to eat well and recover.
You can see that I am talking about bodybuilding routines, powerlifting is a great sport, and you should incorporate the Bench, Deadlift, Squat and Overhead Press in your routines, but remember, you have small joints and those exercises put a lot of pressure in them, so focus on the contraction and feeling the muscle work while you do this exercises, don’t go too far with the weight so that you’ll lose your form, that’s just counterproductive and you’re setting yourself for a injury. That said, you should always strive to be getting stronger on these exercises, progressive overload is the best way to measure your muscle growth because 90% of the times a stronger muscle is a bigger muscle. And who doesn’t want to bench 300 pounds?
Isolation exercises are great to help you fatigue and/or pre fatigue the muscle before going to a compound exercise in case of muscle imbalance. They’re especially good for ectomorph’s because they usually are friendlier on the joints.
Give 100% of yourself at the gym, when you are there, you are there to work, don’t play on your cell phone, you need intensity and the only way to get that it’s by training hard and resting little (45-60 seconds max between sets) remember the 60 minutes workout rule. You might game chicks if you want, but I wouldn’t make that a habit, because it’ll hurt your workouts. Don’t pay attention to the other guys, don’t compare yourself to them, each person have a body and you can have the same height and weight and bf as another guy and you’ll probably look very different.
Step three: Consistency
You can see that I didn’t put that on caps lock, because consistency it’s not about energy, but patience. Patience and good results walk hand in hand, the first couple months will be a wonder for your gainzz, but they will slow down with time, and this is where most guys fail. They don’t have the patience and mindset to be consistent, with anything big that you want to achieve in life, comes a price, and with that price most time comes the requirement of being consistent, be it game, fitness, education or business. If you’re not consistent you won’t get far, you’ll be just another regular guy. And I’d like to think that you’re reading this to achieve excellence.
There will be bad days, there will be days where you won’t be able or won’t care to do everything perfect, but go through those days keeping your mindset of consistency and making it right the next day and you’ll get where you want.
Also I’d like to say you should have one or two days a week where you let yourself go and have a drink, eat a burger, pizza ,whatever you want, after all, you’re not a professional athlete. And believe me; you’ll learn to cherish those things when you restrain them to once or twice a week. The good part of being a ectomorph is that those things will have almost no effect on you, perhaps a little weight loss because of the booze but negligible.
Conclusion and Using your strengths
As a thin guy with narrow shoulders, and small joints you’ll never be the bear walking around unless you get on some serious anabolic steroids, and even with them, unless you have enough muscle mass you’ll be wasting your money and hormones, they need receptors to work, and the more muscle you have more receptors and better the drugs work, that’s a rule for body fat too, the lower the body fat the best the anabolics will work, but I digress..
As I was saying, you won’t be the bear, but you have the lines, when you get to a certain level of muscularity your muscles will look round and defined a you’ll look great without a shirt because of those same small joints and waist, the small joints give the illusion that your muscles are bigger, and so will your waist to shoulder ratio.
Work your shoulders, that’s the reason phil heath keeps getting sandows, he knows that he may not be the widest, but he builds himself in a way to LOOK the widest, and shoulders are a great part of it. The main reason that I advocate a clean diet for ectomorph’s is because if you get too fat, you’re giving away your genetic advantages for a little bit more of volume on your shirt. And you can always work more on your traps and forearms, if your traps and forearms are big enough, people will know you are built even if you’re wearing a sweatshirt.
Hopefully I was able to give you a general idea of what you have to do to grow out of this skinny boy body, and become an aesthetic man. I’ve tried to not be too specific because this datasheet would be way too long, that being said there are a lot of particularities and variables, but if you follow the basic guidelines to this post I guarantee you, you’ll change your body and your lifestyle.
Good luck and good gains.
