Here are the basic movements:
¨ Bench Presses (chest, shoulders, tricep)
¨ Overhead Presses (shoulders, tricep)
¨ Pull-ups/Rows (back, bicep)
¨ Squats (legs, lower back)
¨ Deadlifts (legs, back, shoulders)
¨ Bar Dips (shoulders, chest, arms)
I cannot overemphasize the importance of these exercises. Do not start a mass gaining program without them! Without these exercises, your chances of gaining muscle mass fast is very slim. They will overload your entire skeletal and muscular system like no machine could ever do. This stress forces your body to compensate. In the case of weight training, it compensates by gaining muscle mass. If you can only do a few exercises — do these. They have been proven (and not just by me) to encourage mass and strength gain unlike any other exercises.
Training to Failure
To be sure that you have adequately stressed your muscles to stimulate growth, almost all fitness "experts" tell you that you must go to muscular failure on all sets. By this I mean you must continue to do reps until you can no longer lift the weight in good form. From my experience, training to failure is not a requirement of muscle growth. Going to failure on each set is not as important as making sure that you are continually exposing your muscles to "out-of-the-ordinary" stress. In fact, the whole idea of lifting a weight until your muscles fail seems alien to me. Where else in life do we do something this extreme to get our bodies to adapt? Nowhere. If I want a tan (when your body adapts by darkening its skin for protection), do I go and submit myself to the longest tanning session I can find and stay in there until my skin blisters? No! I start out slowly and gradually build up to longer sessions, while my body is adapting naturally. If I wanted to run a marathon, would I go out and run as fast as I could, until I fell out from exhaustion? No, I would start with short, moderate paced runs and consistently increase the effort and intensity as my body adapted. This is no different in weight training. The only thing you need to do to build muscle is to steadily increase your workout load in small increments on a regular basis. So each week, you will be lifting a slightly heavier weight. These small increases are easier to manage, physically and mentally. Not only will your body recuperate faster, but because you only increased the weight 5 lbs. or less at a time, you will be mentally prepared to lift the small increase.
To provoke muscle growth, your muscles do not need to be exposed to stress that is near its limit (like going to failure), it only needs stress that is slightly beyond what it is normally exposed to. I do train to failure, but not on every set, and only on certain exercises. On most exercises, I typically train to initial muscle fatigue, stopping just short of failure. This is partially because I workout alone, and when you train to failure, you will always need a partner or someone there to "spot" you and provide assistance when needed.
Training to failure is one way to train, but it is not the only road to muscle growth. No training method is perfect, because people respond differently to different stimuli. The only reliable constant is that your body will adapt — and once it does, it’s time to change your workout. For beginners, almost anything will spur temporary muscle growth as long as you do it consistently. So just pick a method and go.
Changing Your Workouts
The problem with overloading is that eventually your body will become accustomed to that specific level of stress, and you will stop growing. In the past "experts" would tell you to simply keep adding more stress (weight) to keep growing. Well, this is not exactly true. Eventually you will hit a plateau, and your size and strength gains will cease. A plateau is simply a size or strength level that your body refuses to go beyond. Everyone gets to this point sooner or later. This is where many guys give up. They continue to train, by working their muscles the same way, but their bodies have adapted to that training routine, and they lose motivation.
To keep your body under "out-of-the-ordinary" stress, you need to change your workout parameters. Your workout parameters consist of types of exercises, tempo of reps, length of rest period between sets, number of reps, workout sequence, etc. Any change of these parameters should spur continued growth. The best approach is to increase poundage for a short period, then back off and change your parameters for a short period, giving your body time to recuperate and get stronger.
Here are a few ways in which you can change your program:
¨ Change the exercises.
¨ Change exercise tempo: Add a pause at the top or bottom of the motion, and increase or decrease the eccentric portion.
" Change number of reps and/or sets: You can do the very famous 10 sets of 10 reps (using a much lighter weight of course), or you can increase the reps even more. I once tried a workout that had only 3 sets per compound exercise, but I had to do 30 reps for my first set, 20 reps for my second set and 10 reps for my last set! I was exhausted afterwards.
¨ Change your workout order: This involves simply changing the order in which you do your exercises. For example, instead of doing bench presses first and doing shoulders last, you would do shoulders first and bench press last.
Overtraining
There are several things that skinny guys must do in order to build muscle, and in my mind, the first is to avoid overtraining. If you train too often, several things happen:
1) You don't give your muscles enough time to recuperate between workouts.
If your muscles have not repaired themselves, you will not be at maximum strength for your next workout. Rest is essential. Other than eating, this should be your main focus. Contrary to popular belief, you do not grow while working out, you only grow when you are resting.
2) You are setting yourself up for burnout or an injury.
I know you are motivated and excited about working out, but don't be careless. You must pace yourself, you want to be able to keep this up for a long time, not burnout before you reach your goals.
Symptoms of overtraining include:
¨ Frequent illness
¨ Lack of desire to workout
¨ Muscle spasms while resting (this happened to me)
¨ Weight loss
¨ No strength gains in the gym
¨ Recurring injury (especially in shoulder muscles, wrists or back)
Grouping
I recommend that you work each body part just once per week, or once every
seven days. The body parts I'm referring to are usually defined as
chest, back, shoulders, bicep, tricep, and legs. The only areas that can
sometimes be worked more than once per week are the bicep, tricep, calves and
abdominals. These smaller muscle groups tend to recuperate much faster than
larger ones.
From the Desk of A n t h o n y E l l i s
¨ Bench Presses (chest, shoulders, tricep)
¨ Overhead Presses (shoulders, tricep)
¨ Pull-ups/Rows (back, bicep)
¨ Squats (legs, lower back)
¨ Deadlifts (legs, back, shoulders)
¨ Bar Dips (shoulders, chest, arms)
I cannot overemphasize the importance of these exercises. Do not start a mass gaining program without them! Without these exercises, your chances of gaining muscle mass fast is very slim. They will overload your entire skeletal and muscular system like no machine could ever do. This stress forces your body to compensate. In the case of weight training, it compensates by gaining muscle mass. If you can only do a few exercises — do these. They have been proven (and not just by me) to encourage mass and strength gain unlike any other exercises.
Training to Failure
To be sure that you have adequately stressed your muscles to stimulate growth, almost all fitness "experts" tell you that you must go to muscular failure on all sets. By this I mean you must continue to do reps until you can no longer lift the weight in good form. From my experience, training to failure is not a requirement of muscle growth. Going to failure on each set is not as important as making sure that you are continually exposing your muscles to "out-of-the-ordinary" stress. In fact, the whole idea of lifting a weight until your muscles fail seems alien to me. Where else in life do we do something this extreme to get our bodies to adapt? Nowhere. If I want a tan (when your body adapts by darkening its skin for protection), do I go and submit myself to the longest tanning session I can find and stay in there until my skin blisters? No! I start out slowly and gradually build up to longer sessions, while my body is adapting naturally. If I wanted to run a marathon, would I go out and run as fast as I could, until I fell out from exhaustion? No, I would start with short, moderate paced runs and consistently increase the effort and intensity as my body adapted. This is no different in weight training. The only thing you need to do to build muscle is to steadily increase your workout load in small increments on a regular basis. So each week, you will be lifting a slightly heavier weight. These small increases are easier to manage, physically and mentally. Not only will your body recuperate faster, but because you only increased the weight 5 lbs. or less at a time, you will be mentally prepared to lift the small increase.
To provoke muscle growth, your muscles do not need to be exposed to stress that is near its limit (like going to failure), it only needs stress that is slightly beyond what it is normally exposed to. I do train to failure, but not on every set, and only on certain exercises. On most exercises, I typically train to initial muscle fatigue, stopping just short of failure. This is partially because I workout alone, and when you train to failure, you will always need a partner or someone there to "spot" you and provide assistance when needed.
Training to failure is one way to train, but it is not the only road to muscle growth. No training method is perfect, because people respond differently to different stimuli. The only reliable constant is that your body will adapt — and once it does, it’s time to change your workout. For beginners, almost anything will spur temporary muscle growth as long as you do it consistently. So just pick a method and go.
Changing Your Workouts
The problem with overloading is that eventually your body will become accustomed to that specific level of stress, and you will stop growing. In the past "experts" would tell you to simply keep adding more stress (weight) to keep growing. Well, this is not exactly true. Eventually you will hit a plateau, and your size and strength gains will cease. A plateau is simply a size or strength level that your body refuses to go beyond. Everyone gets to this point sooner or later. This is where many guys give up. They continue to train, by working their muscles the same way, but their bodies have adapted to that training routine, and they lose motivation.
To keep your body under "out-of-the-ordinary" stress, you need to change your workout parameters. Your workout parameters consist of types of exercises, tempo of reps, length of rest period between sets, number of reps, workout sequence, etc. Any change of these parameters should spur continued growth. The best approach is to increase poundage for a short period, then back off and change your parameters for a short period, giving your body time to recuperate and get stronger.
Here are a few ways in which you can change your program:
¨ Change the exercises.
¨ Change exercise tempo: Add a pause at the top or bottom of the motion, and increase or decrease the eccentric portion.
" Change number of reps and/or sets: You can do the very famous 10 sets of 10 reps (using a much lighter weight of course), or you can increase the reps even more. I once tried a workout that had only 3 sets per compound exercise, but I had to do 30 reps for my first set, 20 reps for my second set and 10 reps for my last set! I was exhausted afterwards.
¨ Change your workout order: This involves simply changing the order in which you do your exercises. For example, instead of doing bench presses first and doing shoulders last, you would do shoulders first and bench press last.
Overtraining
There are several things that skinny guys must do in order to build muscle, and in my mind, the first is to avoid overtraining. If you train too often, several things happen:
1) You don't give your muscles enough time to recuperate between workouts.
If your muscles have not repaired themselves, you will not be at maximum strength for your next workout. Rest is essential. Other than eating, this should be your main focus. Contrary to popular belief, you do not grow while working out, you only grow when you are resting.
2) You are setting yourself up for burnout or an injury.
I know you are motivated and excited about working out, but don't be careless. You must pace yourself, you want to be able to keep this up for a long time, not burnout before you reach your goals.
Symptoms of overtraining include:
¨ Frequent illness
¨ Lack of desire to workout
¨ Muscle spasms while resting (this happened to me)
¨ Weight loss
¨ No strength gains in the gym
¨ Recurring injury (especially in shoulder muscles, wrists or back)
Grouping
I recommend that you work each body part just once per week, or once every
seven days. The body parts I'm referring to are usually defined as
chest, back, shoulders, bicep, tricep, and legs. The only areas that can
sometimes be worked more than once per week are the bicep, tricep, calves and
abdominals. These smaller muscle groups tend to recuperate much faster than
larger ones.
From the Desk of A n t h o n y E l l i s
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