how many calories
Are You Eating Enough Calories? So many ectomorphs get it wrong, they think they can follow the same diet plan that their buddies at the gym are doing and therefore not gain weight.
Ectomorphs need to eat more per pound of body weight than the average man. There is some debate over the exact number but here is a good place to start.
A lean man should multiply each pound of body weight by 20-24. So if you weigh 150 lbs. Multiply 20 equals 3,000 calories a day.
This is where you should start, and if you don’t see weight gain at this stage, start adding 150 calories a week until you do.
The other part of this equation is the diet break-down. Now most people will limit carbohydrate intake, so based on percentage of calories in a day the diet would be 45% protein 30% carbs and 25% fat. Because the average man fears that carbohydrates will put on body fat.
Ectomorphs don’t have to worry about this because of their high metabolic rate. So for an ectomorph I would start with 40% protein 40% carbs and 20% fat. This should aid in packing on weight and muscle.
You can always make adjustments to this as you see how your body reacts.
how much sleep is right
Many lifters underestimate the importance of rest and sleep. They focus so much on their training that they end up hurting their gains due to lack of rest.
While you’re sleeping, your system releases natural growth hormones that help build and repair muscle fibers that were broken down during your workout.
Without this very important process that only happens when you rest, the less you rest, the less benefit you will get.
Of course the other side of the coin is too much sleep. Because an ectomorph has such a high metabolism, it becomes more difficult to gain weight and muscle. 8-10 hours of solid rest is enough to help your gains.
Once you start going over this amount, you run the risk of losing your profits.
Remember that you need to eat a lot of calories in a day and you need to eat often. When we are sleeping we are not eating food. If you sleep too long your body will start needing fuel to survive, remember that fast metabolic rate?
When you are sleeping more, ie more than 10 hours your body is looking for energy to keep going and muscle mass is what it does.
Hence you have to maintain a healthy balance between caloric intake and rest to ensure that you are achieving the optimum muscle building process.
full body workout
Something that often happens to ectomorphs is following a workout that just doesn’t meet the needs of a skinny guy.
An ectomorph will not benefit from the workouts that you find most bodybuilders doing these days. It’s not their fault they just don’t know any better.
They go to the gym and follow whatever workouts their friends do. They watch their friends build muscles every week and they don’t understand that after months of training when they look in the mirror they have the same body they had when they started.
This is why most skinny guys give up, believing they can’t gain muscle, end of story.
But it’s a matter of using the right exercises in combination with the right amount of reps and sets. You see, an ectomorph body type responds to compound exercises and full body workouts.
Compound exercises allow you to get the most joints and muscle groups to work at the time. An example of a compound exercise is the squat. Think about all the joints and muscles involved when you squat.
Your hips, knees, and ankles are involved, as well as your quads, glutes, back, hamstrings, and core, and that’s not even counting all the smaller stabilizing muscles that are involved. These are the types of exercise that an ectomorph thrives on. When you do a full body routine with compound exercises, you will start to see muscle gain.
less is more
What does at least mean? This is a very important point to understand if you are a skinny guy. Because like the skinny guy who’s following his friends to the wrong exercise routine, he’s working out just as tall as they do.
The problem is that the ectomorph frame isn’t designed for a lot of stress. Your friends may be putting in 2 or more hours during workout and they may be doing it 4-5 times a week.
This is a disaster for the lean man. Because your frame and bone structure are small and weak, the amount of stress placed on your body by this type of workout will not help with any muscle gains.
That’s why less is more for the lean man. Your body will work on a regular routine of 45 minutes consisting of a full body workout with a combination of the above mentioned exercises 3 times a week.
Your rest periods between sets should also be longer than the average guy. If you’re only resting for 30 seconds between sets while trying to keep pace with your buddies, you’ve probably noticed that you can’t keep up with the rep level.
Take longer rest periods and make sure you’re getting 7-10 reps on each exercise for 3-4 sets.
Forget about what your friends are doing and don’t think of it as some kind of competition. You have to adjust to your body type, when you do that and start working out according to your body type, you will see quick gains.
And isn’t that really what you want. And think of it this way, how cool is it to be when you’re gaining muscle quickly and doing half the workout than your friends. Soon they’ll be coming to you for advice on building muscle, and to exercise how cute is that?
Source by Craig Hanover
