How to Gain Muscle Fast for Skinny Guys: 5 Key Workout Principles

The picture is of Brian Wade – an actor who clearly knows how to gain muscle fast for skinny guys – and understands this post’s 5 workout principles.

Do you want to gain muscle fast as a skinny guy?

I know I did..

And still do in order to make the most out of my long and lanky body.

I used to weigh around 80 kilos (176 pounds) a few years ago – now I weigh close to 110 (242 pounds).[/dropcap]

You will find endless advice on how to gain muscle fast for skinny guys.

And popular articles from bodybuilding.com, Muscle and Fitness and all the rest are great places to start.

They explain the basic exercises and workouts, the principles of macronutrients, equipment, food and all that jazz.

But what I want to give you in this post is my own piece of advice.

What I’ve learned about fitness and bodybuilding from going at it for several years can be summed up in 5 key workout tips:

1. Consistency is more important than you think

Getting into a habit of working out is so important to gain muscle as a skinny guy.

If you are skinny or in bad shape being a tall guy, it just isn’t gonna give you any long term results to kill yourself in the gym for 3 months and then stop from one day to another.

Make fitness a part of your lifestyle and keep your head in the game year in and year out.

If you really want a tall, lean and muscular body, you have to ‘just put in the work’ as Mark Wahlberg says.

I love the journey, if you can call it that – the process of getting bigger, more muscular and more healthy.

If that’s not you, you could maybe take some ‘before and after’ pictures to motivate you.

Set goals, measure your progression to make it consistent.

2. Train like a pro bodybuilder

There really isn’t any “skinny guy workout routine”. Skinny guys need to train like bodybuilders to gain weight.

No, you don’t want to look extremely buff and oiled up like them – but bodybuilders really know a thing or two about gaining muscle fast.

You can easily get caught up in articles on weird systems and programs for building ‘long and lean muscles’ for your specific body type.

But the muscles aren’t really that clever, so what you need to do is have them undergo extreme stress in order to cause micro muscle tear.

This is the basic principle behind building muscle – to have them super compensate afterwards having been destroyed in the gym.

Why wouldn’t you want to learn from the best? Those who dedicate their lives to bodybuilding, nutrition and all that jazz.

They are professionals and you wanna implement as much from their regimes as possible (except the steroids).

So lift heavy, go hard and use big exercises like the squat, the deadlift and the benchpress.

Squats for tall guys isn’t easy, so look into the correct technique before you stack on the plates.

Keep the rep range at about 10-12 with heavy weights and 5 sets per exercise.

3. Eat like it’s a job – really!

You’ve probably heard this a thousand times before, because you are tall and maybe skinny too.

As  a skinny guy wanting to slab on some weight, you need to pay attention to your higher metabolism.

Higher metabolism requires more fuel, and if you combine high metabolism with working out 3, 4 or 5 times per week, you need a lot of food.

“Eat like it’s a job” is a good sentence, because it expresses the need to eat more than you normally feel like – you have to make an extra effort in order to fill you up over the top.

Eat 4-5 times a day and start out with a lot of water and protein, then focus on carbs and protein before and after working out, and end your day focusing on slow digesting foods and protein for the night.

My favorite protein powder tastes great and is affordable, so no excuses. 

For most people, meal planning and measuring isn’t a path they want to go. I know I don’t bother weighing everything I eat. Neither do you? Then there is an easier way to get an idea of how much you need to gain weight.

Fill out this caloric calculator, add 500 calories to that number, find a meal plan that gets close to your number and has some foods you like and try to eat according to that plan for 1 day.

This will give you an overall feel of how much 3000, 3500 or 4000 kcal’s per day is.

Another little trick is to take a picture of everything you eat during one day.

Use your phone to take the pictures before eating and drinking your food, and then take a look at all the pictures in the evening.

This will also give you an idea of whether you have eaten to much or too little.

Final word on food and nutrition – drink water!

I have no evidence, but I’m guessing that dehydration is the #1 prohibiting factor for people’s progression in regards to building muscle.

Water is fuel, the body consist mainly of that stuff, and it needs more than you’d think during the day.

I fill this Bulk Powders water bottle every morning – with 2,2 liters/0,5 gallon of water (and some BCAA at the moment).

Especially of you are a frequent guest in the gym. Here’s a water calculator to use for a rough estimate, if you don’t know how much to drink – it is more than you think.

Another simple hack is to fill a large bottle of water in the morning, at midday and in the evening. This makes it easier to get water in you and will remind you to drink during the day.

4. Full range of motion can injure your body

Using full range of motion is by all means a good principle, but for tall people it can be hurtful and stress the joints too much.

Going too deep on the squat can hurt your knees, going too deep on the dead-lift can hurt your back and going too deep on the dip rack can hurt your shoulders.

I’ve injured my knees several times squatting too deep, but now I’ve learned that other principles apply to longer legs.

So because we are tall, we have to be careful and listen to our bodies for when to end the movement.

Feel the stretch, then brake the movement and return to starting position.

Don’t use what many call partial reps, which is either just bad form or some bodybuilding tips from some weekly magazine.

Here’s an example of how to go ‘full range of motion’ on the Pull-down exercise:

You should use full range of motion on 90 percent of all exercises, but it’s your body and you should listen it’s alarm signals.

If you feel the slightest pain in your knees when you squat – STOP. Adjust the movement, limit the range of motion, throw off some of the weights and try again.

After all, pretending to be super strong is only slightly cool until the moment when you injure yourself and you can’t train properly for weeks resulting in loosing some of that precious and valuable muscle that you work so hard for.

 

5. Train often but for a short period of time per session

A rule of thumb is to look towards the exit door after about 45 minutes to an hour of working out.

Around that time, different levels in the body rise and fall, which isn’t beneficial to work against.

So get the work done effectively – that also saves you time, if you don’t like ‘gym ratting’ it all day.

I work out 4 times per week on average and some of my friends think that’s way too much. But the don’t realize is that it only amounts to a total of 3 hours of active work per week.

That I can live with.

A way to limit time spent in the gym is to know what you want to do down there before you enter the gym.

Have a workout ready and planned from the start, shorten your rest periods between sets and keep an eye on the clock.

Leave after an hour, drink a protein shake if you like those and get a nice big meal in you as soon as possible.

If you want to spice up a regular protein shake, I’ll show you my recipe for a shake that tastes great:

As simple as that!

These were a few of my workout tips that I know have made a difference for me.

Keeping it as simple as the above 5 tips is also easier to deal with than hundreds of confusing and diverse tips and tricks coming from a wide array of magazines.

Remind yourself of these 5 workout principles before you hit the gym. If you stick with them, you’ll soon be on your way to a better looking body.

In the beginning, I didn’t like to work out, but I’ve learned to love it, and so should you. Otherwise, the whole consistency thing kinda wears off.

If you hate dragging yourself down to the gym, you’ll probably skip your workouts more often, and then nothing happens.

And remember proportion:

Proportion is important for everybody, and maybe a little extra important for skinny guys and tall people.

Because if you skip leg day every week, you’ll end up looking really weird with a strong upper-body and skinny legs.

My own legs don’t look that big, but when I measure the girth of them, they are the same size as my friends’ larger looking legs.

That just means that we need even bigger leg muscles in order for them to appear muscular.

This principle is simple and applies to all limbs. Put in the work and build a big pair of arms, legs and a tight torso.

After all, tall people have better frames aesthetically for sculpting their bodies. The athleticism comes naturally when size is added to a tall frame.

Just remember those legs, apply the 5 tips that I have suggested here and you’ll be on your way.

I hope you can use some of this advice – to go from scrawny to manly over a couple of years. 

Conclusion

• Consistency is more important than you think, so hang in there and make working out a lifestyle.
• Train like a pro bodybuilder, because they are professionals and know what they are doing. And the same principles apply for building muscle whether you are scrawny or buff to start off with.
• Eat like your progression depended on it, which it does. Lifting is only half the battle. Real results happen in the kitchen. Focus on water in the morning, carbs during the day and slow digesting foods with protein in the night.
• Full range of motion can injure your body, so listen to what your body tells you. Especially knees, shoulder joints and back are points of extra attention.
• Train often but for a short period of time per session, then get out of there! 45 to 60 minutes is the duration of your workout session. Afterwards you go for a protein shake and a meal.

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Bonus: A quick look at the Brian Patrick Wade Workout

For this article, I used a picture of actor Brian Patrick Wade. He is a great example of you can get that tall, lean and muscular look if you are extremely disciplined with your training as a tall guy.

Brian is 6’4″ (193 cm) so definitely a tall man. Here’s a video where he flexes a lot, but also explains some of the principles behind his training:

And, if you can take it, one more here:

As you can see in the video above, he has done a pretty good job on working out.

Brian Wade is starring in a couple of films and tv series, but that’s not what we’re interested in right now. I fell across these videos, because he sums up some of his tips nicely on how to build a great physique as a tall guy.

For tall guys like myself and Brian Wade, it is important to constantly focus on nutrition and a good diet, like I underline a 100 times in my Skinny to Muscle guide. Working out is only half the battle, because the real results are created in the kitchen. If you have a high metabolism, meaning that your are slim and burn everything that goes into your mouth quickly, then it is all the more important to eat enough to gain weight in muscle mass. On the other side, you would have to keep track of your diet in a more limiting way, if your are having a little extra around the waist.

It all comes down to whether your daily caloric intake lies above or beneath your equilibrium level. This is the level for maintenance of your body, so to say. If you eat enough to create a calorie surplus above your equilibrium level, you are able to put on weight, and if combined with good workouts, this extra weight will be in muscle mass.

Below is a few very basic points that Brian Wade makes in the embedded YouTube video. Brian Wade stresses the importance of eating and working out the right way.

Brian Wade’s main workout tips are:

I have gained about 40 pounds or 18 kilos over the last 7 years. I have gone from super skinny to muscular, and it has helped a lot on posture and confidence. The reason why I started was because of bad posture and a lack of back muscles for straightening my back. My ice hockey brother got me into weight training, and it caught on to me and I have loved it ever since.

Putting muscle on a tall frame is hard work, but the size added will sit aesthetically and look athletic, which has improved my overall confidence in walking tall and being proud of my size.

I hope you find joy in training as well – I’ll finish this post with a quote of Brian Wade:

It’s all you, just do it! Work hard, eat well.. Lots of sleep!

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Now it’s your turn