A Guide To Building Muscle For Skinny Guys [The 4 Step Blueprint]

If your goal is to go from a bony and slightly unimpressive physique to a muscle packed one, today you’ll learn the exact steps to building muscle for skinny guys.

A muscular and fit physique is accessible to everyone.

Want to read that again? Go right ahead, let it sink in. If you’ve been trying to build muscle unsuccessfully you’re not “genetically flawed” or “unable to grow”.

“You simply can’t build muscle because you aren’t doing things right or doing the right things.”

You probably get a lot of advice thrown at you that’s supposed to help you build muscle fast. To someone who doesn’t know precisely what they’re doing this advice can all sound like a different language.

The undeniable truth that every expert can agree on is that building muscle is not easy.

Another undeniable truth is that EVERYONE can do it. If you haven’t had success with it up until now, you aren’t doing what is required, it’s that simple.

It’s impossible for you to do everything it takes to build muscle and your body won’t respond, it simply doesn’t happen.

So what I will do for you is cut through all that background noise and tell you EXACTLY what you need to start packing on muscle as soon as possible.

Really Skinny vs Skinny Fat

Skinny fat is a brilliant oxymoron in my opinion. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it means someone who has a relatively normal body weight but has too much body fat on them without enough muscle lean muscle.

Someone that is completely or dangerously skinny is probably underweight or malnourished.

The reasons I made this distinction is so that you understand the difference between the two terms. Another reason is if you are way too skinny and underweight you may want to see a doctor before doing any actual muscle building.

Thoroughly check your basic nutrition and your health first before anything else.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the blueprint to build muscle for skinny guys.

Step 1: Knowing How Much Muscle You Can Put On To Adjust Your Goals

Here’s the honest truth. The taller you are the more muscle you can put on and the heavier you can ultimately get.

Research has shown that what determines how much muscle you can gain is the size of your skeletal frame {study}

Someone above 6 foot with broad shoulders has a greater chance of reaching 185 lbs of lean muscle that someone who’s 5’5” with narrow hips and shoulders.

That’s why it’s important to accept the truth which is, if you set a goal-bound by numbers, it has to be achievable for you.

If you don’t understand this going in, the numbers will confuse and ultimately frustrate you.

Step 2: Your Diet MUST be suited to Building Muscle For A Skinny Guy

Your diet is the most important thing to change so you can build muscle. If you’ve heard or read enough about building muscle you probably already know this.

However, most people don’t understand what exactly it takes and how far you need to go to build muscle quickly and efficiently.

As a skinny guy trying to pack on the size you will have to spend the next few weeks taking a good, long look at what you put in your mouth during meal times.

Think about what you eat on a regular basis. You need to understand that if you’re still skinny right now, whatever it is that you eat regularly isn’t enough or isn’t conducive to putting on muscle.

I’ll start with the most important diet-ccentric issue that can slow down or completely halt muscle growth.

Protein [The Most Important]

Protein takes priority over all the other dietary needs in terms of building muscle. You can even build muscle on a calorie deficit (although it won’t be as fast as when you’re on a calorie surplus) but if you aren’t eating enough protein you simply will not put on any muscle.

Muscle is comprised mainly of amino acids and when you exercise it is broken down and built back stronger.

So trying to put on muscle without protein is like trying to carve an ice sculpture without ice…

Now let’s talk numbers.

The figure to shoot for in terms of your protein consumption is 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight.{study}

In the case of a skinny guy trying to build muscle, it may be better to play safe and go for 1g per pound of bodyweight (2.2g per kg of body weight). This is especially true if you’re vegan.

It will ensure you’re eating enough protein to put on considerable muscle.

Where you get your protein from can also play a major role in whether you hit your requirement or not. That’s because protein is very filling and you may not be used to eating huge amounts of food.

So when you decide to start hitting your protein target, apart from your regular protein sources like meat, eggs, cheese, and fish it will be beneficial to supplement.

Protein powders are the way to go to get enough protein for the day without feeling like you’re about to burst.

So investing in some whey protein or creatine will be a game-changer for you. There will be more on these in the supplementation section of this guide.

Calorie Requirements For Skinny Guys Trying To Build Muscle.

When you’re trying to build muscle as fast as possible making sure that you’re in a calorie surplus state (eating more than you burn) is very important. Your muscle growth rate won’t be optimal without it.

Your body may burn more than 2500 calories a day just by being alive. Not to mention walking up stairs, standing, lifting a backpack and all the other daily activities.

To build muscle quickly you need to eat more calories than your body burns to perform all these activities to grow.

If you want to get an estimate of the calories you need in a day use this calculator:

Or do it manually *here* which may have more accurate results. I’m not really a fan of calorie counting because for the majority of the population it’s not sustainable over the long term but as a beginner, you’ll want an idea of what you need to get started.

After finding an estimate, you’ll have to eat a few hundred calories above maintenance. Ideally, you’ll need to eat about 200 to 300 above maintenance.

If you want to find out how many calories are in the food you have readily available around you then use this [calorie counter].

When you try to put on muscle it’s possible you’ll also put on a bit of fat on the way.

Clean Bulk vs Dirty Bulk For Skinny Guys

Dirty bulk involves eating a lot of extra calories from high-calorie foods like junk food to promote weight gain.

Clean bulk offers a more moderate increase in calories with healthier food choices and overall better nutrition than dirty bulking.

So no, gorging on 5 pizzas a day is not clean bulking and the same goes for other fast food and soft drinks.

Dirty bulking has been slammed repeatedly among most muscle building experts and fitness experts for good reasons. While with it’s counterpart- clean bulking, fat gain is usually more controlled and overall nutrition is handled better, with dirty bulking it’s very easy to hit calorie requirements.

I’ve also heard a few arguments that support dirty bulking as the option that’s softer on the finances. Fast food is generally less expensive and less stressful to obtain than other better quality meals.

But the problem with eating a lot of fast food is that you will probably hit and then exceed your daily calorie requirements.

At that point, the excess calories will get put on as fat.

So I’d pick clean bulking for 2 reasons:

More nutritional benefits
Less post gains body fat

Bulking On The Keto Diet

You can bulk while on the keto diet. Just because the keto diet removes the emphasis from carbs doesn’t mean you can’t bulk up.

The difference is that while you would be bulking up on sweet potatoes and other calorie-dense carbs, for keto you’ll want more fat from oils and cheese.

Why You Shouldn’t Exceed Your Calorie Requirements By Too Much

This is why people often notice a reasonable increase in body fat while they put on muscle.

If the number of calories you eat is too far above what you need to build muscle then you will start to put on fat very fast as well.

Standard muscle building procedure for ages has been to put on muscle along with excess amounts of fat. Then, later on, embark on a “cutting” phase.

However, even though it works for the most part it is very inefficient.

You could spend weeks paying extremely close attention to your diet and packing one the size only to spend another 6 months trying to lose fat that you needlessly put on.

So make sure that as you eat to ensure a calorie surplus, you aren’t being too extreme… that’s if you don’t want to spend ages cutting the fat later on.

Step 3: Grow Bigger Muscles With Exercise

When you do strength training your muscles get broken down and then rebuilt as an adaptation to the stress you apply to them.

Your body wasn’t used to stress that comes with lifting heavy, now it has to adapt to the heavier weight. The adaptation is in the form of building muscle which is your desired goal.

That means that the heavier you can lift and the stronger you get the more muscle you will be adding on especially if you’re a beginner.

So focus on getting stronger.

If you do this while eating enough protein and calories you will get bigger, it’s not speculation it’s a guarantee.

Build Strength And Muscle

There are a lot of approaches and ways to structure your exercises.

There’s push-pull-legs, bro splits and others.

As long as you’re committed almost anything will help you grow.

But if you want to pack on the size in the, quickest, most time-efficient and effective way possible here’s what you do.

Get skilled at the big compound lifts.

Skilled meaning correct form and proper technique. For the first few weeks, they may seem awkward and your form may be shaky but with time and experience, you’ll have them down.

After that, it’ll simply be a matter of adding as much weight as possible to your compound lifts. Granted they seem intimidating to someone who’s just starting out but they are simple when you get used to them and they’ll have you put on muscle in all the right places.

So here’s a list of big lifts your workouts should contain:

Overhead Presses
Squats
Bench press
Deadlifts
Dips
Push-ups
Pull-ups
Body rows

How Many Reps And Sets

If you’re just starting out you’ll want to keep your reps between 8 and 10.

Your other options are to increase the weight and lower the reps or decrease the weight and raise the reps.

Too much weight may be way to much tension to handle if you’re just starting out and as your body isn’t used to that level of tension you could get hurt pretty quickly.

Decreasing the weight and raising the reps doesn’t produce results as fast as keeping your reps mid-range. Opinions vary on this because a lot of people have gained muscle from high rep workouts and, yes, you can build muscle from these sorts of workouts. However, there is a high number of wasted reps on sets like these and it isn’t very time efficient.

After you can comfortably do 8 to 10 reps of an exercise then you can increase the weight and then lower the reps (of you wish). There are some exercises like shrugs and bicep curls which are better in a higher rep range (10 to 12).

Experience will teach you which is best to do, so don’t freak out. Focus on finishing your workouts.

If you aren’t new to weight lifting then you can experiment a bit more.

Can Skinny Guys Build Muscle With Bodyweight Exercises

You’ll hear a lot about bodyweight exercises. From some people, you’ll hear that they’re inefficient and they don’t build muscle, other people over emphasise them and exaggerate their results.

Here’s the truth.

Bodyweight exercise will build muscle and that’s a fact.

However, studies show that bodyweight exercises require a large number of sets with each set done to failure or just short of it. {Study}

Step 4: Give Yourself An Edge with Supplements and Sleep

This is the last part to pay attention to in terms of building muscle for skinny guys. These are a few things to pay attention to maximise your efforts.

Can I use supplements to bulk up fast?

Most people out there recommending supplements have an agenda and the supplements themselves are usually not very helpful either.

Thousands of people get ripped off every day in their quest to supplement their diet.

That being said, supplements work well when the right one is used correctly.

If you’re a beginner looking to bulk up quickly there are only TWO supplements you should pay attention to:

Protein powder: As I discussed earlier, eating truckloads of protein is not a walk in the park. To hit your protein requirement you may need to find a source of almost pure without all the added ingredients found in food. This is where protein powders come in. You can mix them into your food or put them in your morning protein shake.
Creatine: Studies show that creatine increases muscle mass, strength and exercise performance. Claims that creatine is unsafe and had side effects are not supported by any evidence {study, study}

Other than these two, you won’t require much more as a beginner. It’s just that simple. Focus on your training and your diet.

Sleep and Recovery

When I first started building muscle I made huge mistakes in this area. Sleep and recovery are less mentioned in muscle magazines than other things like supplements and equipment (most magazines are even over by these supplement companies).

After a day of heavy workouts, you may find yourself sleeping for 8 hours.

When you go through vigorous workouts you will need even more sleep than usual so don’t skip out on it.

Apart from sleep, you’ll have to give your muscles time to recover after workouts. Remember that overworking them won’t make them grow any faster and may even reduce their size.

In Summary…

If you do things right there’s no way you won’t gain muscle especially if you’re just starting out. Work hard and eat right and I give you less than 2 months to start seeing gains.

More Resources for Skinny Guys Trying to Build Muscle

If you enjoyed this article or have questions drop a comment in the comments section.