Ectomorph body.

[NeoGen85]

I'm 5' 9" and weigh about 125. I just received my first gym membership and I'm quite excited. But I don't know where to start. What's really funny is that I have men who give me advice on muscle and weight gain; but they're fat and trying to loose weight.

 

My father use to be in the same position I was at 25. He told me that while many of his Navy buddies were working out to loose weight, and were seeing a considerable amount of weight loss. He was the exact opposite. My dad told me he spent months trying to gain 10 pounds unlike his peers which were loosing 10 pounds in a few weeks.

 

His advice was conditioning to strengthen the muscles around my joints and to familiarize myself with the exercises before lifting heavy so I don't injury myself. He told me that a person with an ectomorph body should workout 45 minutes to an 1 hour about 3 days a week. And that eating more would probably be the real challenge then the actual work. True?

 

I'll admit that I'm not the strongest guy. In fact The only reason I'm 125 now instead 120 before was due to basic in home exercises I started a month and a half ago.

[Surrealist]

His advice was conditioning to strengthen the muscles around my joints and to familiarize myself with the exercises before lifting heavy so I don't injury myself. He told me that a person with an ectomorph body should workout 45 minutes to an 1 hour about 3 days a week. And that eating more would probably be the real challenge then the actual work. True?

 

 

Very true, in fact that is some pretty good advice. You'll never see muscle gain by not eating enough. If you cannot eat, then drink extra calories. Get in the gym and LEARN the BASIC COMPOUND exercises. Don't bother with little cable exercises or small isolation movements - plenty of ectomorphs in the gym who train year in, year out and make no progress whatsoever because they fail to put the work in, in the kitchen and fail to focus on the heavy compound movements. Sure start light to learn the exercises and technique properly. Don't be like the wannabes in the gym who only do heavy bench presses and yet fail to train heavy back and leg exercises as well.

 

Ensure your training is progressive over time. That is from week to week try and do an extra rep or add a little extra weight, but not at the expence of your form otherwise you will risk injury.

 

The exercises you should focus on include bench press, dumbell presses, dumbell flyes, dips, chins, pulldowns, seated rows, barbell rows, deadlifts, squats, leg presses on 45 degree plate load machine, leg curls, barbell curls, tricep extensions with dumbell or e-z bar, shoulder presses, lateral raises, calf raises. For some variety, throw in preacher curls, tricep pushdowns, machine flyes, machine rows, lunges and some other machine work but dont make these your focus. Your focus should be FREE WEIGHTS.

 

Get a personal trainer in the gym to write you a basic split program and teach you the exercises. I prefer to split the body up for a beginner. So it would be Chest, Shoulders, Triceps on Monday and Thursday and Legs, Back and Biceps on Tuesday and Friday - for example.

 

All basic stuff. Even after many years of training myself I still follow these principles as I'm an ectomorph as well. Vary the exericises but only a little from time to time, its good to change around a bit ever now and then to avoid boredom and going through the motions, and also helps with stimulating new growth as your body adapts.

 

Hope this helps.

[Leandro]

what kind of drinks would you recommend Surrealist?

[Surrealist]

Certainly protein shakes with additional foods. I just had a quick look on the net and googled weight gain shakes and the search returned a boat load of responses.

 

I quite like the shakes listed at the following website.

 

http://www.gainingweight.info/20-weight-gain-shake-recipes/

 

I don't take shakes for the purposes of weight gaining anymore, though years ago I did when I was young and had trouble gaining weight, I'm a lot older now. These days I just have protein powder, 20 grams of dextrose and 10 grams of creatine monohydrate post training.

 

But back then it was protein powders (they're much better quality these days), with a banana, skim milk and raw egg. That and lots of eating lol and over a three to four year period I went from 56 kgs (123 lbs) to around 100 kgs (220 lbs) though I was a bit chubby I got my strength up reasonably well back then too.

[tman666]

Surrealist brings some solid points.

 

I'd like to expand on what he said by pointing out that learning how to do the exercises he mentioned is just step 1. You will have to practice using the big 5 lifts (squat, deadlift, bench, overhead press, barbell rows) with good form if you want to succeed.

 

I'm also going to respectfully disagree with Surrealist on his point that a beginner should be using such a highly broken down split program. Bodybuilders need to split their routines like that because they work with much higher volume (number of reps) than most people to elicit growth. As a beginner, if you try and throw in a ton of volume and focus on supplemental exercises such as flyes, lat raises, calve raises, etc., it's likely that your intensity will suffer.

 

There are essentially 3 variables that you can mess with in a training program to meet your goals. Intensity, Volume, and Frequency. Intensity refers to how much weight you're lifting, which is usually denoted as a percentage of your estimated or tested 1 Rep Max. Volume refers to how many repetitions of each movement you do. Frequency has to do with how often you train each muscle. You cannot maximize all 3 at the same time. One variable always has to be lowered so that you can recover. Recovery is the yang to the yin that is hard training. For example, you can lift heavy (85% 1RM or more) at a high volume (15 + reps or so), but you wont be able to do that for more than probably once or twice a week on each muscle group and still be able to make progress or stay uninjured.

 

If you're trying to gain muscle, you're going to have to resign yourself to that fact that you won't be gaining much muscle if you're concerned about your bodyfat. I'm not saying that you have to become a fat slob, but if you're going to try and keep your "hawt abz" and bulk up, you'll stay the same forever. As a natural ectomorph, you'll need to eat like a demon. A great way to get in a ton of extra calories is whole milk. Even better is chocolate milk, calorie wise. If you drink even an extra half gallon of whole milk per day, you'll be adding quite a bit of calories and protein. Protein shakes and supplements can help, but they are not necessary and are a great way to waste your money. If you're going to spend money on supplements, use regular ol' whey protein and possibly creatine monohydrate. Other than that, you'll probably be throwing away your money.

 

As far as training goes, I would look into Starting Strength as a good beginner program for gaining strength and mass. You'll eventually stall out, just like on every other program, but you'll learn how to do the basic lifts, you'll learn basic progression, and you'll be providing yourself a solid base on which to build.

[USMCHokie]

Bicep curls. The whole time.

[threebyfate]

Neogen, while I have no advice about bodybuilding, if your body naturally leans towards being thin, why fight it? Why not just get in shape and cut, instead of trying to stuff a billion calories into your body (which can't be good for it) so you can get pumped.