A Workout and Diet Plan for Skinny Men - To Build Muscle Mass Fast

If you are tired of being underweight and skinny the best way to bulk up effectively without just gaining a load of fat is by following a set workout and diet plan. This plan will force your muscles to grow and fuel the weight gain with a bulking up diet.

Workout to increase your muscle mass

To gain muscle weight you must stimulate the muscles through the use of resistance training. To create the perfect workout plan there are a few points you need to incorporate into your regime:

- The workout must be intense: You must apply a large amount of stress upon you muscle fibres. This can be achieved by lifting more weight in less time. Lift the heaviest weights for low reps (5-7) with short rests between sets.

- The workout must progress: You must continually increase the intensity in order to continue the muscle growth week by week. This is known as progressive overload, where you usually increase the number of reps and the weight per workout.

- You must workout frequently: Workout every other day for the optimal growth. Workout different muscles on each day. One day can be legs, one chest and one back, etc.

- Rest frequently: Between your workouts is when your muscles recover and grow. Rest at least for a day between workouts and at least 5-7 days between the same workouts.

Eat to gain weight

To pack on the muscle mass and overall weight you must consume more calories than you are burning off every day. For optimal weight gain follow these steps:

- Calculate how many calories you need per day: Use one of the many calories formulas available, put in your statistics and get how many calories you need. Then add 500 to 1000 more onto this amount to give you the surplus in calories you need to gain weight.

- Eat plenty of protein: Eat protein with each meal. Aim for at least a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. Eat high quality protein like eggs, beef, chicken, fish and milk.

- Eat plenty of healthy fats: Eating fats will add to your overall calories and will boost your anabolic hormones for increased muscle growth.

- Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables: Everyone knows the importance of them but never ends up eating any. Aim to eat at least 2 with each meal and get a variety for all the vitamin and mineral benefits - giving your body all the nutrients it needs to optimally grow.

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Training Routine to Build Muscle

There is no perfect weight training routine, in my opinion. However, we can make it perfect if we are consistent with our program so that our body will adapt to it. Frequently you read that you should keep changing your routine every few weeks to "confuse" your muscles. For a lot of people, this is a mistake. There is no point in variety for the sake of variety. The best way to make absolutely no progress at all is to keep jumping around from one routine to the next.

I recommend a push-pull routine which encourages muscle growth and prevents over-training by grouping the muscles you train each day into categories based on their primary function. I also recommend combining routines such as a superset within a push-pull routine to develop a particular muscle group. If you have a decent "base" of muscle and want to improve certain muscle groups, then the push/pull/legs split is one of the most effective routines out there.

Blitzing your muscles with a lot of forced reps and descending sets (otherwise called drop set routines) might leave you feeling sore. There is no proven link between soreness and growth, and no rule that says you have to kill each muscle group in order to make it grow. It also leads to greater stress on the neuromuscular system, which only extends your recovery time. But this does not mean you will grow any faster. There's no single training frequency that will work equally well for everyone.

A beginner can train each muscle group more frequently than someone with a few years of training under their belt. This is mainly because they can not recruit as many muscle fibers in each workout, as they do not create as much muscle damage, and can recover more quickly. The longer you train, the more recovery time you will need. This is why a great routine for beginners is to train total body three times a week on alternate days.

The biggest secret to building muscle, is to keep getting stronger in the 5 to 15 repetition range on a few basic exercises for each major body part. Strength is a true indicator that you building more lean muscle.
All you need to increase muscle size and strength is a total of 30 to 100 repetitions per muscle group per workout, distributed across two or three exercises. It is not necessary to do more than 100 repetitions per muscle group, contrary to a lot of the training advice.

I would recommend most of your training should be done using heavy weights in the 5-8 repetition range. However if you want to increase muscle size, you should also include some higher rep (10-15) sets in your workouts. There are different ways to do this, for example doing sets (10-15) and short (30-60 seconds) rest periods to a couple of back-off sets at the end of a series of heavy sets. Even using light weight and slowing your reps down has been shown to help muscles grow (or time under tension).

Just work hard, be consistent and be patient!

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The Right Balance of Nutrients To Build Muscle

Food is the necessary raw materials to create fuller muscled physique, and enough quantities in the proper proportions are essential, which is achieved through a correct muscle building diet. Knowledge of the basic pointers is essential when asking what to eat to gain muscle, and the various bodybuilding diet formulas have used them as the basis for their recommendations. What to eat to gain muscle and how to have the preliminary information for having a suitable muscle building diet therefore follows this.

Calories

Supply the body with sufficient amount of calories, more than enough for a person who is not on a bodybuilding diet. There must be fuel to keep it going while at the same time having more for growth. On the average, a minimum of 20 calories and a maximum of 22 calories are needed with every pound of the body during each workout period. During days of rest, this should be reduced to eighteen calories per body weight unit (pounds). The growth of lean muscles will be promoted, while the growth of fats will be stunted.

Protein

Protein is the basic building block of muscle. Knowing this, therefore, one will easily deduce what to eat to gain muscle. A muscle building diet requires more protein. For bodybuilders who want to know what to eat to gain muscle, protein intake must be two grams for every pound of weight. In a bodybuilding diet, it is safer to consume more than necessary than inadequately.

When choosing protein sources to supplement a bodybuilding diet, beef is very much recommended. It has good quality protein, containing saturated fats that elevates the amount of testosterone and optimizes growing of muscles. Beef also has zinc, iron as well as vitamin B complex, which are basic ingredients in a muscle building diet. Eggs are next in line when it comes to excellent protein sources in a muscle building diet. Three whole eggs as well as three egg whites every day will give a significant boost.

A bodybuilding diet is also incomplete without whey. A shake made of whey protein is an ideal in the morning. For breakfast, take a glass of this drink together with fruits to have an adequate dose of proteins, carbohydrate and natural sugar. It is a preferred muscle building diet breakfast due to the rapid supply of nutrients required by the body. Slow digesting foods such as oatmeal and eggs are ideal after an 30 minutes to an hour, as the next phase of breakfast in the muscle building diet. Before sleeping, remember to take in casein, cottage cheese or a similar food item for the nutrient requirement of the brain to prevent the catabolic breakdown of the muscular system.

Carbohydrates and Energy

Be aware of what to eat to gain muscle. Carbohydrates are also very essential in the muscle building diet. It supplies most of the necessary energy to increase muscle mass. Carbs stimulate anabolism, or the building up of tissue, and support proper muscle development in a muscle building diet. Two to three grams per day for every pound of weight must be taken in a muscle building diet. Consume slowly digested carbs half an hour prior to working out to have a slow and steady release of energy.

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