training for skinny guys

[stuartcow]

i got this in an e-mail and figured i would share it with everyone:

Many of you have expressed concerns about gaining too much body fat
while on such a high calorie diet, and wonder if you should do some
aerobic exercise to offset the weight gain.

Absolutely not.

That will be detrimental to gaining muscle. For best results, you
either have to train and diet to gain muscle or lose fat. One or the other.
If you are a true hardgainer, you cannot do both. If you try, you will
not make any substantial progress either way. So, now is the time to
gain weight. You will worry about losing fat later.


===============================
The fact is that there are no magic pills, powders, foods or exercises
that will allow you to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.
===============================


It all is determined by your genetics and metabolism. Some people can
do it, some can't. If you are naturally thin and have a difficult time
gaining weight of any kind, it would be silly of you to think that you
will be able to gain muscle while trying to keep your body fat low.

Most skinny guys want to gain more muscle, but are afraid of gaining
body fat. They see all the bodybuilder photos and read the stories about
people gaining pounds of muscle while losing pounds of fat -- They want
to do the same. When looking at these photos, you have to remember that
most of these people do not have your body type. The majority of them
are overweight and want to lose fat, not gain muscle.

'Well', you say, 'What about those people who transformed their bodies?
They lost fat and gained muscle'. Yes, but almost all of these people
were overweight, or had high levels of body fat. In other words, their
metabolisms were, for the most part, slow. They simply dieted and
trained for fat loss.

Weight training helped them to tone up and slightly increase their
muscle mass by replacing some of the fat with muscle. However, you will
never increase your body mass far above your original starting weight on
that type of diet.

In other words, even though you gain some muscle, you will actually
weight less!

For example, Big Joe weighs 189lbs with 18% body fat. This works out to
be 34lbs of fat and 155lbs of muscle. He then goes on a fat loss diet
and slowly diets down to a ripped 5% body fat at 168lbs, which is 8.4lbs
of fat and 160lbs of muscle. He lost 26lbs of fat, and his weight only
went down by 21lbs. So, looking that this we realize that he managed to
also gain 5lbs of
muscle. You can see that he has more muscle mass than when he started,
and he looks totally ripped, but his weight decreased because his main
goal was fat loss. He looks much better, and his measurements changed,
but he only increased his total weight by five pounds.

If you are very thin, you cannot do this. Yes, your body fat will
decrease, and this will also give you more muscle mass, but it will not
increase your weight. You will just get much thinner. Big Joe was 'big' to
begin with; we are not. To get the same results as Big Joe, you must
first gain the weight, and then concentrate on losing the body fat later.
Joe had the size; he just needed to trim down. We do not have the size
to work with, so we have to force our bodies to grow beyond our body's
comfort range. This is the hard part.

This is why if you want to grow beyond your current size, you have to
diet for it specifically.

Remember, most of you have extremely fast metabolisms. Gaining weight
will be extremely difficult.

seems true, any thoughts??


mad props to http://www.musclegaintips.com/ because that is who sent it to me.

[Vitamin S]

It's along the right lines. However, I wouldn't trust any advertisement that tries to disguise itself as an article.

[stuartcow]

well, ya but it seems to make sense

[D_I]

I started as a 110ish track runner and I'm now 182. I never bulked to gain mass. Just ate alot and trained hard. Only took me about 2.5 years.