The Newbie Gains Guide for Skinny Guys
If you’re new to lifting weights, you can build muscle incredibly fast. Lifters call this phenomenon “newbie gains.” Most men can gain over 20 pounds of muscle during their first year alone. Skinny guys can often do even better.
We specialize in helping skinny guys build muscle, and we’ve worked with over 10,000 clients over the past decade. We do this all day, every day, with clients ranging from everyday desk workers to professional and Olympic athletes. There are methods to get incredibly consistent newbie gains. But there’s a catch.
Although most new lifters build muscle quickly, some “hardgainers” fail to gain any muscle whatsoever. What’s going on here? Why are some guys able to build a lifetime of muscle in a single year, whereas others spend an entire lifetime unable to build a single year’s worth of muscle?
In this article, we’ll explain what newbie gains are, how they cause such rapid rates of muscle growth, how to take advantage of the phenomenon, and how to avoid becoming a “hardgainer.”
What Are Newbie Gains?
Newbie gains, sometimes called noob gains or noobie gains, is the period of rapid muscle growth people experience when they first start training and eating for muscle growth.
When you first start training for muscle growth, your muscles get sore and inflamed, you start storing more energy in them (as glycogen), and you quickly build new muscle tissue.
When you start eating for muscle growth, you fill your stomach with food, your muscles inflate with even more glycogen, and your body starts investing the extra energy (calories) you’re eating into muscle growth (by converting protein into muscle tissue). If you’re supplementing with creatine, it may draw even more fluid into your muscles (article here).
As you practice lifting weights, your coordination will improve, allowing you to lift heavier weights more easily. Some of these coordination improvements are from conscious practice and technique improvements. Some run deeper. Your brain will learn how to better communicate with your muscles, allowing them to cooperate more gracefully and contract more forcefully.
It’s common to gain a few pounds of relatively lean mass during your first 2–3 weeks of bulking. All the food, fluid, swelling, and muscle growth add up quickly. You’ll add weight and reps to all your lifts, too. That isn’t the end of your newbie gains. It’s only the beginning.
How Fast Can Beginners Build Muscle?
During my first five weeks of bulking, I gained twelve pounds. My roommate gained 22. We didn’t gain a noticeable amount of fat. But then, after posting our results online, we discovered our results were considered scientifically impossible (by people who weren’t scientists).
The skeptics were wrong, but they had a point. The conventional wisdom is that the average beginner can gain around 20 pounds of muscle in his first year of weight training. If we look at the research, that doesn’t seem to be true:
- In this study, beginners gained 9 pounds of muscle during their first 8 weeks of working out.
- In this study, beginners gained 12 pounds of muscle during their first 10 weeks of weight training.
- In this study, beginners gained 15 pounds of muscle during their first 12 weeks of lifting weights.
These studies show beginners gaining more than a pound of lean mass per week for several months in a row. This proves it’s possible to gain muscle quickly and that a good bulking program can reliably produce these rates of muscle growth. If you want an idea of what that looks like in real life, here are the average results our members get. Here’s an example:
The next thing to consider is how these rates of muscle growth vary between people. In this study, they found that:
- The average beginner added 2 inches to their biceps in 12 weeks.
- Some beginners added 5 inches to their biceps in 12 weeks.
- Other guys lost muscle, even though they were following the same workout routine.
This study shows that some beginners can gain muscle much faster than others. That’s not the concerning part, though. The study also highlights the phenomenon of “hardgainers.” Some beginners struggle to build any muscle when they first start lifting weights.
The Hardgainer Problem
If you’re like me, you might assume “hardgainers” have poor muscle-building genetics. I failed to gain any muscle during my first few bulking attempts. When I searched for what was going wrong, I found a mix of “just eat more” and “you’re doomed.” I was already trying to eat more, so I feared I was doomed.
Fortunately, though oversimplistic, the “just eat more” advice was closer to the truth. It didn’t help me eat more. It took me a long time to figure out how to eat enough calories to gain weight. But once I did, I was able to build muscle astonishingly fast.
- Skinny guys can often build muscle faster than the average person. Our bones can only support a certain amount of muscle, and as we get closer to that limit, our rate of muscle growth slows. The less muscle we have on our bones, the more quickly we can fill our frames out. Because we’re starting out less muscular, we can build muscle faster.
- Hardgainer don’t always have bad muscle-building genetics. The rate we build muscle is limited by the rate we gain weight. After all, if we aren’t eating enough calories to gain weight, how can we expect to gain muscle? This is especially true for skinny guys. The only way to go from 130 to 150 pounds is to gain weight.
- Skinny guys are rarely low-responders. The correct term for someone with below-average muscle-building genetics is a “low-responder.” This refers to their lower response to resistance training. The stress of lifting weights doesn’t provoke as powerful of an adaptive response. This has nothing to do with being skinny. Most skinny guys have perfectly good muscle-building genetics. And besides, even low-responders can build muscle. It’s just slower, harder, and requires a more deliberate approach.
- “Skinny-fat” guys are often out of shape. Being skinny-fat rarely means you have bad genetics, just that you aren’t exercising, eating, and living in a way that suits you. It’s fairly common for skinny guys to become skinny-fat as the years pass.
Skinny Beginners Build Muscle Faster
I’ve asked several hypertrophy researchers why skinny guys build muscle so quickly. They’d all noticed the phenomenon. They’d seen it in their study participants and training clients. Some of them have even experienced it themselves. But nobody knows for sure why it happens. The best we can do is make educated guesses.
My theory is that we’re starting off with more room for growth, allowing us to gain muscle more quickly, at least until we catch up to everyone else. It aligns with what we’ve personally experienced. It fits with what we’ve seen in the thousands of skinny clients we’ve worked with.
So, to understand our exaggerated newbie gains, we must compare our starting point against the average man’s. Most guys are starting off with roughly eighty pounds of muscle on their frames. If we imagine a skinny guy with forty pounds of muscle on his frame, he’s starting off behind the starting line:
This matters because our potential rate of muscle growth slows as we inch closer to our genetic muscular potential. If all else is equal, it’s easier to gain your first pound than your second. Mind you, there’s a learning curve to building muscle. If you get better at bulking as you go, you may find it easier to build muscle as your methods and skills improve.
If you’re starting out skinny, follow a good bulking program (such as ours or another), and get help from a mentor or coach, you can probably gain twenty pounds of lean mass in less than a year. In our experience, most guys following our program can gain 20 pounds of relatively lean mass in 3–6 months. Some outliers can do it much faster. Others take a bit longer.
How Long Do Newbie Gains Last?
Newbie gains last until you’ve packed a comfortable amount of muscle onto your frame. Mind you, everyone’s frame can hold a different amount of muscle. Your newbie gains will run out when you’ve gained an amount of muscle that’s comfortable for your body.
If you’re starting off skinny, you can probably get newbie gains for several months. Maybe as long as a year. You’ll build muscle quickly until you’ve bulked your thinness away. Your newbie gains will gradually slow as you fill your frame out.
If you have a wide frame, thick bones, and good muscle-building genetics, you might be able to keep making newbie gains until you’re impressively muscular. Your frame can hold more muscle, so you can continue filling it out for longer.
Newbie Gains Gave Me 55 Pounds
I started bulking at 130 pounds, at 6’2, with a BMI of 16.7. I was clinically underweight. My doctor was urging me to bulk up for the health benefits. My roommate was in the same situation, but he had the added problem of various weakness-related issues, such as poor posture and tendon pain.
We exploded in size when we finally figured out how to combine hypertrophy training with an abundant bulking diet and a healthy lifestyle. Our bodies were desperate for extra muscle mass, especially since we were training so hard. Our newbie gains were remarkable because we had a dramatic amount of room on our frames.
David Epstein, the author of The Sports Gene, found that each pound of bone can support five pounds of muscle. I was very bony starting out. I had plenty of room on my frame. Bulking from 130 to 150 pounds was difficult, but the muscle growth came quickly and leanly.
To my surprise, I got a second round of newbie gains. During my second 4-month bulk, I gained another 17 pounds, going from 150 pounds to 167 pounds. And once again, my gains were quite lean.
Then, I got newbie gains again. During my third bulk, I gained another 18 pounds, finally bringing me up to a healthy and athletic body weight:
An obvious objection is that not all lean mass is muscle. That’s true. Our stomachs stretch, our organs grow more robust, our bones get denser, we build new blood vessels, and we store more glycogen in our muscles.
I got a DEXA scan showing a body-fat percentage of 10.8%. But that just showed I hadn’t gained much fat. It didn’t prove all my gains were muscle. They weren’t. I’d grown bigger overall.
Can You Waste Your Newbie Gains?
People often ask us if they’ve wasted their newbie gains with their failed bulking attempts. Maybe they followed a bad workout program, ate a questionable bulking diet, or failed to eat enough calories to grow. They’re still skinny, and they fear they’ve trained away their newbie gains.
However, you can waste one aspect of your newbie gains. Sort of. There’s a phenomenon called the repeated bout effect (RBE). As you get used to the stress of lifting weights, your muscles grow tougher. They won’t get as sore or be as sensitive to the stimulus of lifting weights. But that’s not what newbie gains are. Not really. Newbie gains have more to do with how much more muscle your frame can hold.
Before I succeeded at gaining my first twenty pounds, I had already failed six bulking attempts. None of those failed bulks interfered with my newbie gains. If you haven’t succeeded at bulking up yet, you haven’t wasted your newbie gains.
If you’re still thin, you can still make newbie gains. If you’re still skinny, your newbie gains will be even more profound.
Why Do We Get Newbie Gains?
To get a deeper understanding of newbie gains, we need to look at what’s happening inside our muscle fibres. If you haven’t succeeded at building muscle yet, your muscle fibres probably have few myonuclei. Having even just a few myonuclei, though, is already quite remarkable. Most cells in our bodies have just one nucleus, putting a strict limit on how big they can get.
To understand how these myonuclei work, the researcher Greg Nuckols uses the analogy of a Wi-Fi router. The Wi-Fi router can project an internet signal a certain distance. Once you get too far from the signal, your device can no longer connect. Myonuclei function the same way. Each one can only handle an area so big. That area is their myonuclear domain.
Our muscle fibres can adapt to stress. If we challenge them enough, they will attempt to grow bigger. At first, the growth comes easily. Then it slows. Here’s why:
- In the short term, our muscle fibres fill their myonuclear domain. Think of it like more people coming into the café, connecting to the Wi-Fi routers that are already installed.
- When our myonuclear domains are full, we can’t build muscle until we gain more myonuclei. Think of it like the café running out of room, buying the building next door, and installing a new Wi-Fi router, freeing up a bunch of new space.
The Beginning of Newbie Gains: Claiming Your Domain
When you first start bulking, your muscle fibres will quickly expand to the limit of their nuclear domains. You can build muscle within your current Wi-Fi range without needing to make any structural changes. You can expect your muscle fibres to grow 15–27% before hitting that limit (study).
Since beginners aren’t near the end of their range, beginners can build muscle quickly. This early stage of newbie gains is so quick and explosive that it’s described as steroid-like growth.
This stage will last until you’ve maximized your nuclear domains. At that point, if your muscle fibres grew any bigger, your nuclei would lose control of them. So your body halts muscle growth until it can install new Wi-Fi routers—add new nuclei. As you can imagine, it’s common for people to hit a plateau at this point.
This first plateau can be confusing. The methods that helped you gain your first ten or twenty pounds might not be enough to stimulate further muscle growth. For example, if I want to use Wi-Fi from the balcony, I can sit right next to the door and get a signal. Working from there is no problem. But if I want to work from the far side of my balcony, there’s no signal there. I’d need to go to install a new router. It’s a hassle. Nothing has forced me to endure that effort, so I haven’t bothered.
Your body won’t go through the effort of adding new nuclei to your muscle fibres unless you give it a strong enough incentive. That’s why it becomes increasingly important to follow a good workout program, put your best effort into every rep, and eat a good bulking diet. If you can do that, your body will happily add new nuclei to your muscle fibres.
The End of Newbie Gains: Expanding Your Domain
Once you’ve reached the edge of your Wi-Fi range, the low-hanging fruits are gone. To continue growing, you must install new routers. If you’ve been doing a good job of bulking up, your body will have been doing this all along. You can begin adding new nuclei to your muscle fibres right from your very first workout (study).
Now that you’ve claimed your domain, from this point forward, every pound of muscle you gain will need to be preceded by gaining new nuclei. You add new nuclei to your muscle fibres by growing satellite cells and then fusing them into your muscle fibres, stealing their nuclei.
This allows for even more muscle growth, and this is where most of your overall muscle growth will come from. At first, this growth can be quite quick. This is the stage of newbie gains where guys gain another 10–20 pounds of muscle over another few months.
And this is where the magic happens. These changes are permanent. Once you go through the trouble of installing a new Wi-Fi router, it’s there to stay. Even if you stop lifting weights, you get to keep the extra myonuclei. This is why people can rebuild muscle so easily. They already have tons of mynuclei in their muscles.
Even as your rate of muscle growth slows, you can continue gaining more myonuclei for quite a long time. These new nuclei will allow you to grow much bigger (study). And that brings us to the final, mystical stage of muscle growth: building new muscle fibres.
What Happens After That?
You can continue adding nuclei to your muscle fibres for quite a long time, just with increasingly diminishing returns. As we alluded to earlier, it seems that these diminishing returns are due to our bones only being able to support a certain amount of muscle mass. Once you fill out your frame, your muscles will hesitate to add new nuclei.
By the time you get to the end of this road, your muscle fibres will be as thick as those of an athlete, strongman, or bodybuilder (study). You still won’t be quite as big as them, though, and the reason for that isn’t totally clear. They might have more muscle fibres, but it’s hard to say for sure.
We’re at the advanced stage of muscle growth now, which is beyond the scope of this article. That’s a good thing, too, because this advanced muscle growth science is highly theoretical. We know that elite powerlifters have more muscle fibres than intermediate lifters, and we also know that animals can create new muscle fibres. With those two facts, we can infer that men can build new muscle fibres. But we don’t know for sure.
By this point, you’ll be muscular. You’ll have a strong physique that looks great. Continuing to make progress will be slower and harder, but you’ll already have a physique you can be proud of.
How to Get Your Newbie Gains
Now that you know what newbie gains are, how do you get them? Any type of resistance training can stimulate muscle growth. That includes bodyweight training, resistance bands, exercise machines, and, of course, free weights. Free weights are the most efficient, with exercise machines and calisthenics trailing closely behind.
Whatever tools you use, you should do hypertrophy training. Hypertrophy training is designed to stimulate muscle growth. It’s the pursuit of size, but that size is functional, giving us a balance of muscle strength and endurance. It strengthens our muscle fibres (by adding contractile tissue) while increasing their work capacity (by adding sarcoplasm). We also develop denser bones, build new blood vessels, and improve our cardiovascular fitness.
Hypertrophy training will have you using moderately heavy weights, doing a moderate number of reps, getting a moderate amount of rest between sets, and doing a moderate number of sets and exercises.
Pair that training with a good bulking diet. Stimulating muscle growth motivates your body to build muscle. Once you’ve done that, you need to give your body the building materials (protein) and energy (calories) it needs to build that muscle. Eat a big, abundant, nutritious diet that has you gaining at least a little weight every week.
To continue growing bigger and stronger, you need progressive overload. You must fight to lift heavier weights for more repetitions. You might need to start doing more sets. You may need to progress to more rigorous workout routines. The more muscle you build, the more challenging it gets to build more. Fortunately, you’ll have the size, strength, and vitality to handle the growing challenge.
Final Word
When we first start lifting weights, our muscles are sensitive to the stress of lifting weights. It doesn’t take much to provoke muscle growth or crippling soreness. As we adapt, our muscles grow bigger, stronger, and also tougher. This process of growing tougher is called the Repeated Bout Effect (RBE). It allows us to handle harder training but also makes it harder to stimulate growth. This is one reason why beginners can build muscle so quickly.
The main reason beginners gain muscle so fast is because of how far away from their genetic muscular potential they are. When our frames have plenty of room for muscle growth, our bodies build muscle extremely fast. This period of rapid growth is often referred to as newbie gains. And because our rate of muscle growth is determined by how much more muscle our frames can hold, skinnier guys can often build muscle faster than the average beginner.
However, to build muscle quickly, you need to follow a good hypertrophy training program, eat a good bulking diet, and live a healthy lifestyle that supports muscle growth. Most beginners, understandably, don’t know how to do that very well. Don’t worry, though. You won’t miss out on your newbie gains. You’ll get them as soon as you learn how to bulk properly.
If you want help bulking up, we can walk you through the entire process from start to finish. Our Bony to Beastly Program includes a 5-month workout routine, tutorials teaching every exercise, a diet guide, a recipe book, and a year of online coaching. Results guaranteed.
Shane Duquette is the founder of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell, each with millions of readers. He's a Certified Conditioning Coach (CCC), has gained 70 pounds, and has over a decade of experience helping more than 15,000 people build muscle. He also has a degree in fine arts, but those are inversely correlated with muscle growth.
Marco Walker-Ng is the founder and strength coach of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell. He's a certified trainer (PTS) and nutrition coach (PN) with a Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences (BHSc) from the University of Ottawa. He has over 15 years of experience helping people gain muscle and strength, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
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Nice article. You are being blessed by so many skinny people. Keep it up.
I can relate it to many things but still there are some questions roaming around in my mind.
I am training since 3 years. The first 2 years I did weight training. I even hired an online coaching and followed 3 day full body workouts. My strength increased but unfortunately no change in body measurements or the mirror.
So since last 1 year I started with progressive calisthenics. Again my strength keeps increasing gradually but no change in measurements. Although I look better in mirror now and specially my arms feel “filled” at the same size. Still no vein can be seen on arms. Whatever I try to do I cant seem to gain size.
During the entire 3 year period I tried to eat more. But at one point if I try to eat even more, I feel bloated and gassy.
What could be the reason behind this? And can “The Bony to Beastly program” help with it??
Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.
Hey Ashish, the reason why you’re gaining strength but not size with both strength training is that strength training is designed to make us stronger for our size. Lifting in lower rep ranges does a better job of improving our motor unit recruitment and “neural gains,” but it’s not very good for stimulating muscle growth. Calisthenics can be good for building muscle, and we have a bodyweight hypertrophy training article, but a lot of bodyweight workout routines do a better job of improving our coordination, balance, or cardiovascular fitness than stimulating muscle growth. If you’re trying to stimulate muscle growth, it’s better to train directly for muscle growth: hypertrophy training (aka bodybuilding).
The reason why you didn’t gain weight even after two years of lifting, and even after your coordination gains surely plateaued, is because you weren’t eating enough calories to gain weight. If there isn’t a consistent calorie surplus, you won’t gain weight. If you aren’t gaining weight, you can’t really add much muscle mass. In addition to training for muscle growth, we also need to eat for muscle growth. But, yeah, force-feeding yourself is a miserable way to live. Like you noticed, it just makes us feel bloated, gassy, and tired. Even though we don’t need to bulk forever, we do need to bulk for a few months in a row to see lasting and remarkable changes. That means finding a way to eat more calories that doesn’t make you feel awful. We’ve written about that extensively.
Can the Bony to Beastly Program help? Absolutely! The program is written by skinny guys who struggle to eat enough for skinny guys who struggle to eat enough. Most of us have tried to build muscle and failed for the same reasons you have. I sure have.
How to know whether one is gaining muscle or fat while gaining weight? Thanks.
Getting a DEXA scan is one of the more accurate ways of measuring your body-fat percentage, but it’s expensive and a hassle. As a result, most bodybuilders use a skinfold caliper to measure their skinfold thickness. There’s a learning curve to that, but it works quite well for tracking changes in body-fat percentage.
But most recreational lifters are mainly interested in their body-fat percentage because of how it affects their appearance. If that’s the case, it’s usually best just to gauge your body-fat percentage by looking at your appearance. That’s what we care about, right? So that’s what we should measure. We talk about how to do that in our article about body-fat percentage.
I can see my abs in good lighting, else it disappears lol, but there is no bulge either way. So do I assume it’s less than 15% at least?
Sounds like you’re in that sub-15% neighbourhood, yeah 🙂
How would one know if they have spent some or all of their newbie gains ?
Since they are dependant on nutrition surplus one would not expect gains in a cut, even though fat loss can look like gains.
I measure nearly 100% exactly the same as day one. Aside from losses in pants size. So I expect I still have most of not all my potential gains ahead of me assuming I hit my feeding goals when I do begin a ‘bulk’
Heya Nate! You’re getting the other benefits of being a newbie: being able to build a little muscle while losing fat. For every pound of muscle you gain, that’s a little bit of newbie gains you’re using up, but I suspect by the time you lean out to your liking, you’ll still have some easy gains when you transition to your bulk 🙂
Thanks.
It was a good article. With good news.
I’m curious if there are examples of this in connection with age.
But I’m game to find out from practical experience myself either way.
There are some differences with age, and also with how long you’ve been inactive. So a guy who hasn’t been exercising for 40 years is in a different situation from a guy who hasn’t been exercising for 5 years. However, the best study to date found no differences in the rate that men built muscle between the ages of 18–40, suspecting that it would carry on that way up until about 60.
How many pounds do you think you should put on (on average) before you start to ‘lean’ bulk (lower caloric surplus). I ask because I’ve gained about 20lb over the last 12-14 weeks while staying relatively lean, however I’m struggling to maintain gaining 2lbs a week, it seems every time I put on an extra 2-3 pounds I have to up my calorie intake, but at what point should I start expecting to put on more fat than muscle?
Ideally I would like to gain about 10lb in the next 5-6 weeks leanly and then slow the bulk down to 1lb a week maximum, or do you think trying to force 2lb for the next few weeks would just cause fat gain?
Thanks guys.
Hey Luke, congrats on the 20-pound gain! That’s awesome 😀
I would gear down your caloric surplus and start gaining around 1 pound per week at around the +12 point. You’ve gone further, and that’s great, but that’s generally the point where we at least need to start really making sure the gains are lean. So at +20 now, I think it’s probably time to slow down. We’ve seen guys go further, so I won’t say it’s impossible, but that would be my advice.
So yes, I think trying to force it during these next few weeks is more risk than it’s worth. Better to arrive at your goal a few weeks later but with way better muscle definition.
Hey guys!
When doing half kneeling landmine presses, i feel my triceps wprking instead of my shoulders. What may i be doing wrong?
That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s a compound lift that works both your shoulders and your triceps. It’s normal for one of those two muscles to be worked harder than the other. However, you might want to make sure that you’re getting your range of motion in your shoulder joint, not just in your elbow joint. It’s a little bit hard to explain with just text but bring your elbows all the way down, back in line with your torso, before pressing the weight back up again.
Push-ups and the bench press (especially with a narrower grip) also train the fronts of your shoulders, so don’t worry too much if the landmine press is mainly a triceps exercise for you 🙂
Do you think gaining muscle has any effect on the skin? I don’t know why but the pictures B2B members posted show not only a muscle gain but also a healthier skin. A more tanned skin if that makes sense haha
I wonder if it has anything to do with that too.
I’m not sure if having more muscle mass would have any effect, but the diet and exercise that goes along with it sure is. When we exercise and eat well, it improves the balance of red and yellow in our skin tone. For example, one way that regular exercise helps is by leading to a higher level of oxygenated blood, giving us a healthier tone.
You could probably build muscle without improving your skin tone, though, or improve your skin tone without building muscle. Depends on the manner in which you do it. In our program we take a pretty health-conscious approach to it, so most guys look and feel healthier by the end of it, not just bigger and stronger.
Even then, some of the difference in skin tone that you see might be lighting or an actual tan. Someone might start the program in the winter and finish in the summer (or vis versa).
What should someone do if he finishes your program, but would like to grow even more? Start it again from the beginning with heavier weights, or what?
Is it just me, or you, naturally skinny guys doesnt look broad from the side, even after bulking up a lot? My friend has a bmi of 27, has flat stomach, but still looks somewhat lean and skinnyish at his lats..? Only steroid users will have full looking shoulders and back?
Hey Erick. Some guys have gone through the main program a few times, but there are other options too. When someone graduates from the program, we give them another 5-week bonus phase. Just for being a member in the community, though, and a yearlong membership comes with the Bony to Beastly Program, we give you advanced workouts. You’d pick an advanced program based on your goals, and then every month you’d get a new 4-week phase that has you progressing through that new program. When you finish it, you pick a new one.
You can become quite a lot thicker by developing your entire back (including spinal erectors), entire bore and your chest. However, there’s only so much you can do. Many naturally skinny guys have thin ribcages. We’re shaped more like a deck of cards than a barrel. No amount of bulking (or steroids) will affect this. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter that much. You can become very strong and very attractive without needing to worry much about the shape of your ribcage. For some recognizable examples, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale—all guys with thinner ribcages.
Just to confirm, if you have been training consistently for many years, but have not even gained 1 KG on the scales then you can still gain ‘newbie gains’ in the same way someone who follows the B2B program has never really lifted before and is a ‘newbie’.
Just concerned that my body thinks I’m an experienced lifter and won’t be fooled into getting newbie gains if that makes sense.
Hey S.
Confirmed.
If you haven’t built any muscle mass yet, you haven’t maximized your myonuclear domains any more than a beginner has. So yes, your newbie gains are still waiting for you 🙂
was wondering if you guys have a sale going on this month for the bony to beastly program? i just came across your site on the internet and found your site to be very informative
Glad you’ve been liking the site, Nate! We’ve only ever run one sale in the history of our company… but if you get on the newsletter asap, you might get an email with some good news in it in a few days.
Love this article, great read! As usual but I really liked this one 🙂 Wish I read something like this when I started but I can relate so much now. Mostly on the failing part 😀 But as you said it is true, over time, gains do come and show. Keep up the great articles guys 😉
Thank you, Daniel! “Mostly on the failing part” Lol! Ahaha but your progress updates also tend to have happy endings. You must’ve done that prototypical hero’s journey like a dozen times by now.
Hey Shane,
I’m a former NCAA cross country athlete on a mission to go from bony to beastly. I’m not running 80 miles a week anymore, tired of having the body of an 11 year boy and want to gain some weight/muscle. However, I’m a bit confused. In this article you mention that we need to aim for protein rich meals for each meal, but I also read in another article on Bony to Beastly that most of our diet should come from carbohydrates (70% or something like that?). I tried a protein-dominate diet a few months ago where I was eating heavy protein meals like every 2-3 hours and… it didn’t work. I gained about 10lbs but plateaued right there and couldn’t get above 150lbs. Without making this a long story, I took a break after failing but now I’m giving it another shot and this time with the carbohydrate approach (based off one of your articles).
If my goal is to gain 20-25 lbs, could you clarify where the bulk of my diet should come from? (Carbs or protein)
Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post!
Hey Max,
Both are true, and not conflicting at all. Ideally you want roughly 0.8–1 gram of protein per pound bodyweight per day, 20+ grams of protein in each meal, and 50% or more of your calories coming from carbs. That all fits. If you have 4–5 meals per day, that’s just 80–100 grams of protein if you have 20 grams of protein with each meal. That’s not very much protein, and you’ll actually probably want a little more. Still, all of those meals can be at least half carbs.
Eating too much protein won’t stall progress directly, but it might make it harder to eat a lot, and that will make it harder to get into a calorie surplus. Not being in a calorie surplus will always plateau your gains. A good solution for that, as outlined in the other article, is to consume more macros that are easier to eat in bulk, like carbohydrates: rice, dried fruit, bananas, pasta, maltodextrin, milk, beans, grains, smoothies, juice, etc.
Good luck on your bulk!! 🙂
Okay, so what you’re saying is my daily diet should roughly consist of at least 50% from carbs, 20% (or more) from protein, and the remaining 20% in healthy fats, etc. Is that correct? (I started using the myfitnesspal app so I’m kind of using the daily pie charts from Calorie and Macronutrient goals feature to better understand)
Seriously, thank you so much for being available and willing to answer our questions. You are the man!
*** sorry for the math typo… Obviously 50+20+20 does NOT equal 100! I meant to write: at least 50% from carbs, 20% (or more) from protein, and the remaining 20-30% from fats etc… (I promise I graduated college! Haha)
That sounds like a good approach, yeah 🙂
I’m glad I could help!
I have been bodybuilding on and off for 7 years. When I left the Army, I was 6’2″ 221 16% bodyfat and ending a bulking period. When I stop working out, I get skinny.. fast.
I started working out about 4 weeks ago, weighing 180 or a little less. I only weigh myself every 6 weeks, but I weigh around 195 with decent fat gains and a 34″ waist. My working out bench weight has gone from 135 – 205, I expect to be working out with 225 in two weeks. My form is perfect, my diet is right, and my beginning routine is spot on. I’ll swap to my regular bulking routing at 8-12 weeks depending.
I Do Not Get Very Sore. Not even my first day back into the gym. If I do it’s very slight, and lasts 2 days max.
So I have two questions.
1.Is this Muscle Memory + Noob Gains?
2.What happens to your myonuclei when you stop working out? It would seem they condense and are in waiting.
Nice work, man! Sounds like you’re doing a real rad job with this. That’s a really astute pair of questions, too.
Yes, it’s muscle memory. Yes, your myonuclei condensed but stayed inside your muscle fibres even as your muscles shrunk. (They seemingly only disappear if you starve yourself.) And yes, it’s essentially the same thing as newbie gains… except you’re filling out a much larger myonuclear domain because you have far more myonuclei in your muscle fibres than a beginner would.
So, your history of bulking up drew more myonuclei into your muscle fibres (intermediate gains), then you lost some muscle mass but the extra nuclei remained, and now you’re filling up your huge myonuclear domains that you painstakingly developed in the past (newbie gains+).
Does that make sense? Sounds like you totally understood the concepts and put them together exactly right.
[…] by increasing the rate at which muscle fibres can pull in new myonuclei from satellite cells (more on that here). Calories are then directed into the muscles to feed this growth. Taking testosterone also greatly […]
[…] than half a year by capitalizing on the extreme response that our bodies have to new stressors. (The science of newbie gains explained here.) This allows a skinny guy to very quickly move into the “fit” category—often in a […]
I think you were a great inspiration to me and many skinny people out there. The thing is that when i was 11 years old, i was only 130 pounds at 5ft 7 but after many years of training, i experienced a huge and enormous huge growth spurt. When i reached 16 which is how old i am, im currently 330 pounds and 6ft 2, so that means i put on 200 pounds in 5 years and went 7 inches taller. Everybody is different, you might be skinny but have similiar genetics to Ronnie coleman, or even Thor Bjornnson who is 6ft 9 and 430 pounds, he gained like 200 pounds in two years, but if you dont try u will never know. My advice is to just lift big, and eat big, because by no9t doing that, u will never know your fantastic potential in weightlifting, respect brother
Congratulations on gaining such an incredible amount of weight, Adam! Amazing! 😀
Newbie gains are the best! It truly is a great time when you start seeing your body transform and motivation is sky-high! This is a very detailed post on the topic- nice job!
Thanks, Jim 🙂
After many years of failing at lifting, I finally learned about proper diet. I started a heavy lifting routine and for the first time ever began eating like someone who was really trying to gain weight. I suppose this flew over my head before because gaining weight had never been my goal, despite my ectomorph form – strength was.
I couldn’t believe how fast I gained weight. I had never had noticeable weight gain in my life, always stuck at ~150. Suddenly, 3 months into this, I was 185 pounds and it was all muscle (well, almost all). Like you, as I read more, I began to see all this stuff about how what I did was impossible. I’m glad I came across this article, because those massive initial gains had perplexed me. Very informative and it all makes sense now.
Thanks for sharing your story K, and congratulations on gaining 35 pounds! That’s amazing, dude!
[…] of us to look great in a t-shirt. If you’re curious about how that’s even possible, check out our article on newbie gains. If you’d like to actually do it, I’d recommend our Bony to Beastly […]
[…] can grow extremely quickly due to a phenomenon called newbie gains, and beginners also experience the most muscle soreness, which leads most people to assume that […]
[…] NOTE: if you’re skinny, take this as an encouragement—but this will be the only time that you’ll be able to get steroid-like gains naturally. You can build a lot of muscle, very very quickly (called newbie gains.) […]
[…] you read our newbie gains article, then you know that the further away from our genetic potential we are, the faster we’re able […]
[…] process is helpful for all skinny guys, and we explain it in our newbie gains article. What makes it especially helpful for skinny-fat guys, though, is that these nuclei improve […]
I can gain 2 pounds per week for 3 month with creatine or without creatine?
If you want to gain at the quickest possible rate, you’d want to take creatine, yeah. It’s the best supplement for improving the rate that you can build muscle, and especially during the first few weeks, it can really cause your muscles to swell up. It pairs great with making newbie gains.
And to be clear, we aren’t recommending that you try to gain 2 pounds per week. There’s a high risk of gaining a lot of fat if you do that, so we generally recommend limiting your weight gain to around a pound per week.
In some cases, if a guy is skinny, lean, and not scared of gaining fat, we put the upper limit at 2 pounds per week during the first 5 weeks of his bulk, and in most cases, that works out great. That’s the approach I personally took, and I loved it, but it’s not for everyone. If you want lean gains, safer to gain a pound per week during that first 3-month period of early newbie gains.
So if I am gaining 1 pound per week (500 calorie surplus) and with creatine i gained 1.5 pounds. Either do I need to have a 750 calorie surplus to turn .5 fat and water into muscle gaining total of 1.5 lbs a week with creatine or I can gain 1.5 with 500 calories surplus with creatine?
In some people, creatine will draw a few pounds of water into their muscles over the course of the first month. That wouldn’t require an especially large calorie surplus, just adequate water intake.
However, the main benefit of creatine is that it allows you to build muscle more quickly, and building muscle more quickly will require eating more calories, yeah.
So the answer is yes to both.
But you should adjust your calorie surplus based on how much weight you gain each week anyway. If you bulk for a week and gain 1.5 pounds, but you were trying to gain 1 pound, then try removing 200 calories per day, and vice versa.
[…] and it absolutely is, but that alone doesn’t make this study suspect. As we covered in our newbie gains article, there are plenty of studies showing tremendous amounts of muscle growth, especially in untrained […]
[…] good news is that once we start training for muscle growth, we can gain muscle more quickly than any other body type. We’re far enough away from our genetic potential that our bodies are primed for muscle […]
Hello, I’ve been doing exercises with 5kg dumbells for the past 7months, once a week. I have not gained any weight on the scales, however I am positive I’ve lost fat as I’ve been eating on a slight deficit and I can start to see my abs. Have a utilised my newbie gains yet, or do I only utilise it when I start bulking?
Thanks so much
Hi, I just noticed from your article that you seemed to equalize the quantity of muscle mass growth with the quantity of body mass. Shouldn’t they be differed? When I look at the formula of lean body mass calculator that calculate the muscle mass, the growth of muscle mass is pretty affected by body fat percentage. But when I compared to my own body data, the percentage growth of my muscle mass and my body mass is linear and almost equal as the growth of body fat percentage is so small that it doesn’t seem to affect the calculation. So I wonder if you try to equalize them in the same manner esp. for skinny guys and hardgainers as they seem to be hardly get an increase of body fat? And do you think it is necessary to differentiate them esp. when we talked about the average guys as to decrease some confusion perhaps of many readers including myself..:D I hope for your kind explanation. Thank you in advance.
You’re right. I always try to talk about weight gained, not muscle gained. But sometimes I use “muscle” as a shorthand, and I probably shouldn’t. In our transformation photos, you’ll notice that we just list X pounds gained. And when I talk about my own transformation, I try to say “55 pounds gained at 10.8% body fat.”
As for fat gains being negligible, yes and no. My body-fat percentage is the same as it was before, but I also gained 55 pounds, and if 11% of that is fat, then that’s 6 pounds of fat. So that leaves 49 pounds. And is all of that muscle? Surely not. My bones and tendons grew denser, my stomach may have gotten bigger (which I’m very thankful for), and, of course, I also gained quite a bit hair.
So you’re absolutely right that if I ever accidentally claim to have gained 55 pounds of muscle, that’s incorrect.
I see what you’re saying about this article, too. We talk about 40 pounds of muscle gain and the we show a photo that represents 40 pounds of weight gain. That’s a really good point. I’ll fix that.
Shane I’ve been lurking around the site for a while. I’m an older guy..48 to be exact and I’m in reasonable shape. 5ft 9in and 165lbs. I estimate from a visual that I have about 15-16% body fat. Im also an ecto. I’m struggling to put on muscle. I’ve been at it for months. I’ve made some small gains but not much for the effort. I’m wondering if your program would work for older ecto’s or whether I should look elsewhere. I’m very concerned about gaining fat when bulking at my age. Any advice would be appreciated.
Hey Stew, congrats for sticking with this even though it hasn’t given you the results that you want yet. There’s that fine line between sticking with something that clearly isn’t working versus trying to improve upon your approach until it finally starts yielding results.
Muscle growth is pretty similar between 18–60. Strength gains seems pretty similar between 18–70. I know that might sound crazy, but building muscle isn’t like a lot of professional sports, where people peak early and retire young. The current Mr Olympia is 44, for example, and he’s still not at his peak. Not that we should be copying professional bodybuilders or anything. I just mean that even at the highest echelons where people push their bodies the furthest, even then it’s not dominated by younger guys.
Yeah, the program definitely works for older guys. Mind you, I wouldn’t call you old yet. Here’s EddiB’s 3-month progress update, who bulked up very leanly with our program at 60-years-old. Here’s JohnnyD’s 5-month progress update. He wanted to lose fat and build muscle. They’re quite a bit older than you and still getting results that are comparable to our younger members, as the research would predict.
The main thing with older guys is that they often want assurances that they can work around old injuries while avoiding making new ones. Older guys generally have enough wisdom to care about that stuff, whereas younger guys will sometimes brush that stuff aside. Mind you, that’s still important with younger guys, it’s just that they haven’t learned to care about it yet.
As for building muscle without gaining fat, yeah, we can absolutely help you do that. Our program talks about how to bulk aggressively (more muscle) versus cautiously (less fat). You’ll just want to take the more cautious approach to bulking 🙂
Does that help / answer your questions?
Thanks for the quick reply Shane. Yeah you’ve definitely answered my questions and what you’ve said is very encouraging. I think I’m getting ready to take the plunge. I’ve been putting in a lot of effort and want to see more results. I think I need some fresh insight and some help.
My pleasure, Stew! I hope to see you on the other side 🙂
Hi Shane, thanks for your generous answers and for accepting my feedback. I know it might sound unimportant, but I am very thankful that you hear me too as I am now becoming more of an avid follower and reader of your articles, they are indeed very helpful. 😀
So to make it clear, all in your articles are basically saying that the weight gain is a gain that includes muscle mass, body fat and everything in between incuding the gain of denser bones, tendons and hairs, not to forget the bigger stomach you are very thankful for. XD
I hope for the best of you, your family and also your website and programs.
Mind you if I may ask something again in the future when I get confused.
Cheers!
Hans
[…] But again, regardless of your situation, if cardio is making it impossible to eat enough calories, just save it for later. You can always add in some cardio after you’ve gotten your newbie gains. […]
[…] Having narrower bones limits how muscular we can become, so this will often get us pegged as “hardgainers.” However, that’s a misnomer. The rate that people can build muscle is mostly determined by how far away from our genetic muscular potential we are. Since ectomorphs tend to start out thinner, that puts us further away from our genetic ceiling. As a result, when we first start training and dieting for muscle growth, we tend to build muscle more quickly (an…. […]
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[…] for naturally skinny guys, these proportions are often realistically achievable, and usually within just a couple of years, […]
[…] the Bony to Beastly Bulking Program, partially thanks to a phenomenon called newbie gains, the average member will gain ten pounds in the first five weeks and twenty within the first three […]
[…] When someone first starts bulking, they go through a period of rapid muscle growth. This phenomenon is called newbie gains. […]
[…] a nutshell, when you lift weights, special stem cells called “satellite cells” donate their myonucle…. That extra nucleus helps the muscle support a slightly larger area, and your muscles get bigger. […]
[…] Newbie gains: how quickly can a skinny guy build muscle? […]
[…] Now, this may seem unbelievable at first, but skinny guys and gals can build muscle so fast, that it’s almost on a steroid-like level — the reason why is because they are very far from their genetic potential in terms of muscle mass. Their body is practically begging to build muscle, and just need the right stimulus (resistance training), the right nutrition (such as lots of protein), and the right amount of quality sleep. If you want to learn more about this phenomenon, check out this nerdy article on the science of “newbie gains.“ […]
Hi! Would just like to know if this still applies to guys almost 50 years old?
Thanks!
Hey Harold, yep! It should apply to guys up until around sixty. If you want some inspiration, check out Eddi’s bulking progress right before his 60th birthday. If you aren’t as lean as that, check out Johnny’s progress 🙂
Hey Shane, i am 21 years old, 5ft8 and 58kg (127 lbs). I have always been skinny, though at the moment although i am lean i don´t consider myself to be in bad shape. It´s just that i would like to have more mass to at least not be considered skinny and be considered “normal” type. The problem is that i also want to do boxing, so i was wondering myself: Could i do the bulking workout (following your program for example) for let´s say 4/5 months to have this “newbie gains” for the summer, and then get back to boxing and try to mantain at least some of that through eating too much to then repeat the cycle the next year before summer?
Thank you!!!
Also i wanted to say that i believe my weight is a bit low because i have the thinnest bones you can imagine. Like really, i have never met another person, woman or man that have a wrist as thin as mine.
Hah, I can relate to the thin bone comment. I’m the same. That’s actually pretty common for ectomorphs. It’s one of the defining features of our body type. But, yeah, the degree varies. Even when I compare myself against other naturally skinny guys, my wrists are always thinner.
There are some muscles along the backside of your forearms that you can bulk up by doing wrist extensions. It will make your wrists a little bit thicker. And lifting weights and boxing will make your bones denser. They’ll weigh more and be tougher. (But they’ll still be thin.)
Hey Manuel, yeah, totally! That’s pretty common with athletes. They do sports-specific training during part of the year, then go through a bulking phase in the off-season. That’s perfectly fine. Any muscle you do lose during the boxing season will pop right back on as soon as you start lifting, so no real problem there.
With that said, in an ideal world, you’d probably want to do at least a little bit of lifting during the boxing season. That could even be a single workout per week, or a couple quick 20-minute sessions. Banging out a few sets of squats, bench, Romanian deadlifts, and chin-ups would allow you to maintain virtually all of your muscle during your body season. You don’t have to, though.
Also, if you’re boxing, make sure to check out your neck bulking article. You’ll definitely want to build a bigger and stronger neck.
Thank you for responding Shane!!! you made my day with the answer, i thought i would not be able to do that. I will definitely try then, i´d look forward to your program for the bulking. Regarding the neck building article i have also checked it because obviously i have a thin neck too, haha, so i´ll also try to bulk it a little both for boxing and for aesthetics. Thank you!!
My pleasure, man! Good luck 🙂
Ok guys, I haven’t started working out yet but I will very soon. I have one question, though. Do I need a protein shake, like whey protein, to bulk up? I don’t know what to do. Protein shakes are expensive in our country, and I really need to bulk up. I get that you all were skinny before, but I am still so skinny. I hate my body. You don’t even need an X-RAY to see my bones, you can see them with your eyes!
I need answers please. Save one ectomorph today!
Hey Kirubel, we’ve got an article on bulking supplements for skinny guys. In it, we explain the pros and cons of various supplements, including protein powders, and whey protein specifically. Long story short, no, you don’t need to use any supplements. You can reach your genetic muscular potential simply through resistance training, eating enough good food, and eating enough protein.
Where protein shakes come in handy is for people who are having trouble getting enough protein from whole foods. In that case, it can be handy to whip up a quick protein shake. It’s not that the protein shake is better than food, just a convenient way of eating more protein. Another simple way to get more protein, though, is simply to have some milk along with your meals, or eat more beans, or more peas, or whatever source of protein best fits your budget and your preferences 🙂
I’m in a situation that I can’t tell if I lost actual muscle mass or just extra water. I’ve trained while in a calorie surplus and noticed some size gains with close to a 10 pound gain (flexed biceps increased by 0.5-1.0 inch, thighs increased by 1.5 inches). However, afterwards I lost most of that weight and the resulting size gains that I had when some busy things came up in life, wasn’t doing much training, and was probably in a small caloric deficit. I’m trying to see if it’s possible that glycogen increases from being in a surplus and training played that much of a role in the size increases, or if it’s more likely that this was from actual muscle that I later lost.
For months now I’ve since picked back up training to about 80% of the weekly volume that I had before. As a percentage of my diet, my carb intake is just as high as it was when I was in a surplus. However, my weight is still holding about 6 to 7 pounds lower and my muscle measurements are still down. (I obviously haven’t really been in a surplus since I lost weight). My strength is very close to what it was at the point when I came out of a surplus; some lifts are like 90%, while others I’m at 100% or even higher. So I don’t think I’m necessarily low on glycogen based on my training and carb intake. I’m sure a little bit of the initial weight gain was fat, and some of what I lost would have also been fat, but I’m thinking most of what I lost was LBM. Do you have any thoughts as to whether it is realistic if this was actual muscle mass or just extra water? I should also note that I am small-framed; currently I’m at 5’8″ 123 lbs so the weight range at which I maintain at would be smaller than most other people.
Hey Jason, if you lost weight while you weren’t lifting weights, it’s likely that you lost some muscle mass. But, like you’re saying, it’s probably just that you’ve lost some of the fluid in your muscles—the glycogen/sarcoplasm. The more permanent changes, such as adding new nuclei to your muscle fibres, won’t have been affected. So it’s simply a matter of getting back to working out and regaining that lost weight. You’ll inflate right back up in a jiffy 🙂
And, yes, lifting weights and being in a calorie surplus both increase glycogen storage in our muscles. Simply going into a calorie deficit can cause our muscles to lose glycogen, which can make them smaller and flatter.
Also keep in mind that, yeah, some of your weight loss was likely fat, and also some of that weight loss was gut contents. If you were eating more food before, then there was more food in your digestive system, and that food can often weigh a good couple of pounds.
If your strength is doing well, I think your muscle mass is probably fine. Once you regain that weight, you’ll be more muscular than ever 🙂
Thanks, Shane. That makes sense. I’ve also read your article on muscle memory. Considering that I’d only gained a few pounds of muscle, I think what you wrote there about newbie gains not having a permanent feel and disappearing fast explains what I have going on here. Sounds like I just have to get back to a similar training volume and a calorie surplus to get back the gains.
Hi Shane 🙂
Very grateful to you and the team for all the effort you put into what you do, truly helping transform so many lives. Still can’t believe you give away all this info for free! Thank you so much!
Reading this article made me curious about something you don’t explicitly mention here, though it seems fairly logical: would newbie gains be ‘site-specific’? Consider someone who has never trained abs or legs (or some other specific muscle group), although they’ve been training the rest, arms, chest, back etc for more than a year. The day they decide to finally begin to train this much neglected muscle group, would they find newbie gains waiting in store for them for those specific muscles, even though they’ve reached a more intermediate and slow growth phase when it comes to their other more well-trained muscles?
Thanks a million again for all that you do! 🙂
Warm regards
AM
I can’t say I know for sure, but I think your logic is good, yes. For example, if you only train your legs, you might see newbie gains when you finally train your upper body. We see that kind of thing all the time. I’ve experienced it myself, too. I started training my neck years after I started training the rest of my body. I got newbie gains in my neck.
[…] period of rapid growth when people first start weight training is often called “newbie gains,” but keep in mind that anyone who is untrained can experience newbie gains. What makes our […]
Most of the case studies that you showcase on your site are newbie gainers. As a suggestion for another article, it would be great if you could follow-up with some of your past subscribers and see where they are after a year or more. It’s encouraging to see skinny guys who have bulked up and put on 20–30 lbs, but when you’re really skinny, you don’t just dream of getting bigger. What you really want is to get BIG—and jacked. What you yourself have accomplished, through multiple bulking periods, is sustained growth. Now as you admitted in another post, you have grown to over 200 lbs of lean muscle mass. And that’s what us skinny guys want to see.
Hey James, that’s a really good idea. We have quite a few members that been with us for many years now. Some have been in the community for a full decade now.
I don’t think every skinny guy dreams of being super jacked. A lot of guys get to the point where they look athletic, they become the fit one in their friend group, they start collecting compliments for being in good shape… and their dreams of looking like a bodybuilder fade away.
My initial goal was to go from 130 pounds (clinically underweight) to 150 pounds (normal weight). I thought that if I could get to 150 pounds, I’d be healthy, and people would stop picking on me for being so incredibly thin. And that’s indeed what happened. At 150 pounds, all of the negativity around my body completely disappeared. Nobody ever bothered me about it ever again. I decided to keep going, and I went on to gain another 50 pounds, but all of the pain that had been driving me forward was gone.
As you said, though, some guys do want to continue getting bigger. I enjoy it very much. It’d be cool to write an article on that.
I am a teenager and i get to make fun of my skinniness at school i just wanted to know how much pounds can i realisticly gain till summer ends if i workout 5 times a week and do a 700 calorie surplus
Hey Eyob, I hear you, man. I went through the same thing in high school (and university). I’m sorry that’s happening to you.
This whole thing is tricky. After gaining my first 20 pounds, I moved from underweight to normal weight, and nobody ever made fun of my skinniness ever again. It would feel wrong to hide that fact. On the other hand, it feels wrong to tell someone who’s being picked on that they’re the one who needs to change. There’s nothing morally wrong with being naturally thin. The people picking on you are the ones in the wrong here.
There are plenty of skinny guys living happy lives. High school can be rough. It often gets easier later. People mature. They stop making fun of each other over stupid stuff like this.
Anyway, it’s cool how you’ve taken this point of pain and decided to do something positive with it. Lifting is great for building muscle. It’s great exercise, too. It’s very healthy.
If you want to bulk fast, eating in a 700-calorie surplus, we’ve got an article on aggressive bulking. That’s the fastest way to build muscle.
You’ve got 3 months. If you start now, a lean bulk would have you gaining about 7 pounds. A classic bulk would have you gaining more like 13. If you bulk aggressively, I think you could gain 20.
Also, I’m not sure how old you are, but this is probably something you should discuss with your parents. There’s no harm in lifting weights or bulking up as a teenager. One concern with trying to gain weight really quickly, though, is if you gain too much fat, you may want to cut. Cutting isn’t usually advisable for teenagers, given that you’d be going into a calorie deficit while your body is trying to grow and your brain is trying to develop. It might be a good idea to go with more of a classic bulk, trying to keep your gains leaner.
I’m not sure why you decided on training 5 days per week. That’s perfectly fine. If you’re a skinny beginner, though, a good default is to follow a 3-day full-body workout routine. You can maximise your rate of muscle growth with 3 good workouts per week. 5-day routines tend to be better for intermediate and advanced bodybuilders, but even then, it’s often overkill. (I only moved up to 4 days per week after gaining my first 50 pounds.)
Good luck building muscle, man! You’ve got this. And if you have any questions, feel free to drop more comments on the blog. I’m happy to help in any way I can 🙂
Thanks for the help i am in 10th grade by the way
Good luck, man! Let me know how your bulk goes. I did my first successful bulk during my summer break while I was in university. It’s a great time for it. You got this. And if you don’t, we’re here to help 🙂
And i have been wondering how you maintain it your muscle do you still do calorie surplus or just normal exercise and no diet.
Good question. It used to haunt me when I was skinny, and even more so after I started building muscle. I’ve been thinking about and experimenting with it for years. To make a long story short, you can go back to listening to your appetite after you finish bulking. Here’s a full article on “Reverse Bulking.” You don’t need to read it now, but I think it will be a great help when you finish your bulk.
Hey, I am 21 and i have a hard time maintaining muscle. Following what Eyob commented on reverse bulking, how much time can this spare body fat last for maintain and it’s not for all skinny people right.
Hey Caleb,
Spare body fat can last forever, just like extra savings in your bank account can last forever. To get rid of it, you have to use it. You could slowly build muscle and lose fat at the same time (body recomposition) or you could go into a calorie deficit to burn it faster (cutting).
Reverse Bulking works really well for a lot of naturally thin guys. It can be a great alternative to cutting. However, thin people are a small subset of the overall population, and even then, it doesn’t work for all of us. If it’s not working for you, you’d need to recomp or cut to get rid of the fat.
Maintaining your muscle should be fairly easy. I’m not sure if you read the full Reverse Bulking article, but when you stop bulking, you’ll usually lose a bit of size and strength. You aren’t losing muscle, per se, it’s just you aren’t experiencing the performance-enhancing benefits of eating in a calorie surplus anymore. You aren’t packed full of as much glycogen or fuelled by as much energy.
If you’re actually losing muscle, you might need a higher maintenance training volume, a healthier lifestyle, more protein, or better sleep.
If I misunderstood your question, I’m happy to try again.
Hey man, I also wondered can you also maintain muscle by just 100 calorie surplus or does it have to be 500-600
Hey Caleb. You can maintain your muscle indefinitely without any calorie surplus at all. If you have fat to spare, you can even maintain your muscle mass in a calorie deficit.
A calorie surplus is extra calories. It’s when you’re gaining weight. You only need to eat in a calorie surplus while you’re actively bulking up.
However, as you build muscle, your metabolism will increase. Every pound of muscle takes about 12 calories per day to maintain and carry around. So if you gain 20 pounds, that’s 240 extra calories per day. Mind you, your appetite will increase accordingly. You’ll naturally want to eat that extra food.
As someone who has been going to the gym 11 months and eating between 2000-3000 daily, i can confirm noob gains are not real. I even had a personal trainer for a few months and there was no muscle growth.
Maybe it’s because i’m 32 and never been to a gym in my life. I’ve given it my best for almost a year and there’s been no growth at all. Some people even accuse me of not going to the gym, but people there have seen me go 3 times a week since last february.
I genuinely do not believe some guys can build muscle. My brother is the same and been doing it 10 years. We both have poor genetics and he’s done everything possible to gain muscle. It doesn’t give me any hope either.
So yeah. Noob gains are BS. Unless you have normal genetics.
Hey Alex,
Newbie gains is the period of rapid growth that new lifters can experience. That’s a real phenomenon.
I think you’re arguing that low-responders (aka non-responders) are real. That’s also true. We have an article on that here.
A low-responder is someone who, for whatever reason, has trouble building muscle. There can be a genetic component to it. There’s no doubt that some people build muscle more easily than others. Most people are about average, but some people have exceptional genetics and other people have atrocious genetics.
People who struggle to build muscle used to be called “non-responders,” but it wound up being a misnomer. Everyone can adapt to resistance training to some extent. So the term was switched to “low-responders,” indicating that the response is lower but not nonexistent.
We might be able to figure out why you weren’t able to get results. Tell me about your calorie intake doesn’t give me the information I need. Different people need different amounts of calories, and those needs change over time. How much weight were you gaining?
Under the “How Fast Can Beginners Build Muscle” section, three studies are cited to support the claim that beginners can gain over a pound of muscle a week in the first twelve weeks of weight training. But none of the studies support that claim. Each of the three studies measure differences in fat free mass, which includes any non-fat changes in body mass.
The first study compared creatine supplementation to protein supplementation, and finds that creatine supplementation increased fat-free mass by 4.0kg. It doesn’t have data on how much of this increase was muscle as opposed to, for example, increased water retention from the creatine supplementation.
In the second study, too, the researchers measure the difference in fat free mass before and after an intervention including protein and amino acid supplementation or carbohydrate supplementation, which again isn’t the same as measuring muscle growth.
Similar for the third study on milk consumption — fat free mass, not muscle mass.
They all do conclude positive muscle anabolism with their interventions. But it’s not right to conclude that these differences in FFM are muscle mass.
I hope the article can be amended to include these caveats so that readers don’t end up with unrealistic expectations about muscle growth during their first months of training. Thank you.
Hey Akangm, all of that is true, but when people talk about “gaining muscle,” what they’re talking about is gaining fat-free mass. I could be super scientific and refer to it as “fat-free mass” instead, but I don’t think that would actually help anybody. Nobody who lifts weights speaks like that.
If creatine is causing extra water retention, and if that extra water retention adds lean mass, improves workout performance, and looks like greater muscularity, most people just casually count it as muscle mass.
In our before-and-after photos, we aren’t strictly looking at gains in muscle mass, either. People are building muscle, gaining (or losing) fat, retaining more water, adding bone density, strengthening their tendons, digesting more food, and so on. But if they finish looking as lean as they started, it’s pretty normal to say they gained X pounds of muscle (in a casual context, not a scientific one).
I don’t think casually referring to lean mass as muscle mass would create unrealistic expectations. People are looking at their weight on the scale, progress photos, and muscle circumference measurements. They’re comparing themselves against other people’s rates of weight gain, progress photos, and muscle circumferences. They aren’t having researchers measure their gains in skeletal muscle mass and then comparing that against someone else’s.
Hey Shane,
Great article as always! I have a quick question: what exactly defines a newbie? For example, if someone trained sub-optimally in Years 1-3—doing only 3 sets per muscle group per week with +5 RIR—would they still be considered a newbie if they switched to a more serious program in Year 4? Can we define a newbie as someone who has reached, say, 50% or less of their genetic potential, regardless of their training history? Similarly, would it be accurate to say that an advanced lifter is someone who has generally maxed out their genetic potential? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Best,
Joe
Thanks, Joe!
I think there are two main factors that define a newbie:
1. How sensitive are you to the stimulus of lifting weights? When you first start lifting weights, it doesn’t take much to stimulate growth, and it also doesn’t take much to cause muscle damage. So, you need to ease in gradually. As the weeks pass, your muscles growth tougher, and you can handle more. This is called the Repeated Bout Effect (RBE). We gain and lose this adaptation fairly quickly, so if you’ve been lifting for a couple of months, you aren’t a newbie. If you haven’t lifted in the past couple of months, you are.
2. How much room do you have on your frame for muscle growth? This is your definition. The further you are from your genetic potential, the faster and more easily you can build muscle. As you get closer, your gains slow, and you need to go to greater lengths to keep on growing. I’m not sure what percentage it would be, though. You could use this aesthetics calculators, if you want. Those measurements represent an athletic physique for someone with your frame. That’s an intermediate level. You could get bigger, but it won’t be as easy or fast.
So if you imagine someone who isn’t currently in the habit of lifting weights and isn’t very muscular yet, that’s a person who will grow fairly quickly and easily.
You could also imagine someone who has an active job, eats a lot of food, doesn’t train very often or hard, but is still quite advanced. They might never be able to make newbie gains. They got them naturally.
I tried lifting weights a few times but never succeeded at eating enough calories to gain weight. I didn’t gain any muscle at all. I could have spent a decade doing that, and it wouldn’t have given me any newbie gains at all. I might be a skilled lifter, but I could still make newbie gains by eating a proper bulking diet.
Yeah, I’d say an advanced lifter is someone who’s within a few percentage points of their genetic potential. They might still be able to grow a little but, but it might take years to make noticeable visual progress. Mind you, those are very pleasant years! They look great, and they’re strong and healthy. Being stuck there isn’t exactly a problem.
You can get an idea of your genetic potential with this calculator. Most people would be squatting around 405, benching 315, and deadlifting 495. Most people never get there.
I like to think of myself as a late intermediate lifter.
That’s how I think about it, anyway.