The Skinny Girls Guide To Muscle Gain.

Chances are, if you’ve landed here, you are looking to GAIN weight (as in building some muscle).

Fantastic!

That puts you in a tiny niche, indeed.

Less than 3% of people are looking to gain weight, and most are men.

Unsurprisingly, the internet is packed with weight loss advice for women who want to be skinnier.

Most fitness advice for women is about weight loss, cardio, or becoming a yogi.

Anything you can do to shrink.

Because in our society, smaller = better, right?

But that’s not you?

You’re already thin and tired of it.

It’s something I can relate to. Despite how it may look these days, I was once that super skinny guy who struggled to gain weight.

Even 20 years later, I still have to work my ass off to make gains.

So this article is for you, the naturally thin women of the world.

I’ll show you how you can start to gain a healthy weight in the right places.

First off, let’s talk about food.

You Need To Eat

Yes, I’m telling you to eat more.

Shocking, I know!

Telling a woman to eat more, not less.

But you need to eat more to build muscle.

All that work you’re about to do in the gym is underpinned by what you eat.

And there is no magic formula; you don’t need to eat any differently from men. The only real difference is the number of calories you need.

You need a calorie surplus to grow. Otherwise, you’ll stay the same size.

Any thin woman looking to add lean muscle and shape to their body needs to eat more calories than they burn during the day.

This can be anywhere from 200-500 calories over your maintenance calories daily.

This may sound a little confusing, so I have two amazing tools to make this part simpler for you:

1. Use my CALORIE CALCULATOR to get your muscle-building calories and macros.

2. Check out this article where I show you how to calculate calories and macros (ignore the fat loss part).

Remember, we are looking to build muscle (healthy weight gain) and not just pile on tons of body fat.

So this is not an excuse to start eating junk food for easy calories. That empty shit will more than likely just get stored as body fat.

We want strong, feminine curves, not a muffin top.

Your diet should comprise whole foods, complex carbohydrates, lean proteins, and healthy fats.

The Scoop On Protein

Protein is going to be the main macronutrient you need to prioritise. Protein is what helps muscles to grow and repair. But let’s not overcomplicate things - follow this one simple rule to get enough protein to grow.

Take your weight in POUNDS; that’s the grams of protein to aim for every day as a minimum.

e.g. 110lbs woman = 110g of protein per day.

It may seem like a lot, and it may take you a while to get there, but it’s an essential effort.

👉 51 High Protein Foods For Building Lean Muscle

Let’s Talk Supplements

This is an easy trap to fall into - thinking supplements are the answer and will do all the heavy lifting for you.

The truth is most supplements are a waste of money.

And none of it means shit if your diet, training, sleep, stress and hydration aren’t in good shape.

Remember, supplements are there to supplement your diet; they are not the foundation of your diet, like sprinkles on a cupcake.

Here are a few supplements worth taking to help you build muscle (but are NOT strictly necessary).

1. Protein powders and Weight Gainers - Eating roughly 0.7–1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day has been proven to be ideal for muscle growth.

   Whey protein is considered the best, but any good dairy or plant-based protein powder will work perfectly fine.
   
   

2. Creatine - creatine is the most effective muscle-building supplement and has been proven safe. The main benefit of creatine is that it increases how many reps you can do when lifting weights (by replenishing your ATP), allowing you to stimulate growth in your muscles better.

   It also improves your body’s ability to construct new muscle mass.

   Creatine will cause your muscles to swell by increasing intra-muscular water storage, the upside being you’ll look more muscular and defined.

   It’s also dirt cheap!!
   
   

3. Vitamins and Minerals - A daily multivitamin is a good safety net if there are holes in your diet, i.e. you hate vegetables.

   Vitamin D is a good addition if you live in a colder country like Canada or northern Europe.

   An Omega 3 is a great addition to most diets, especially if you don’t eat oily fish (Vegans and Vegetarians).
   
   

4. Caffeine - I usually recommend a source of caffeine before training. Caffeine allows you to squeeze out more reps and do more sets before becoming fatigued, increasing your lifting volume and thus allowing you to build more muscle more quickly.

   However, I don’t typically recommend Pre-Workout. They are overpriced, underdosed and full of stuff you don’t need. Honestly, nothing beats a good strong coffee or a sugar-free Monster.

   My personal choice is pure 200mg caffeine pills.

And that’s it.

Forget the BCAA’s (unless you are vegan); forget pre-workouts, Intra-workouts and fat burners.

You Need To Lift Weights

A quick word on Cardio

It’s time to kiss the crosstrainer and Zumba goodbye.

Don’t get me wrong, cardio is fantastic for improving our general health, but it doesn’t do much for improving how we look beyond burning calories and losing weight.

In fact, for building muscle, cardio alone sucks.

When most women want to lose weight, they tend to lose both muscle and fat.

Not as big an issue when you have weight to lose, but for the skinny woman, it’s a big step backwards.

From now on, your cardio should only be for general health maintenance.

The good news is that lifting weights is amazing cardio. Doing three weight training workouts per week, each lasting about an hour, will count toward about 90 minutes of cardiovascular exercise. That’s more than enough for most women.

Now it’s time to get serious with some big girl weights.

I can hear the sweat start to roll down your neck at the thought of picking up a dumbbell.

“I don’t want to get bulk or manly.”

Listen! I’ve been lifting for 20 years, and I still don’t feel bulky or manly 😂

You won’t leave the gym on day one looking like She-Hulk.

But lifting weights will dramatically enhance your results and how you look in ways you can’t imagine yet.

What’s the Best Type of Lifting for Skinny Women?

Brace yourself again!

It’s bodybuilding… Also known properly as hypertrophy training.

Now relax.

Bodybuilding is just a word; it doesn’t mean you are or will be a bodybuilder. But that’s what we are doing; we build (grow) our bodies by adding muscle.

A quick Google for bodybuilding or bulking programs will bring up a lot of choices… But all geared toward men.

Men with very different goals and body types than you. The approach you may want to take will likely differ from most men's.

Typically men want a big chest, big arms and a six-pack.

A woman may typically want toned legs, a big round bum and a flat stomach.

So your approach needs to reflect your goals, not a generic program for a man.

Remember, we are technically bodybuilding but don’t want to look like bodybuilders.

Gaining 10-15 lbs won’t make you bulky. But gaining 40-50lbs may make you bulky.

It’s a spectrum, and curviness lies along the path to bulkiness. If you start skinny, you’ll still be thin and slender, even with an extra 10-15 lbs of muscle.

But my god, you will look better for it.

Let’s also be realistic.

Muscle is really hard to grow. It takes incredible effort in the gym, with your food and lifestyle. You are never going to wake up one day and be super muscly.

You’ll never get bulky unless you WANT TO. It doesn’t just happen.

Also (top secret): Many men and women you see on social media use steroids! So unless you plan on hopping on the juice, I think you’ll be quite happy with the results.

You Need To Lift Heavy Ass Weights

Like Zumba, It’s time to leave the pink dumbbells and BodyPump classes behind.

Now is the time to step into the big weights.

Yes, the “scary'“ area is full of men.

That is your home now.

Because it’s not a “men’s area”, it’s your area.

Remember what I just said about looking like She-Hulk?

That’s not going to happen.

Testosterone levels in a woman are far less than in men.

And testosterone has a huge contribution to muscle growth, so unless you are a genetic outlier or on steroids, getting bulky or manly is the least of your concerns.

Muscles grow when they're stressed.

Check out this article on The Best Exercises To Grow Your Glutes.

We only get that stress from heavy resistance training breaking down our muscle tissue.

Over and over, we break down, repair and rebuild, developing new muscle, strong curves and an ass you could ricochet a bullet off.

No one is saying you need to start squatting 100kg tomorrow, it just has to be heavy for you, and you must continually push every session harder than the last.

Compound Exercises For The Win

Lots of fitness content for women is about isolation exercises for different body parts. It’s a surefire way to waste your time in the gym unless you are a bodybuilder with specific goals.

Instead, compound movements, which use many different muscle groups at once, must be your priority.

Think squats, lunges, hip thrusts, deadlifts, bench presses, shoulder presses, pull-ups, lat pulldowns and rows.

You can move some serious weights and make the most progress in these exercises. Your body will be built on compound exercises and refined by isolation ones.

80% of your training should be compound exercises, leaving the isolation for the end of your workouts or when focusing on a specific muscle group you want to develop, like glutes or arms.

Check out this article on how to get an Hourglass figure

Finally, Time and Progress

To end, we need to talk about time, patience and progress.

This is not going to happen in 6 weeks.

Building muscle is a slow, laborious process that takes months and years and is something you will (and should) spend the rest of your life working on.

The typical average woman could build up to 15 pounds of muscle in their first year of training (or around one pound per month).

But it drops off exponentially after that.

Year two would be 5-7 lbs a year.

Year three, 2-3 lbs a year.

Until it becomes about incremental improvements and maintaining what you’ve built.

Your training also needs to progress.

Over the years, you need to lift heavier weights, try more challenging exercise variations, and do more sets and reps to challenge your body constantly.

You can’t just do the same weights, sets and reps repeatedly; you must progress.

So be patient, work hard and eat well.

Get Help

All this probably sounds very overwhelming.

You could shortcut all the confusion, conquer the fear and start gaining weight today.

Wouldn’t that be better than figuring all this out on your own?

Then it’s time to join my online coaching team, where I will get you building muscle, gaining weight and becoming a badass from day one.

And Check out of a few of my clients below, who’ve gone from Mini to Mighty

I’m Aaron Schiavone, owner of Mind Muscle Personal Training. Over the past 7+ years I have helped women increase their self confidence, improve their relationship with food, improve their health, become stronger, fitter and happier..