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As in most fitness goals, learning how to bulk up properly involves finding the right diet and supplement plan along with the most appropriate workout.

If you’re somewhat skinny and small and you want learn how to bulk up, you’re definitely in the minority these days. It’s not because most people weigh as they should. It’s that most people don’t really need to bulk up since they’re bigger and heavier than they ought to be. According to the CDC, in the US 69% of adults are either overweight or obese. These people don’t really need to think about gaining mass but should really concentrate on losing those pounds instead.

But learning how to bulk up isn’t merely about gaining weight. After all, that’s a natural “talent” for most people, and you certainly don’t need any more tips on how to gain pounds. But you need to learn how to gain mass properly, and that means gaining muscle instead of more layers of excess fat. And that goal, while popular, isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

For some people, it’s about the cycle. You start with the bulking phase, wherein you gain muscle. But you also invariably gain fat in the process as well. That problem is solved in the cutting phase, when you attempt to get rid of all that excess fat while you retain the muscle you’ve so painstakingly gained.

But some other experts think that it’s also possible to forego this “two steps forward, one step back” approach. It may be possible for you to bulk up more steadily without going through any cycle at all. Regardless of whether you choose to undergo the cycle or not, you will still need the two pillars of fitness—a proper diet and an effective workout regimen.

Proper Diet

It doesn’t matter whether you go wish to lose weight or gain mass—a proper diet is crucial. The problem is that despite the scientific nature of this goal, there’s no real consensus on what a proper diet is. Go online and check out the topic through Google, and each expert will recommend a different type of diet.

So how do you pick which one to choose? That’s all up to you, and good luck with that. You may choose an option according to which authority figure you trust. Or perhaps you’ll make your choice of dieting plan according to what seems doable to you. You can even customize your diet by consulting a nutritionist. That may cost you some money, but it would be money well spent as it saves you a lot of time and trouble from figuring things out by yourself.

Regardless of what bulk up diet you choose in the end, here are some factors you need to keep in mind:

• Calorie amount. Becoming heavier is a matter of simple mathematics. You consume more calories than what you use up. Your body then retains the calories you don’t use up as extra weight.

It’s for that reason you’ll need to count calories, or at least eat more than what you’re used to. In fact, since bulking up properly means gaining muscle instead of fat, you’re going to eat a lot because you’re going to have to go into a strenuous workout program that involve lifting weights.

To count calories, your diet plan should have some sort of indication as to how many calories are contained in each serving of a particular dish. Some packaged items and restaurant meals offer this info. If they don’t, you may have to go online for some quick research.

But you’re going to have to track your calorie intake, because you’re going to have to fine tune this aspect of your plan as you go along. You may want to start with about 16 times your body weight in pounds.

• Healthy foods. You can’t just eat anything that strikes your fancy if you want to bulk up properly. While overweight people may eat lots of fast food, ice cream, and lots of unhealthy food, that’s not the proper course of action for you. These things will damage your health and mess with your cholesterol, and you end up being obese instead of being muscled.

That means you need to stick with healthy foods, with a special emphasis on the greens tuff like vegetables and fruits. When you’re figuring out what to eat to bulk up, you need to start with a healthy diet consisting of healthy whole foods.

You’ll also need to think about proper preparation of food, because frying your food on a consistent basis may not be all that healthy. Improper preparation may add more calories to your diet than you accounted for because of the oils you used, and it may also destroy some of the nutrients and vitamins you need.

• Macronutrient content. You’ll also need to think about the nutrients you consume, such as your protein, fats, and carbohydrates. You may also want to note your sodium intake, as well as your vitamins and minerals. Again, this can be a rather convoluted topic where experts have differing opinions, and a nutritionist can really help. If you’re going at it alone, you’re going to have to track your nutrient intake so that you can fine tune your diet later.

Of course, for proper muscle building you’re going to need lots of protein. When you exercise and lift weights, you put some microscopic tears in your muscle tissue. Your muscles rebuild by using protein, and you end up with bigger muscles when you have an adequate protein supply for your muscles to use. Some experts recommend that you take about a gram of protein for each pound you weigh. Each gram is about 4 calories.

Then you limit your fat intake. Here experts ask that your fat intake should be about a fourth of your total daily calorie intake. Each gram of fat is 9 calories.

Finally you have to fine tune your carbohydrate intake. Carbohydrates provide the energy you need for your workout, and it keeps your body from burning your protein stores as fuel for energy.

You need to track your food intake and your measurements regularly. If you’re not gaining weight, then you need more calories. If you’re gaining too much fat, then a reduction in your calorie intake may be in order.

Supplements

Often your diet alone may not be enough to provide you with the proper levels of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals you need. This means you may have to complement your diet with supplements. This of course begs the question of which supplements to take.

When it comes to effective muscle building supplements, perhaps the most popular options are protein shakes, which offers a convenient and affordable way for you to get the protein levels you need without bothering too much on buying and preparing fish and meat dishes.  Not all protein shakes are of the same quality, and your body may not react to them in the same way that other people do. Some types of protein shakes, for example, may cause gastrointestinal upset.

Others supplements promise faster muscle build up or greater energy, such as the ones that contain stimulants like caffeine. These stimulants may help you exercise more vigorously. Some athletes even take illegal steroids. While these substances may work (which is why they’re so popular), in most cases you’re going to have to suffer the side effects. Some of these side effects can truly harm your health instead.

When you buy workout supplements, do your research first. Check the reputation of the manufacturer and the seller, because you always risk getting a placebo or a supplement laced with toxic ingredients. And read the reviews so you have a more accurate idea of what to expect.

Just remember, supplements are not guaranteed to work. Even the best ones don’t work equally well for everyone. And make sure that you’re prepared for the side effects as well.

Working Out

Like with diet plans, you’ll have lots of options when it comes to workout programs. Each expert has their own ideas on which exercises to perform and which moves to avoid. Others will also recommend various machines for you to try.

Yet despite the wide range of choices in workout plans, most experts agree that weightlifting is the key to bulking up properly. You don’t bulk up by running or cycling. You bulk up by lifting dumbbells and barbells.

No matter what kind of workout plan you choose, here are some tips that may help:

• Always warm up. Warming up makes the workout more effective, and you also minimize the risk of injury.
• Start slow. Don’t go for the really heavy weights right away. Start with the more comfortable weights and go from there.
• Track your progress. Note down how many pounds you lift and how many reps you make. Every week or so, you need to progress each time.
• Give your muscles time to rest. The rest period is when your muscles are rebuilding so they can become bigger. That’s why some people focus on a different muscle group each workout session. When that muscle group is resting, you can then focus on another muscle group. Make sure you don’t neglect your leg muscles either.

Learning how to bulk up properly is a process, and there are a lot of adjustments to be made along the way. You also need lots of determination to see it through. But in time and with hard work, you may end up with the muscles you need.

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If you’re super-skinny and you want to pack on some muscles, the articles on this site can really help you gain weight and muscle in just a few months. But if you’ve read them already and incorporated the tips into your lifestyle, you may find that you may have gained some fat along with some muscles. So now you’ve encountered a fact of life, which is that knowing what to do to build lean muscle can be difficult if you aim to avoid taking on fat as well.

It can be annoying, knowing that you’ve gained muscle but they’re not well-defined lean muscle. They’re hidden alongside layers of fat and water, which make you look soft and pudgy instead of ripped and strong. This is the situation that calls for cutting in bodybuilding. And like everything else, you’re going to have to adjust your diet and your workout to find the best routine for cutting. You want to get rid of the fat while you keep the muscle you’ve gained.

So what should you do?

Reduced Calorie Intake

Since you’re aiming to cut down on your body fat, your first task is to cut down on your calorie intake. When you started your body building process, you probably added more calories to your diet, didn’t you? Now that has to stop. You’ll need to reduce your calorie intake by the same amount you added, which is probably about 500 calories per day. That’s the amount you added when you needed to gain a pound a week, so cutting that same amount should be a good start.

The precise number of calories you take in a day will depend a lot on your present circumstances. Bigger and heavier people need more calories a day, and of course you will have to take your workout into account. If you’re a male of average size, you’re probably going to need anywhere from 1700 to 2500 calories a day. If you’re heavy then your calorie intake will be closer to 2500 than to 1700 calories.

When you cut back on your calories, most of them should be in the form of carbohydrates and fats. You’ll still need carbs and fats, but you’ll just eat less. Make sure you get high-quality carbs and fats, and your carbs should be slower to absorb.

As for your protein, they should be maintained through this period. You just need enough protein to maintain the muscles you’ve already gained. The protein should be about a gram per pound of bodyweight, and comprise about 40% of your overall calorie intake.

So if you weigh 180 pounds, then that’s 180 grams of protein. A gram of protein is 4 calories just like carbs, and fat is 9 calories per gram. With 180 grams of protein, that’s 720 calories. If that’s 40% of your diet, then your daily calorie intake is 1875 calories a day.

A More Moderate Approach

Some experts, however, ask for a more get rid of the fat to cutting calories. If you’ve been consuming more than 3,000 calories a day in your bulking phase, then for cutting you may want to reduce your calorie intake to 13 to 17 calories per pound of body weight.

So if you weigh 180 pounds, 15 calories per pound of body weight leads to 2700 calories per day. In this approach, protein intake is about 1.2 to 1.6 grams per pound of body weight, and fat makes up 17 to 28 percent of the total calorie intake. The rest of the calories come from carbs.

You’re essentially going on a diet. To make it more doable, you need a diet plan that you can actually stick with for the duration. That may mean cutting your calorie intake by just 10% (or even by just 5%) instead of the more difficult 20% reduction. Don’t put all your favorite foods into your banned list. And take a break from your diet after a month, and return to normal eating for about a week before you return to your diet.

What to Eat

So what kind of foods should you incorporate into your diet during this phase? Here are some suggestions:

• Salmon. You still need protein to maintain your muscle mass, because if you don’t get enough protein your body may break down your muscles as well. Salmon is an excellent choice for protein during this period. It is low in saturated fats, and you also get high levels of Omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3 steadies your insulin levels (which affect your fat storage and your energy production), and fish is also good for your cardiovascular health.
• Turkey breast and skinless chicken breast. Both are excellent sources of protein for the same reason, which is that they offer protein with very little fat.
• White kidney beans. These contain These supplements which help reduce the absorption of carbs. These beans are also high in protein, low in fat, and full of numerous vitamins and minerals. They’re also slow for the body to absorb, so you feel fuller for a longer period of time after you’ve eaten them.
• Leafy green veggies. Try to include lots of cabbage, sprouts, spinach, and raw salad into your diet. They’re very filling so you don’t feel hungry, but at the same time they contain very little calories. They also contain lots of fiber that slow down how your body absorbs the other food in your meal. That means you don’t get hungry more quickly.
• Whole grain bread. In the cutting phase, you need to eat foods with less carbs. Whole grain bread fits the bill, as you get half the carbs you get from rice. This bread also contains more protein than rice, it’s full of nutrients, and you’re more likely to eat less. You just need about three slices of this bread for each meal to feel full, and that gives you 30 grams of carbs. In comparison, you need 1½ cup of rice to feel just as full, except that gives you 70 grams of carbs.
• Almonds. With this snack you get some protein and healthy fats, and even fiber too. It’s an eminently convenient snack food as it’s easy to take anywhere with you.

All these food items should be regularly incorporated into your diet so that you can get rid of your excess body fat while you retain your muscles. Just keep in mind, however, that variety is the real secret to any successful diet. Don’t eat the same things over and over again, or you’ll end up quitting on your diet eventually.

Supplements

In the cutting phase, the best supplements to get ripped are the ones that do any of the following:

• Burn fat. They may do this by boosting the metabolism.
• Prevent fat storage. These supplements may slow down the absorption of carbs into the body, or divert the nutrients into becoming energy instead of being stored as fat.
• Suppress the appetite. The cutting phase means a reduction in calorie intake, and invariably that may mean you may get cravings that you need to deny. Appetite suppressants keep you from feeling hungry, so that you’re encouraged to stay on your diet.

Some of the other popular suppressants for building lean muscle are protein supplements, which help you retain your muscles. Others also give you more energy so you can work out more effectively.

You may also want to think about taking vitamin supplements, especially when your restrictive diet keeps you from eating too much. These supplements can help you get your recommended daily allowance for vitamins and minerals.

Workouts

The diet plan is the most important part of any cutting phase, but that doesn’t give you leave to abandon working out altogether. You should still do some strength training, but to burn fat some form of cardio may be in order.

The frequency of your cardio depends on you as an individual, because everyone’s different. Some do cardio exercises every other day, but others do it every day and some others have found it enough to do cardio every third day. But you should just keep it to about 30 minutes of cardio per session.

So what kind of cardio training should you do? Some experts recommend interval training, in which you sprint for a while before switching to light jogging. Or you can just choose to run or ride a bike instead. What’s important is that you find it engaging, so you don’t quit doing your cardio too soon. It’s also important that you change your cardio routine after a while, so the body doesn’t adapt to your cardio workout.

For your weight lifting, the main difference is that you should reduce the weight you lift just a little bit. For each set, aim for about 10 to 12 reps. The point in this phase is to maintain your muscles you already have.

Conclusion

It would be nice if you can just gain muscle without gaining any fat as an accompaniment, but knowing what to do to build lean muscle without fat is one of the most difficult things to achieve in fitness training. So you just have to accept that you will gain some fat along with your muscles, and concentrate on losing that fat while you retain the muscles you’ve already got.

So you want to know how to gain weight fast? That’s a surprise, statistically speaking. You’re probably aware that most people, especially in the US, are overweight. So if you’re skinny, you have a very rare problem. Some obese people may think that it’s a problem that they would like to have, but it’s still a problem.

The truth of the matter is that only 2% of all adults in the US are underweight. So even if you think you’re skinny, you may actually not be underweight at all. In fact, many people don’t have an accurate idea of what their weight ought to be. In one study, it was found that 25% of overweight or obese women considered themselves as normal or even underweight.

So before you go try to find the best way to bulk up or gain weight, here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Find your ideal weight. You need to discover if you are really underweight or not. For this, you’re going to need to go online and find your body mass index, which is a number that’s affected by your age, gender, and height. A BMI of less than 18.5 is considered underweight.
2. See a doctor. Most people simply blame their quick metabolism or a family history of thinness to explain why they remain skinny despite their ravenous appetites. But that may not be the case at all. You’ll need to be sure before you put on pounds, so you should consult your doctor and get a full checkup.

With the checkup, the doctor may see if you have any medical condition that prevents you from getting bigger, or perhaps causes you to not absorb nutrients properly. These conditions include a B12 deficiency, lactose intolerance, celiac disease, or bacterial overgrowth syndrome. You may also have an eating disorder, if you don’t eat enough.

However, it is true that genetics play a huge role in your weight issues, and a high metabolic rate is also usually involved.

1. Don’t aim to gain weight too quickly. There is such a thing as gaining weight too fast. Your safest option is to aim for a pound or half a kilo increase in weight per week.
2. Start with increasing your calorie intake. This doesn’t have to be a complicated procedure. You can start by adding an extra 500 calories to your daily diet, and you can do that by increasing your portions for each meal or by adding an extra dish.
3. Stay active. Weight gain is simple—you consume more calories than you use up. But that doesn’t mean you should stay inactive every day so you don’t use up your calories. The opposite is true and you should stay active throughout the day instead. Work out, or, play sports. These activities may whet your appetite so you can eat more every day.
4. Cut out the junk food and avoid snacks during the day. You may think that eating more often by adding snacks is the way to go, but that’s not accurate at all. Snacks can ruin your appetite later on. So it may be better to stick to the basic 3 large meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) every day.

And you should also cut out the junk food as well, as you may get more problems aside from being underweight. You may have to add your cholesterol to your list of problems. And you may also add some weight on the inside even if you’re apparently still skinny, and this extra weight may cause you more problems as well.

1. Take a snack before you sleep. Late night snacks can give you a lot of pounds to add to your weight. A peanut butter sandwich will do just fine or a potato salad too. Use whole meal bread instead of white bread when you make your sandwiches.

In fact, it may also help you gain weight if your dinner is taken late, such as after 7PM at night.

1. Stop smoking. Smoking is bad for so many reasons, so quit now. But this nasty habit can also contribute to your lack of weight gain. Smoking is well-known for curbing the appetite, so at the very least you should refrain from smoking just before a meal.
2. Boost your protein intake. Your muscles need protein to rebuild the tissues when you work out. That’s why protein shakes are the most popular types of muscle growth supplements. You drink them after a workout so your muscles have all the protein they need to rebuild and become bigger.
3. Increase your carb intake as well. Some people recommend a low carb diet for overweight people, so it stands to reason that boosting your carb consumption will cause you to gain weight. But you have to be careful, because carbs can lead to excess fat.

So figuring out your ideal carb consumption will take some testing. What you want is enough carbs to give you energy so that your body doesn’t use your protein for fuel. On the other hand, you can’t consume too much.

Of course, fat intake is important as well. About ¼ of your calorie intake should be fat.

1. Keep a food journal. A food journal helps you become more aware of your diet, so you’ll know for a fact just how many calories you’ve consumed in a week. Keeping track of your meals reminds you of your dietary responsibilities, and can help prevent you from assuming that you’ve increased your calorie intake when you actually haven’t.
2. Drink lots of fruit juice. Some people gain weight by drinking sodas. This is, however, not such a healthy way of attaining the pounds you need. Instead, you may want to try fruit juice instead. Not only do you get the calories you want, but you also get lots of vitamins and other nutrients.
3. Take some supplements. Taking weight gain supplements can really help, although a lot depends on what you take. You may want to drink lots of smoothies as well. If you’re not lactose intolerant, milkshakes can help you gain weight much more quickly. Opt for full cream milk, as it contains more protein and also offers more calcium.

It may be important to talk to you doctor about the supplements you’re taking to gain weight. Some supplements are ineffective, and others may be downright dangerous especially when you don’t know anything about the manufacturer.

1. Avoid too much cardio. If you want to gain weight in a manner that’s healthy, you lift weights, as that builds muscle. On the other hand, if you’re losing weight you try to do a lot of cardio exercises, such as running or cycling.

So if you’re trying to gain weight instead, cardio exercises won’t be as helpful as you think. You can do sprints, but marathon running is out of the question. Have you ever found any successful marathoner who’s not skinny?

You can start with bodyweight exercises, such as pushups and pull-ups. Other weight training exercises you should try out include bench presses and squats.

1. Get enough sleep. The amount of sleep you get can affect your metabolism and your weight, so nit getting enough sleep may be preventing you from getting the pounds you want. Try to get about 8 hours of sleep a night, and avoid getting less than 6 hours of sleep.

This means avoiding tea and coffee and other stimulants at night. If you have insomnia, get your doctor to help you out.

1. Maintain your efforts. Just as people who are trying to lose weight may sometimes falter and fail and work out to eat correctly, you too may suddenly just quit. You have to stay at it, even if you’ve progressed by gaining a few pounds. By pausing in your efforts, you may end up losing whatever gains you may have attained.

Cutting the Fat

When you do all these things, eventually you’re going to gain weight if you don’t have any medical issues. Some experts actually expect you to gain more pounds than your ideal weight, and that’s alright.

It’s very difficult to gain weight and just get pure muscle to add to your frame. It’s inevitable that you’ll gain some body fat as well. To improve your health and your looks, you’ll then need to concentrate on cutting out the fat while retaining the muscles you’ve gained.

Here a fitness expert can help, but in general you’ll need to cut down on your carb intake. That will encourage your body to burn the excess fat for fuel for your workouts and daily exertions.

Just remember, that gaining weight is supposed to be healthy for you. So even if you want to learn how to gain weight fast you may want to gain weight steadily instead of too quickly. We can’t stress that enough. Also, a balanced and nutritious diet is still essential, and you don’t want to end up overweight and obese with large amounts of excess fat. If you’re underweight, becoming overweight isn’t much of an improvement!

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If you’re so skinny that runway models think you’re too thin, or too weak that normal lifting chores are impossible, then you really should put more time and effort into finding out how to gain muscle mass. Muscles don’t just make you look attractive and impressive. Muscles also make you stronger for your daily activities.

Of course, that just begs that question: what’s the best way to build muscle? Each nutritionist and fitness instructor may have their own ideas on the subject. However, many experts do agree on that you need the right diet, supplements, and weightlifting regiment to attain the muscle growth you want.

What Should You Eat

Training doesn’t matter all that much when you neglect the nutrition aspect of gaining muscle mass. So food should be your first priority. You have to at least eat three full meals a day and you need to increase your calorie intake by about 500 a day. You also need lots of protein, which should be about a gram of protein for every pound you weigh.

But let’s talk about specifics. Exactly what should you eat? Here are some tips to help you out:

• Lean beef. Of all the things you can eat, lean beef offers the most ideal meal if you are aiming to put on some muscles. Lean beef provides with high quality protein, as not all protein are equal in quality. Soy protein, for example, isn’t exactly very popular for muscle builders, although vegetarians like it as an alternate source of natural protein.

Lean beef also gives you numerous essential nutrients, which include B vitamins, zinc, and iron. What’s more, lean beef doesn’t contain a lot of calories. A 3-ounce serving only provides about 154 calories, but you get the same amount of protein as from a cup and a half of beans which comes with almost double the calories.

• Tuna. Tuna, along with sardines and mackerel, contain lots of protein. They’re also full of omega-3 fatty acids while they’re low on fat. Tuna helps you to lose fat, while it also helps maintain your healthy metabolism.
• Chicken (except for the skin). Chicken rivals beef in its ability to provide you with the protein you need. The protein from chicken improves the health of your bones while your muscles get the protein they need to rebuild tissue.

One of the best things about chicken is that there are so many ways to cook and prepare a chicken dish. You can eat chicken frequently and not find yourself sick of its taste.

• Eggs. Don’t listen to all those reports about how eggs are bad for you—these reports are not true at all. If you’re hell-bent on gaining muscle mass, eggs will have to become part of your diet. They pack lots of nutrients for you the money you spend on them. Not only do you get lots of good protein, but you also receive good fat, vitamin D, choline, and 9 essential amino acids.
• Healthy fats. You’re going to need healthy fats if you’re aiming for muscle mass. That’s because you’re going to need growth hormones and testosterone, and healthy fats play an important role in the production of these hormones.

You can get your healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats from nuts, seeds, and avocado.

• Whole grains. Carbs are going to be a crucial part of your diet, and whole grains offer a much better source of carbs than refined grains. Whole grains are better for your overall health, and they also help provide a steady supply of energy throughout the day. Brown rice is an excellent example. It improves your levels of growth hormones, which help with fat loss and the growth of lean muscle.
• Oatmeal. Oatmeal is great when you’re trying to preserve muscle when you’re also trying to get rid of excess fat. It also has a low glycemic index, which also helps with fat loss and comes with more fiber and a better micronutrient profile.
• Fruits and vegetables. It’s a cliché that you need to eat fruits and vegetables, but it’s a cliché for a reason—these food items really help. They give you enough fiber to help get rid of substances your body doesn’t need. They provide lots of vitamins and minerals, including vitamins C and E plus beta-carotene. And they also provide you with antioxidants which help with your immune system.

If you’re very skinny, you may want to go on a feeding frenzy at least once a week. You may be used to small meals, and this practice will help your body get used to larger amounts of food. You can time this huge meal right after a strenuous workout so most of the calories go you’re your muscles, and your workout may have helped you build up an appetite as well.

What Supplements Should You Take?

Perhaps the most popular supplements among those wishing to gain muscle mass are protein supplements. Whey protein supplements are very popular, because they’re very affordable yet the protein they provide is quite helpful and convenient.

Lots of body builders take protein supplements as often as they can, although your best option is to take a protein supplement right after you've worked out. In fact, whole foods may not be your best option for your post-workout protein, as they may take too long to digest.

Other supplements are energy bars that boost your ability to lift heavier weights and to do more reps. Many of these contain stimulants, such as caffeine. Still other supplements claim to help your body become more effective in absorbing nutrients from your food.

Some muscle builders resort to taking muscle building stacks of supplements. These stacks may contain different types of supplements. Some supplements may cause some side effects, and you’ll need to add different substances to these stacks to minimize or eliminate these side effects.

Finally, some people do take anabolic steroid supplements for muscle growth. These things are dangerous, and they’ve been banned for very good reasons. While they may be effective in helping you build muscle, the side effects can be truly horrendous and do serious damage to your health, and even to your mind.

So how do you pick supplements? You read the labels and read the reviews. There are no guarantees with supplements, but a supplement that works with lots of people is more likely to work with you as well.

Exercising

There are as many recommended workout plans as there are diet plans online, which is to say there’s a lot to choose from. But there are two rules when you’re aiming to gain muscle mass. The first rule is that you need to lift weights. The second rule is that you need to limit your cardio workouts.

Here are some tips to help you out:

• Lifting weights is the widely acknowledged way to get muscle. You may want to focus on intensity rather than endurance, however. You should keep your workouts to less than an hour in duration, as training for more than hour is considered less than effective in gaining muscle. Pick exercises that involve lots of different muscles at once. These exercises include pull-ups, presses, squats, rows, and deadlifts.
• Always stretch and warm up properly. You need fluidity of motion and flexibility, so that you don’t injure yourself doing exercise movement your body has not prepared itself for.
• As you progress, you’re going to need to track your performance and check that you’re improving. Perhaps you may increase the number of reps you make, change the rest period between sets, or you increase the weights you lift. Keep your reps to 6 to 12 per set, and each set should last anywhere from 40 to 70 seconds.
• Try to concentrate on your upper body in one session and then focus on the lower body in the next. That way, you give your muscles time to recover and to build. You should also make sure you train your entire body to minimize injuries. Besides, neglecting muscles don’t make you look impressive—when you have a huge chest and arms but your legs are skinny, you just lock funny.
• You’ll also need to constantly change things around every now and then. For example, you may want to replace one set of exercises with another that also focuses on the same muscle groups. You may also wish to change the order of the exercises you perform. The body is incredibly adaptable, and if you persist in doing the same things over and over you’ll realize that you’ll gain less progress as time passes.
• Your cardio should be limited to about two or three sessions per week, with half an hour for each session. It’s also better to sprint for about a minute and then follow that up with a light jog for a couple of minutes.

Conclusion

While the details of your nutrition and workout plan may differ from anyone else’s, the basic elements are still the same—more calories and protein, plus lots of weightlifting.

Learning how to gain muscle mass also needs patience and determination. You need time to build muscle, and you shouldn’t give up once you start.

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