If you are a thin lady (or an ectomorph as another term) and find it very difficult to gain weight whether it’s in the form of muscle weight or fat, this workout page is your best solution. Since ectomorph’s bodies work in a particular way, we provide you with our best tricks so you will know what to eat as well as getting a toned body.
What should I consume if I am a skinny woman?
The ectomorph’s metabolism is crazy fast and burns calories quickly. Therefore, you need to eat healthy foods with lots of proteins so that you can gain muscle mass. Even though you do all your workouts in the gym, you will still keep the same shape if you don’t eat the right food. Here are our top 3 key points you need to remember:
You have to fuel up your body by eating and drinking more than you usually do as building more muscle requires more energy. If you don’t ingest these extra calories, your body will only keep its current size. Therefore, you should eat an average of 200-250 calories more than you regularly do. However, we’re not talking about snacks or desserts here, but rather vegetables, fruits, and meat.
You have to focus on eating a balanced diet contained with healthy foods from different food groups. Here are some suggestions for your daily meals:
- Proteins: beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds
- Complex carbohydrates: sweet potatoes, brown rice, yams, pumpkins, quinoa, and oatmeal
- Healthy fats: avocados, walnuts, olives, olive oil, and dark chocolate
Getting enough protein is another key point. It is important in building muscle and giving you those shapely curves. We recommend consuming around one gram of protein each day for every pound or so of your lean body mass. To calculate your lean body mass, you will need to take your full body weight and subtract your body fat weight.
How ectomorphs should lift weights
Most women do not like lifting weights as they fear getting a big muscle body and losing their curves. Let’s take a closer look at why you shouldn’t worry too much about that, shall we? To begin with, normally, women can’t grow muscles as easily as men, primarily due to a lesser amount of testosterone. If you want to keep your body curves while building your muscles by lifting weights, here are 3 tips that will help you in doing so:
Lifting with five-pounders is way too easy for your body. You have to challenge yourself to go to Heavier City, or, as heavy as you can. Moreover, doing heavy lifting will break down muscle tissues, and those will go through a repairing and rebuilding process to become larger and stronger.
As your muscles grow under stress, heavy resistance training can support building muscles. You can gradually increase the weights as you go with the following:
- Free weights
- Weight machines
- Resistance bands
- Your own body weight
If you are not feeling tired with 10-time reps exercises, you can level up and go for heavier weights or more reps.
How to manage my workout if I am skinny?
As your body’s shape is skinny, you will need to work out the big muscle groups in your body or a specific muscle so that you will gain a stronger foundation. You may think that an isolation workout is good to focus on a single group of muscles in the routine, but it will take you a long time to build your curved shape. To work out the big muscle groups is to train more muscles at the same time. Doing this does not only challenge your body to solidify its general structure, but it also helps to increase the curves faster. As doing compound movements allow you to use more than one muscle group, here are workouts that you can consider doing:
- Deadlifts
- Squats
- Presses
- Rows
- Pull-ups
These workouts will let you train more muscles at the same time, and lift more weights of your body. Furthermore, they are easy enough to progress, fun to do, and inspire you to work out harder.
Why skinny-body type should do high-intensity interval training (HIIT)?
Of course, cardio is essential. Nonetheless, working out by doing too many aerobic exercises can hamper the growth of those curves and muscles you want. Furthermore, doing excessive aerobic training can deplete your body’s energy, which is not good if you want to grow them muscles! Going for high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is the best thing to do instead of working out on a treadmill. A HIIT training program consists of:
- Periods of slow training
- The low intensity of rest intervals: around 20-50% of your maximum effort.
- Alternating with fast, high intensity of workout intervals: 80-100% of your maximum effort
To get effective training, the rest intervals must be long enough to allow sufficient recovery so that you can hit your work intervals at a near-maximal effort. Moreover, you can try doing twenty-minute interval sprints to strengthen your lower body while developing your glutes.
HIIT can be done with:
- Body weight
- Cardio equipment or weights
- Training tools such as TRX
With these techniques, you can achieve a shapely figure like the one you dreamed of. Plus, with healthy eating habits and dedication, you’ll definitely get the desired curves and feel great with your body shape. Enjoy your workouts!
