You are an ectomorph. If you suffer from this curse, then you already know the all-too-real effects of it. If you do not, then you can never understand the curse. You are naturally rail-thin, and it seems no matter how hard you try, you are unable to shake it. Your clavicles are closer than those of your mesomorphic (naturally muscular) and endomorphic (naturally fat) counterparts in the gym. Your muscle bellies are small, and your metabolism is high. It’d be just as hard for you to get fat as it would for you to add muscle. When you bulk, that’s usually what happens – you get a little fatter and don’t seem to really add much muscle at all.

Over the years, you’ve probably been proud of your visible abs, as the six-pack is often very visible on ectomorphs. At the same time, you’ve probably been very embarrassed about your lack of width and thickness, your inability to add more than 20 pounds to your frame, and your thin arms and legs, which are typical with ectomorphs. If you’re ready to tackle the problem you’ve always faced and find a way to overcome your genetic limitations, now may be the time! Here are a few tips for ectomorphs looking to finally add some muscle to their frame.

Sleep more
This is listed first, because it’s often the biggest obstacle to success for ectomorphs. Due to their high metabolisms and elevated energy levels, they often sleep only 6 hours per night. This is not conductive to muscle growth. You should be averaging 8 to 9 hours of sleep each night. The muscles grow while we are asleep, not while we’re up late at night.

Increase your protein
Eating more calories is important, but you may find the biggest gains in terms of your overall muscularity and new muscle gains will arrive when you add more protein to your diet. This doesn’t mean you should move up from 175 grams per day to 225 grams. This means you should be averaging 350 to 450 grams of protein per day. You will excrete much of it, but you will have a nice balance of required protein (and subsequent amino acids in the bloodstream) to allow for some muscle growth.

“Compounds” is the only word you need to know
If an exercise only hits one muscle group, you probably don’t need it for the time being. You want to abandon all of the cable, dumbbell, and other machine movements which isolate one muscle group for the time being. Instead, you should opt for exercises which stimulate many muscle fibers at once, across multiple muscle groups. Bench presses target the chest, shoulders, triceps, and sometimes lats. Deadlifts stimulate the back, arms, hips, glutes, and hamstrings. Squats target the quads, calves, and hamstrings, but create growth in the entire body. Focus upon movements like these instead of “one arm 45-degree cable shoulder raises” and other movements which don’t create as much growth. You’ll have plenty of time for those finisher movements later once you’ve built up your foundation of muscle!

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