Exercises and diet for muscle building ectomorphs

The speed of gain­ing mus­cle mass depends on many para­me­ters of a per­son, includ­ing his type of physique. There­fore, in order to gain a sports pumped-up fig­ure, it is nec­es­sary to orga­nize a diet and fit­ness train­ing, focus­ing on your soma­to­type. For the first time, the the­o­ry of divid­ing peo­ple into three body types was pro­posed by Dr. William Her­bert Shel­don back in 1940.

Soma­to­types are char­ac­ter­ized by the fol­low­ing dif­fer­ences:

Thin and frag­ile-look­ing peo­ple with a nar­row chest and poor­ly devel­oped mus­cles. Often they are com­plete­ly skin­ny and do not gain excess weight, regard­less of the amount eat­en.

Ath­let­ic, strong, mus­cu­lar peo­ple who put on weight fair­ly eas­i­ly.

Quick­ly gain both mus­cle and fat vol­ume. It is usu­al­ly dif­fi­cult to get rid of excess mass.

Today we will talk about ecto­morphs, which can be eas­i­ly rec­og­nized by their slen­der, thin-boned build and long, thin limbs.

Features of the addition and nutrition of ectomorphs

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of this type look frag­ile and lack vol­u­met­ric relief. They are dis­tin­guished by nar­row shoul­ders, a small amount of hips, chest and an elon­gat­ed rec­tan­gu­lar sil­hou­ette. Ecto­morphs are quite hard to build mus­cle tis­sue and are often found among dancers and fash­ion mod­els.

Women with a sim­i­lar physique stand out with a frail boy­ish fig­ure, while men look thin and sinewy. Often such peo­ple seem too weak due to insuf­fi­cient mus­cle mass. When try­ing to gain weight, ecto­morphs are forced to lit­er­al­ly fight for every kilo­gram: both fat and mus­cle mass are extreme­ly reluc­tant to gain.

The diet of ecto­morphs should not be low in calo­ries, since a lack of calo­ries will lead to loss of mus­cle mass much faster than rep­re­sen­ta­tives of oth­er body types. There­fore, it is bet­ter for ecto­morphs to get rid of local fat deposits, if they appear, with the help of a bal­anced diet and car­dio exer­cis­es.

And although many rep­re­sen­ta­tives of this type would pre­fer to have a more mus­cu­lar body, the ecto­mor­phic addi­tion has its own sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages:

1. On a frag­ile body, even a small amount of mus­cle will look dis­tinct and bold.
2. An accel­er­at­ed metab­o­lism allows you to indulge in the plea­sure of enjoy­ing deli­cious food and, if nec­es­sary, burn­ing excess fat faster.
3. Long limbs seem to be designed to per­form dead­lifts, mak­ing these exer­cis­es extreme­ly effec­tive.
4. With age, a lean build often shifts into a meso­mor­phic meta­bol­ic regime, allow­ing a per­son to main­tain a toned, youth­ful fig­ure.

Diet plan for fitness and muscle building

Despite the fre­quent under­weight, adult ecto­morphs are char­ac­ter­ized by a high per­cent­age of sub­cu­ta­neous fat, so they often look quite loose. They should def­i­nite­ly take care of reg­u­lar exer­cise and prop­er nutri­tion. More­over, diet plays a key role in gain­ing mus­cle vol­ume.

The opti­mal diet is deter­mined indi­vid­u­al­ly, depend­ing on gen­der, age, weight and phys­i­cal activ­i­ty of a per­son. How­ev­er, the approx­i­mate required caloric con­tent of an ath­lete’s diet can be deter­mined by mul­ti­ply­ing the weight in kilo­grams by 38–40. So, for exam­ple, a 60-kilo­gram ath­lete should con­sume 2280–2400 kcal per day.

Since calo­ries are a source of ener­gy, in order to build mus­cle mass, you should cre­ate a slight excess of them. This will pro­vide the body with the strength to per­form phys­i­cal exer­cis­es and the build­ing mate­r­i­al for the mus­cles. How­ev­er, this should be done in mod­er­a­tion, as too much excess calo­ries can eas­i­ly turn into body fat.

An ecto­morph should eat 6–8 times a day with an inter­val of 2.5–3 hours. Nutri­tion should be bal­anced as fol­lows: pro­teins — 20–25% of total calo­ries, car­bo­hy­drates — 50–60%, fats — 20–25%. When com­pil­ing a diet, it must be tak­en into account that one gram of pro­teins con­tains 4 kcal, one gram of car­bo­hy­drates — 4 kcal, and one gram of fat — 9 kcal.

At the same time, pro­tein per­forms the main func­tion of build­ing and restor­ing mus­cle tis­sue. Car­bo­hy­drates are a source of ener­gy for mus­cles, the brain and the whole body. And fats are nec­es­sary for addi­tion­al ener­gy, nor­mal­iza­tion of hor­mon­al lev­els, pro­tec­tion of joints and good mood.

These macronu­tri­ents are rec­om­mend­ed to be obtained from the fol­low­ing prod­ucts:

• pro­teins — lean meat and poul­try, fish, seafood, eggs, cot­tage cheese, low-fat dairy prod­ucts;
• car­bo­hy­drates — cere­als, veg­eta­bles, fruits, pota­toes, whole grain bread and pas­ta;
• fats — nuts, seeds, avo­ca­dos, fat­ty fish, olive and lin­seed oils.

With active sports, you should sup­ple­ment your diet with high-qual­i­ty vit­a­min and min­er­al com­plex­es. If there is a desire to treat your­self to sweets, you can include choco­late, ice cream or dry cook­ies in the diet, pro­vid­ed that they make up no more than 15% of the total calo­ries con­sumed. More­over, it is bet­ter to eat such food in the morn­ing.

If, despite all efforts, the prob­lem with weight gain per­sists, it is worth con­tact­ing a doc­tor, except for pos­si­ble med­ical rea­sons. In some dis­eases, such as hyper­thy­roidism, peo­ple are phys­i­cal­ly unable to gain weight.

A set of exercises for mass gain

This fit­ness pro­gram is designed for own­ers of ecto­mor­phic com­plex­ion with an aver­age lev­el of phys­i­cal fit­ness. Its dura­tion is 10 weeks, the dura­tion of the work­out is 60 min­utes, the num­ber of ses­sions per week is 4.

Rules for per­form­ing fit­ness exer­cis­es:

• warm-up — car­dio exer­cis­es, 5–10 min­utes;
• hitch — mus­cle stretch­ing and car­dio load;
• exer­cise scheme — 2–1‑2 sec­onds;
• the inter­val between approach­es is up to 2 min­utes;
• inter­val between exer­cis­es — 3 min­utes;
• work with the press — Mon­day and Wednes­day, or Wednes­day and Fri­day.

The week­ly sched­ule looks like this:

1. Mon­day. Work with the pec­toral mus­cles and tri­ceps — bar­bell and dumb­bell press­es, dumb­bell wiring, push-ups on the uneven bars.
2. Tues­day. Work­ing out the back and biceps — dumb­bell rows, row­ing, lift­ing the bar­bell to the biceps, alter­nat­ing dumb­bell curls.
3. Wednes­day is rest.
4. Thurs­day. Quad and ham­string work – squats, leg press­es, dead­lifts, leg curls.
5. Fri­day. Work­ing out the shoul­ders and calves of the legs — bench press­es and dumb­bells, lift­ing dumb­bells, lift­ing on toes.
6. Sat­ur­day and Sun­day — rest.

Thus, ecto­morphs who want to make their fig­ure more ath­let­ic are able to suc­cess­ful­ly gain mus­cle mass. You just need to take care of prop­er nutri­tion, reg­u­lar exer­cise and good rest.