Gain Mass Quickly with Basics that Actually Empower You

The formula to gain mass quickly is pretty basic. It’s made up of three parts.

• Training
• Fuel
• Recovery

I’ve found there are no shortcuts, and it really doesn’t need to be overly complicated. Let’s dive into each of those a little further.

Training to Gain Mass

Training refers to committing to a mass gaining weight lifting program that triggers muscle growth.

Know your goal. Train to gain mass. Hypertrophy, building muscle, gaining mass, or whatever you want to call it, is different than training to get stronger, get leaner, or improve endurance. That sounds simple, but skinny people waste a lot of time on routines that don’t align with their goal, especially strength training.

You have to lift weights to gain mass quickly. This doesn’t emphasize lifting heavy as it does lifting volume. Strength training will have you lift heavy weights for a few sets. Mass training means you need to lift a challenging weight for a lot of sets- think 10 sets of 10 reps. You’re going to do the same lift 100 times. Some people call this German Volume Training, while others refer to it as the 10×10 method. When I started out, it was the was the Optimized Volume Training routine at T-Nation that inspired me, although I deviated from it to create my own methodology to get serious gains. You can read about that intro to my journey on the About Gaining Muscle page.

Fuel Your Training and Growth

Fuel is the food you put into your body to support your training and recovery.

Every skinny guy I’ve ever talked to takes great pride in how much food they can eat. They swear that eating enough isn’t a problem for them and compare the amount they eat to their bigger friends. You’re struggling to put on mass. Trust me, you are definitely not eating enough. Sorry if that bruises your ego, but the point is to learn how to gain mass, not justify what you’re already doing.

You have to be in a caloric surplus. This means, you need to consume more calories per day than your body burns. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, so I recommend using an online calculator to get an estimate of the number of calories you personally need. There are options through an online search like this basic calculator from the Mayo Clinic, or this more involved one from the National Institutes of Health that helps you understand calories needed to hit a goal. Then, I recommend using a calorie tracking app to ensure you hit that calorie count every single day. I used MyPlate because it did a great job of breaking down daily intake by meal, and estimates the calories if you’re not sure.

I wouldn’t recommend going down the path of a “dirty bulk”. This is when people eat all kinds of junk food just to get the calories and pack on mass quickly. It leads to a very unsustainable and unhealthy result. You need a diet that is high in protein to support building muscle, and has a good supply of carbohydrates to power your training. Also, consume plenty of water to support your body through the additional exercise and food.

Recovery to Build Muscle

Recovery is so important to actually gain mass quickly. This was the last piece that I finally got right. The truth is, your muscles don’t grow in the gym. They grow outside of the gym. Respect recovery both when it’s time to sleep, and when it’s time to end your training session.

Get 8 hours of sleep. Laying in bed and scrolling through your phone is not enough. Remind yourself that the hours spent awake for no reason are just taking you further from your gains. Your muscles rebuild from training when you are asleep.

Get in and out of training in 60 minutes. (You can maybe push that to 75 minutes depending on where you work out, how long it takes you to set up, if you have to wait after others in the gym, etc.) If you’re there longer, you’re probably cheating your training by killing the intensity of your workout in the first place. Also, you’re just exhausting your muscles with minimal additional benefits. Don’t tack on useless exercises because you’re feeling energetic. You’ll hit those muscles hard soon. Don’t linger and don’t drag training out. Get your rest to allow your body to recover.