The“Skinny” Guys Guide To Bulking
I probably started lifting the same way you did:
Trained with my mates
Copied whatever the biggest guy in the room was doing
Treated the gym as the whole equation to getting my results with zero thought about nutrition or recovery
And truthfully, none of that is necessarily a bad thing when you’re first getting into training. What you enjoy is what you’ll keep showing up for without motivation. Training with friends, tagging along with the bigger guys and learning whatever you can, turning up for the vibes with no strict nutrition plan or recovery routine. Millions of people do it and they do so because it’s fun.
But when you reach the point where you want serious progress, to see real changes in your physique, that’s when you need a bit more structure. That’s when you need to start understanding your body, your training preferences and how to eat and recover in a way that supports your goals.
Even while I was enjoying those early sessions, there was this lingering sense that something was missing, it was that I wasn’t satisfied with my progress. I wanted to fill out a T-shirt without rolling the sleeves up eight times.
Over the years I’ve gone through a few phases:
Too soft/higher body fat: eating everything in sight because “I’m bulking bro”
Too skinny: over restricting because I panicked I’d “got fat”
Finally finding the middle ground: slower, smarter gains and actually becoming proud of my physique
This playbook page is for you if you’re in that “too skinny” mindset and you just want more muscle on your frame without turning into a melted ice cream in the process.
The Big Problem: Wanting To Be “Big Yesterday”
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance of two things:
You want muscle as fast as humanly possible
You really don’t like how your body looks right now
This combo is dangerous business. When you hate where you’re starting, you’ll believe anything that promises a shortcut:
“Dirty bulk, just eat everything.”
“This program will add 10kg of muscle in 8 weeks.”
“Just smash heavy triples and drink a gallon of cranberry juice intra workout and a gallon of milk post workout”
Yes, you can gain weight really fast. But it won’t be the kind of weight you actually want.
The good news, is there’s a way to gain muscle at a pace that’s fast enough to see progress, but slow enough that you don’t just get soft.
The Boring Truth That Works
Let’s set the target clearly:
Aim to gain around 0.25kg per week (about 0.5 lb per week)
Do this for around 24 weeks (roughly 6 months)
That’s about 6kg of bodyweight added.
Will all of that be pure muscle? No. Will a big chunk of it be muscle if you train, eat and recover properly? Yes.
To do this properly, you need three big pieces:
Training: telling your body what to build
Eating: giving your body the materials to build with
Recovery: giving your body the time to actually do the building
1. Training: How Often, What To Do And How Hard
How often should you train?
This will vary a lot depending on your starting point and training history. For some people, 3 sessions per week or 45 minutes each is more than enough to grow muscle, especially early on. For others with more experience, a realistic target may look more like:
4-5 weight training sessions per week
Each session lasting around 60-90 minutes
Both ends of the spectrum work, what matters most is consistency, progressive overload and choosing a plan you can actually stick to.
How often should you train each muscle?
Aim to hit each muscle group around twice per week. It’s a sweet spot for most people, enough to grow but not to train so much that you’re constantly wrecked.
How many reps?
Stick mostly in the 5-20 rep range:
5-8 reps = heavier work
12-20 reps = lighter but still effective
Rep ranges come down largely to personal preference. What matters most is that you’re consistent with them and you push each working set close to failure (the point where you’ve only got 1–3 reps left in the tank.) That’s what will drive your growth.
Progressive overload
This is where most people can fall off. If you always lift the same weight for the same reps, your body has no reason to change.
You grow by slowly doing more over time: try and add 1 rep or a small amount of weight to your key lifts. Not every session. Not every exercise. But over time.
Don’t forget to recover
If you train hard for 5 or 6 weeks in a row, your body and joints will start to feel it.
Every 6th week or so:
Either take a very light week (same exercises, half the weight, fewer sets)
Or take several days off completely
You won’t lose muscle in a week. But you’ll come back hungrier, stronger and far less beat up.
2. Eating: Getting Bigger Without Just Getting Fluffy
If training is the signal, food is the building material. I’d suggest aiming for 4 or 5 meals per day.
Breakfast
Lunch
Pre-training or post-training meal
Dinner
Optional extra snack/meal if needed
Protein: non-negotiable
Aim for about 1.6-2.2g of protein per kg of bodyweight every day. High quality protein sources include:
Chicken, turkey, lean beef
Fish
Eggs
Greek yoghurt, skyr, cottage cheese
Whey or vegan protein powders
Carbs: your main energy source
Don’t cut out your carbs. The benefits they bring to your training performance, energy levels, and recovery quality far outweigh any (likely) short term of progress you might get from removing them completely.
Great carb sources include:
Rice, pasta, potatoes
Oats and wholegrain bread
Fruit (apples, berries, bananas, etc.)
Beans and lentils
A simple way to structure your intake is this:
Set your protein target first
Set your fats next
Whatever calories you have left to hit your daily calorie goal, fill those with carbs
This keeps things balanced, supports your training, and ensures carbs are working for your goals, not against them.
Fats: (20-35% of daily calories)
You don’t need loads of added fat when bulking slowly. You’ll get some healthy fats automatically from:
Meats
Eggs
Dairy
If the scale isn’t moving? Add a little healthy fat to each meal:
Nuts, nut butters
Avocado
Olive oil on your food
But don’t live on sausages, takeaways and deep fried everything.
The only number that really matters: the scale trend
Forget perfection. Just track: Your average weekly bodyweight.
If, over a few weeks, your average is going up by about 0.25 kg per week: perfect keep eating roughly the same
If your weight isn’t moving: add some calories, easiest way is a bit more carbs or 10 g fat added to most meals
If your weight is jumping up too fast (like 0.5–1 kg per week): pull some calories back, usually lower fats first
3. Recovery: Where Your Growth Happens
When I started training I thought the answer was always more:
More sets
More gym sessions
More caffeine
What actually helped me grow was:
Sleeping properly: aiming for 7-9 hours of sleep per night.
Steps and activity: moving enough to stay healthy and not feel like a statue, but not so much that your body is constantly tired. 8,000-10,000 steps per day is a nice target.
Stress: Arguments, endless scrolling and online drama, working and training with zero downtime. All of this keeps your stress high and a stressed out you doesn’t build muscle as well.
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If there’s one thing I want you to take from all of this, it’s that you don’t need to rush the journey. You don’t need to panic bulk, starve yourself or copy every big guy in the room. You don’t need to hate where you’re starting, either. If you stick to the basics, what you enjoy and find effective, stay patient and let the process work on you, the changes come. C’mon!
