This is probably gonna be a long post so go grab a cup of coffee
First a bit about myself:
Can you picture and ectomorphic, hyperkinetic, hard gaining, tall but really skinny dude? That's me a couple of years ago. So one day I decided to practice martial arts to change something about skinnyness. I practiced martial arts for several years and it made me gain a little muscle mass, it did toughen me up, inscrease strength and made small muscle mass 'harder'.
But as I said, the muscle mass gain was really modest: intstead of looking very skinny, I now looked just skinny. Then I had to quit due to the hours of the trainings being totally uncompatible with full time job. After being inactive for a couple of years, the hyperkinetic guy I am decided to work out to let loose that excessive energy.
goals:
I don't have the need to look super big and super bulky. I'm not trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his peak years. I wouldn't be unhappy to look like that but it's not goal right now. Right now, I look skinny. I want to change from skinny to 'above average'. Looking muscular, but not huge. I don't want to say "damn, I look skinny" when I look at myself in the mirror any more you see.
diet:
One advantage of body structure: I have an insanely fast metabolism. I burn fat at an amazing rate. No matter how much I eat, I never get too fat. Doesn't mean I eat like a pig though. In a nutshell, I eat a lot of fish (codfish, salmon, tuna,...), a lot of rice, red meat once per week and a normal amount of veggies. I eat one yoghurt every day and usually a banana every day too (I just love those).
I never eat junk food. Perhaps I order a pizza like 7-8 times per year but that's it. I also eat a bar of chocolate a few times per week.
For the rest, you can say I eat healthy. Not obsessively healthy, but still healthy enough.
workout:
Here we are, the workout. I work out every saturday and sunday. At home. Because the gym is not nearby and since saturday is the only day I can go, I can assure you it's so crowded you have to wait ages for each machine.
workout looks like this:
On satudays-
- 3 sets of pull-ups. Parallel grip, pals facing each other. At this moment I do 5-4-4. I plan to evolve to 5-5-4, 5-5-5, 6-5-5, etc. And I do pull-ups the hard way: starting from a deadhang position, pull myself up till the chin reaches the bar, go back down and deadhang for a second between each rep to avoid swinging. Does this excercice work out the biceps enough too? Or should they be worked extra? I ask because I have the feeling biceps don't tire as much as I want them to with this one.
- 3 sets of dips. Usually just 3 sets to failure.
On sundays-
- 3 sets of one legged calve raises (standing on one leg)
- 3 sets of one legged squats
Now I got some extra questions with this: I want forearms to look bigger. I have pathetically skinny wrists so I want the forearms at least to look strong and thick enough. I heard that forearms need an extra hard hammering to grow. At this moment, I hesitate between two excercices: the wrist roller (3 sets of 3 reps, one rep being rolling down and back up) or what I call the hammer excercice. Basically, I have a dumbell where all the weight it on one side of the bar. I hold the dumbell by the other side of the bar like a hammer and hold arm stretched at the side of body. Then I raise the dumbell using wrist and keeping elbow stretched.
I do this hammer thing also 3 sets and after that I usually grab the dumbell by the unweighted side like a hammer again but simply hold it as long as I can ( grip usually fails after +/- 30 seconds)
Which one's better? The hammer thing or the wrist rollers? Both excercices make arms burn and make thme feel like they're gonna burst open afterwards.
Secondly, I've read articles that certain people will more easily gain weight by doing lots of reps with medium weight, and others will gain more weight with low reps and heavy weight. Any truth in this?