Again, I am not Vince … I wish I could have the body he does. Mine is still a work in progress I just recommend his ebook The No-Nonsense Muscle Building Guide.

Calories can be very individual depending on a number of factors. Your metabolism, your size, how much exercise you are doing etc so i cant give you an exact figure. You are spot on about protien though, high protien diets will help muscle growth as will eating foods with less saturated fats and trans-fats (you need good fats not bad ones).

If you are eating a lot mroe than you sued to but you are still not making gains then the problem is probably your workouts and how much you are pushing your muscles. You have to have good eating habits AND good workout practice combined to produce muscle growth. Lift heavy, workout hard, eat more and rest well.

As i was just saying to the other posters, building muscle DOES require time and monetary investment if you want to do it right.

However, you go to the gym and seem to realise this. However if you go to the gym on the weekend and push the intensity levels you should be seeing some gains, so look to your gym technique befoere you blame your lack of workout during the week.

You also do not need to do long sessions to get gains. If you can spare just 30 minutes on a weekday to hit the gym then you can do a short but brutal workout that will help.

Without the gym you will need to do exercise in your own home. If you have some weights you can do a number of exercises in house, but the key is making sure you are pushing your muscles and not just lifting light weights which will not spark muscle growth.

Simple equation
weight lifting to your capacity with heavy weights
+
Eating enough food to feed your muscles and the rest of your body functions
+
Enough rest to give the body time to repair and grow
=
muscle growth!

Hi dazaquane,

The problem with push ups when you are a skinny guy is that you are pushing up such a small amount of weight! This is not challenging your muscles.

You must really push to the extreme how much you can lift, the idea is to lift heavy not lots and lots of light reps. This will build endurance but not size.

You need to find a way to lift weights that really challenge you, or find a way to make your body weight exercises heavier with some sort of extra weight. Building muscle requires investment.

Hi Bob,

Simply put, if you are gaining fat now and not muscle, you are eating too many calories and not pushing your musckles hard enough to use that energy in muscle building. Without knowing your diet i cannot be sure however.

My advice would be, stop worrying about your abd. Stength in your core is more importnat than having a six pack. Having great core strength will build your muscle there, but only stripping away a lot of fat will reveal the muscles underneath.

Dont try to build muscle and strip fat at the same time. It is better to bulk up, then go on a fat trimming regime which is easy for skinny guys, so concentrate on then muscle building and dont worry so much about the “look” just the results in terms of strength.

I could rattle off lots of exercises to build shoulder but the problem is … you need to increase your weights. If you cant do that then you cannot push your muscles. If your current weights are too light you need bigger ones as simple as that.

Sorry i cant be of more help there, but its not a matter of what your doing, but of the equipment you have.

Try finding something to use as weights, old tyres, bricks, whatever …. makeshift stuff can be helpful but really you need to invest something to get soemthing.