In a new video on the Athlean-X channel, strength coach Jeff Cavaliere C.S.C.S. breaks down his advice on how to start building muscle and change your physique if you happen to be “skinny fat,” i.e. lacking muscle and maybe look a little thick around the waistline (the most common area for men to retain fat).
One way to approach this is to try to burn fat, leaving just the “skinny” part. Cavaliere advises tackling both aspects at the same time. “The base of what’s happening with a skinny person is they have no muscularity,” he explains. “They have no muscular development.”
The quickest way for any skinny fat person to make some visible changes, he says, is to follow two simple steps: start following a consistent training plan, and get into a hypo-caloric state (or caloric deficit) where you are consuming fewer calories than your maintenance level. “We know you can build muscle at the same time as you’re losing fat in a caloric deficit, as long as your protein content is high enough,” he says.
A good benchmark here is to be eating around 0.8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. Cavaliere advises tracking what you’re eating for just a few days to get the hang of this, as well as possibly taking out some of the carbs in your current diet and replacing them with extra protein.
Once you have your diet under control, it’s time to commit to a progressive training plan. “You have to have a focus on building your base strength around a strong foundation in the bigger compound lifts,” he says. In other words: the squat, deadlift, and bench press. “Some of those exercises are going to feel a little daunting to you,” he continues. “You may avoid them altogether, and that’s a mistake.”
It’s also common for beginners to assume that a compound lift is simple or easy, when that is not the case: “The more compound the exercise is, the more complex it actually is to perform it,” says Cavaliere. “You’ve got a lot of different muscles working together in sync, you’ve got to move an often uncoordinated body through space, through these multiple joints, and you have many different areas up and down the kinetic chain for these weaknesses to rear their ugly head and cause that lift to go the wrong direction… But in no instance are you to avoid the exercise altogether.”
In addition to the core compound movements, smaller isolation exercises can help to build strength that will carry over into your lifts. According to Cavaliere, supplementing these into your training plan will make up to three things happen: You will get a better mind-muscle connection which helps you to achieve a greater overall output, and assists in creating hypertrophy volume in your routine. And perhaps most importantly, when it comes to ensuring you keep coming back to the gym: “You might actually have some fun.”
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