Here's how I answered the question on Yahoo! Answers:

Question:
Hey.. I'm a 5'11 approx 190lb guy.. I wanna pack on some weight really badly because I'm thin and approaching feminine looking. Problem is that I have a very fast metabolism and nothing I do seems to add weight. I even found a term for it. Hardgainer. So, how do I overcome this? I work a full time job and have school.. so I really don't have time to just pig out all day long. I'm single.. no gf to cook tons of meas for me.. I can cookfor myself, but I don't know what's best for gaining weight. I know to stay away from junk food.. I never touch fast food. Any suggestions for me? Oh, I've tried those weight gain shakes from the health stores.. spent a fortune on that stuff and never gained a pound. This is really frustrating because i wanna start working out hardcore, but without anything to build off of what's the point?

Answer:
Your last line tells me you don't understand how to build muscle. It's all about synergy – if you lift heavy but don't eat right, then you will gain nothing. Same if you eat a lot and don't work out (well, except with this "method" you will get fat and turn into "skinny fat guy" or "fat skinny guy").

You need to approach gaining weight (i.e., building muscle) from 3 angles:

• Eat right
  
• Train right
  
• Recover right
  

Attitude is the glue that sticks it all together.

Eat 6 to 8 times a day, concentrating on protein-rich sources like eggs, beef, milk, fish, pork, and chicken. Also eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Don't forget water!

Weight gain powders don't work well. Some people make gains, but these are the exceptions. They would have gained even without the supplementation.

Try a meal replacement powder mixed with whole milk like MetRx. Don't replace a meal, though, add it in.

Train 3 times a week. Do "limbs" one workout and "torso" the next workout. Stick to compound movements like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses and rows. 6 to 8 reps for 1-3 sets, starting at 1 set and building to 3. Try to add weight every workout.

Get plenty of sleep, at least 7 hours a night. Try for 8 or 9; you're better off. If you cannot get 8 or 9, take a nap in the middle of the day.

Keep a positive attitude. It makes all the difference. I know it's difficult to stay positive; I used to be 120 pounds and couldn't gain an ounce. Then I figured it all out and put on 60 pounds in less than a year. Success came from simply following the program above and by staying positive about it all.

Best of luck. I know you can do this!

What's your goal for the rest of the summer?

I know quite a few people who reached their low body fat goal – some even achieved their lifelong dream of seeing six pack abs…

Now they want to gain some muscle, but they're scared of gaining back the fat along with the muscle (which is very common… so it's not an unwarranted fear).

If you want to:

• Gain muscle WITHOUT getting fat (NO "bulking up" – just lean gains)
• Lose fat without losing muscle (FORGET the "lean but bean pole" look)
• Or even gain muscle and lose fat at the same time (The "holy grail" of all fitness goals!)

then check out: The Holy Grail

Welcome to the July 2, 2010 edition of hardgainer blog carnival.This one is a little light on content. C'mon guys, stop sending me articles about Android applications and high blood pressure! We want to learn about how to overcome being a hardgainer.

Joshua Townsend presents Hardgainer posted at Healthy Fit Vegan: Nutrition, Diet, Fitness, saying, "Tips for hardgainers to bulk up and improve their muscle building strategy."

billspaced presents How Many Meals a Day for a Hardgainer? | The Hardgainer Manifesto Blog posted at Hard Gainer's Blog, saying, "Hardgainer success is at least 80 percent nutrition. Here's a post about the number of meals you should eat in a day if you're a hardgainer."

billspaced presents Hardgainer Bodybuilding posted at The Muscle-Build.com Blog, saying, "A mini-seminar on how to defeat your hardgainer genes and train right, eat right, and recover right!"

billspaced presents GOMAD posted at Muscle-Build.com, saying, "Bulking up is easy enough in concept but very difficult for hardgainers. Here's how to do it."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of hardgainer blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

"Everybody who's ever picked up a weight thinks he's a hardgainer."

There is a nasty little term that a lot of weight trainers use – "hardgainer." What is a hardgainer and how should a hardgainer train to promote maximum muscle mass?

I say "nasty" because every kid who lifts and doesn't gain 50 pounds right away thinks he's a hardgainer.

A hardgainer is someone who truly cannot gain weight. I know, I 've "been there, done that." A hardgainer is typically of the somatotype (body type) ectomorph, a lean body type that has little body fat and is very scrawny (not much in the way of muscle). Usually on the tall side. Long limbs. Angular facial features.

But you can be an endomorph and still be a hardgainer. I'd characterize a hardgainer not by how he looks but by how he responds to a "typical" bodybuilding training system.

Here's what I mean by typical:

• 4-day split routine, either push/pull or upper/lower body
• 5 or 6 meals a day, supplemented by protein powder or weight gainer
• Relatively active lifestyle (plays sports and/or supplements weight workouts with cardio like running or cycling)

The above is a typical bodybuilding training system (generically described, of course) that many beginning bodybuilders and weight trainers advance to after several months of steady progress in a basic program (note that I don't even consider calling somebody a hardgainer if they're just starting out – it's too soon to tell).

A hardgainer will have very little to no response from the above training system. In fact, he might even lose weight. This is highly discouraging, of course. Typically, a trainer afflicted with such a response will respond with a "more is better, right?" approach: He'll move to 6 days a week of training and double up on the weight gainer.

The Right Approach to Hardgainer Bodybuilding

In fact, working out more frequently and adding in more weight gainer couldn't be a worse approach to jumpstarting muscle mass gains for the hardgainer. Hardgainer bodybuilding requires a different approach. In fact, you could consider it an entirely different mindset.

Hardgainers should:

• Train less frequently
• Use fewer sets
• Eat quality food
• Rest more often
• Cut out all extraneous activity
• Curtail all ab training and cardio until sufficient muscle mass gains have been made
• Relax at all times (except when training when you really want to push yourself)

A while back, I wrote a series called Building Muscle in 30 Minutes a Day. In it, I described a simple way of building quality lean muscle mass in only 30 minutes a day. The aim of the series was to show anybody how to build a quality physique on limited time.

What I really wrote in that series was a hardgainer bodybuilding routine!

It was an adaptation of a book I wrote a few years ago called Hardgainer Manifesto, which was the system I used to gain over 60 pounds in less than a year after spending over 20 years training with little success. It was something I "stumbled" across after studying weight training, bodybuilding, nutrition, and "hardgainer systems" for decades.

I was the typical "scrawny (but scrappy) kid" – the kid who got sand kicked in his face like the old Charles Atlas comic strip ads. I tried everything under the sun and found nothing worked. So I made my own system. That's the short story.

The long story is that it took a lot of time to figure out. Suffice it to say that you could save yourself a lot of time and frustration by picking up a copy. Or read the series Building Muscle in 30 Minutes a Day. Either way, you'll come to a "hardgainer bodybuilding" solution that works better than anything else out there for a fraction of the time and price.

Are You Skinny?

by Bill Davis
http://www.muscle-build.com

I grew up skinny. Everybody thought that I had it made! But on the inside, I was dying. I HATED being a stringbean.

I bought my first set of weights when I was 12. They were plastic-covered concrete weights. I lifted multiple times a day, every day of the week. I also ate like a horse.

More is better, right?

Wrong. It took me nearly 20 years to figure out that I was doing too much. Hey, I'm a slow learner.

But now that I know how to pile on massive amounts of muscle, I'm here to tell you that almost everything you think you know about gaining size is wrong.

I am going to tell you the Top Three things that you think are right but are actually wrong. Getting these right will give you about a 100 percent increase in effectiveness.
 

1. You have to train 5-6 times a week, hitting every body part 2-3 times a week, and hitting them from every angle for 15-20 sets per body part. THIS IS COMPLETE HOGWASH. If you train like this, you better do one of two things: Get some great medical insurance because you're going to be spending some time in the hospital or find a doctor of dubious ethical values and start taking anabolic steroids. Training like this is counterproductive for normal human beings.
2. You need to eat like a gluttonous pig and down buckets of expensive protein powders and other supplements. POPPYCOCK! This is what the supplement companies want you to do! But it's certainly not in your best interest to do so. Not only will your gut suffer, but your checking account may never recover! Supplements that the bodybuilding magazines push (every major bodybuilding magazine is either in bed or owns a major supplement company) are incredibly expensive. You don't need this.
3. 8 hours of sleep is plenty. You're an animal and animals don't sleep much. BS! You need ALL the sleep you can get! In fact, it would be difficult to get "too much sleep" while you're trying to pack on the pounds.

Not coincidentally, the 3 "Truths" mentioned above are the cornerstone of any successful bodybuilder or weight trainer. I call this the "3 Pillars" – You have to
 

• Train right
• Eat right
• Recover right

What does this mean? If you train with high intensity, you only need 2-4 sets per exercise. You do need to eat a lot, but it doesn't have to be in the form of expensive food supplements. Try drinking milk and eating LOTS of eggs. These 2 food items are the keys to your muscle-building nutrition.

Finally, you need all the sleep you can get. Sleep is when your body recovers from the smackdown you placed on it during your workout; sleep is when your body grows.

No sleep = No growth

You could even shrink. That's right – by not getting enough sleep, you may actually begin to lose size.

Who wants that?

If you want more mass-building ideas, head on over to The Best Exercises, where you will learn all about building muscle, losing body fat, and gaining tremendous strength.

Originally published on SearchWarp.com for Bill Davis Friday, May 14, 2010
Article Source: Are You Skinny?
 

This question was asked on Yahoo Answers and my answer was chosen as the best. By the way, the Stair Step Training System virtually eliminates any chance of a prolonged plateau, simply by forcing periodic short plateaus!

Muscle Building Plateau?

Best Answer – Chosen by Asker

Source(s):

Over the past year, I've done a lot of experimentation with different split routines. I've tried:

• 5-days-a-week, training one major bodypart per workout (not enough frequency)
• 4-day 2-way split, using the Push-Pull concept (workouts were too long)
• 3 full body workouts per week (I was pooped before I got to the end)
• 6-day 2-way split (too much frequency)
• 4-day 3-way split (this one was pretty cool but didn't offer the frequency I needed, but it's great if you have a weak bodypart and are trying to build strength)

Now I'm back to my old standard, working out 3 days a week on a 2-way split. I train Torso one day, Legs & Arms the other, alternating between the two every other day (like Monday-Wednesday-Friday). On weeks where I'm only training a bodypart once, I train HARD & HEAVY. Or maybe just HARD.

On weeks where I train a bodypart 2 times in the week, I may choose one day to train HEAVY, the other day with high reps.

There's a lot of flexibility built in to the system. During bulking phases, I just train with weights. During cutting phases, I add in cardio on off-days and/or after my weight workouts. It's pretty cool.

It's funny to me that I keep coming back to this split. Not so funny is that I make my best gains with this system. This is the system I used to pack on 60 pounds of rock-solid muscle in less than a year. I talk more about that at Hardgainer's Manifesto.

How can I gain muscle and lose fat at the same time?

That’s right up there with “How do I get six pack abs” as one of the most frequently asked fitness questions of all time. The problem is, when you ask it, you get all kinds of conflicting answers – even from experts who are supposed to know these things. So what’s the deal? Is it really possible to lose fat and build muscle simultaneously?

Short answer: Yes, you can gain muscle and lose fat at the “same time.”

Long answer: It’s difficult and it’s complicated. Allow me to explain…

First we have the issue of whether you really lose fat and gain muscle at the “same time.”

Well, yes, if your definition of the “same time” is say, a month or 12 weeks. But in that case, you’re probably not gaining muscle at the “same time” literally speaking, as in, right now this very moment you are reading this, or 7 days a week, 24 hours a day for months in a row.

The best explanation for what’s really happening is that you alternate between periods of caloric surplus (anabolism) and caloric deficit (catabolism) and the net result is a gain in muscle and a loss in body fat.

You see, if you stay in a calorie surplus, it’s the body’s natural tendency for body fat and lean body mass to go up together. And if you stay in a calorie deficit, it’s your body’s natural tendency for body fat and lean body mass to go down together.

There may be exceptions, but the general rule is that it is very difficult to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time – the mechanisms are mostly antagonistic to one another. When it does happen, it’s almost always the result of “unusual conditions” – I call them X factors.

The 4 X-Factors

The first X-factor is “training age” . Ever hear of “newbie gains?” The less trained your body is and the further you are from your genetic potential, the easier it is to gain muscle. The reverse is also true – an advanced bodybuilder with 20 years experience would be thrilled just to gain a few pounds of solid dry muscle in a year!

The second x factor is muscle memory. It’s easier to regain muscle you’ve lost than it is to gain new muscle in the first place (ergo, the fat out of shape semi retired bodybuilder who starts training again and blows up and gets ripped “overnight”).

The third X factor is genetics (or somatotype). Ever heard of the “genetic freak?” That’s the dude who sprouts muscle like weeds even when he’s on the “50-50 diet” (50% McDonald’s and 50% pizza)… and he never gets fat. (That dude chose the right parents!)

The fourth X factor is drugs. It would stun (or sadden) you if you knew how many people take performance and physique-enhancing drugs. I’m not just talking about pro bodybuilders, I’m talking about “Joe six pack” in the gym – not to mention those fitness models you idolize in the magazines. How did they get large muscle gains with concurrent fat loss? Chemicals.

I’m not a gambling man, but I’ll place a wager on this any day: I’ll bet that in 99% of the cases of large muscle gains with concurrent large fat losses, one or more of these x factors were present.

That’s not all! There are actually 5 more X factors related to your body composition and diet status (the X2 factors). But I’ll have to talk about those later.

So you’re not a beginner, you don’t take roids, you’re not a genetic freak and you have no muscle memory to take advantage of. Are you S.O.L? Well, I do want you to be realistic about your goals, but…

There IS a way for the average person to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

The Secret: You have to change your “temporal perspective!”

Traditionally nutritionists and fitness pros have only looked at calorie balance in terms of 24 hour periods. At midnight, you could tally up the calories like a shopkeeper closing out his register, and if the balance were positive, you’d say you were in a surplus for the day. If the balance were negative, you’d say you were in a deficit for the day.

But it’s entirely possible that you might pass through periods of “within-day” surplus where you were in a highly anabolic state (for example, you eat the biggest, highest carb meal of the day after your workout), and you were in a deficit the rest of the day.

If you did intense weight training, and you timed your nutrient intake appropriately, it is possible that you could gain a small amount of muscle during those anabolic hours, while losing fat the rest of the day. Granted it might only be grams or ounces – but what if you kept that up for a week? A month? Three months?

As you pan out and look at the bigger picture, what if most days of the week you were in a deficit for the entire day, and on some days you were in a surplus? If so, then isn’t it possible that over the course of the week, you’d have a small net gain of muscle and loss of body fat a a result of the caloric fluctuation?

These within-day and within-week phases are called microcycles and mesocycles. If you also had a primary goal with a longer term focus of several months, say 12 weeks or 16 weeks, that would be a macrocycle.

What I’ve just described is nutritional periodization. Some people call it cyclical dieting. It’s where you manipulate your calories (primarily by fluctuating carbohydrate intake, hence “carb cycling”) in order to intentionally zig zag your way through periods of surplus and deficit and create specific hormonal responses.

The end result: muscle gain and fat loss during the same time period!

I know that someone out there is having a hissy fit because I’ve only talked about calories: deficits and surpluses. Rightfully so. Calories matter but there’s more to it than calories – most importantly, hormones and “nutrient partitioning.”

If you’re in a calorie deficit you are going to pull energy from your body. The question is: From WHERE? If your hormones are out of whack and you’re eating crap, you could lose more muscle than fat in a deficit and gain almost pure fat, not muscle, in a surplus!

But WHAT IF you could manipulate within-day energy balance, use nutritional periodization AND control your hormones with food and lifestyle strategies?

Make no mistake – concurrent muscle gain and fat loss is a difficult goal to achieve. The good news: Difficult does not mean impossible. Or as George Santayana said, “The difficult is that which can be done immediately, the impossible, that which takes a little longer.”

The Holy Grail Body Transformation Program: How to Gain Muscle and Lose Fat at The Same Time

You can learn more about gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time in Tom Venuto's new e-book called, "The Holy Grail Body Transformation System."

You’ll learn all about nutritional periodization, cyclical dieting, hormonal manipulation, within-day energy balance, nutrient partitioning, AND the all the X factors, including the 5 “X2-Factors” – which are the keys to gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time.

You’ll also get Tom's new “TNB” training system, as seen in Men’s Fitness magazine (the complete, expanded version that Men’s Fitness didn’t have room to print).

At the moment, The Holy Grail ebook is not for sale separately and there is only one way you can get it.

From now until Midnight (PST), May 13th, 2010, you can get a copy of the Holy Grail Body Transformation program ebook for FREE when you purchase the Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle e-book from this web page:

www.BurnTheFat.com

After May 13th, 2010 at midnight PST The Holy Grail will be taken off the market for a period of time while Tom is collecting case studies and getting feedback from users, to include in the final edition – which WILL be released for sale separately later this year.

Visit the Burn The Fat website now and jump on this deal while you still can.

I got this tip from Doberman Dan, author of Hyper Muscle Growth. This is a killer tip for boosting your muscle gains through the roof! It's something all of us successful hardgainers have done, but we often fail to mention it because it's so innocent and obvious that we forget to mention it in our newsletters, tips, blogs, and sites.
 

Dramatically Increase Your Calories for 3 Days

You will never achieve a positive nitrogen balance with a low calorie diet. It takes raw materials – carbs, protein and fats – to build new muscle mass and support recovery. Increasing your calories by 50% (from 3,0000 to 4,500 per day, for instance) for three days can spur growth while adding little if any bodyfat. The key is to limit the increased calories to a designated three day period; you'll be able to stimulate growth by improving muscle sensitivity to insulin and by providing more carbs for glycogen storage.

If you are in an overtrained state – and if you're not gaining any new muscle mass, this is probably the case – the additional calories will promote anabolism before fat storage is able to kick in. That's why you want to limit the 50% increase to a three day period. After that time, return to your typical intake of daily calories; you'll have stimulated new growth without adding unwanted fat.

Get more of these super tips that work especially well for hardgainers by clicking the link below –

Hyper Muscle Growth

Here's some advice on how to build muscle and gain weight if you're on the skinny side -

Yahoo Answers

After a few comments that it would be better if I just posted the answer here on the blog, I've decided to do just that! So, here it is.

You need to concentrate on 3 things for building muscle:

1. Train right
2. Eat right
3. Recover right

For training, you want to lift heavy weights for 2-5 sets (more sets for more experienced lifters) of 6-10 reps on compound exercises only (exercises that use multiple muscles like squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull ups, overhead press). Train 3 times per week. Full body workouts.

For nutrition, make sure you eat at least 6 meals per day. Get 20-40 grams of protein per meal. At 160 pounds, you want at least 160 grams of protein a day. Good protein sources are eggs, milk, beef, fish, poultry, and pork. Eat plenty of raw fruit and vegetables, too. Drink lots of water.

Before your weight training workouts, mix up a protein shake. Make it a double serving. Mix whole milk and a good protein powder and drink roughly 1/3 of it about 30 minutes prior to working out. During your workout, drink another 1/3. Afterwards, finish it off.

Get at least 8 hours of sleep and rest as much as possible. Walk when you can run, sit when you can stand, lie down when you can sit. The idea is to expend as little energy as possible throughout the day.

The best system I've seen for building muscle is the Stair Step Training System (SSTS). It's a 16-week course that shows you how to build muscle, shred body fat, and get bigger, stronger, and faster all over a 4 month period.