Experienced gainers who’ve gone from skinny to ripped, what advice would you give to your former self?

its easy to moderate your calories once you start to gain weight, and for most skinny dudes the first 20-30 lbs of fat gained just disappear into you.

Yes thats absolutely true, just a lot of people here are absolute beginners and eating more and more will cause fat gain not pure muscle so I juste thought it useful to point that one out. I've trained with a lot of dudes who just started eating huge amounts when they start lifting and they gain weight fast but once they pass the point where the fat just disappears on them or if they started skinnyfat then they just end up fat. Its a real shame seeing someone lose motivation because they got fat from trying too hard to get ripped.

so.. magic?

No, if you want to see magic look into gear. Not that I would recommend it.

creatine and BCAAs help with recovery and explosive strength for your workouts, they dont make you huge but they give you advantages to help you get the most from each rep

Creatine is awesome and is the supplement with the most research behind it. But the point I am making is don't take creatine expecting it to put 200lbs on your total and make you look like Zeus himself. Creatine just allows for faster replenishment of the muscles ATP stores. BCAAs do nothing more than ordinary protein. There is literally nothing special about them assuming you are eating adequate protein because you will get adequate BCAAs from the other protein sources. All BCAAs are is 3 albeit special amino acids. The only time they may be useful is when you are in a large defecit and even then they cost a ton for little if any benefit.

this is so wrong, once you are able to build that connection it allows you to squeeze every last ounce of strength from your muscles.. i was struggling with my squats before i started focusing on MM and when i learned to really squeeze the muscles as I was working them my strength skyrocketed.

No its not. Here is why, if you can squeeze every last ounce of strength from tiny muscles then you will make gains, but not as many as if you squeeze a reasonable amount of strength from much larger and stronger muscles that are moving more weight. I didn't focus on MM connection for any of my lifts for YEARS and I gained 65lbs in that time and hit a 1400lbs powerlifting total. There is a reason why heavy compound movements are better at building overall mass than doing little iso moves all day long, because you can move more weight. By all means focus on the perfect rep and squeeze and all that melarke once you have a strength base but as long as you lock out your reps and squat to depth you can get huge before even thinking about MM connection.

/r/gainit Thread Parent