Getting to know your body shape with Swift Fitness York

As you know at Swift Fitness York we welcome all shapes and sizes, so we thought we would provide you with some interesting facts around a certain body shape, we have a few members at our York gym who have approached us asking for help gaining weight and increasing muscle mass.

So here is a short blog to help you understand a certain body shape, we will look at other body shapes as the weeks and months go by.

Lets start looking into a typical shape of a thin male adult, which is commonly known as an ectomorph.

They usually have small joints with long and thin limbs, typically lean muscle and shoulders which have minimal width also have a tendency to have a square look.

Typical body shape of an Ectomorph:

• Small “delicate” frame and bone structure
• Flat chest
• Small shoulders
• Fast metabolism
• Thin
• Lean muscle mass
• Finds it hard to gain weight

Logging Your Calories
If you want to gain muscle mass, you have to gain weight!
Just lifting weights will not be enough to gain the muscle mass. You also need to eat enough food to gain weight. Otherwise your body won’t have the extra energy it needs to synthesize new muscle tissue after an intense workout.

Trying to build muscle without gaining weight is like asking someone to build you a new house without putting in the foundations in as in “food”… putting in the foundations “food” will make the house build quicker “muscle”.
The Plan, It starts in a Morning, don’t worry if you are short on time.

Eat a Large Breakfast
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and if you are an ectomorph, then most people with this body shape need around 2,500 – 3000 calories to gain weight.

Eating a small breakfast will only make it hard for you to consume your remaining calories throughout the day, which would probably mean you will have to consume to large meals at lunch and dinner with mediums size meals between, this is not always manageable for a lot of individuals, its not realistic to manage with work and other commitments in your busy day to day lives.

The plan moving forward to help with your gains…

Start the day with an extra large breakfast for instance have 3-4 eggs, 5 slices of bacon, 2 crumpets with butter on it, and a tall glass of milk and That should be around 1000 calories.

Gainer Protein Shake – Quick, Easy & Healthy…
This is one way to make sure you consume calories under a busy lifestyle.

A lot of gainers use (Jumbo Scitec Nutrition) which have high amount of proteins and carbs in them which makes hitting your daily goal target of carbs and proteins a lot easier.

One easy way to add calories is to add other ingredients such as porridge oats, fresh fruit, full fat milk, and peanut butter.
You can drink it at home as a meal replacement, or you can take it to work or the school run and drink it whenever you have a few minutes to breathe keeping your body fueled.

“It takes time to adapt, the gains are just around the corner”

Small Changes
Making small but affective changes to your food intake will certainly help and your daily routines and you should to start to see some quality changes, not just in your mirror reflection and amounts of weight gained. You will also find increasing your food intake we change how you feel after sessions.

Recovery time after session will be a lot quicker, leaving you feeling fresh and ready with energy for your next gym session.

Like anything else in life, it will take time for your body to adapt to the amount of food begin taken onboard, so more than likely you will feel bloated and even to the point of feeling sick for the first 4-6 weeks, eventually you’re stomach will grow and get used to the amount of food you are consuming on a daily basics.

We hope you have found this useful and if you need additional information we can point you in the right direction.

Good luck, Danny Allan