Are you that special someone who can gain muscle easily but also piles on the fat? Then endomorph bodybuilding is for you! Gain the right knowledge needed to gain the muscle and lose the unwarranted fat.
In regards to body types, endomorphs are characterized by their short stocky nature and roundness of the body. Don’t be fooled though. True and pure ectomorph, mesomorphs and endomorphs do not exist. The body is going to be a mixture of two somatotypes. Therefore there can be tall and heavy endomorphs, myself included, or there can be short and stocky ectomorphs. Thus endomorph bodybuilding is defined as the way to lose fat or build muscle for that particular somatotype.
An endomorph, for whatever he or she is worth, is characterized as the ability of gain muscle and copious amounts of fat as well. Therefore straight of the bat, you should know that an endomorph should never dirty bulk as it will lead to high fat gain. Bulking for endomorphs is thus sadly limited to clean bulking. More on this later.
Top Tip: If you are above 15% bodyfat, do cutting. If you are below 15%, do a lean bulk
After you have decided your goal, and you know that you want to cut; understand that this is going to be a gradual process. There are two facets of looking at this. Firstly you must understand how to cut. Secondly you must learn about nutrition for endomorphs which is essentially a subset of cutting.
Cutting or Cut is referred to the process of cutting your calories in order to lose the fat. The process to cut is to calculate your caloric intake, create a deficit and thus manipulate your macronutrient intake to make sure you maintain muscle mass. Below are some endomorph bodybuilding tips, so you can achieve your goals:
- Calculate and create a calorie deficit– Quite Simple. Read the article below to know how to calculate your calories and thus create a deficit. A 200 calorie deficit is an optimal starting point.
- Understand macronutrients– Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats are the three essential macronutrients that one needs. Keep your protein intake and fat intake high since endomorphs are usually carb sensitive. In order to reduce your body fat percentage, carbohydrates should be the first macronutrient to be reduced and in some exceptional cases that could mean increasing your fats.
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If all done well, the fat should decrease and so should your weight. For optimal fat loss, stay within the 0.5kg/week range though this doesn’t apply to Week 1 and 2. In the first two weeks, you’d be losing mostly water weight so do not make any changes to your calories based on those decreases. Also have realistic fat loss goals. You can’t get shredded naturally in two months, when your body fat percentage is around 15-20%. I speak from experience.
Unfortunately as endomorphs, you will always need to engage in some sort of cardiovascular activity. With the training plan given below, engage in 2-3 cardio sessions of either Low Intensity Steady State (L.I.S.S) or High Intensity Interval Training (H.I.I.T).
This is a bit tricky because not only do you have to increase muscle mass, you would also need to maintain or decrease the body fat percentage. A lean bulk means just that and that should serve as a base point for any endomorph bodybuilding routine.
Because an endomorph can build muscle quite significantly the protein would actually decrease, as compared to when you were cutting. 1gm per pound of bodyweight as opposed to 1.5gm in cutting. The fat should stay at 20% of your daily macronutrients, whereas the carbs should be dynamically altered. Here techniques like intermittent fasting and carb backloading can come in handy to get rid of any unwarranted fat gain and thus making it easy to gain muscle as an endomorph. Do remember, that you’d need to calculate your calories again and monitor the scale weekly, this time even more sternly because the rate of weight gain can only be limited to 0.25-0.5kg per week. Staying in this range ensures that you are gaining only muscle.
Due to the fact we are dealing with muscle building for endomorphs, most, if not all, of your food sources need to be clean. Chicken Breast, Olive Oil, Sweet Potato, Brown Rice and Broccoli are your friends now. Whatever diet you make, make it centered around these food sources.
Progressive Overload is king when it comes to training for endomorphs. What is that?! Progressive overload is slowly increasing your poundages in all your lifts over time. If you’re the guy who is still bench pressing the same weight as you were 6 months ago, then you’re doing something horribly wrong. In the sea of endomorph workout plans; this concept is embedded at the heart of it all. You must get better over time. Lets take an example. If you are barbell shrugging 50kg in total for 10 reps, 6 months later, you must either perform more than 10 reps or increase the weight for the same repetition. The only way to ensure this, is to log in all your weights in a diary of some sort. Trust me. It works. I can now Barbell Shrug 100kg for 10 clean reps due to this.
So the answer to what’s the best workout for an endomorph is quite simple. Progressive Overload with a dash of intensity. Ah yes. Intensity. If you are thinking about your social life while curling a bar, then we all know how much that muscle will grow. Command your body to grow and it will.
