Reaching out to successful Ectomorphs

Hey GB.

First off, I am a lanky, 6'5" ectomorph. I'm out of my element here in GST, but I really want to stick with it. However, I've been a little demotivated lately by a lack of progress.

I've been working with GB for about 6 months. Not a lot of time, but I think a decent amount. Despite having pretty much no mobility limitations (at least for my current strength level), I don't really have any advances in strength to show for these past 6 months. As far as I can tell, my technique is fine. I try my best to sleep 8 hours a night. I eat plenty. I have been pushing myself through the hard parts of sets and stopping when my technique breaks down. I started ambitiously at the 5 day a week Foundation schedule and have widdled my way down to 3 after accepting my low recovery ability. I'm even eyeing 2 days a week, since 3 doesn't seem to be doing the trick. Neither my weight nor my body composition have changed.

Basically, I feel like I should be making progress, but I don't really see any. I know that my body type can often cause complications in building strength. To help rebuild my motivation and perhaps get some ideas to keep in mind in my GST, I would really love to speak with some other ectomorph GBers who have found success and tangible progress with this program.

Erik Sjolin seems to be the star example but has not been active on the forum for a while. If anyone has his contact information, I would greatly appreciate getting in touch with him. I'm also hoping there might be a couple of others besides him. Anyone out there?

Thanks in advance, everyone.

I'm by no means a ''successful'' candidate yet, but I'm 6'5'' and 180 lbs. That's up from 160 lbs when I first started with GST. I will tell you one thing. You curse your lack of ability to put on muscle now, but you'll be glad for it later. We are already at a huge disadvantage being as tall as we are. I have long arms for my frame (6'7'' wingspan). As an example, I cannot learn ring swings in my gym because my toes touch the ground even with just one crash mat. With that kind of height, more weight further multiplies our disadvantage. I started off with very low recovery as well, but that improved with time. 

You won't see any progress outright. But that's the thing with connective tissue. It's growing. You cannot see it, but it's happening. Believe me. I just enjoy GST so much that putting on muscle mass etc doesn't matter one bit. One fine day, I looked in the mirror and found that my chest and my abdomen looked more muscular than they have ever been. Seriously, enjoy the journey and forget about the results. One fine day a random stranger will be eyeing your beautiful posture and you'll be pleasantly surprised. 

I know this isn't the answer you're looking for. I cannot give you a time frame and say 'stick with it for x months and you'll add y kgs of weight.' Forget about the superficial results and focus all your energy into obtaining new skills. No matter how simple they look, appreciate your accomplishments, and give yourself some credit every now and then. Feel free to message me if you want to know something specific about my journey so far. I have had many ups and downs, and GST has been my anchor through the lowest points of my life, since I started it.

SM3091, thank you for your post! I'm glad to hear that you've been making progress (Edit: and congratulations to you for it!), and I will certainly PM you later to ask more about your own journey! 

I just want to clarify for further posts that my current concern is not about muscle building, but rather progression in strength (which will eventually entail muscle building, yes). I'm interested in becoming stronger and advancing through these progressions. I just can't tell that I am growing stronger at the moment, and I am not advancing much (I am roughly where I started in the progressions).

NoHiddenCosts said:

 

I just want to clarify for further posts that my current concern is not about muscle building, but rather progression in strength (which will eventually entail muscle building, yes). I'm interested in becoming stronger and advancing through these progressions. I just can't tell that I am growing stronger at the moment, and I am not advancing much (I am roughly where I started in the progressions).

Ah, my mistake. I misunderstood what you meant, because you mentioned you being an ectomorph. Strength has more to do with connective tissue and the nervous system than the muscular system. It will come. Give it time. Re-evaluate your technique in case you're doing something sub-optimally. And I can personally assure you, progress will happen. 

I'm 6'4 and I have build noticable muscle(nothing crazy, but enough) since starting GST, mostly chest, whole of the back and abdominals. I follow J Natermans pre- and post-workout plan and try to eat as much as I can. It's definitely possible, and I think real gains in strength and muscle size especially start after F1, when your joints are prepared and the exercises get tougher.

It has been my observation in the past that ectomorphs do just fine at building strength.  If you want to do a gross generalization, you

could say that they have trouble as a body building, however, some of the strongest people I have seen are ectomorphs.

In my experience Ectomorphes tend to excel more in pull strength (think rock climbers) than the classic mesomorphs which are generally better at pushing.

However, having said all that, if you are not progressing, it is more likely due to other conditions  than your phenotype.

Diet:

What is your diet like?  are you eating enough. Are you eating the right foods for your own individuality? Are you taking advantage of

pre/post workout nutrition?

Training:

Are you training more than the body can currenty handle?  (training vs recovery).   Are you not pushing yourself as hard as you could? (Mind failing vs body failing). Are you performing the exercises correctly?  Are you doing extra training on top of GST  (weight training, sports, running etc).  How is your posture? Poor posture = weak body, overcompensation, poor technique etc

Lifetsyle:

What does the rest of your life look like?  Social?   Stress? (work, relationships, illness etc)

Do you have other commitments that are sapping your energy outside of training?

As you can see, there is a lot more that can contribute to lack of progression then just your body type.

Maybe take a week off, relax, and then come back on a 2day of just F1, and no H (just to start off).  Track your energy levels, workout intensity (scale of 1-10 etc). Also if you could give us a rough outline of your diet we could perhaps find some improvement.

That was a lot of information but I hope some of it was helpful.  I have the Foundation and Handstand courses. Feel free to PM me if you would like some more advice on the subject

I am an ectomorph at 6'2 170 lbs. I am not doing foundation but I do something similar. I do however respond quite well to training and I have never been underweight, lanky or whatever. Progress in levers are hard of course but I see progress in every trained element little by little. I understand your concern but you will eventually get there by nursing your connective tissue since that is the strength secret of most ectomorphs, muscle mass is not that important.

More cannot be said without IRL examination but I think you will get. I would not say best of luck, but rather best of progress since luck indicates making it or not.

jules said:

It has been my observation in the past that ectomorphs do just fine at building strength.  If you want to do a gross generalization, you

could say that they have trouble as a body building, however, some of the strongest people I have seen are ectomorphs.

In my experience Ectomorphes tend to excel more in pull strength (think rock climbers) than the classic mesomorphs which are generally better at pushing.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, people who excel in rock climbing do so because they understand the fact that foot placement and using your legs is more important than pulling or pushing strength. Generally speaking  women are better at rock climbing than men are. 

I'm about 6'2 with long limbs. Things like pushups have always been harder for me than for some others but I figure that just makes it a better strength exercise. It might take me longer to progress but my goal isn't to do a certain trick, it's to get stronger.

GoldenEagle said:

Sorry to burst your bubble, people who excel in rock climbing do so because the understand the fact that foot placement and using your legs is more important than pulling or pushing strength. Generally speaking  women are better at rock climbing than men are. 

Oh I don't doubt the technical aspects.  It was more an observation about pulling strength and not mean to be a definitive statement about rock climbing. 

I'm 6 ft 160 lbs, and I have some kind of success with strength training. I can do free HSPU, back/front lever for 10 seconds, cirques, and I'm getting close to HBP, one arm pullup and front lever pullups. I absolutely suck at planche training though : I have not even started to train for planche, and I think I will have a hard time achieving it. I will never use my heigth as an excuse, that is a certainty. And I agree ectomorph are good at pulling strength, and no, women are not better than men at rock climbing, and they will never be. 

I'm 6 ft, 170 lbs and I've always been pretty skinny. After 3 years of work though (mostly on my own) I've got cross, cross pull out, kip to cross, straddle planche, and am getting quite close to maltese on rings. On bars I can do straddle L press handstands (not really focusing on them anymore), and straddle planche press handstand, and full ROM HSPU. The one thing that I find really matters is consistency in your training, don't get discouraged! It might take a few years but who ever thought becoming a superhuman was going to be easy?

6 ft 170, 6 ft 160, 6'2 ft 180....

Are you sure you boys are skinny?

Those are some high weights for that height. But I suppose body weight is a really hard way to tell someone's size. I saw a picture of Helander on this forum, I think he said he was 6 ft 180...incredibly muscular body. But then i see the handbalancer Andrey Moraru, 6'2 and 180 and he looks quite skinny. I guess your perception of skinny is also a matter of where you grow up, your culture, the people around you, etc...

At around 20% bodyfat, I'm the leanest person I know.

Micawberian said:

6 ft 170, 6 ft 160, 6'2 ft 180....

 

Are you sure you boys are skinny?

 

I was thinking the same thing.  I'm 6'1 and 155 and this is the heaviest I've been.

Well when I started I was 150 or so

You didn't post your improvement in this 6 months. Do you have a training notebook?. 6 months is not that much time, even less if you are building a base from zero. It can be slow at first but it´ll go much faster after this base is solid.

Managing load with bodyweight exercises can be difficult at first, that´s why F 1 evolved from the book BtGB. More scaled down exercises were needed. Also maybe you have to find to what kind of stimulus do you react better.

I´m not ectomorph by any means ( I don´t know if this will be helpful to you), I discovered some time ago that I improve much faster if I perform easier (or with lighter weights) variations of the exercise, with more reps and sets. There is people that are just the opposite, they just get killed if they go above 5 reps.

Maybe you have to adjust a bit your set/rep scheme to your needs. If you have always been a fast sprinter, pull ups have been easy to you, and all that, maybe you have more fast muscle fibers, try less reps per set, and less sets. If you are more a resistance guy with low explosivity, that finds hard to win strength, try more sets and reps with a much easier variation.

I guess this has been talked about on the Foundation forum or at the seminars. But I can not recall Coach´s take on this.

Alvaro said:

If you are more a resistance guy with low explosivity, that finds hard to win strength, try more sets and reps with a much easier variation.

That's me! (Which is why I am waiting for Movement 1 with bated breath) I've also come to think that more sets and reps will help me out. I've heard others on the forum speak well of doing some negatives at the end of a workout, as well.

However, that of course adds more to recover from, so for the time being, I'm trying increased volume in each workout and fewer workouts per week. At this point I think I just need to run with one schedule for a while and see how things go. For science!

It´s not so much the total week volume as that you are getting fried with just 2-3 sets at higher effort. Once you change to easier variations of the exercises, and you keep moving on the high count range of reps, you´ll see that your recovery capability will improve. Somehow you are now over trained, not by volume, but your body is not able to manage the high intensity.

Higher volume should feel like at the  last week of  the mesocycle (the week before recovery week) it´s the only moment you find hard to reach the last reps of the last 2 sets (this is the sweet spot, as you are making the necessary load to obtain the overcompensation).

All the other days you should end your training feeling pumped, but with still one more rep on the tank (close to technical failure but not to muscular failure), at the last set of each exercise. Of course the recovery week it´s for that, make it easy.

This will feel even too easy to be effective, but you are training to get better, not to destroy yourself. If doing easier workouts makes you improve, this is the way you should train. There is people that improve very fast with shorter, harder workouts, usually they are more athletic capable (they won the genetic lottery) and it seems that everybody has to train like them, but it´s not the case.

You´ll see that you are able to train 3 days easily, and once you develop the work capacity a bit more, 4 days with an active rest day (easy swimming, bike, running for 1/2 hour and stretching ) on Wednesdays will be doable.

I'm 5 foot 7 and 141 lbs. Yeah, I'm ectomorph as hell. Can't put on mass and that means things like bodybuilding doesn't work for me. Don't wanna do bodybuilding anyway. At least I can eat all I want without worrying about getting fat.

Currently trying to build wrist strength needed for handstands. And keep stretching the hip flexor for extra ROM for the front splits. I currently have a tucked front lever, tucked back lever, tuck planche and an L-sit.

Alvaro said:

It´s not so much the total week volume as that you are getting fried with just 2-3 sets at higher effort. Once you change to easier variations of the exercises, and you keep moving on the high count range of reps, you´ll see that your recovery capability will improve. Somehow you are now over trained, not by volume, but your body is not able to manage the high intensity.

Hmm. That's not quite it for me, I think.

Generally, my work capacity in the strength range is very low, endurance fairly high, and I don't gain much from low rep/low set workouts. However, I feel that a higher reps of lighter exercises will just recruit the wrong types of muscles (not a physio expert though). So low rep + high volume seems to be an answer.

This excerpt from Coach Sommer's BtGB seems to word my ideas:

Measure your progress in years not in months and you will be fine.

Im 6'2 with 176lbs and have trained for 4 years to reach a 3 seconds straddle planche, regarding strength I feel that the horizontal levers are our worst enemy, but things like handstands, pullups, hspu, hs press aren't a lot harder for us than it is for the shorter ones.

I remember something Coach said to me almost five years ago, "It continues to amaze me more and more as I get older how much physical progress can be made by simply being patient and persistent." link
 

Thank you for the reminder, Arthur Costi. It took me some time to accept that I won't necessarily be doing levers and such with just a year or two of training.

I'm not trying to get the Hollow Body Press overnight, though; I would just like to be able to do a decent number (GB Standard) pushups before next year! I don't think expecting progress over several months is unreasonable if you define "progress" in a reasonable way (like advancing an element or two, rather than going from pushups all the way to handstand pushups). I won't be able to get to straddle planche in 4 years if I'm not making slight but noticeable progress in the months between.

Coach Sommer has said that it is perfectly possible to master the GB curriculum in 6 years or so (including Rings), so his expectations for progress speed are high (EDIT: sorry, when I say "high", I mean higher than the expectations of others struggling on this forum). Of course, this is harder to do when you don't have a coach motivating you to work harder, correcting your form, and adjusting your training based on their observations and expertise, so maybe I should expect a much longer timeline. But I can't quite accept that looking for noticeable progress (read: some kind of advancement in the exercises) over 6 months is "impatient".

Of course, it's possible that I just somehow have not noticed some kind of progress I have made in 6 months (such as subtle but important improvement in technique). It's also possible I trained improperly in earlier months and have only been training effectively for a couple months. So who knows, maybe another 6 months from now I will see some progress. Or maybe not, and maybe I just need to accept a longer timeframe. I guess I'll keep working and find out. 

I just don't want to stumble around in the dark, reaching for the door, only to find that I've been walking towards the wrong side of the room.

Edit: sorry to make a mountain out of a molehill here. Not trying to be dramatic.

Given my long arms (even for my height), I'm at a disadvantage for muscle ups. But at the moment, I can get 2-3 muscle ups depending on the day. No kipping, but a lot  of piking. Still working on it, but I'm here to tell you that this is definitely a skill you can attain in a (relatively) short period of time. You're fine. Keep doing what you're doing, and the progress will become visible. It's already hapening, you just cannot see it yet. 

Micawberian said:

6 ft 170, 6 ft 160, 6'2 ft 180....

 

Are you sure you boys are skinny?

 

Those are some high weights for that height. But I suppose body weight is a really hard way to tell someone's size. I saw a picture of Helander on this forum, I think he said he was 6 ft 180...incredibly muscular body. But then i see the handbalancer Andrey Moraru, 6'2 and 180 and he looks quite skinny. I guess your perception of skinny is also a matter of where you grow up, your culture, the people around you, etc...

At the moment (I'n my profile picture) I'm around 190 lbs and 6'1 tall.

I find these hard: Planche, front lever and handstand endurance. I went to a handstand class last spring here in Helsinki (got a good deal, the handstand guy taught me handstands for free and I helped him with strength progressions), and I took an endurance match of one minute hs holds with a small girl, and she pretty much destroyed me at that point!

But, as a very typical handstand-girl, she was totally screwed if her elbows bent even a small amount, and was not able to push back up, whereas I could easily maneuver around.

Maybe it's just lack of training with the endurance, but I feel that dynamic movement, power and brute strength is natural for tall and heavy guys.