Yusri Ally Gym Culture

The Mistake Almost All Guys Make When Trying to Build Muscle

When I started training, I was really skinny. To give you some context, at 14 years old, I was already 180 cm tall and weighed around 60 kg—definitely underweight for my height. I was painfully aware of it, too. Even though I played a lot of sports, you’d think my diet consisted of air and wishful thinking.

That insecurity became my spark. I wanted to get bigger—badly. Like many other guys, I started chasing the fastest way to achieve my goal. I dove headfirst into every supplement and "secret" training method that promised quick gains.

Spoiler alert: all I got was frustration and wasted time.

Years of trial and error later, I look back at that period and realize something crucial: I was trying to speedrun a process that takes patience and consistency. In my rush to get results, I neglected one of the most important foundations of muscle growth: proper nutrition.

Back then, I thought supplements were the golden ticket to getting ahead. They weren’t. What they actually gave me was a massive hole in my budget. Here's what I learned during my time working at a supplement company and completing a short nutrition course:

1. Most supplements are just broken-down versions of real food.

2. Supplements that promise fast gains don’t deliver much, if anything.

3. The supplement industry thrives on selling the dream of quick results.

It was a hard pill to swallow because I genuinely believed supplements were the key to catching up to the guys I admired in the gym. But looking back, I now know that if I’d spent more time focusing on my nutrition instead of chasing shortcuts, I could’ve saved myself years of frustration and wasted money.

Here’s the truth:

You need enough calories to grow and recover from training.

Protein and carbs fuel your workouts and build muscle.

Fruits and vegetables are essential for gut health and overall recovery.

Fast forward to today, I can squat over 200 kg, deadlift 210 kg, and carry way more muscle than I ever thought possible. And guess what? I’m doing this while using way fewer supplements and focusing instead on eating real food.

If you’re tired of spinning your wheels and want to learn how to eat and train to get bigger and stronger, join the Skinny to Strong 8-week program. Let me show you how to get the results you want without wasting your time or money on shortcuts that don’t work.

Avoiding overtraining or training to failure during the fast is vital. Consistent training to failure increases the level of fatigue and suppress your ability to perform during training. Without proper recovery between sessions, fatigue will continue to build suppress performance until you eventually see a complete suppression of performance and start to see a decline in fitness. Due to technically being in a caloric deficit during Ramadan your ability to recover from training sessions decrease thus build up in fatigue might happen faster. For these reasons I recommend taking a moderate approach to training by focusing on maintaining as much lean muscle as possible.

•Ideal recommended training times

Ideally the best time to train would be after you've broken your fast.
Training while fasting is not recommended as this increase risk of injury and drastically decreases performance due to dehydration.

•Reps & sets
14 sets per muscle group a week. Rep range of 6 – 15
This is enough weekly volume in order to maintain muscle and recovery from training.

•Sets of 16 - 20 is greater for building muscle however most might struggle with recovery in that range.

•Training above 20 sets should be avoided as recovery time for this is long and energy needs are high.

Week 14 8kgs down

Consistency is key 🍑🍑