Should you be bulking?

Should you be Bulking?

Let’s make this clear from sentence one. I dislike the use of the word bulking. It makes me think of a polar bear eating everything it can in sight in order to prepare for the winter and hibernate. Humans don’t work that way and anyone who uses the growth season phase to eat everything in sight is not truly dedicated to fitness, they are just lazy and use it as a means to eat everything in sight and make themselves feel better by saying they’re packing pounds of muscle. But what’s to expect from many athletes who spend months dieting only to find themselves craving everything in sight after they don’t have any shows or shoots anymore? However this shouldn’t be the “normality” of it. How can fitness models be promoting the images of health and fitness and then balloon up after the cameras aren’t pointing at them anymore? In fact, studies keep showing us that after a certain point, your ability to gain muscle is not going to speed up by consuming more food. In fact, consuming more and more food will cause you to feel more tired, less athletic, slow and metabolically damage your health. Doing things fast, specially when it comes to your body (whether it’s weight gain or fat loss) don’t’ end up being the best for you.

Should you have a growth phase and keep building lean muscle? The truth is you should never not be trying to gain lean muscle mass. Improving your body composition will always be a goal for anyone who spends time in the gym with the intention of wanting to gain size. However, some people abuse the concept of this time and go over board with calories and still think they are adding quality size to their body. Yet when they diet down for a show, shoot or simply because summer is coming around they realize they haven’t truly added that much size and perhaps even lost size on the process of trying to lose fat. It’s a roller coaster effect and I speak from personal experience. I too have in the past “bulked” and eaten 2 Chipotle burritos a day plus a weight gainer shake in the mindset of the more the better. However, I gained a ton of fat that I later had to take off just to realize that I didn’t add that much muscle at the end. That’s not optimal for anyone wanting to get a sponsorship, a magazine cover or anything related to the fitness industry. I know several Pro bodybuilders that during their mass gaining phase are actually consuming only about 350g of carbs and still making great changes to their physique. Yet we associate these extremely high numbers of macros to growth because we can’t seem to be adding size. Is it sometimes the calories or is it something else? More is not better in a lot of cases and this surely is one of them.

Adding 2-3 lbs a month should actually be your goal. That means that if you are doing everything correctly a large percent of that 2-3 lbs is actually muscle and not fat. I think it’s interesting for a lack of words (more idiotic really) when people tell me they’ve gained 10lbs in a month and “well Alex I can still see my abs, so I’m good”. ‘Under the best possible circumstances – perfect diet, training, supplementation, and recovery strategies – the average male body can build between 0.25 and 0.5 pounds of dry muscle tissue per week. That is the amount your natural body chemistry will allow you to build.’[1]

So how should you be approaching your ‘time off’? Simple. The first thing you must do is have patience. You need to understand that muscle doesn’t grow that fast and that you need to be applying the same intensity and mindset that you were during your prep phase (or cutting fat phase) as you are now when adding muscle. In fact it can be harder for a few people to add lean muscle than it was to cut down weight. Secondly, keep track of your macros. Know what you are consuming and keep an eye in the mirror and secondly on the scale. Assess these two and at the end of every week and evaluate if you need a bit more food. If you are changing in the mirror but not in the scale this doesn’t mean that you aren’t adding muscle. So don’t fall under that stigma. Third and finally if you can’t even see the outlines of your abdominals than you might consider actually losing some weight and not trying to be adding more weight. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be aiming to add lean muscle but be careful with your total calories.

[1] Christian Thibaudeau - https://www.t-nation.com/training/truth-about-bulking

#bulking #weightgain