2 Week Bulk, 1 Week Cut Repeat?

Training
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[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:

[quote]Waittz wrote:

[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:

[quote]Waittz wrote:

[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:

[quote]buildsomemuscle wrote:
Layne norton apparently bulks for 4-6 weeks and cut for two[/quote]

That’s old he does not advocate that any more[/quote]

Interesting that someone uses said plan on the way to be a Natty pro and since they now use something else we no longer validate its past success.

OP, if you wanna do it, then do it. Dotn waste your breath convincing people otherwise. You asked for their opinion, and they gave it, pretty simple.

If you still want to do this plan inspite of the small sample of opinions here just educate yourself further. I know lyle McDonald was advocating something like this in the past. Using his rapid fat loss plans for short periods to get back to comfortable leanness levels.

Kelly Bagget mentions something like a 2 day forward, 1 day back approach, which is just a high to low calorie cycle to limit fat gains.

Tons of stuff out there. Spend less time convincing those who disagree with you otherwise and more time researching the topic that interests you.

Hope that helps.
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He doesnt advocate it because he feels it doesnt work
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But he did advocate it. For some time. Dont you get tired of always having to have the last word? [/quote]

Just correcting your wrong assumption. he thought it worked then saw it didnt. Its not he gained massive amounts and found something better. You made it sound like that method should be credited him him turning pro. It plain didnt work even though he thought it would. Most likely he wanted the new shiny thing to name his own and found shit this doesnt work.
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Seems to me that you are looking at the whole bulking and cutting problem as simple thermodynamic equation. You need to think about the endocrine system during these mini bulks and cuts and not just simple calories in vs calories out. We are not bomb calorimeters and this will become more and more apparent the shorter they cycles you lay out for yourself.

Does your body really know when your 1 week cut is over just because you are ingesting a few more calories? Does your body know the exact length of a day and therefore will make massive fluctuations in anabolism vs catabolism over night or throughout the day?

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Also, I’ve never seen a thread where everybody agrees on one point. When you see Smashing, Ryan etc agreeing with Prof X you know it’s a bad idea.

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[quote]setto222 wrote:
Seems to me that you are looking at the whole bulking and cutting problem as simple thermodynamic equation. You need to think about the endocrine system during these mini bulks and cuts and not just simple calories in vs calories out. We are not bomb calorimeters and this will become more and more apparent the shorter they cycles you lay out for yourself.

Does your body really know when your 1 week cut is over just because you are ingesting a few more calories? Does your body know the exact length of a day and therefore will make massive fluctuations in anabolism vs catabolism over night or throughout the day?[/quote]

Yes the endocrine system is what i was thinking of when limiting the cut to 7 days, i was thinking that by keeping the cut so short the body would never shift gear from anabolic tissue building that you achieved during the 14 days to a catabolic environment in which you would lose muscle or not be able to make gains.

I have no studies or whatever to back up why its exactly 7 days but i remember hearing that thyroid hormones, testosterone and such take approximately that amount of time to start downregulating.

so that was my thinking, please critique if you have any conflicting knowledge or experience, this is why i made this thread and keep bumping it. because i want a discussion from which we can all learn, not so i can decide on the spot wether i am going to do it and not so i can convince other people that its the best approach.

currently i am going to keep bulking since i am making amazing progress in strength, dont want to ruin that with some experimenting into uncharted territory.

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[quote]buildsomemuscle wrote:

[quote]setto222 wrote:
Seems to me that you are looking at the whole bulking and cutting problem as simple thermodynamic equation. You need to think about the endocrine system during these mini bulks and cuts and not just simple calories in vs calories out. We are not bomb calorimeters and this will become more and more apparent the shorter they cycles you lay out for yourself.

Does your body really know when your 1 week cut is over just because you are ingesting a few more calories? Does your body know the exact length of a day and therefore will make massive fluctuations in anabolism vs catabolism over night or throughout the day?[/quote]

Yes the endocrine system is what i was thinking of when limiting the cut to 7 days, i was thinking that by keeping the cut so short the body would never shift gear from anabolic tissue building that you achieved during the 14 days to a catabolic environment in which you would lose muscle or not be able to make gains.

I have no studies or whatever to back up why its exactly 7 days but i remember hearing that thyroid hormones, testosterone and such take approximately that amount of time to start downregulating.

so that was my thinking, please critique if you have any conflicting knowledge or experience, this is why i made this thread and keep bumping it. because i want a discussion from which we can all learn, not so i can decide on the spot wether i am going to do it and not so i can convince other people that its the best approach.

currently i am going to keep bulking since i am making amazing progress in strength, dont want to ruin that with some experimenting into uncharted territory. [/quote]

You seem to be very curious about physiology for an 18 y/o which is a very good thing. I recommend you take the next step and hit the local library or bookstore and get a couple of the must reads (at minimum a book on medical physiology and one on exercise physiology). Don’t read studies until you have done this because studies can be way to specific and misleading. Read up on the mechanisms of hormonal change and then draw some of your own conclusions. When you have some time and some discipline: experiment. See if it works. See why it would/wouldn’t work for others etc.

As for the up/down regulation or test and other hormones, why would you want to stop them when they are at their peak? Once you are in a totally anabolic state, wouldn’t it be better to ride out that state for as long as you can? It would seem like a waste of hormonal potential to stop a bulk or a cut short.

Having said all this, I don’t really believe in the whole bulk v cut thing but to each their own.

Lastly, look into the readings of Dr Di Pasquale. I feel as if I’ve read something of his about hormonal regulation around a 7 day window but i’m not sure and too lazy to search. And I’m glad you will continue on your bulk/strength gain.

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[quote]setto222 wrote:
Also, I’ve never seen a thread where everybody agrees on one point. When you see Smashing, Ryan etc agreeing with Prof X you know it’s a bad idea. [/quote]

I loled. Funny stuff and true

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[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:

[quote]setto222 wrote:
Also, I’ve never seen a thread where everybody agrees on one point. When you see Smashing, Ryan etc agreeing with Prof X you know it’s a bad idea. [/quote]

I loled. Funny stuff and true[/quote]
x2

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i call troll.

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I agree it is stupid and doubt it will work.

That being said, for years everyone thought you have to eat every couple hours until it was shown you can have great success with IF. If you really wanna try it so bad then go for it. The body is very complex and its pretty much impossible to understand how it works 100%- not what you wanna hear, but I’d rather emulate successful people than go against the grain so to speak. If you find a way maybe you’ll be the next Martin Berkhan.

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i might give 3 week bulk, 2 week cut a shot somewhere in august. i’ll update with whatever results it gives

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[quote]buildsomemuscle wrote:
i went from 903 on the bench and 115 for 8 on the deadlift to 1003 and 135*12 in 4 weeks.[/quote]

Are you talking pounds? Do yourself a favor and get on a real diet and lifting routine from any of the respected authors posting articles on this site.

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[quote]solarFLARE wrote:

[quote]buildsomemuscle wrote:
i went from 903 on the bench and 115 for 8 on the deadlift to 1003 and 135*12 in 4 weeks.[/quote]

Are you talking pounds? Do yourself a favor and get on a real diet and lifting routine from any of the respected authors posting articles on this site.[/quote]
lol, its not impressive either way but you srsly tough pounds?

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I could see a 2 week bulk 1 week maintenance cycle as a means of keeping fat gain down, but if 2 weeks bulk then 1 week cut just equals out to the same weight, how can you progress. You need a net result of a surplus to gain anything.

If anything, it sounds like carb cycling might be a better concept for you to work on, as its proven.

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tomorrow im finished with the first 2 weeks of cut and its worked so far, i was in an overreached state before starting and now i feel better, sleep better and lift more. In other words, even though i was in a deficit it didn’t dent my recovery progress and i will going into my bulk fresh

numbers:
bench: 102.5 3 → 105 * 3
squat: 1103 -->1153
deadlift: 1353 → 145*5

weights of course increased on all my accessories as well.

my deadlift improved the most and i am expecting 150 for 3 on Wednesday, next time i deadlift and 120 for 3 on squat

Forward during my bulk cycle i will each session increase volume in some fashion, but always be smart about it, in that i don’t do anything unnecessary or unplanned. this peaking on the fourth week

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I haven’t read the whole thread so I might just be repeating something that was already mentioned.

About a decade or so ago, there was a diet based on that principle called the ABCD program (Anabolic Burst Cycling Diet and Exercise). Frankly it didn’t stick around and that’s a good sign that something doesn’t work.

TC wrote this about the ABCDE program about 14 years ago (!!!)

Problems with the ABCDE diet

The original article listed dozens of references. You’d think that the gods themselves had been consulted in devising the program. Unfortunately, very few of the studies were applicable to bodybuilders. The cornerstone study3 definitely showed a correlation between high calorie intake (1200-1600 calories over maintenance) in the female test subjects and increased testosterone and IGF-1 levels â?? along with increases in lean body mass â?? but no one knows if these results would carry over to men or whether the increases in LBM were muscle or just glycogen and water.

Almost all of the other studies cited in support of the main premise had similar problems. Either they didn’t incorporate weight training, or they didn’t distinguish between actual muscle mass increases and increases in glycogen and water. Still, much of the “evidence” presented by the original author, at least, made the diet an interesting concept. I think, however, that he made a few mistakes in developing the program.

The developer of the program recommended a calorie intake of eight calories per pound for the two-week dieting phase. This works out to be about 1600 calories for a 200-pound bodybuilder. Unfortunately, a 200-pound bodybuilder has a maintenance level of about anywhere from 2500 calories to about 3000 calories per day. In my opinion, that’s way too big of a drop in calories. Once you exceed a 900 to 1000 calories a day deficit, your body goes into a metabolic slowdown, which might very well cause it to put on fat at an alarming rate during the subsequent overload phase.

Likewise, the loading phase required the athlete to determine his daily caloric intake by taking his bodyweight, multiplying it by twelve, and then adding another 1500 calories to the number. For our hypothetical 200-pound bodybuilder, this equals 3900 calories a day, or anywhere from 900 to 1300 surplus calories a day. In my opinion, ingesting this high of a caloric overload for a two-week period would result in putting on way too much fat â?? so much fat that it would be almost impossible to lose it during the subsequent underfeeding period.

The net result of several two-week underloading and overloading phases would, no doubt, be a more muscular bodybuilder, but the vast majority of that newfound muscle would be obscured by fat.

Back to Thib…

And if you lower the food intake to avoid putting on too much fat, you simply will not gain much muscle in 2 weeks. I tried it when it first came out, didn’t work. Two of my friends used it last year (hello blast from the past) and these guys are anal about measurements and being super scientific with their body comp analysis and they had virtually no change in two cycles (8 weeks). Maybe gained about a pound of muscle and got 2% fatter.

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Thanks for the reply thibs, but i’ll give this a go. and report back with the findings. i will try a modified version 4 week bulk 2 week cut and i have yet only done the two weeks cutting, which you can read in my post above yours.

My routine will be based on the overreaching/underreaching principle, i will gradually build up volume up to a peak on the fourth weak and the two following weeks will be low volume designed to let my body recuperate and prepare for next cycle. I have bulk and cut, multiple times and have experience with that traditional approach so i will compare my results to those i got while doing that

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Have you posted any photos OP?
I have a hunch…

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You wont get fat by eating 2-400 cals over maintenance if you train hard. Probably will be easier mentally as well.

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I’ve been contemplating trying a similar routine of bulk/cut micro-cycles (specifically, 3 week bulk/1 week cut) and this topic caught my interest. The advice of the more informed & experienced members here should have been enough to dissuade me from doing this, but what really convinced me to abandon this idea was your very argument for doing so:

[quote]buildsomemuscle wrote:
well my idea when making this thread was based on the hormonal effects, which i have heard and read around(lyle talks about this, icecreamfitness) takes 5-7 days to significantly responds to this kind of difference in calories atleast when coming off of a diet. basically in theory you build up an anabolic environment when you bulk for more than 7 days, and then you dont cut for longer than 7 days so you stay in that anabolic environment with hormones, pathways and whatever still triggered for growth as a result of the bulk.
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I’ve heard it said that muscle growth occurs in spurts, and I’ve noticed that whenever I start eating/training for muscle growth, weight gain in the first 1-2 weeks is considerably greater than that of the following weeks, which is why I got the idea in my head of trying shorter bulking/cutting cycles.

However, it should have been obvious that the initial elevated weight gain I always experienced was mostly fat. It was never visibly noticeable, but no steroid-free adult is going to gain 3-5 pounds of muscle in a week. The 5-7 day window of hormonal retooling that you talk about is the very reason why experts recommend gradually increasing/decreasing caloric intake rather than suddenly changing it by an order of several thousand calories.

This is all conjecture on my part, but if you start dumping more calories into your body than it knows what to do with, it will be inclined to storing all that energy as bodyfat until the anabolic hormonal environment is fully established. The inverse should hold as well - if caloric intake is abruptly reduced at a time that adipose tissue is not the body’s preferred energy source, it will start breaking down muscle tissue for the glucuse and amino acids that it wants but is no longer getting.

The cycle lengths that you’re suggesting aren’t much longer than the time it takes for the body to adapt, which is why I now think this is a bad idea.

ETA: Whoah, I somehow missed the entire 4th page of this topic. Anyway, after seeing your lifting numbers, I agree with solarFLARE - drop all this bodybuilding theory stuff and get on a strength program. I highly recommend Rippletoe’s Starting Strength. You’ll still build muscle on a strength regime, even if that’s not the objective.