Age Old Question: Size First or Cut First?

Training Bodybuilding
1

hey guys. im 5’9", 150 lbs and have roughly 13% BF. im wondering whether i should cut my BF down to like 9 or 10 percent, then focus on size, or should i focus on size,then reduce my BF?

remember though, my weight and height may not be big, my my BF% is 13%. thats more of an important factor than weight or height. according to Charles Poliquin, im fat!

but however, im still a little lost with what i should do. all and any advice will be most appreciated.

as for diet is concerned, im planning to do the TNT diet (which i like very much).

what kind of training split (TBT, upper/lower, body part) should i do?

thank you :slight_smile:

2

[quote]forbes wrote:
remember though, my weight and height may not be big, my my BF% is 13%. thats more of an important factor than weight or height. according to Charles Poliquin, im fat!
[/quote]

That’s nice.

No you are not “fat” @ that weight and height - get real.

Bulk, nice long 2 year bulk will work nicely.

Aim to get stronger first, and your will get bigger once you are lifting bigger weights.

What’s the TNT diet?

3

TNT diet is a diet similar to the Anabolic Diet, but there are different plans. if you go on mens health website and type in TNT diet, it will send you there and tell you EVERYTHING about it (science, eating plans etc).

thanks for not calling fat rsg. i can see my abs fine when i suck in and flex my stomach, but when i relax my belly, my gut sticks out. thats what got me thinking on what i should do. i eventually want to see my abs without having to flex.

thanks.

4

Yeah… dont try to lean up… if you add some muscle and no extra fat, you will have a lower BF% anyway. 10% is easy for you to achieve in the next year. And add muscle.

Are you training now? how long? whats your fitness level? Experience?

I would suggest a whole body program or a 1/2 1/2 split. Train 4x a week. Never ever less than 3x.
Upper lower is fine - id put you on legs/shoulder/tri-Back/Chest/Bi or a push pull though.
Upper lower isnt a true 1/2 and 1/2 split you see, it has alot of overlap, and too much potential volume for someone of your (assumed) level…

Then i think you should train with moderate volume say… - BUILD upto 8 sets per large bodypart and build upto 4 sets small. medium progress to 6 sets. Depending on your current level/sessions build from as little as 1 set per bodypart…

Use a rep range between 15-20 reps for a good 6 weeks, then increase the weights to fail somewhere between 12-15 for another 4-6 weeks then incease again to fail between 8-12 reps for another 6 weeks.

Use compound/money exercises, Presses, Squats, Pulls, Rows, OH Presses, Curls, Dips, pullups/pulldowns… you get the gist. I still use these exercises and they make up 80% or so of all workouts. Oh… choose free weights for a minimum of 60% of your workouts.

Food wise, eat low fat… plenty of fruits, bananas, apples, pears… plenty of oats - a true wonder food. i eat 2-3 bowls a day. Eat lean meats like beef, chicken, eat low fat fish such as tuna and oily fish such as mackrel and salmon.
Wholegrain rice, wholegrain pasta, potatoes.
No chips, crisps, pies, pastries, cookies, biscuits, fried foods or trans fats.

I cant think of much else right now, but i have assumed that you are a newbie to training. Even if not, i hope this helps. I personally wouldn’t suggest concentrate on getting strong then getting big will follow - not unless you specifically asked or it was obvious that was your goal. For some reason you come across particularly “soft-core” no offence intended.

Basically it answers your question by advising you to watch what you eat - do not diet. Build some lean muscle - don’t “bulk” and you will achieve both your goals. Just have a good diet. Then train regularly and consistently with progression/basic periodisation and lift heavy, but not PL heavy. Moderate reps/sets for general fitness style hypertrophy, so in 2-3 years you will look really quite “nice” when you slide your green underpants off under the bed cover before going crazy on your woman in missionary position.

This/you are not a case of “bulk then cut” - i get the feeling that you are much more of a “general fitness” guy, or at the most someone who trains or “bodybuilds” just for fun/personal reasons and is not too serious… in which case the basics above will see you well as a base template for many of your training years.

OK?

5

[quote]forbes wrote:

remember though, my weight and height may not be big, my my BF% is 13%. thats more of an important factor than weight or height. according to Charles Poliquin, im fat!

[/quote]

Sounds like you maybe are already leaning to the wrong side and are trying to justify trying to lose some body fat.

I have problems with your numbers… at 5’9" and 150 lbs I doubt you are 13% body fat unless your muscles are actually concave. Did you use a scale impedance test? Woefully inaccurate.

At any rate, you should post this in the beginners section because that’s what it’s for. As far as workouts, doesn’t really matter not one bit. If you did splits or full body or whatever at this stage is fine.

6

The Truth about Bulking

http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1268956

I’d advocate that you get bigger. Most people I know who say they’re around 13% bodyfat say that because that’s just above the % where you can’t see their own abs. In reality, they’re probably closer to 18%.

But for now you should be primarily concerned with gaining muscle. So you’ll want to frequently work all your major muscle groups.
At this point anything will give you results. But I think one feature that so many successful programs have is the simple upper/lower split.

But since you need to gain a lot of weight, a good TBT 3-day a week program for you would be the very simple 20 rep squat program.
It goes like this.

Free Squat - 20 reps X 1 set
Pullovers - 20 reps X 1 set
RDL - 15 reps X 1 set
Chin-ups - Max reps X 3 sets
Dips - Max reps X 3 sets
Heavy Abs - Max reps X 3 sets

Some versions call for using added weight on Chins and Dips. This is always a great idea. Some call for Bench Press and Barbell Rows. These are also good exercises choices. Just do any Upper Body Pull and any Upper Body Push for whatever rep scheme suits you.

For the 20 rep squats pick a weight that’s either 85% of your max, deep squat or a weight you think you could surely do for 10 reps. Now, do 20 reps. You’ll know you’ve picked the right weight if you’re thinking to yourself by rep 11 that this program was a huge mistake. This is where the battle begins. In order to complete the set of 20 reps in good form, you’ll need to stand at the top of your squats between reps to catch your breath. That’s why many call them “breathing squats.” Don’t take more than 3 breaths at the top. A good guideline is to take 1 breath at the top between reps 1-9, take two between 10-16, and take 3 breaths at the top for the last 3 reps.

As for increasing weight, you must add 5 pounds to the Squat bar every single workout. So you’ll be adding 15 pounds to your 20-rep squat every week. For the other exercises, just don’t be a little bitch and try to add weight as frequently as possible with them.

Nutrition wise, it’s recommended that you drink a gallon of milk a day while doing this program. But this program was written before the days of protein powder. Even though the article I provided you says you can’t stuff yourself into more muscle, you’d be surprised at how much protein you really need.
Consider 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight to be the bare minimum in your diet.

You must also eat protein frequently. Your body constantly needs amino acids to repair and build new hair, liver, and skin cells along with every other cell you can think of. If those amino acids can’t be easily found in the blood, your body will break down muscle tissue without even batting an eye.

Millions of years of evolution don’t understand that you’re trying to get jacked, they just understand that you need to survive.

So, in order to combat this from happening, you need to give your body a constant supply of protein so that a plethora of amino acids are constantly available and your body has no need to break down muscle tissue. You can accomplish this by eating a 5-7 protein rich meals a day. A meal is anything from a cup of cottage cheese to a Steak and Fries.

By constantly providing your body with protein and ensuring that your body doesn’t break down precious muscle tissue, you will put on muscle a lot faster since you won’t be taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back on the road to getting jacked.

Base your carbs and fats off how active you intend to be that day. Eat a lot on training days. Eat what you need on non-training days. Don’t be afraid of fats. Seek out good fats and good carbs. You know what these look like. You should know.

Eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible. They are so good for you and have so few calories that there is no harm in eating as many as you can throughout the day. No one ever got fat off fruits and vegetables.

Protein powders and necessary. Creatine works. If you can’t get your Omega-3s from fish, get them from oil or capsules. Most other products aren’t worth it.

You don’t need a diet. Lee Priest needs a diet when he’s coming out of the off season and he’s bloated as all hell. You do not need a diet. You just need to eat right and eat big.

7

Hey Forbes,

Even though Charles Poliquin says that 13% BF is fat take a look at some of the mutants he trains. The Red Wings line up is chalked full of 6 foot 210lb (average mind you)guys that are REALLY strong. If they had an extra 10 lbs of fat it would certainly effect their power against an opponent. I believe his assertion is based on athletic performance. Mr Poliquin is first and foremost a strength coach. If a bodybuilder benefits so be it but his resume reads like a who’s who of STRONG, FAST, elite athletes. Not Bodybuilders. Take a look at some of Thib’s writings on this site. That might give you a different insight. then again maybe not.

What are your goals? Are they specifically related to Bodybuilding? How old are you? How long have you been training?

I think JJ is pointing you in a great direction. Whole body compund exercises should be your primary focus. That and a good nutrition program. At your height and weight you have to add lots of strength before the muscle begins to build up.

Good luck and happy training.

8

[quote]medevac wrote:
forbes wrote:

remember though, my weight and height may not be big, my my BF% is 13%. thats more of an important factor than weight or height. according to Charles Poliquin, im fat!

Sounds like you maybe are already leaning to the wrong side and are trying to justify trying to lose some body fat.

I have problems with your numbers… at 5’9" and 150 lbs I doubt you are 13% body fat unless your muscles are actually concave. Did you use a scale impedance test? Woefully inaccurate.

At any rate, you should post this in the beginners section because that’s what it’s for. As far as workouts, doesn’t really matter not one bit. If you did splits or full body or whatever at this stage is fine.[/quote]

How do you work out that he cant have that bf%? why not?

9

14% is NOT fat, WTF.

at your weight, you might be a skinny-fat, but you’re not fat, that’s just retarded.

Focus on putting quality size on and it will make you look a lot leaner in the long run.

Change your body comp by putting on muscle, not by cutting fat.

but, by all means, cut to 135 lbs, you’d look hawtt with abzzz

10

[quote]FightingScott wrote:
The Truth about Bulking

http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1268956

I’d advocate that you get bigger. Most people I know who say they’re around 13% bodyfat say that because that’s just above the % where you can’t see their own abs. In reality, they’re probably closer to 18%.

But for now you should be primarily concerned with gaining muscle. So you’ll want to frequently work all your major muscle groups.
At this point anything will give you results. But I think one feature that so many successful programs have is the simple upper/lower split.

But since you need to gain a lot of weight, a good TBT 3-day a week program for you would be the very simple 20 rep squat program.
It goes like this.

Free Squat - 20 reps X 1 set
Pullovers - 20 reps X 1 set
RDL - 15 reps X 1 set
Chin-ups - Max reps X 3 sets
Dips - Max reps X 3 sets
Heavy Abs - Max reps X 3 sets

Some versions call for using added weight on Chins and Dips. This is always a great idea. Some call for Bench Press and Barbell Rows. These are also good exercises choices. Just do any Upper Body Pull and any Upper Body Push for whatever rep scheme suits you.

For the 20 rep squats pick a weight that’s either 85% of your max, deep squat or a weight you think you could surely do for 10 reps. Now, do 20 reps. You’ll know you’ve picked the right weight if you’re thinking to yourself by rep 11 that this program was a huge mistake. This is where the battle begins. In order to complete the set of 20 reps in good form, you’ll need to stand at the top of your squats between reps to catch your breath. That’s why many call them “breathing squats.” Don’t take more than 3 breaths at the top. A good guideline is to take 1 breath at the top between reps 1-9, take two between 10-16, and take 3 breaths at the top for the last 3 reps.

As for increasing weight, you must add 5 pounds to the Squat bar every single workout. So you’ll be adding 15 pounds to your 20-rep squat every week. For the other exercises, just don’t be a little bitch and try to add weight as frequently as possible with them.

Nutrition wise, it’s recommended that you drink a gallon of milk a day while doing this program. But this program was written before the days of protein powder. Even though the article I provided you says you can’t stuff yourself into more muscle, you’d be surprised at how much protein you really need.
Consider 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight to be the bare minimum in your diet.

You must also eat protein frequently. Your body constantly needs amino acids to repair and build new hair, liver, and skin cells along with every other cell you can think of. If those amino acids can’t be easily found in the blood, your body will break down muscle tissue without even batting an eye.

Millions of years of evolution don’t understand that you’re trying to get jacked, they just understand that you need to survive.

So, in order to combat this from happening, you need to give your body a constant supply of protein so that a plethora of amino acids are constantly available and your body has no need to break down muscle tissue. You can accomplish this by eating a 5-7 protein rich meals a day. A meal is anything from a cup of cottage cheese to a Steak and Fries.

By constantly providing your body with protein and ensuring that your body doesn’t break down precious muscle tissue, you will put on muscle a lot faster since you won’t be taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back on the road to getting jacked.

Base your carbs and fats off how active you intend to be that day. Eat a lot on training days. Eat what you need on non-training days. Don’t be afraid of fats. Seek out good fats and good carbs. You know what these look like. You should know.

Eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible. They are so good for you and have so few calories that there is no harm in eating as many as you can throughout the day. No one ever got fat off fruits and vegetables.

Protein powders and necessary. Creatine works. If you can’t get your Omega-3s from fish, get them from oil or capsules. Most other products aren’t worth it.

You don’t need a diet. Lee Priest needs a diet when he’s coming out of the off season and he’s bloated as all hell. You do not need a diet. You just need to eat right and eat big. [/quote]

we wrote very simirar posts at the same time i think - lad to see we’re on the same page here!

11

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
at your weight, you might be a skinny-fat, but you’re not fat, that’s just retarded.
[/quote]

Yeah, you are NOT fat. Retarded and skinny-fat - yes, but fat-fat absolutely not…! ;D

12

[quote] JJ wrote:
jehovasfitness wrote:
at your weight, you might be a skinny-fat, but you’re not fat, that’s just retarded.

Yeah, you are NOT fat. Retarded and skinny-fat - yes, but fat-fat absolutely not…! ;D[/quote]

actually, I meant to take out the skinny-fat thing. He’s probably not even that at 13%, but in any event, 150 lbs at 13% is not going to be carrying much muscle

13

man, I started training at 5’9, 150 lbs, and lemme tell you that the last thing you should be doing is cutting. You simply do not have enough size (muscle) to make it worthwhile in the end. Instead, attempt to put on size, but don’t use ‘bulking’ as an excuse to eat an entire pie several times a day. Smake sure you’re getting enough QUALITY protein and overall cals, and sure you can eat some crap, because as you add muscle, your body will need to brun through more calories anyway (just don’t be stupid about it!)

S

14

As a comparison, my ex-girlfriend was a natural female bodybuilder and was 140 on 5’3’’ with less than 8% body fat. If you can’t be bigger than a natural female, then you don’t have much muscle on ya!

Seriously though. While I’m of the school of thought of staying leaner; the appropriate answer to your question is that it depends on your must current need and objective.

At 150 on 5’8’’ marathon runners are more muscular than you. So while you are not lean, I would say that IF a muscular look is what you are after then gaining muscle ASAP is way more important than losing fat.

On 5’8’’ I evaluate the ‘‘looking good and muscular’’ threshold to be 175-180lbs at 10% body fat. At these stats you will not look like a bodybuilder (unless you have a fantastic structure) but you will start to look good and muscular.

Let’s say that you really are at 13% (unless you had it measured precisely it is likely to be a wrong estimation) on 150lbs that means that your lean body mass is 130lbs and your fat mass 20lbs.

To be 175 at 10% you would need a lean body mass of 158lbs and a fat mass of of 17lbs.

So in essence you need to gain 28lbs of muscle and lose 3lbs of fat (note, if you go on a real mass gaining phase you might end up having to lose around 10-15lbs of fat since you might put on some fat while adding muscle).

Is it that hard to see where your priority should be???

NOW, I understand that summer is at our doors and everybody wants to look ripped for the beach. That’s understandable. But do you really think that 145lbs with abs will look that impressive?

Adding muscle is a long term process. Gaining 1-1.5lbs of muscle tissue per month constantly is actually pretty darn good for a natural trainee, you might gain more ‘‘weight’’ but it will be from glycogen storage, water retention, intramuscular triglycerides and fat. So adding 28lbs of pure muscle tissue might take you anywhere from 14 to 24 months depending on your genetics. It might be faster than that if you have good muscle-building genetics, but if you did you would not be 150lbs to start with!

All I’m saying is that if you try to get super ripped right now, devote 2 months to it or so, then it pushes your priority goal even further away.

15

Forbes,

You heard from the man himself! If you are really interested in learning more check out his Book, The Black Book of Training Secrets.

Thib - Black Book Rocks. Thanks for adding to the post.

16

Thibs raises good points, especially the concept of bf%. If you are indeed 5’8, think about the natural BBers who have a contest weight of 175 lbs at your height. We’re talking single digit bodyfat here, so they probably weight about 190 -200 lbs with ‘respectable’ bf levels during most of the year. Keep the end results you want in mind, and remember that it takes several steps to get there (which may be adding muscle 1st, and then cutting)

S

17

[quote] JJ wrote:

we wrote very simirar posts at the same time i think - lad to see we’re on the same page here![/quote]

I think we both started writing our own posts thinking they would show up as the second post. You just finished seconds before me.
I probably wouldn’t have bothered saying a lot of what I did if your post had appeared before I started writing mine.

18

[quote]forbes wrote:

remember though, my weight and height may not be big, my my BF% is 13%. thats more of an important factor than weight or height. according to Charles Poliquin, im fat!

[/quote]

Is this true? Is Poliquin telling people that 13% body fat is “fat” and that everyone at that number needs to diet?

19

wow! coach Thib actually wrote to me! thankyou very much. all of you! but Thibs man, i wanna hear everything you have to say. EVERYTHING!

have you heard of the TNT diet yourself coach? i was planning on using that.

but i think my concern is more with training. if i eat enough, i can gain easily (i used to be fat mind you). i just have to stimulate my muscles the right way.

so what do you suggest coach with regards to training (and nutrition)? can you help me out here. so far i was thinking the following training set-up:

3 weeks TBT (balls to the wall training)

1 week de-loading

3 weeks upper/lower split

1 week de-loading

i would continue alternating b/w the two “templates”

for the TBT, Mon would be max strength, Wed would be muscular endurance, Fri would be functional hypertrophy.

for the upper/lower split, i would include three exercises for each muscle group (less sets of course). the first exercise would be a compound exercise with heavy weights (3-5 reps). the second exercise would be an exercise that provides a deep stretch in the muscle (flyes, split squats, incline curl etc) for 6-8 reps. the final exercise would be an exercise that produces a peak contraction (leg extension, leg curl, conc. curl etc). 2-3 sets for each exercise.

what do you think (but i will take your advice however)

i workout at home and am limited to my equipment (ex, i can load up a bar all the way to the ends and deadlift it, roughly 200 lbs). i have no cables. just rely on dumbbells and barbells, with a pullup bar, dip bars and an adjustable bench.

thank you Coach Thib

20

[quote]Professor X wrote:
forbes wrote:

remember though, my weight and height may not be big, my my BF% is 13%. thats more of an important factor than weight or height. according to Charles Poliquin, im fat!

Is this true? Is Poliquin telling people that 13% body fat is “fat” and that everyone at that number needs to diet? [/quote]

I hope not, it’s probably out of context or just misunderstood by the OP.

Though I have heard some things from that side that made me raise an eyebrow.