Thank you for the response Cmarz! I reread ur first post, so would you recommend that I should cut down further past 180, and once I establish a lean foundation do almost what appears like little micro bulk cycles of a pound a week, practice maintenance for a few weeks and then restart the process? And you’re reccomending 6 months of maintenance? I originally intended to cut up until October-November, eat at maintenance for a month and then start the bulking up process. Thank you again for the feedback. I posted pic in another topic if it’ll help you get a better idea of where I’m currently at.
Also I’ve luckily been able to maintain and even gain strength in most of my lifts. I hit everything twice, for chest I have a barbell and a dumbbell day, I prefer to go heavy on my dumbbell days. I’m currently doing 70’s for 5X5, and my back days im starting to be able to do chinups when I previously was not able to. I’m starting to see size gains but hi believe that’s due to the decrease in fat levels so I try to use strength as my biggest indicator of progress.
Yes, spend some time being lean. If you’re an impatient guy, stick to 4 months. Then add small increments of calories until you hit the half to one pound mark on a consistent basis.
Look at it this way: you can spend six months looking good or six months of being an eating machine with no idea of what the fat to muscle ratio is. At least with this method, you’re controlling some of the variables.
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I won’t be competing anymore. I planned on doing an ANBF pro show shortly after I got my card at the October show, but I got an injury shortly before the show for which I’m still rehabilitating and healing (no surgery needed) and my we are expecting our first kid this summer.
I would like to attend Saturday’s ANBF show but considering I attended a show last week and will be attending the NY Pro next week and maybe the LI NPC show the week after that, I have to make some time for other stuff this Saturday.
I will likely be at the October ANBF show. I really want to go to that.
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Congrats!
I’m sure I’ll be at the October show, either judging or expediting. See you there!
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Heres my take on bulking for the guy who puts on fat easily. IT is also what I do when bulking, and ever since starting this protocol I add VERY LITTLE if any fat when bulking, and my last bulk macros were 300 protein, 580 carbs, 60 fats.
IT’s called cyclical bulking! I bulk pretty heavy (500+ at least) over maintenance. I make sure to structure my carbs around my workout, and make best use of nutrient timing, and separate my carbs from fat, so each meal is either protein plus fat or protein plus carbs. IF I took rest days, (which I Don’t), I would lower cals on rest days.
I stay at these cals for as short as 6 weeks and as long as 10 weeks or so, maybe even 12 in some cases. The key is AS SOON as I start to see ANY visible fat gain, I immediately transition into a SHORT cut, which can last anywhere from 1-4 weeks. Some times 1-2 weeks is enough to eliminate the fat I gained in the previous say 8 weeks of bulking, and to get me back to the optimum bodyfat to bulk.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND CYCLICAL BULKING IN LAYMANS TERMS:
When you are eating high calories your body is producing more hormones such as GRHELIN(I think that’s spelled right)]and many others. Your metabolism is also through the roof! so Immediately switching to a cut allows great progress for a SHORT TIME. After a week or so, your body adjusts to the cut and its harder to lose fat. Being in a calorie deficit increases different hormones than a bulk does, that allow you to MORE EFFICIENTLY use calories, especially carbs. Being on a deficit usually means much lower carbs, so your insulin sensitivity (how well your carbs go to muscle instead of fat) is greatly increased. SO by cutting for a couple weeks then returning to bulking, your hormones are at the optimal place to put on muscle not fat.
The take away from this is the following: Eating at a deficit releases hormones that allow you to use cals better and put muscle on better, so when you switch to bulking you have increased abilities. Eating above maintenance release hormones that make it much more efficient to cut for a short time when you switch cals back to lower. THE IDEA is to cut and bulk for short cycles to take advantage of these hormone fluctuations. This isn’t the biggest deal for the “Assisted” athlete, but for naturals, this can be GOLD.
You may think you will just be spinning your wheels, and you probably would be if you did say a 2 week bulk and a 5 day cut over and over. But the suggested timeframes I outlined earlier should allow you steady progress, and they did for me.
I Still do long cuts and bulks sometimes, but I also utilize cyclical bulking more and more. Try it out and see for yourself!
I had to reread this a few times just to make Sure I wasn’t misunderstanding…
Getting extremely lean, like serious contest level lean, goes against every survival mechanism that the human body has. It’s not comfortable and it’s not usually fun. It is insanely cool in terms of how you look, but even in the best case scenarios, with careful planning and understanding of what you’re doing, chances are your hormones will be somewhat surpressed, your sensitivity will be somewhat skewed, and your required caloric intake will most likely be considerably lower than when you started (except in rare instances that im not Going to get into here).
If you are “resetting your bmr” in any way, you are doing so at a considerably lower rate. That’s why guys like Dr joe and any of the “old school” actually knowledgeable coaches always warned that post contest the body is primed for FAT GAIN!
S
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I might give this a try. I gained 44 lbs in three months, and no these are not newbie gains lol. The old school bulking protocol is very outdated. But i fall for it everytime!
I think you are 100% on the mark here–no unassisted human can walk around contest-lean for more than a few days (what competitive BBers do is called peaking for a reason). My question to you is, how can someone find the ‘sweet spot’ where they are as lean as they can get without tipping their metabolism over into the undesirable state associated with getting contest-lean? In other words, how can someone figure out what their maximum sustainable level of leanness is? In all the BBers you’ve prepped (including yourself), have you noticed anything that occurs–be it in terms of mood, workouts, BW, response to carbs, what have you–where you know they’re entering ‘unsustainable’ territory?
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Excellent question! I’m not sure there’s a hard answer to this; just my thoughts, I think this is very individualized. For me personally, it’s around 8-9% body fat, but once I have to start doing over 40min of cardio daily and carbs get low, I really feel the effects. I was able to get to about 9% with a hard six pack without inconveniencing myself too much and only doing 1 weekly HIIT workout and 20min of LISS post weights, and also keeping carbs relatively high at 180g average per day. But once the daily morning LISS was added on, and carbs dropped, I really felt wrecked.
The individual response to carbs, cardio, all methods of prep, varies so widely. I’ve learned that for me, my cortisol gets elevated when carbs are very low and cardio is too much, and once cortisol is constantly elevated, “everything sucks” mode is in full effect. Some ectos or naturally faster metabolism folks can probably maintain a leaner level of conditioning without feeling as taxed, because they can handle more carbs and do less cardio.
Even if you’re not an ecto with a fast metabolism, people still respond differently based on their hormones and genetics. For example, my wife on her prep felt fine on low carbs. Certainly not ideal, but it didn’t affect her mood as much as mine. Even on keto, she sustained well and felt good, where as on keto or very low carbs, I get depression-like symptoms and can barely function. This isn’t a “suck it up” type thing, the depression is real, and it’s just what happens to some people. Not everyone has the same symptoms. Note that if I’m low carbs while I’m fat and happy in the off season, this doesn’t happen. But once body fat is very low, everything changes.
Another example, it is quite common for competitors to lose their libido as they get really lean, males and females both. The vast majority of competitors I’ve known all agree. But, I’m also good buddies with a guy who is a WNBF physique pro and great competitor and coach, and gets on stage with ridiculously dry conditioning, and he said his libido was in full swing throughout his entire prep, and was shocked to hear that mine wasn’t.
I think this is the responsibility of the client to tell the coach, because there’s really no way the coach would know. Although Stu has certainly prepped more folks than I have, the ones I have prepped, and others who I’ve done nutrition for that aren’t prepping but got really lean, especially as they’re approaching really tight conditioning, I ask them a few times daily how they’re feeling, especially when cardio increases. Once you know they’re entering that zone, it’s important to make small adjustments and toe the line, because injury, low blood sugar, etc., things can get dicey if you’re not careful.
I think that to find this out, someone would have to do a prep style cut until they reach that point. @EyeDentist, as a great competitor yourself, when have you noticed you’ve reached the unsustainable point?
Hey, I had no idea there was a TNer named EyeDentist who was a “great competitor”! I hope he chimes in on this thread.
Meanwhile, as the TNer named EyeDentist who finished second out of four in the old-guy Physique division…
I can say that while I got fairly lean, I’m almost positive I didn’t get to the physiologically (which is not to say psychologically) unsustainable territory where you natty BBers (and high-level Physique competitors) have to go. For example, while I would like to stipulate upfront that I didn’t spend much time looking for them, I’m almost positive I had nothing close to glute striations. In short, I think I could have stayed pretty close to my contest-level of leanness–but only because, by the extremely harsh BBing standards for leanness, I wasn’t that lean.
For me, it was mainly social issues (read: the stress incurred by my wife secondary to living the incredibly dull life of the spouse of a BBing monk) that made my contest level leanness unsustainable.