Clean Bulking, Lost Weight. What's My Problem?

Hello christian. my name is ali I’m 22.been training for about 1 year and half.took some weeks off during it.the problem is that I’m clean bulking.after measuring my maintenance it was like 2535 calories. my calorie intake through the day used to be 2700 - 3000 and even more my carb intake was very good so as my protein intake and also fats you can say eating very good foods.oats.eggs.white rice. speghatti. i didn’t even ate chocolate or bread.training was good. my weight was 64.4 and after 28 days I checked my weight and it was 63 how this happened.this means that my maintenance is about 3400 right? I’m training 6 weeks per week with high intensity my workout is being long.know it Should not be.

The answer is simple: if you are losing weight you are consuming a caloric deficit. No need to try to find complicated answers.

You mention that you do a high volume of work. That alone will increase your maintenance caloric level by a lot. If your BMR is 2500 calories (for example) but you are burning 800 calories during your workout and in the recovery period. If you consume less than 3300 calories, you will lose weight (BTW these are not “real” numbers, it’s just to illustrate the situation).

Based on the numbers you gave me, your daily deficit was anywhere between 400 and 500 calories per day. So yeah, I’d say that at you curent level of training your maintenance level will be between 3300 and 3400 calories per day.

Thanks Christian.what about my training program.since my diet was in a deficient.should I change my training routine since my body got used to it the past 4 weeks or the calorie surplus works without need for a training change

Change the program if it doesn’t motivate you anymore. Not everybody need to change every 4 weeks. Some will need to change every 2 weeks, others every 6-8 weeks, some do better sticking 12-16 weeks to a program

So if my body got used to the program during that calorie deficient. it won’t build muscle if I went to a calorie surplus. so training adapting is not related to nutrition intake ?

Dude, you don’t adapt to a program like that. Get that out of your head. That is complete pseudoscience.

A lot of elite olympic lifters use the same execises/sessions over and over, only changing the loading from time to time, Several bodybuilders do the same program for almost all their career.

Changing a program is for when your priorities change, your training goal changes or when you get mentally get bored of a program.

It is. You need adequate energy intake and protein to fuel the adaptation process.

You don’t need to change the “program” in that you don’t have to change your exercises every X weeks. The body adapts when the loading/demands of the workout are a bit higher than what it is used to facing. This means that you have to vary volume, reps, loads cyclically. But you can do that without changing the “program”.

Heck, Dorian Yates stuck to the same program for the 5 years he was Mr.Olympia but always trying to gradually lift more weight.

Thanks Christian. may GOD bless you.if possible what you think about Weighted jogging.can it build the quads, hamstrings,and calves if it was a high intensity workout while being in a calorie surplus ?

By definition “jogging” cannot be high intensity. Sprinting is high intensity.

Honestly using weighted jogging to build muscle is like using a spoon to dig the foundation of a house. Technically it can work but it is probably the worst tool to do the job.

It might work with totally sedentary individuals who don’t train at all and are not physically active because for them it does represent an overload. But for anybody who is physically active or training the effect will be minimal.

There are several ways of stimulating muscle growth, and weighted jogging does not meet any of them except for total beginners.

  1. PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD: Basically here you stimulate adaptation by having the muscle perform more intense work than it is used to. While there are many other ways to accomplish that, in resistance training we normally talk about adding weight. Here’s the thing: if you have been training hard, jogging with weights is not really an overload as far as the intensity is concerned. In the sedentary person who doesn’t do anything physical, yes it will be. But not for someone who trains. “Yeah but what if I use loads of weight?” first of all unless you have perfect running mechanics, muscle activation and a core of steel, using too much weight while jogging will kill your joints. But even if you can do it, you are not even creating and intensity overload, even with a 50lbs vest… you can do a lot of work (weight x distance) but not a high intensity of contraction compared to what you achieve in the gym.

  2. MTOR ACTIVATION: You can also trigger muscle growth via mTor activation. While every resistance-training method will activate mTor to some degree, the two that have the most significant impact are accentuating the eccentric and loading the muscles in a stretched position. None of these occur with jogging, loaded or not.

  3. GROWTH FACTOR ACCUMULATION: Another pathway that can stimulate muscle growth is releasing growth factors inside that muscle. Two things will have you release these growth factors: accumulation of lactate inside the muscles and deprivation of oxygen. The later cannot really occur since jogging is by nature aerobic. The former (lactic acid//lactate build-up) rarely occrus, it can happen when you have to climb a steep hill or sprint. But it’s not normally something that will happen most of the time.

  4. MUSCLE FIBER FATIGUE: As Dr.Zatsiorsky says:“A muscle fiber than is recruited but not fatigued is not being trained”. So you need both: recruit a lot of fibers and fatigue a lot of fibers. During normal muscle actions the body recruits muscle fibers according to the size principle: the smaller/weaker muscle fibers are recruited first. If they are not strong enough to meet the force production demands, stronger fibers will be recruited. Here’s the thing: with weighted jogging the need for force production is pretty low. So there is not need to go with the strongest fibers (those that can be hypertrophied more). Not only that the smaller/weaker fibers (slow twitch fibers) are also those with the most endurance. So it becomes unlikely that they will tire out so much that you need to bring in those fast twitch fibers into play. Now, slow twitch fibers have a low growth potential. So even if you were able to fully fatigue the slow twitch fibers with weighted jogging, you still would not stimulate much muscle growth.

Not only that, the drawbacks/negatives of that method to get very few benefits on muscle growth makes it a no-no IMHO.

  1. It puts a lot of stress on the knees and hips which can lead to injuries

  2. It will expend a lot of calories, making it a lot harder to reach a surplus allowing you to grow at an optimal rate

  3. It can spike cortisol to a high degree, making it even harder to build muscle in the long run

I’ve used weighted WALKS for cardiovascular improvements and weighted jogging with Crossfit competitors who use it in competition, but never as a way to build muscle.

I’m afraid that you will have to squat and deadlift.

Thanks for the valuable information christian :blush:. My problem is that my leg day is not going fine.i train at home.and have seen huge improvement.when I Squat I reach Failure because of my breathing not because my quads can’t continue.and I use my hands to left the bar from the ground to my back and this is somehow annoying and hard a bit if the weight is high.the program is as follow :
1_ bodyweight squats 4 sets / 25 reps / resting 10 seconds between sets.
2_ barbell jump Squats 4 sets / 8 - 12 reps / I used 52 KG
3_ fast squats 4 sets / 20 reps / 40 KG
That’s what I used yesterday but before I used to do 6 sets of normal squats for about 8 - 12 reps.and I do 5 sets of Dumbbell Swings for hamstrings.because lunges are very boring.
My other workout days are fine.but legs how can I activate them correctly.plus is once a week enough.im 163 cm.my legs are good but I want to increase their size.what should be my plan.thanks :slight_smile:

You should not reach failure on big lifts like squats and deads.

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So in my case how many reps should I do for squats and how many sets ?

How can I answer that? It depends on so many factors. Your genetic tolerance for volume. How often you train legs. What other exercises you do for your lower body. our body type, etc.

I’d say that for most 4-5 work sets (maybe 2-4 warm up sets) of 4-6 or 6-8 reps is adequate.

I’m a mesomorph.i train my legs once a week.i also do Deadlift 4 sets once a week on my back day. so I must not go till failure on squats ? And if possible the puny calves workout made by you how often should I do it ? Thanks