There are lots of arguments about gaining muscle while staying lean (i.e. around 10% bf) as opposed to gaining while letting bf% go up to around 15-20% or more.
Most of the proponents of the former method point out that fat isnt helping muscle growth and that the optimal nutrients, if so timed, would serve to give optimal muscle growth.
In the other camp are those pointing out that most real life examples of people growing large amounts of muscle involved a bulking phase that included some fat.
The only way to ‘prove’ one or the other in this debate is to run a twin study, i.e. get a few sets of two genetically equal people on two equal exercise programs with the two different diet approaches and then study the total growth in muscular lbm at the end of a period.
On a larger scale you’d need more test subjects to average out genetic differences. Either way the outcomes would be true as a snapshot of this day, knowlegde of diet etc may increase in the future.
My guess is that if you really could pre-empt exactly the nutrient requirements and the timing thereof you wouldnt need to ‘bulk’ as such, but that in practice this isnt sufficiently well understood and also so easy to get wrong in practice that you won’t see many examples of success.
Most people attempting to grow while staying very lean will fail, especially if doing so on their own without day to day coaching, because they simply won’t be able to get the balance right.
ok get this iam supposed to be dieting for a competition ok last week i was down to 125.4 lbs today iam 136 thats 11lbs and i got much more cut i run everyday on an empty stomach and train 7 days a week frombodybuilding to rowing .
also i think it comes down to how well u know ur body i know how my body responds to certain foods , and last year trying to bulk up with a godd bf i went from 140 lbs with 13% bf to 166 lbs with 11% bf . i just made some rules and stuck by them , no carbs after 6 pm , if iam going to cheat its going to be the post workout meal no sodas or sweets , and it worked . i don’t have super genetics i was a fatboy thats why i did this and it worked.
[quote]dyskee wrote:
ok get this iam supposed to be dieting for a competition ok last week i was down to 125.4 lbs today iam 136 thats 11lbs and i got much more cut i run everyday on an empty stomach and train 7 days a week frombodybuilding to rowing .
also i think it comes down to how well u know ur body i know how my body responds to certain foods , and last year trying to bulk up with a godd bf i went from 140 lbs with 13% bf to 166 lbs with 11% bf . i just made some rules and stuck by them , no carbs after 6 pm , if iam going to cheat its going to be the post workout meal no sodas or sweets , and it worked . i don’t have super genetics i was a fatboy thats why i did this and it worked.[/quote]
The day someone not a midget who weighs 136lbs begins GIVING their personal experience with all of that muscle gain on a bodybuilding forum…and no one laughs and flames the hell out of them, is the day this site dies.
agreed whats up with you dieting for a contest @ 136lbs @ 5-10…
Back to gswork it would seem that this debate has been through the forums alot lately! Im really on the fence with this. On One hand there seems to be good science behind staying leen and maximizing nutrients and so forth but then again Look at a guy like Lee Priest he is said to baloon in the off season but Id say nobody here would argue that this affects him? He always comes in with great conditioning and makes reasonable gains and improvements year in year out for someone whos been training that long…just my thoughts
[quote]Dave.F wrote:
agreed whats up with you dieting for a contest @ 136lbs @ 5-10…
Back to gswork it would seem that this debate has been through the forums alot lately! Im really on the fence with this. On One hand there seems to be good science behind staying leen and maximizing nutrients and so forth but then again Look at a guy like Lee Priest he is said to baloon in the off season but Id say nobody here would argue that this affects him? He always comes in with great conditioning and makes reasonable gains and improvements year in year out for someone whos been training that long…just my thoughts[/quote]
[quote]dyskee wrote:
ok get this iam supposed to be dieting for a competition ok last week i was down to 125.4 lbs today iam 136 thats 11lbs and i got much more cut i run everyday on an empty stomach and train 7 days a week frombodybuilding to rowing .
also i think it comes down to how well u know ur body i know how my body responds to certain foods , and last year trying to bulk up with a godd bf i went from 140 lbs with 13% bf to 166 lbs with 11% bf . i just made some rules and stuck by them , no carbs after 6 pm , if iam going to cheat its going to be the post workout meal no sodas or sweets , and it worked . i don’t have super genetics i was a fatboy thats why i did this and it worked.[/quote]
It just seems to me that every time someone brings this subject up again, you have dumber people making the case for and against each side because the more experienced people avoid the topic because its been discussed ad nauseum on these very forums.
But really, dyskee,what kind of competition are you dieting for that you’ll compete at 125.4 lbs? Did you have both legs cut off at the hip in a tragic accident? Your picture is male, but maybe you’re a female fitness competitor? What the hell do you know about gaining real muscle when you weighed at the most 165 lbs, and lost all of that?
[quote]dyskee wrote:
ok get this iam supposed to be dieting for a competition ok last week i was down to 125.4 lbs today iam 136 thats 11lbs and i got much more cut i run everyday on an empty stomach and train 7 days a week frombodybuilding to rowing .
also i think it comes down to how well u know ur body i know how my body responds to certain foods , and last year trying to bulk up with a godd bf i went from 140 lbs with 13% bf to 166 lbs with 11% bf . i just made some rules and stuck by them , no carbs after 6 pm , if iam going to cheat its going to be the post workout meal no sodas or sweets , and it worked . i don’t have super genetics i was a fatboy thats why i did this and it worked.[/quote]
I think it is pretty widely accepted knowledge that its easy to gain muscle while losing fat when you are at the very beginner level. Once you each intermediate and beyond it becomes a whole new story. Every big guy at my gym followed a “bulking” period, hell the biggest guy told me he bulked without cutting a single time for about 10 years. Part of that time was spent as a powerlifter.
I can also see the very very very few people actually making progress month to month and they are the ones not scared to gain a little bit of fat in their quest for more muscle. The majority (id say 99%) of the people in the gym look exactly the same month after month, year after year. Why? Because they have the “Omg I need hawt abzzz!” mentality.
Brook I wanna be big and Im gona be big I was just cutting a little weight for a road race comming up on the 27th I’l get back on the bulking train the next day! however I still feel my opinions are valid …
Some time ago, somewhere someone started to associate the concept of “bulking” with an increase in bodyfat%.
I don’t know why this happened, but it got way out of hand.
Bulking simply means eating enough calories for you body to build additional muscle tissue.
If you gain more bodyfat than desired, either your training sucks (not enough intensity, not enough volume, etc) or your caloric intake is way too high.
Everyone is familiar with the concept of eating slightly more protein than you actually need, because is does no harm whatsoever and it would be stupid to limit one’s progress by accidentally consuming not enough Protein, so everyone goes a little overboard “just to be on the safe side”.
It’s the same with adding bodyfat while bulking, losing bodyfat is very easy and very fast if you know a little about diet and are able to push yourself in the gym (so excess calories do no harm) plus, it would be stupid to limit one’s progress by consuming not enough calories, so some people go a little overboard to “be on the safe side” and gain a little fat in the process (which is dieted off later).
BUT, if you a scared so much of gaining fat, simply adjust your caloric intake.
It’s impossible for your body to synthesize tissue while on a caloric deficit, if you try to “cut” now you’ll lose some weight, won’t make any progress in the gym whatsoever, likely slow down your metabolism in the process, and when attempting to “bulk” again afterwards you’ll end up exactly where you started a year ago.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
dyskee wrote:
ok get this iam supposed to be dieting for a competition ok last week i was down to 125.4 lbs today iam 136 thats 11lbs and i got much more cut i run everyday on an empty stomach and train 7 days a week frombodybuilding to rowing .
also i think it comes down to how well u know ur body i know how my body responds to certain foods , and last year trying to bulk up with a godd bf i went from 140 lbs with 13% bf to 166 lbs with 11% bf . i just made some rules and stuck by them , no carbs after 6 pm , if iam going to cheat its going to be the post workout meal no sodas or sweets , and it worked . i don’t have super genetics i was a fatboy thats why i did this and it worked.
The day someone not a midget who weighs 136lbs begins GIVING their personal experience with all of that muscle gain on a bodybuilding forum…and no one laughs and flames the hell out of them, is the day this site dies.
I really want to see what happens here.[/quote]
I can’t really see how evaluating a response based on how much the other person weights rather than the content of his reply helps “this site”.
[quote]Petrichor wrote:
Professor X wrote:
dyskee wrote:
ok get this iam supposed to be dieting for a competition ok last week i was down to 125.4 lbs today iam 136 thats 11lbs and i got much more cut i run everyday on an empty stomach and train 7 days a week frombodybuilding to rowing .
also i think it comes down to how well u know ur body i know how my body responds to certain foods , and last year trying to bulk up with a godd bf i went from 140 lbs with 13% bf to 166 lbs with 11% bf . i just made some rules and stuck by them , no carbs after 6 pm , if iam going to cheat its going to be the post workout meal no sodas or sweets , and it worked . i don’t have super genetics i was a fatboy thats why i did this and it worked.
The day someone not a midget who weighs 136lbs begins GIVING their personal experience with all of that muscle gain on a bodybuilding forum…and no one laughs and flames the hell out of them, is the day this site dies.
I really want to see what happens here.
I can’t really see how evaluating a response based on how much the other person weights rather than the content of his reply helps “this site”.[/quote]
Because the guy tried to say its possible just because he went from 136 to 166 while losing BF. That doesn’t apply to someone that already has a decent foundation of muscle. We are all well aware of “newbie gains”…unfortunately those don’t continue past a certain point, which is exactly why they are called newbie gains.
Most people attempting to grow while staying very lean will fail, especially if doing so on their own without day to day coaching, because they simply won’t be able to get the balance right.[/quote]
I can’t really see how evaluating a response based on how much the other person weights rather than the content of his reply helps “this site”.[/quote]
Of course you don’t. That is because you and those like you attempt to act as if gaining muscle isn’t important when it comes to who you listen to.
I also have no doubt that anyone who would even ask me that question is pretty undeveloped themselves.
People who have made progress and are looking for much more don’t walk up to the smallest guy in the gym to ask their opinion unless that guy is some super-personal trainer who has trained tons of people and produced huge muscles on nearly all of them.
What I want to know is how many people (even the larger, trained individuals) that are actually advocating a “lean bulk” got there by using the same means?
[quote]rsg wrote:
What I want to know is how many people (even the larger, trained individuals) that are actually advocating a “lean bulk” got there by using the same means?
Not many is my guess.[/quote]
I doubt ANY. It may take some digging since many seem to “hide” what they did to actually get that big, but I have yet to meet the huge lifter who is weighing over 260+lbs at average height who got there by eating only chicken breasts and rice in reasonable portions while fretting about how much their stomach sticks out or dieting down to 8% body fat at the first sign of any fat gain.
People are more focused on fat now than muscle and that is why I get to look around the gym now and see very few people who even look like they take this seriously.