i’ve read a lot your posts here and you seem like you are very knowledgeable about bodybuilding. i had a few questions, i was wondering if you can answer them…
I’ve been bulking for the last 2 years and have put on a decent amount of mass. I’m nowhere near the size of a bodybuilder or even close but i’m happy with my overall size at the moment. I’m now concerned about losing body fat and getting my body in proportion (bring up lagging body parts).
Do you believe someone can gain muscle in a caloric deficit? Mainly I ask because I’ve seen a lot of posts where people introduce diets where they are above maintenance certain days and below on others. My question is, can one be slighly below maintenance and gain muscle consistantly while losing bodyfat?
Also, for lagging body parts, do you advocate increase volume for them? Until now I have done mostly low volume routines (max-ot, doggcrapp, etc). My two biggest lagging bodyparts are biceps and traps.
[quote]tfhut987 wrote:
i’ve read a lot your posts here and you seem like you are very knowledgeable about bodybuilding. i had a few questions, i was wondering if you can answer them…
I’ve been bulking for the last 2 years and have put on a decent amount of mass. I’m nowhere near the size of a bodybuilder or even close but i’m happy with my overall size at the moment. I’m now concerned about losing body fat and getting my body in proportion (bring up lagging body parts).
Do you believe someone can gain muscle in a caloric deficit? Mainly I ask because I’ve seen a lot of posts where people introduce diets where they are above maintenance certain days and below on others. My question is, can one be slighly below maintenance and gain muscle consistantly while losing bodyfat?
Also, for lagging body parts, do you advocate increase volume for them? Until now I have done mostly low volume routines (max-ot, doggcrapp, etc). My two biggest lagging bodyparts are biceps and traps.
Since the Prof must have had a ‘busy’ Saturday night and hasn’t arisen yet, I am going to do the untinkable. I will give you MY answers to your questions and then let the Prof give you his views. The answers may not be as different as you would think.
It is highly unlikely that you can gain SIZE in a caloric deficit state. You can gain some strength but even that will be limited. You can also get more definition which may make you APPEAR larger when unclothed but as for actual hypertrophy, I don’t think so. When I went from 170 to 185, I did it over 18 months by eating roughly 250 calories over maintenance.
Maintenance actually changed as I put on more muscle so my total daily caloric continued to go up and not stay static. Most people don’t take that into account and stay with a set caloric input which, if you are working out, will reset your maintenance point. I reset my estimated input every 2 weeks.
I gained 29 pounds of muscle and lost 14 or 15 pounds of fat based on skin fold tests. Now I try and stay at maintenance, which, by the way, is significantly higher than the maintenance plus 250 calories when I started my slow bulk.
2.If you have lagging body parts and are using low volume workouts, the obvious answer is to increase volume on the lagging parts. My personal twist would be to increase volume by increasing FREQUENCY. Thus if you were working arms once per week for 6 sets, I would drop the daily volume to 3 sets but increase the frequency to every other day or even every day.
Many of the recent studies show that protein synthesis is complete in 48 hours, on average. Thus, many TBT-type programs say workout every 48 hours. (No this is not an endorsement of TBT nor meant to be anti-split. I use them both depending on what my body tells me.) However, I am not sure you have to wait 48 hours because it MAY be beneficial to work a muscle BEFORE protein synthesis is complete. That has been my experience but I have seen no real studies to support it and most “traditionalists” would call me a heretic.
Just my two cents worth of hereticism.
EDIT: Also take a look at Staley’s recent thread using EDT twice per week for arms. It sounds like a good compromise between more frequency and more volume.
In addition to what AvoidsRoids wrote (he’s been on the planet for at least a century longer than the rest of us so we owe him some respect)
[quote]tfhut987 wrote:
Do you believe someone can gain muscle in a caloric deficit? Mainly I ask because I’ve seen a lot of posts where people introduce diets where they are above maintenance certain days and below on others. My question is, can one be slighly below maintenance and gain muscle consistently while losing bodyfat?[/quote]
You used the word “consistently”. No, I do not think most people, outside of some beginners or those who easily gain muscle mass regardless of what they do, would “consistently” make progress on a caloric deficit. Your body needs more energy than it uses to maintain to build that additional muscle mass.
Someone who is new to training could be more likely to see some type of growth while in a deficit simply because their muscles are now being stimulated to adapt where they never were before. This would not be an effect experienced CONSISTANTLY in someone well trained with several years of bodybuilding experience behind them for the most part. Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, I have experienced some type of increase in muscle mass before when dieting. NO, I would not relate this to what could be seen had I actually been providing my body with everything it needed to grow more.
In short, blanket statements don’t always apply when it comes to biology. Biology is adaptive. It finds a way to do things that scientific studies don’t even have a firm grasp on yet.
[quote]
2. Also, for lagging body parts, do you advocate increase volume for them? Until now I have done mostly low volume routines (max-ot, doggcrapp, etc). My two biggest lagging bodyparts are biceps and traps.
Thank you[/quote]
Any body part that is lagging, I train more often. In fact, I don’t just do this for body parts that are lagging. My shoulders are no longer lagging at all. They actually stand out pretty significantly.
However, I want them to actually draw more attention compared to the rest of my upper body so I still train them at least 2 times a week. My calves didn’t grow until I started training them every single day. Now, I actually have some calf muscles. Hell, I’m still wearing shorts and its cold outside.
The idea of losing fat while building muscle or strength is something I would really like to see more talk about around here. It seems like the immediate answer is always no, and the facts seem to indicate that this is the correct answer. However, I personally have pulled this off on a number of occasions in my life. The Prof is definitely right about the consistency portion of this idea. However I would wager that there are a great number of experienced lifters who could still pull this off with the correct diet/training regime at least temporarily. Specifically, look into Thib’s meltdown training article, running man (not the movie!), and also German Volume training by Poliquin?
I did a 4 week cycle of meltdown training about 3 years ago; prior to that I had lifted consistently for probably about 3-4 years. Mind you the first 3 years were not quality time in the gym as at the time as I was in high school and I had not yet found this place; my guide was crap in magazines. Tangent aside, at the time I must have weighed about 230 lbs (6’1"). The training schedule went as follows:
Monday & Thursday
4 x
10 r squat (315 lbs)
10 r chins (w/ 20-35 lb dumbbell)
10 r deadlift (315 lbs)
10 r DB bench press (120’s)
Tuesday & Friday
4 x
10 r barbell lunges (205 lbs)
10 r pushpress (205 lbs)
10 r dips (w/ 45-90 lbs)
10 r barbell row (185 lbs)
I list weights to demonstrate my relative strength level at the time. I know some of those weights are not big around here but trust me supersetting that stuff was fun.
If I remember correctly I lost around 5-7 lbs body weight. However, body comp. changes were significant. Nothing quantitative except 2 notches on my belt. So, again with the right training/diet I believe you can make it happen. However, I had never trained with this sort of volume and intensity so maybe that is why I was able to make significant gains…
Again, as Avoids and the Prof stated though this will not be something one can pull off consistently. But clearly this seems to be one of your goals (lose fat/build muscle) so check out the aforemtnioned articles.
[quote]jpersinger wrote:
The idea of losing fat while building muscle or strength is something I would really like to see more talk about around here. It seems like the immediate answer is always no, and the facts seem to indicate that this is the correct answer. However, I personally have pulled this off on a number of occasions in my life. The Prof is definitely right about the consistency portion of this idea. However I would wager that there are a great number of experienced lifters who could still pull this off with the correct diet/training regime at least temporarily. [/quote]
The problem with that is that while you may think as a beginner that you have “forever” to make progress, you will eventually figure out that you wish you had every moment you ever wasted back as far as “bodybuilding” is concerned. I could honestly care less about trying to force my body in two directions as it will, without a doubt, cause slower progress as far as muscle growth.
Add into it genetic factors and the hassles of life itself, and very few people truly have the time in the short life given them to SLOWLY gain muscle mass that they could have gained in a fraction of the time had they only focused on one goal at a time.
Body fat loss takes less time than building significant amounts of muscle. That muscle built is also based on AGE, sex, metabolism and genetics. That means some 21 year old kid who spends the next 10 years gaining only 20lbs of muscle because he was afraid of losing abs will be far behind the 21 year old who went ahead and bulked up a little and gained 80lbs in the same time period.
Yes, goals are a factor, but considering the forum, for many, that goal is not MINIMAL gains in muscle mass.
If we begin to take into account body weight set points, we bring up an entirely different set of problems as I believe those who start out skinny and never force any type of extra weight gain will see far less overall progress.
If your goals are " a little bit of muscle" then carry on and try pulling your body down two different roads. Eventually, you just might gain an inch here or there…maybe…perhaps.
Any general advice for arm training? What have you found causes the greatest increases in arm size? [/quote]
Overall weight gain and direct arm work. There are no people with 20" arms who only weigh 170lbs unless they are disproportionate midgets.
[quote]
2) What do you think about tempo, or using slow negatives on reps? I find doing 3 or 4 second negatives kills my work capacity. [/quote]
I have done negatives…at the end of a workout before. I don’t do them regularly. I usually use a fairly quick tempo attempting to lower the weight a little slower than I lift it. I see some of the smallest people lifting weights the slowest as if they get an award for taking half an hour to put a weight down. Chances are, if you can lift a weight that slowly for that long, you aren’t lifting heavy enough.
I guess I should clarify that I do understand that attempting to do both is a waste of time and that it is much more efficient to focus on one at a time. When I stated that I would like to hear more talk about losing fat/gaining muscle simultaneously, I guess what I really mean is more talk about what is happening internally to make this happen. How are we making strength gains when we are in calorie deficit…that sort of deal.
And when I said I have pulled this off a number of times, it was never really my intention. At the time my goal was to lose fat period. I planned to work hard in the gym in the hopes of at least retaining muscle mass. It just so happened that with a few of the programs I have given a spin over the previous years I have been able to lose fat and at least gain strength; specifically talking meltdown training. There was another program written by Thib that yielded similar results for myself; consisted primarily of coupling heavy 5 rep compounds with an additional 5 reps of a different exercise, less weight, slow concentric. Can’t remember what it was called.
So, I hope after clarification that people aren’t lead to believe that striving towards both fat loss and muscle gain simultaneously is a good call, or even that I think it is a good call.
Also, Prof X you mentioned that you train calves everyday. While we are on the “ask Prof X” I wouldn’t mind hearing more about your particular routine. Thanks.
The problem with that is that while you may think as a beginner that you have “forever” to make progress, you will eventually figure out that you wish you had every moment you ever wasted back as far as “bodybuilding” is concerned.[/quote]
Also, Prof X you mentioned that you train calves everyday. While we are on the “ask Prof X” I wouldn’t mind hearing more about your particular routine. Thanks. [/quote]
I just started making it the very first thing I do when I get in the gym. Some days I may only do either seated OR standing calf raises (usually alternating between them daily). Some days I do both with about 4 sets each going up to my heaviest weight. I’ve been doing this for over a year and a half now so it is just becoming what I do to get my mind ready for lifting weights. I don’t argue with what works. I never did have much prgress there in the past and had just given up on them. They didn’t start to progress until my overall body weight increased so I think simply carrying around heavier weight all day helped as well.
Also, Prof X you mentioned that you train calves everyday. While we are on the “ask Prof X” I wouldn’t mind hearing more about your particular routine. Thanks.
I just started making it the very first thing I do when I get in the gym. Some days I may only do either seated OR standing calf raises (usually alternating between them daily). Some days I do both with about 4 sets each going up to my heaviest weight. I’ve been doing this for over a year and a half now so it is just becoming what I do to get my mind ready for lifting weights. I don’t argue with what works. I never did have much prgress there in the past and had just given up on them. They didn’t start to progress until my overall body weight increased so I think simply carrying around heavier weight all day helped as well.[/quote]
It seems the only period in which my calf size increased was when my training partner and I went back to the gym every evening before they closed and proceeded to murder our calves.
[quote]TrainerinDC wrote:
This is the beginning of a new column.
The X Factor
The X Man
Ask the Professor
Mutation Fitness
I’m out of ideas for the name. But Prof I promise to be the guy who harps you on your answers. Even if we agree 95% of the time. Which we do.
[/quote]
Aw man, you forgot the inevitable “X-FILEZ”
Though I’ve only ever asked him one question directly Professor X has helped me a lot too. Actually with some of the very things this thread started with. Had I done ten years ago what he’s telling you youngens here I’d be one hefty mofo right now instead of having to approach those goals as a 40 plus starting over semi noob and all the adjustments that necessarily means.
Work, eat, rest and grow large while you’re in your prime. Your greatly then swole physique will chew up fat by accident.
