[quote]babaganoosh wrote:
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
Its:
That issue has been gone over a whole lot on this forum. I know for myself, I wouldn’t have gotten as big as I was and the size I’m maintain now–220 pounds–on far fewer calories had I not gone through a long bulk. I bulked up too much at times, but not to the limits that X and Fatty Fat have. I can maintain 220 with about 14% bodyfat at 5’10" without even eating much or training as much and as intensely as I did. I didn’t even lose much muscle while consuming about 1,200 to 1,300 calories on the Rapid Fat loss diet with near zero starchy carbs and training twice per week.
I’m not as advanced as X - never was, never will be. However, I still disagree with him on the EXTENT of bulking. I don’t see a point in going above 15 percent bodyfat. I did go above 15 percent, but I’m not sure if I can attribute that to my gains in size and strength. Added bodyweight will help to a great degree with max strength, but I don’t know if it will lead to greater gains in muscle mass up to a point because the bodyweight is supplying leverage, stability, and cushioning during some lifts. (You know how much easier it is to overhead press when your forearms spring off a fat AND muscular arm at the bottom position? Or how much easier is to squat when you have a fat and muscular neck, upper back, calves, stomach, and hams? A lot easier.)
I think the flawed yo-yo strategy results from eating too much. A guy, in an effort to get bigger, starts eating more–albeit too much–and then sees his poundages going up and some muscle gain. Then a few weeks go by and his clothing doesn’t fit too nicely anymore and people start informing him he’s fat. Then he looks in the mirror and he notices that he IS fat! So he starts back pedaling with the food intake - TOO MUCH in that direction also! So he winds up losing some of the gains he made. It turns into a vicious cycle in which the dude is either strong but too fat, or stringy and weak. The key is to bulk up, but no go overboard. It will involve some tracking of food intake with measuring cups, scales, and food labels at first. When you get more experienced you use more instincts and “eyeballing” of portions. [/quote]
I have a few problems with this post. I think when you start throwing numbers out there (i.e. “15% bodyfat”) kids are going to read this and think that they need to start dieting as soon as they hit what they think is 15% bodyfat. The same problem happened - although I wasn’t here to see it - with that Thibs 10% article, HELL, when I first joined, that was literally the first article I read, I had no experience, no knowledge, so I believed it. LUCKILY I didn’t cut down to 10% before bulking. I was convinced otherwise by more experienced guys.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, maybe it’s not worth going above 15% bodyfat, but the problem is reading your post may cause people to under eat and/or try to eat “clean” all the time - which we generally know does not work, in fear of going past 15% bodyfat. What I’m saying is, it is a bit careless to be throwing numbers around, especially since people are gonna listen to you Brick. No-one really knows when they are 15%, or 10%, or 20%. They can only guess (unless they have a really good body fat test done - I’m not sure of the best method tbh). Also what if there is a young guy who wants to get as big as he possibly can; let’s say he’s at 16% body fat. Should he be wasting time cutting down before gaining even though these are his best gaining years and he has practically no muscle yet? What if he’s already started a little late, and hasn’t really got any time to lose if he wants to get truly huge? It’s been a while, but from what I remember reading about Prof X and Way’s training, they never really did any cutting cycles (correct me if wrong!), but when bodyfat was an issue, did “damage control” instead, and it certainly seemed to work for them!
I think what you said in the second half of your post however is spot on. That is exactly what happened to Artem (people can learn from that kid’s mistakes). However, to break through a set point (there’s a great thread on that in T-Cell), you may need to go overboard for a little while (well, that is MY experience). What is most important is making sure you are seeing gains in strength that justify the bodyweight gains. You have to bust your ass in the gym.[/quote]
Thanks for the post and not taking any ONE person’s writings as if they’re fucking gospel - another problem that is wrecking people’s training and diets!
You wrote “wasting time”. Do you know how fucking long (or short) it takes to go from 16 to 12 percent bodyfat? With a restrictive diet–like the RFL diet or V-Diet–it can be done in ONE fucking month. If done with a gradual, less-restrictive diet, it can be done in a few month. And if adequate training is done, there should be minimal muscle loss because getting down to 10 to 12 percent is nothing like getting down to single-digit, contest-ready bodyfat. You don’t even need a restrictive diet to do it.
Now compare a 1 to 3 months with THREE DECADES (or more time) of training to get big! Anyway, one might reach their genetic potential, or close to it, after 15 years or less of training. Are you telling me that one little short-term sacrifice, done to get down to a certain fat percentage, is really so significant when compared to a training “career” or “journey”? I think not.
I don’t mean 15 percent is the gold standard. Actually, I’m at the point where I believe there is no gold standard way of doing all this. But on the other hand, there are things that hold true for MOST of us. EVERY time people bring up the bulk-to-the-hilt endeavor, they bring up X and Waylander, and sometimes Steely, Sky, and Fatty. Keep this in mind - you’re bringing up VERY serious men who have the dexterity and ABILITY to train and manage their intake adequately. They have become quite adept at monitoring everything required to be successful at this and a few of them have above-average genetics.
And genetics is worth bringing up here, even in regards to this whole bodyfat/bulking-up issue. There are some men that are successful with the ultra-bulk-up approach and there are men that are NOT successful with the approach. Chris Shugart is an example of someone who, for whatever reason, was NOT successful with that approach. (There’s nothing wrong with that.) As Dan Duchain wrote in Bodyopus, the genetic elite, at worst, suffer from looking “smooth” and chipmunk cheeks; they just appear “bulky”. The “sacrifice” they must go through to start losing some weight is just eating LESS (not none) ice cream and potato chips. Genetically hapless individuals (uh, like most of the population) can’t hold onto the muscle they have while dropping huge amounts of weight.
And I ask: "Who the hell wants the responsibility of losing so much goddamn weight when they could have done this more gradually and suffered less while dieting down?
“How many of you are going to enter a show?”
“And if you do start entering shows on a REGULAR basis, do you know what kind of burden you’ll be placing on yourself when you have to drop so much goddamn weight every time you want to compete?”
And let me use this disclaimer before I go forward. I have nothing–repeat NOTHING–but respect for PX; he’s one of the most competent guys on this forum. But I don’t know why he is the go-to guy with this bulking issue. He has stated over and OVER that he hates dieting down. YES, he is fucking enormous - he definitely knows how to get big. But what about the whole other side of the bodybuilding coin - getting ripped while maintaining muscle mass? We have no idea what difficulty he’ll run into if he decides to come down.
And there’s another side to the whole set-point coin too! Yes, it’s true that you need to hold onto your mass for a considerable amount of time so that you don’t shrink down the very minute you subtract calories. The other side of this is that when you get so goddamn big (muscle AND fat), the slightest reduction in diet sets off hunger pangs and symptoms. Is that something YOU want to deal with?
And people have to keep something in mind with authors too. CT is writing for a mainstream publication. I bet dollars to doughnuts that he personally knows men that do well with an all-out bulk. But PROBABLY (I don’t KNOW) from his vast experience (the guy is fucking awesome at what he does!), he noticed that MOST people–you know, men that don’t have stellar genetics and do this as a HOBBY–DON’T do well with it and it creates problems for them.
The setpoint thing holds true for fat mass too (from my observation and experience). Chris Shugart and CT have gone over this. If you hold onto fat mass for a long time, the body stubbornly holds onto it. Just like Shugart said, there are men that now have problem areas with bodyfat that are extremely hard to shake without extreme, restrictive dieting and/or excessive amounts of physical activity that are not even worth it unless the person wants to compete. NO ONE on here ever thinks of this whole thing like that! They love going over the setpoint thing for mass and that you have to be fucking huge for a long time so the body recognizes it as regular (X’s mantra that he repeats over and over), but NO ONE mentions what I propose here - the problems that can occur for many GENETICALLY ORDINARY folks with ORDINARY lifestyles and ability.