The 'Bulking' Philosophy

Training Bodybuilding
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[quote]Professor X wrote:
<<< Gaining LARGE amounts of muscle is simply not something your body wants to do. It will fight you to do so. >>>[/quote]

This point really does get missed a lot. Diplomatic persuasion and carrot dangling does not induce serious muscle growth. It must be coerced in no uncertain terms under the iron and on your plate.

The trouble a lot of guys have as I see it is no matter whether trying to gain or get lean the emphasis is always on body fat. They say they want to get bigger, but the first thing they check in the mirror is whether they’ve gotten any fatter. They want to get leaner and the first thing they check is if they’ve lost any fat. Body fat is the overriding concern regardless of anything else.

They are thinking wrong.

I honestly don’t even notice my body fat level when checking progress. I look to see if there’s any new muscle. If there were a significant gain in body fat it would catch my attention, but that isn’t what I’m looking for.

One other thing along these lines and there are guys I like and generally agree with who I know disagree with me here. Any amount of body fat that requires testing to be detected is not only not worth worrying about, but that concern exemplifies the very misdirected attitude I’m talking about. I’m referring to people looking to get bigger. I not a fan of body comp tests anyway, but especially when shooting for size.

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I think this’ll be my first post ever here, but I just wanted to say welcome back to Professor X. One of the most helpful sources of info on T-Nation, IMO. Glad to see you back.

Now, onto this topic, here’s a pretty interesting article from Kelly Baggett that suggests a rapid method for weight gain where you basically plan on gaining about twice the number of pounds total as pounds of muscle you’d like to add. I’m not sure about his ‘1 lb/week’ thing or some of the training plans, but it’s an interesting read.

DS

mindandmuscle.net/articles/kelly_baggett/bodybuilder

P.S. I had the realization that this might be the original article the OP was talking about, but decided to post it anyway…enjoy.

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Oh and I’d also like to thank both ProfX and Tiribulus, who I know have both posted on this topic many times in the past (probably too many for either to count), for continuing to try to get people to understand what has to be done in order to gain appreciable amounts of muscle in a reasonable time.

I know their posts (along with DC’s writings) helped me get my head on straight and start gaining (while fighting an uphill battle with it b/c I’m in my mid-30s…oops…waited a bit too long to figure it all out!).

DS