Building Muscle

It’s about that time. The Earth is embarking on its journey which begins growing the distance between the northern hemisphere and the sun. Days are getting shorter and gradually becoming colder. The layers of clothing are coming back on and you’re digging out your hoodies and sweatshirts that went missing for summer. But amongst all this something far more important is going on. More important than the changes in celestial objects and their position in the cosmos. It’s the start of something special. At the back of every gym rat's mind they've started planning something. It’s been a lingering thought throughout much of the summer cut but the time is finally here. Its bulking season!

Time to Bulk

Before we start talking about bulking lets quickly differentiate between the two main phases of a bodybuilder's season. Professionals refer to them as on season and off season but most people refer to them as a cut and a bulk. When pros are on season they are looking to get ready for stage and reach their lowest body fat percentages to show off their muscle. During the off season they will be aiming to build mass and sacrifice their stage condition to optimise the muscle building process.

Very extreme example of a bodybuilder during a bulk and after a cut

Most people who pursue bodybuilding as a hobby will use the winter months to bulk up and build muscle mass. This isn't always the case for professionals as they typically use contest dates to determine when they transition between a cutting phase and a bulking phase. The biggest bodybuilding contest, Mr Olympia, takes place in October. So Phil and Kai, you might not relate to this article as much the regular gym rat but I’ll try to write one aimed at pros some time in the future.

Now for someone to add muscle mass to their physique they need to be continuously training hard and eating right. These are the two fundamental aspects of gaining muscle and this article will focus on the nutritional side of things.

In this article I’ll be looking more at how to adjust your diet for a bulk and what you should expect in terms of mass gain. In a later article I’ll begin to talk about what I’ve found to be the most effective way to gain muscle through resistance training.

Transition from a cut to a bulk

Ever been in the situation where you finish a cut and want to start throwing the ice cream and pop tarts down your face. It’s allowed now right? It’s ok I’m bulking. Dirty bulk. Mad gains. Let’s do this. Yeh buddy!

Much of this is fuelled by the anticipation of entering a bulk (which is what I was trying to capture in the intro) and the psychological stress that a cutting phase can cause. Even when done gradually and effectively, when you reach a low enough body fat percentage you’re going to find it hard to maintain. It’s not where your body naturally feels comfortable. Please note, I’m talking about a level of leanness where you see striations in muscles you didn’t know existed and veins that resemble a road map.

For many people they will find they begin to lose their conditioning very quickly. At the end of a cut your body is primed for storage. You’ve been in a caloric deficit for a fair amount of time and your hormonal profile is geared towards storing fat. Different individuals are more prone to the effects of exiting a cut but everyone will be affected to some extent.

How to Minimise Fat Gain

At the end of a cut your maintenance calories are going to be far below what they were when you started your cut. Some people might try jumping straight back to what they were eating to begin with assuming that this is still their maintenance level but this is far from accurate. The level of calories that you finish your cut on is close to where your current maintenance will be assuming you have gradually lowered calories throughout the cut while breaking through plateaus.

To begin your journey back to where you were eating you will need to start adding in calories gradually. Usually increasing calories by around 2-4% a week will be a good aim to keep your body fat levels in check while increasing the amount of food you’re eating. Below I’ve attached my personal reverse diet plan which I am using to phase out of my cut and into a bulk.

From the screenshot of the excel spreadsheet you can see at week commencing 25/08 I began my reverse diet aiming to eat around 70g, 240g and 230g of fats carbs and protein, respectively. This was roughly around where I finished my cut. On the last week of my cut fats were around 5g below this, carbs were around 20g below this and protein was around 10g above this. 

As the weeks go on I plan on increasing fats by 2g a week and raising carbs by 20g a week while lowering protein by 10g a week. The increase in carbs by 20g and decrease in protein by 10g will give a net calorie increase of 40 calories. The reasons for lowering protein will be explained in more detail in a following article on how to eat for a cut, but briefly, you need more protein when you’re cutting and relatively less when you’re bulking. However, it is important to realise protein is still very important when you're looking to gain muscle and this is why once I reach 200g of protein I will stop reducing it any further and decrease the carb intake increment to 10g from 20g.

I am aiming to get to my previous maintenance calorie intake in a 10 week period so by the last week of October I’ll be eating around 90g fats, 370g of carbs and 200g of protein giving me a total of just over 3000 calories. Just in time for Halloween so I'll be able to enjoy my treats.

This is just the theoretical framework for what I am planning to do and things in real life may differ somewhat which is why it is important to keep a track of weight throughout. I like to weigh myself every morning and take an average weekly weight reading and see how that compares to my average calorie intake. If I see that my weight is going up too fast it is likely fat gain and I’ll have to take the foot off the gas, so to speak (or the roti off the tava).

Now We’re Gaining

Once you’ve got to around your pre-cut level of maintenance calories and are finding that your weight gain is plateauing you’re ready to transition into a bulk where you begin to add new muscle, not just regain muscle lost from your cut. 

This doesn’t mean you should increase calories by 1000+.Many people do this and gain fat faster than muscle. You can only gain so much muscle in a given time period and adding excess calories get stored as fat. Adding excess fat will only mean you have to cut for longer or cut more aggressively if you want to get to your desired body fat level. Both of these measures create a more catabolic environment that could have been avoided with minimal fat gain so always increase calories as needed.

How Much Do I Aim to Gain?

The amount of muscle you gain depends on many factors including genetics, years of training and training intensity. Although muscle gain is not an easy process, for some people it is a relatively easier process compared to others. This shouldn't be used as an excuse by hard gainers but rather used to understand that they need to make adjustments to their diet and training and that their calorie intake will be different to someone who is of a similar size but gains muscle easier.

Genetics can also cap your muscle gaining abilities. There is only so much muscle you can gain and as years of training progress the muscle gain will be slowing down at an increasing pace. So someone who has been training for 10 years may be close to their potential and will probably notice very little muscle gain during a bulk compared to a new starter who would experience their best gains during their first few years of training. So when deciding how much you’re aiming to gain during a bulk the level of experience should be something which is considered.

The best way that I suggest to bulk is to put yourself in a caloric surplus and continue training hard whilst monitoring progress through the scale and through the mirror and make regular adjustments when needed to break through plateaus. This will help you gain at your optimal level where fat gain is minimised.

How to measure Progress?

The mirror can be very useful when measuring progress when used along with weight measurements to help you decide if your weight gain is muscle or fat however it can also be misleading by people who see fat gains as muscle therefore it shouldn't be used as the only measure. Strength gains can be used to help understand whether the gains you see in the mirror are fat or muscle if you have a difficult time distinguishing between the two. 

As you gain muscle your weight will begin to increase through the new muscle built and the glycogen that this newly built muscle can store. When you have lower levels of glycogen your weight will drop which could be mistaken as muscle loss. This is why someone who is incorporating a carb cycle into their diet routine could be confused and think they are losing muscle on a bulk but taking a weekly average of weight should 

help resolve this potential confusion.

Individual Differences

One thing that is very important to recognise when adjusting calories, be it for a bulk or cut, is that individual differences will come in to play a lot. You may know people who need a lot of calories to gain muscle and others who can do it with fewer calories while staying at their optimal muscle gain level. This is why it is very important to track intake and learn your body’s response to different increases in calories and where those calories come from. This ties in closely to different set points and varying metabolic flexibility which will be discussed in detail in the future.

Bulking can be an exciting time for many but others who are concerned about maintaining visible abs all year round may find that they are reluctant to increase calories. This means they do not gain muscle at a significant rate. Even if you bring in calories slowly and keep training intensity high, some fat gain is inevitable during a bulk, (unless you’re a beginner where you may be able to do both in certain circumstances).

Various strategies can be used for individuals who want to stay lean such as carb cycling or cyclical ketogenic diets which some people find very effective for staying lean while bulking. Some find that they benefit from introducing a mini-cut during their bulk where calories are dropped for a short period and then raised again.

Others have a problem with how much they eat and find it hard to build an appetite to get enough calories in while some think they are eating more than they actually are. This is common problem amongst hard gainers and can be easily fixed by tracking calorie intake accurately. Once you see how much you’re eating you can begin to make adjustments and often self-proclaimed hard gainers are just individuals who aren’t eating enough. There are many ways that someone can help fix this problem including low intensity cardio and changing food sources to increase appetite and fit more calories into your diet.   

I’ll begin to go more in depth into these areas in future posts but this hopefully sets some bulkers up for some nice LEAN GAINS!