Poll - best way to gain muscle / bulk

ElJefeChief

Feel free to answer this any way you like. I'm trying to see what the consensus is in MFP, and what your reasoning is.

For someone who is at or near goal-weight (such as myself), what do you think is the best way to effectively gain muscle / bulk, while minimizing fat gain?

a) Traditional bulk / cut cycles - basically, eat like mad, emphasize protein, lift ridiculously heavy and often, put up with some significant fat gain, then cut cut cut until your big muscles show up.

b) Recomposition. Eat at maintainence, lift heavy and lift smart, put up with slower lean muscle gains, but end up (theoretically, anyways) with trading fat for muscle in the end.

c) Some happy medium between "a" and "b" - much more modest bulk and cut cycles, doing "bulk" days and "cut" days, or ????

d) Some other option I haven't thought of.


Regarding me, I'm not unfamiliar at all with weight training and I've done it for years. The only piece I'm unfamiliar with is dieting properly. I've been great at losing weight, but now I'd like to see if I can gain lean mass, ideally, without a ton of "cutting" necessary at the end of it all. A six-pack would be cool, too.

I am willing to put up with some modest fat gains if I can get a good payoff in muscle bulk. Moreover, I won't probably be able to weight train more than 2-3 times per week at this point (that could change down the line, looking into upgrading my gym access).

Anyways, again, just trying to see what people's opinions and experiences are. I'm still in my information-gathering phase here.

rybo

Google "lean gains"
If I were to bulk that is how I'd go about it.

xcalygrl

C, if the conditions are right.

What I mean by conditions: is your body fat low enough? BF that is too high will cause you to gain more fat than desired during a bulk.

If your BF is in the "prime bulking" area (mid-teens for guys, low 20s for gals), I say a moderate surplus (250-500 depending on how long you want to bulk for) plus lifting all of the things.

If your BF is still too high to effectively bulk, but you are at a healthy weight then B would be my choice. Recomping can suck though because it is sooooo slow and doesn't give you the visual satisfaction of leaning out or gaining muscle as quickly as bulk/cut cycles.

ETA: the nice thing about recomp is that you can do it for a bit of time to get your BF lower then run a traditional bulk/cut. It will give you a mental and physical break from a deficit and allow you to better figure out maintenance calories.

piperdown44

Not many people I know here or on another weight lifting forum (not bb.com) do not "eat like mad" for a bulk anymore.
I think most of us realized that it sucked in a big way to have to trim a lot of fat off after doing that and, unless you're really aggressive on cal cutting, it takes a long time to properly cut without losing a lot of muscle in the process.

The better move, IMO, is a slight calorie surplus. I like about 250 cals over and heavy lifting. Run it for as long as you're comfortable. Sure it's slow (not as slow as a recomp) but it's easier to decide when to stop, reverse diet for a couple weeks and then cut slowly.

250 cal surplus over 30 days is just a little over 2lbs. That's 8lbs in 4 months. Figure with heavy lifting that it's 50/50. Very slow cut for another couple months may leave you about 3lbs gained.

More aggressive (and I wouldn't go over) is 500 cals. So double that to 16 lbs after 4 months, slow cut but a little longer (maybe 3-4 months as opposed to 2 months) to trim off the fat maybe 5-7lbs muscle gained.

A lot depends on how heavy you're lifting, how often, age, other activities too. Lots of variables to think about.

ElJefeChief

xcalygrl wrote: »

C, if the conditions are right.

What I mean by conditions: is your body fat low enough? BF that is too high will cause you to gain more fat than desired during a bulk.

If your BF is in the "prime bulking" area (mid-teens for guys, low 20s for gals), I say a moderate surplus (250-500 depending on how long you want to bulk for) plus lifting all of the things.

If your BF is still too high to effectively bulk, but you are at a healthy weight then B would be my choice. Recomping can suck though because it is sooooo slow and doesn't give you the visual satisfaction of leaning out or gaining muscle as quickly as bulk/cut cycles.

ETA: the nice thing about recomp is that you can do it for a bit of time to get your BF lower then run a traditional bulk/cut. It will give you a mental and physical break from a deficit and allow you to better figure out maintenance calories.

According to my Fibit Aria, my body fat percentage is stuck around 16%. Not great, not bad.

jemhh

Either works so I think that the best way is to commit to either A or B and just do it. After a reasonable length cycle of either you might switch it up but changing every month is probably the least effective thing to do.