Lean bulking?
Da_Chozen_Juan
Posts: 37 Member
I am considering to go on a lean bulk soon and have run into somewhat of a wall. Kinobody's take on lean bulking is to bulk by 500 cal for 3 weeks then go on a deficit for the 4th by 500 cal then repeat. Sounds legit but Another article I read suggested bulkin by 500 cals on the days that I train, and on my off days simply bulk by 100 cals. What do you think will be optimal and have you tried a small bulk?
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Why not 250 calories daily until you meet your weight goal? It's .5 lbs per week as opposed to 1 pound per week, which will hopefully allow for minimal fat gains. It's not over complicated.0
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It's hard to do daily calorie manipulation but it might slow your progress since you actually grow on your rest days as well, in fact, the gym is only for stimulation and it's the rest that really promotes the growth. The first suggestion is a mini-bulk/mini-cut cycle, which can certainly work but will take longer.0
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That's not a problem for me as there's really no rush, consistency is what matters. How long do you suggest going on a mini bulk for? Mini cut for?Wheelhouse15 wrote: »It's hard to do daily calorie manipulation but it might slow your progress since you actually grow on your rest days as well, in fact, the gym is only for stimulation and it's the rest that really promotes the growth. The first suggestion is a mini-bulk/mini-cut cycle, which can certainly work but will take longer.
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Da_Chozen_Juan wrote: »
That's not a problem for me as there's really no rush, consistency is what matters. How long do you suggest going on a mini bulk for? Mini cut for?Wheelhouse15 wrote: »It's hard to do daily calorie manipulation but it might slow your progress since you actually grow on your rest days as well, in fact, the gym is only for stimulation and it's the rest that really promotes the growth. The first suggestion is a mini-bulk/mini-cut cycle, which can certainly work but will take longer.
As long as you need to hit your goal. You won't know till you do it but you will roughly gain a pound a week in your bulk and lose a pound in your cut. So each month you should gain 2 pounds with maybe 1.5lbs being muscle if you fire on all cylinders. The reason why is you should gain 50% muscle on your bulk weeks but lose only about 5-10% muscle on your cut weeks. At least, I'm going to assume that's the theory behind this cycle.0 -
The first option would be easy to screw up because you will have metabolism and water weight fluctuations that will make it difficult to accurately assess your progress and rate of gain. When you cut on week 4, you will drop a bunch of water and this will make it even harder to see that pattern in your numbers. After a few cycles you may get your numbers down pretty well, but it is unnecessarily complicated. Also, if you nail everything perfectly, you are only gaining a max of 2 lbs of total mass per month, so maybe 1 lb of muscle per month if you are lucky. Unless you have already been bulking for a couple of years, this is pretty slow for a 20 year old male. Not sure why you would want to gain so slow, unless you have a good reason to stay really lean. But to each their own.
The second option won't hurt, but it won't "optimize" any progress. I have never read any science that would suggest that calorie cycling during a bulk is beneficial compared to a consistent amount of calories every day.0 -
Do a Slow Bulk - go at +250calories instead of +500. Slower progress, but less fat gained.0
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arditarose wrote: »Why not 250 calories daily until you meet your weight goal? It's .5 lbs per week as opposed to 1 pound per week, which will hopefully allow for minimal fat gains. It's not over complicated.
this ..
sounds like you are spinning your wheels and over complicating things...0 -
But a male can gain half a pound of muscle a week. I'd be going for that and getting out earlier, with a small cut at the end.
I'd make the most of that gain potential.0 -
It depends on how much of a novice you are. A true novice can gain muscle really quickly as he provides the right fuel for his body (protein and caloric surplus), and can gain weight super quickly. As you have more muscle mass, it takes longer and more complex training to add the same amount of muscle (in other words, you get diminishing returns, otherwise people who spend 20 years in the gym should look like Arnolds)0
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Springfield1970 wrote: »But a male can gain half a pound of muscle a week. I'd be going for that and getting out earlier, with a small cut at the end.
I'd make the most of that gain potential.
true, but I think that half pound per week number is considered only under "ideal" situations so not quite sure that every male will gain .5 pound per week of muscle....0 -
Springfield1970 wrote: »But a male can gain half a pound of muscle a week. I'd be going for that and getting out earlier, with a small cut at the end.
I'd make the most of that gain potential.
true, but I think that half pound per week number is considered only under "ideal" situations so not quite sure that every male will gain .5 pound per week of muscle....
Yes, they'd have to be super accurate with calories, be near the beginning of their lifting career, know what they were doing and have youth on their side perhaps?
Sounds like an oxymoron to me!
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Springfield1970 wrote: »Springfield1970 wrote: »But a male can gain half a pound of muscle a week. I'd be going for that and getting out earlier, with a small cut at the end.
I'd make the most of that gain potential.
true, but I think that half pound per week number is considered only under "ideal" situations so not quite sure that every male will gain .5 pound per week of muscle....
Yes, they'd have to be super accurate with calories, be near the beginning of their lifting career, know what they were doing and have youth on their side perhaps?
Sounds like an oxymoron to me!
Yeah, being over 40 sucks for gains lol.0 -
arditarose wrote: »Why not 250 calories daily until you meet your weight goal? It's .5 lbs per week as opposed to 1 pound per week, which will hopefully allow for minimal fat gains. It's not over complicated.
This +10 -
McDonald suggests that the average young male just starting out on his first bulk can grow 0.5 lb of muscle a week, given proper training, rest and nutrition:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html/
OP is 20, but he didn't mention anything about his training history.
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McDonald suggests that the average young male just starting out on his first bulk can grow 0.5 lb of muscle a week, given proper training, rest and nutrition:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html/
OP is 20, but he didn't mention anything about his training history.
He does, but he is dong this purely on speculation based on an anectodtal model from what I can see. Based on his theory an average young man should gain about 20 pounds of muscle in the first year, which seems very unlikely. To my knowledge he has never done a proper study using proper BF% measurments, nor does he site any, he does provide some indirect evidence based on studies of (presumed) natural body builders to justify his model, but I would take it with a grain of salt.0 -
Beachbody has a workout program that accomplishes this very well called body beast. If you buy it you also get an app for your phone (kinda) that is really handy while at the gym. The program is kind of built for body building but you can select the strength version as well. Program has both0
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Beachbody has a workout program that accomplishes this very well called body beast. If you buy it you also get an app for your phone (kinda) that is really handy while at the gym. The program is kind of built for body building but you can select the strength version as well. Program has both
While I would give Beast the credit for getting me into lifting, its a good but not great program or even ideal. It doesn't have enough training volume and has too much isolation.
OP, I generally lean towards a more consistent approach, 250 or 10-15% above TDEE. The variation in calories can over complicate things and make it more difficult to hit your goals. Plus the cut week would be hell with the huge reduction in calories.0 -
I'm going for a lean bulk too, I can't be bothered with varying my calories on training / non-training days.
If you want to try some quick cutting you could bulk for 8 weeks, de-load and cut for a week, then bulk for a further 8 weeks.
This would give you 8 weeks to see some strength gains between cuts.0 -
I have been training for 1 year entirely on a caloric deficit. I was 250 when I started, now I'm 180 lbs.McDonald suggests that the average young male just starting out on his first bulk can grow 0.5 lb of muscle a week, given proper training, rest and nutrition:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html/
OP is 20, but he didn't mention anything about his training history.
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Are you following a designed lifting program?0
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I'm going for a lean bulk too, I can't be bothered with varying my calories on training / non-training days.
If you want to try some quick cutting you could bulk for 8 weeks, de-load and cut for a week, then bulk for a further 8 weeks.
This would give you 8 weeks to see some strength gains between cuts.
or just bulk for 12 to 16 weeks and then cut ….0 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »McDonald suggests that the average young male just starting out on his first bulk can grow 0.5 lb of muscle a week, given proper training, rest and nutrition:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html/
OP is 20, but he didn't mention anything about his training history.
He does, but he is dong this purely on speculation based on an anectodtal model from what I can see. Based on his theory an average young man should gain about 20 pounds of muscle in the first year, which seems very unlikely. To my knowledge he has never done a proper study using proper BF% measurments, nor does he site any, he does provide some indirect evidence based on studies of (presumed) natural body builders to justify his model, but I would take it with a grain of salt.
And he prefaces the article by saying:Now, it should go without saying that nobody can really say upfront what someones genetic potential actually is. Until we live in the world of Gattaca where we can do a full genetic scan and know what it means, nobody can say ahead of time what someone can or can’t achieve.
In addition to other things mentioned upthread, genetics plays a huge part in it. It's all well and good to hypothesize that it may possibly happen, but there's no guarantee.0 -
Not exactly. I'm mainly doing an upper/lower split 4 days a week with a primary focus on compound movements with a little bit of isolation work.juggernaut1974 wrote: »Are you following a designed lifting program?
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Wheelhouse15 wrote: »McDonald suggests that the average young male just starting out on his first bulk can grow 0.5 lb of muscle a week, given proper training, rest and nutrition:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html/
OP is 20, but he didn't mention anything about his training history.
He does, but he is dong this purely on speculation based on an anectodtal model from what I can see. Based on his theory an average young man should gain about 20 pounds of muscle in the first year, which seems very unlikely. To my knowledge he has never done a proper study using proper BF% measurments, nor does he site any, he does provide some indirect evidence based on studies of (presumed) natural body builders to justify his model, but I would take it with a grain of salt.
And he prefaces the article by saying:Now, it should go without saying that nobody can really say upfront what someones genetic potential actually is. Until we live in the world of Gattaca where we can do a full genetic scan and know what it means, nobody can say ahead of time what someone can or can’t achieve.
In addition to other things mentioned upthread, genetics plays a huge part in it. It's all well and good to hypothesize that it may possibly happen, but there's no guarantee.
Yeah, my genetics aren't going to make me look like Arnold, although a good pharmacist can really help. I tend to lift a lot more than I look like I can so I have decent leverage, and I have some decent muscle mass as well, but I just lack the skeletal structure to make me look a lot more filled out.0
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