Cutting to Bulking
Replies
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dreamsignals wrote: »Awesome job @Tsartele!
Keep checking in with updates.
If I were to leave a suggestion, reassess after you've shed the next 10lbs of fat. From the pictures and your avatar goal, it looks like you could be ready for a legit bulk at that point.
All the best.
You might be correct..I know that I am not far away from my bulking phase... I don't care about the scale number as much as I do about being ripped...and overall body composition. The 160 number was just a guess because I don't know what it's going to actually take to reach my goal.1 -
dreamsignals wrote: »Awesome job @Tsartele!
Keep checking in with updates.
If I were to leave a suggestion, reassess after you've shed the next 10lbs of fat. From the pictures and your avatar goal, it looks like you could be ready for a legit bulk at that point.
All the best.
You might be correct..I know that I am not far away from my bulking phase... I don't care about the scale number as much as I do about being ripped...and overall body composition. The 160 number was just a guess because I don't know what it's going to actually take to reach my goal.
Please don't take this in a negative way but I would get considerably leaner before you consider bulking. When you eat in a surplus you gain lean body mass AND fat, there is no way to avoid it. Gaining 5lbs and 5lbs of fat over 3-4 months will not leave you with the physique you desire and you'll have to cut again.
The best practise is reduce bodyfat to under 15% (as close to 10) as possible and then aim to gain 2-3lbs a month to ensure the least fat gains.0 -
trigden1991 wrote: »dreamsignals wrote: »Awesome job @Tsartele!
Keep checking in with updates.
If I were to leave a suggestion, reassess after you've shed the next 10lbs of fat. From the pictures and your avatar goal, it looks like you could be ready for a legit bulk at that point.
All the best.
You might be correct..I know that I am not far away from my bulking phase... I don't care about the scale number as much as I do about being ripped...and overall body composition. The 160 number was just a guess because I don't know what it's going to actually take to reach my goal.
Please don't take this in a negative way but I would get considerably leaner before you consider bulking. When you eat in a surplus you gain lean body mass AND fat, there is no way to avoid it. Gaining 5lbs and 5lbs of fat over 3-4 months will not leave you with the physique you desire and you'll have to cut again.
The best practise is reduce bodyfat to under 15% (as close to 10) as possible and then aim to gain 2-3lbs a month to ensure the least fat gains.
^^I agree.
There is a mental game you play when you bulk and cut. When bulking you need to accept (and be able to handle) the gain in fat. for this reason I recommend you're very happy with your %BF before a bulk - If you want 6 pack abs and there not present at the start of a bulk, they sure as hell ain't going to be visible after a bulk.
Also, I was skeptical of the bro-science, body partitioning concept which says that "the more fat you have at the start of a bulk, the more fat you will gain during that bulk" but I recently saw this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27604771
Which indicates that leaner individuals will gain more muscle on a bulk than overweight peers.
So, in your instance, I would (as @Hornsby recommends) hit maintenance (or as close to it as possible) for a couple of weeks as a break then return to cutting for a while to get to a %BF you're happy with before your cut.
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StealthHealth wrote: »trigden1991 wrote: »dreamsignals wrote: »Awesome job @Tsartele!
Keep checking in with updates.
If I were to leave a suggestion, reassess after you've shed the next 10lbs of fat. From the pictures and your avatar goal, it looks like you could be ready for a legit bulk at that point.
All the best.
You might be correct..I know that I am not far away from my bulking phase... I don't care about the scale number as much as I do about being ripped...and overall body composition. The 160 number was just a guess because I don't know what it's going to actually take to reach my goal.
Please don't take this in a negative way but I would get considerably leaner before you consider bulking. When you eat in a surplus you gain lean body mass AND fat, there is no way to avoid it. Gaining 5lbs and 5lbs of fat over 3-4 months will not leave you with the physique you desire and you'll have to cut again.
The best practise is reduce bodyfat to under 15% (as close to 10) as possible and then aim to gain 2-3lbs a month to ensure the least fat gains.
^^I agree.
There is a mental game you play when you bulk and cut. When bulking you need to accept (and be able to handle) the gain in fat. for this reason I recommend you're very happy with your %BF before a bulk - If you want 6 pack abs and there not present at the start of a bulk, they sure as hell ain't going to be visible after a bulk.
Also, I was skeptical of the bro-science, body partitioning concept which says that "the more fat you have at the start of a bulk, the more fat you will gain during that bulk" but I recently saw this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27604771
Which indicates that leaner individuals will gain more muscle on a bulk than overweight peers.
So, in your instance, I would (as @Hornsby recommends) hit maintenance (or as close to it as possible) for a couple of weeks as a break then return to cutting for a while to get to a %BF you're happy with before your cut.
The p-ratio was known for a while, Lyle McDonald never pushes broscience.
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Wheelhouse15 wrote: »StealthHealth wrote: »trigden1991 wrote: »dreamsignals wrote: »Awesome job @Tsartele!
Keep checking in with updates.
If I were to leave a suggestion, reassess after you've shed the next 10lbs of fat. From the pictures and your avatar goal, it looks like you could be ready for a legit bulk at that point.
All the best.
You might be correct..I know that I am not far away from my bulking phase... I don't care about the scale number as much as I do about being ripped...and overall body composition. The 160 number was just a guess because I don't know what it's going to actually take to reach my goal.
Please don't take this in a negative way but I would get considerably leaner before you consider bulking. When you eat in a surplus you gain lean body mass AND fat, there is no way to avoid it. Gaining 5lbs and 5lbs of fat over 3-4 months will not leave you with the physique you desire and you'll have to cut again.
The best practise is reduce bodyfat to under 15% (as close to 10) as possible and then aim to gain 2-3lbs a month to ensure the least fat gains.
^^I agree.
There is a mental game you play when you bulk and cut. When bulking you need to accept (and be able to handle) the gain in fat. for this reason I recommend you're very happy with your %BF before a bulk - If you want 6 pack abs and there not present at the start of a bulk, they sure as hell ain't going to be visible after a bulk.
Also, I was skeptical of the bro-science, body partitioning concept which says that "the more fat you have at the start of a bulk, the more fat you will gain during that bulk" but I recently saw this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27604771
Which indicates that leaner individuals will gain more muscle on a bulk than overweight peers.
So, in your instance, I would (as @Hornsby recommends) hit maintenance (or as close to it as possible) for a couple of weeks as a break then return to cutting for a while to get to a %BF you're happy with before your cut.
The p-ratio was known for a while, Lyle McDonald never pushes broscience.
I guess I called it bro science because, due to my exceptionally poor google scholar skills, I couldn't find any studies in it (I generally find that unless you know the correct terms to search on you can search and search but not find the type of studies you need) only people on this and other forums talking about fat/muscle partitioning as if it were a given.
The linked study was one which was mentioned in a blog I read least week.0 -
StealthHealth wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »StealthHealth wrote: »trigden1991 wrote: »dreamsignals wrote: »Awesome job @Tsartele!
Keep checking in with updates.
If I were to leave a suggestion, reassess after you've shed the next 10lbs of fat. From the pictures and your avatar goal, it looks like you could be ready for a legit bulk at that point.
All the best.
You might be correct..I know that I am not far away from my bulking phase... I don't care about the scale number as much as I do about being ripped...and overall body composition. The 160 number was just a guess because I don't know what it's going to actually take to reach my goal.
Please don't take this in a negative way but I would get considerably leaner before you consider bulking. When you eat in a surplus you gain lean body mass AND fat, there is no way to avoid it. Gaining 5lbs and 5lbs of fat over 3-4 months will not leave you with the physique you desire and you'll have to cut again.
The best practise is reduce bodyfat to under 15% (as close to 10) as possible and then aim to gain 2-3lbs a month to ensure the least fat gains.
^^I agree.
There is a mental game you play when you bulk and cut. When bulking you need to accept (and be able to handle) the gain in fat. for this reason I recommend you're very happy with your %BF before a bulk - If you want 6 pack abs and there not present at the start of a bulk, they sure as hell ain't going to be visible after a bulk.
Also, I was skeptical of the bro-science, body partitioning concept which says that "the more fat you have at the start of a bulk, the more fat you will gain during that bulk" but I recently saw this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27604771
Which indicates that leaner individuals will gain more muscle on a bulk than overweight peers.
So, in your instance, I would (as @Hornsby recommends) hit maintenance (or as close to it as possible) for a couple of weeks as a break then return to cutting for a while to get to a %BF you're happy with before your cut.
The p-ratio was known for a while, Lyle McDonald never pushes broscience.
I guess I called it bro science because, due to my exceptionally poor google scholar skills, I couldn't find any studies in it (I generally find that unless you know the correct terms to search on you can search and search but not find the type of studies you need) only people on this and other forums talking about fat/muscle partitioning as if it were a given.
The linked study was one which was mentioned in a blog I read least week.
I understand, I'm always skeptical of claims that aren't presented with the proper data. I had to do some research into it as well. I think p-ratio and calorie partitioning are vernacular terms.0 -
StealthHealth wrote: »
There is a mental game you play when you bulk and cut. When bulking you need to accept (and be able to handle) the gain in fat. for this reason I recommend you're very happy with your %BF before a bulk - If you want 6 pack abs and there not present at the start of a bulk, they sure as hell ain't going to be visible after a bulk.
@Wheelhouse15 and @StealthHealth bring very good points (not that you need my corroboration
).
My comment was trying to target another mental game, which is the waiting until you've reached the generally-recommended low levels of body fat before a bulk, which can be long and put a dent in your motivation, especially that last stretch of 10-15 BF%. I guess that's what I assumed @Tsartele was getting at with this thread.
There is certainly established knowledge on best and fastest ways to cut/bulk. But after many months of calorie deficit and significant fat loss, I consider it a morale boost to see some extra muscles popping through, even if not super cut and defined.
This is why, in my original comment, I suggested experimenting with upping you caloric intake, very protein-focused. You'll still be at a deficit, but getting close to recomposition levels, and start getting a feel of what the bulking phase will look like. Correct me if I'm wrong, but recomposition muscle gain is widely accepted as real, among beginners and advanced athletes alike, right?
I recommend this article, which is kind of a literature review on the topic: http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/gain-muscle-and-lose-fat-at-the-same-time/
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dreamsignals wrote: »StealthHealth wrote: »
There is a mental game you play when you bulk and cut. When bulking you need to accept (and be able to handle) the gain in fat. for this reason I recommend you're very happy with your %BF before a bulk - If you want 6 pack abs and there not present at the start of a bulk, they sure as hell ain't going to be visible after a bulk.
@Wheelhouse15 and @StealthHealth bring very good points (not that you need my corroboration).
My comment was trying to target another mental game, which is the waiting until you've reached the generally-recommended low levels of body fat before a bulk, which can be long and put a dent in your motivation, especially that last stretch of 10-15 BF%. I guess that's what I assumed @Tsartele was getting at with this thread.
There is certainly established knowledge on best and fastest ways to cut/bulk. But after many months of calorie deficit and significant fat loss, I consider it a morale boost to see some extra muscles popping through, even if not super cut and defined.
This is why, in my original comment, I suggested experimenting with upping you caloric intake, very protein-focused. You'll still be at a deficit, but getting close to recomposition levels, and start getting a feel of what the bulking phase will look like. Correct me if I'm wrong, but recomposition muscle gain is widely accepted as real, among beginners and advanced athletes alike, right?
I recommend this article, which is kind of a literature review on the topic: http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/gain-muscle-and-lose-fat-at-the-same-time/
It depends by what you mean by recomp. Recomp generally means sticking to a maintenance diet while training. Essentially you will be hitting small surpluses and small deficits continually so you will sometimes be gaining a bit of muscle and sometimes losing a bit of fat. As for being in a deficit and gaining muscle while losing fat, that's still debatable and if at all possible it's likely only novice lifters who would benefit much from it since they have a lot of advantages in quick muscle gain.
I would love to see an actual study with metabolic ward and/or double labeled water along with DEXA and muscle biopsy that shows you can gain muscle while losing fat. That would really show what going on but to my knowledge such an in-depth study has not been done so we are left speculating as to what is really going on. Biochemically we know that going into a deficit will trigger processes that make gaining muscle much more difficult if not impossible (and the larger the deficit the more these process will block muscle synthesis) but how it works out in practice is still not settled.0 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »
It depends by what you mean by recomp. Recomp generally means sticking to a maintenance diet while training.
That is what I meant, which I think is the widely accepted definition. Thanks for writing it out when I failed to do it. I'm also working under the assumption that OP would indeed make "newbie gains" by reducing his caloric deficit to near maintenance (he's at 1000cal daily deficit right now).
I do share some of you skepticism, as most of the evidence is indeed anecdotal. I confess, though, I can't help but feel compelled by the studies that tracked groups of pro athletes and seen recomp work for them (granted, small groups, no control and treatment, very short timeframes, focused on weight and BF measuring, etc).
With all that good knowledge in hand to guide you toward established best practices, I'm all for experimenting and seeing how your own body responds.1 -
dreamsignals wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »
It depends by what you mean by recomp. Recomp generally means sticking to a maintenance diet while training.
That is what I meant, which I think is the widely accepted definition. Thanks for writing it out when I failed to do it. I'm also working under the assumption that OP would indeed make "newbie gains" by reducing his caloric deficit to near maintenance (he's at 1000cal daily deficit right now).
I do share some of you skepticism, as most of the evidence is indeed anecdotal. I confess, though, I can't help but feel compelled by the studies that tracked groups of pro athletes and seen recomp work for them (granted, small groups, no control and treatment, very short timeframes, focused on weight and BF measuring, etc).
With all that good knowledge in hand to guide you toward established best practices, I'm all for experimenting and seeing how your own body responds.
Good luck on your recomp!
I wouldn't really take the research on pro athletes with a grain of salt because of the likelihood of drug use but recomp certainly does work for many although slowly.0
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