If you've spent any time reading about weight training, bodybuilding, or the general concept of gaining muscle...…. you've likely read about 'bulking' up.
The phrase itself is a bit of a social cliche now, especially when celebrity talk shows talk about actors gaining muscle mass for certain roles such as Chris Hemsworth in Thor, or Hugh Jackman when he plays Wolverine in the various X-men movies.
The typical commentary will be that they 'bulked up' for their role.
My assumption is they're trying to describe a gain in lean muscle mass.
I say that this is my assumption because there is no real definition of what "bulking up" really means.
So what does 'bulking up' really mean?
At the most basic level, it's supposed to describe the gaining of overall body size, and the assumption is that most of that size increase is due to a gain in muscle mass.
Usually the only way guys measure their 'bulk' is by stepping on a scale and checking to see if they weigh more.
This is a pretty crude and very unscientific way to measure any progress in muscle growth… and often leads to a TON of errors.
But, what goes into a typical 'bulk up' workout and nutrition cycle?
In the past, typically a bodybuilder or anyone interested in gaining a lot of muscle mass would be told to train with heavy weights as often as possible, lots of compound lifts included bench press, squats, deadlifts, military presses etc.
(Leave the isolation lifts alone for now… of course)
And eat big.
Typical rhetoric would be something along the lines of "if you only weigh 150 lbs but you want to weigh 220 lbs then you gotta eat like you're already 220lbs"
This simply meant overeat as much as possible... as often as possible.
Eat big, train big... get big. [sounds good so far right?]
To understand where this logic breaks down… we have to determine who started the trend of bulking and cutting in the first place.
Bulking and cutting started with competitive bodybuilders who typically take various anabolic steroid drugs that DRAMATICALLY aid in the muscle gaining process.
(In fact, a guy on gear can out gain a guy NOT on gear even WITHOUTworking out! )
In their case, they may very well need to eat more calories than their natural counterparts.
They may actually need more calories than you or I do because the drugs are allowing for a degree of muscle growth that can actually use some of these excess calories.
In fact, it is only because these bodybuilders are using testosterone and testosterone based drugs that they could have ever gotten away with bulking for any length of time at all…… because they were counteracting the negative side effect bodyfat can have on your testosterone and estrogen balance.
Testosterone, Body Fat & Estrogen Conversion In men, body fat has an enzyme in it that converts testosterone to estrogen.
In layman's terms, the more body fat you have, the more of your testosterone gets converted to estrogen. Obviously this NOT good for muscle building.
If you attempt to gain muscle by overeating and 'bulking up', and during this process you start to gain body fat… you can actually be reducing your testosterone levels and killing your ability to really gain quality muscle mass. The only reason bodybuilders might have got away with traditional bulking is simply because they were taking enough steroids to offset the body fat
conversion to estrogen pathway. But if you're not taking steroids, you better not be gaining any body fat at all while you attempt to gain muscle.
In other words, clean guys cannot 'bulk up' to gain muscle in the traditional sense.
In order to gain maximum lean muscle mass your goal should be to first get to a sensible and lean body fat level. I would suggest anything below 15% or so should do it. If you're already much lower than 15% then no problem, you can focus entirely on muscle gaining. The main question at this point is how much do you eat to gain muscle?
How do you know if you're gaining muscle or fat?
Our nutrition calculator will give you a number of both calories and protein to eat every day that should work for gaining muscle as long as you're following an appropriate workout.
You can test if you are eating too much by measuring your waist and comparing your WEIGHT gain to your WAIST gain.In our research, we have found that as guys gain or lose body fat there is a consistent correlation of approximately 1 inch gained around the waist for every 5 lbs of fat
gained to your body. Likewise every 5 lbs of weight lost should translate into approximately 1 inch lost around the waist, most of this loss will be fat. Therefore a 5 lbs weight gain that comes with a 1 inch gain around the waist means you've likely gained almost all fat. On the other hand if you gain 5 lbs and there is almost no change to your waist measurement you can say with confidence that most of that weight gain went to other areas of your body and most of it is likely lean mass.
Naturally, this is what we want.
Gaining muscle mass happens at different rates for different guys depending how new they are to weight training, how old they are, and how consistently they workout. It might happen faster some months and slower other months. The key is to always monitor your WAIST gain vs your WEIGHT gain as well as other body circumference like shoulders, chest, arms and legs.
As long as your other measurements are going up faster than your waist…… then you're gaining more lean mass than fat and you're doing ok. As soon as your waist starts out gaining the rest of your body it's time to pull back on the calories and get your body fat down a bit.
Remember, bulking up and gaining fat in the name of gaining muscle isn't going to work.
Stay lean to get big.
It sounds counter intuitive but it's really the only way to works for clean guys.
==> This is the BEST way for "clean" guys to BLOW UP - period
Brad
HUGE Secret Testosterone, Body Fat & Estrogen Conversion "
10 Slim Secrets from Various Countries
References:
id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoni
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adonis
www.pantheon.org › ... › Greek mythology
www.maicar.com/GML/Adonis.html
groupeadonis.ca/en/
References:
id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoni
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adonis
www.pantheon.org › ... › Greek mythology
www.maicar.com/GML/Adonis.html
groupeadonis.ca/en/
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