Taking a daily scale reading upon waking and tracking it across the week will let you see how you are responding to your current calories.
If however you are gaining 2lbs-3lbs per week or more then this is likely not going to be muscle mass and you will need to pull back your calorie surplus to reduce this rapid weight gain. When starting a lean bulk a lot of testing is going to be needed during the first few weeks so a conservative approach to macros will be required. When losing weight you can select a certain macro split but doing something like extended HIIT cardio sessions will then accelerate fat loss and make it difficult to track whether the calorie deficit or energy expended is causing the rate of fat loss.
Use the following macro splits to start a lean bulk and then adjust as necessary, this is based on your maintenance calorie level. Protein — 1 gram per pound of body weight Fat — 0. My starting point would be a conservative calorie surplus so daily calories will be 2, to start, the macro split will be as follows:.
This is what you can use to start your lean bulk, if that carb amount is too high and you are gaining weight too fast then you can change the formula for protein to anything from 1g per pound body weight to 1.
For a lean bulk going higher than that will be excessive as it will leave you on very low carbs which is not of benefit when in a bulking phase. One final consideration of a lean bulk and something that often sparks mixed opinion is cardio. Cardio is a tool traditionally used to burn fat, the two most common forms are low intensity steady state LISS and high intensity interval training HIIT. The purpose of a bulk is to gain weight and people are often worried that cardio will somehow prevent muscle building and even contribute to some muscle loss, it is however important to include some form of cardio a few times a week even when on a bulk.
Eating in a calorie surplus combined with reduced energy expenditure assuming you were fairly active and did cardio before starting a bulk is a combination destined to result in gaining more fat than you would want. This can be seen in two ways. The goal here is to gain as much muscle with as little fat as possible—yes? This will allow you to bulk for longer while also boosting your muscle gains. Keep your meats lean, your carbs complex, and your fats healthy.
Which brings us to the next point. A high protein goal to have is to eat somewhere from 1 to 1. Depending on what kind of eater you are, this can be either easy or hard. Your daily calorie intake should steer in the direction of weight gain, but when it comes time for the caloric restrictions during the cut, things might get difficult, depending on your body type. However, do remember to switch things up every now and then. Hitting a plateau during a bulk would suck, and a good way to avoid that is to keep your body on its toes.
Put your feelers out there and see if anything sticks. Cardio is useful for everyone—except maybe the lifters who are absolutely at the top of their game. Weight training can be aerobic as well, so having this solid aerobic foundation can be a boon for improving your lifts. Remember all those great things that being lean gave us?
A good bulking season is a good time to be alive. Hopefully, your spirits will already be high, but make sure that nothing sneaks up on you.
Long-term progress is all about endurance, and long-term progress is where the real gains are at. This is why, up until a reasonable degree of body fat, bulking is important as a newbie as these are your prime months to gain a huge amount of muscle and strength when done correctly which includes both diet and training.
A progressive load is consistently adding weight and reps to your workout in a daily and methodical way. High reps have their place in a hypertrophy based program, but beginning your workouts with heavy compound lifts bench press, back squat, deadlift, bent over row, and overhead press are essential to maximizing your bulking gains. Of course, bulking is more than proper training, it is mostly what you decide to do with your diet. This is most definitely not ideal if your priority is to maximize muscle gain and minimize fat gain as while you will progress, you will be gaining way more fat than you need which will only make your next cut harder.
Unfortunately, you will gain fat when you bulk in about a daily calorie surplus, but there are ways to keep this to a minimum. Luckily, not much is different for starting or transitioning to a cutting diet. Whether you begin lifting above the recommended body fat levels to start off bulking or have reached it after months of bulking, a lot of the concepts are exactly the same. If a bulk is when you have a daily surplus of calories anywhere from , a cut is exactly the opposite with a calorie deficit.
Your goal is to lose around 0. The scale and mirror will be your best judge of how many calories you need a day though. For example if the calculator says you need to eat calories a day to lose one pound a week, but you are only losing less than half a pound, you will need to take control of this number and experiment whether you drop calories or add cardio to get back to one pound of weight loss a week. The same goes for bulking, if you are gaining too much weight too fast on a calorie count the calculator tells you to consume, maybe try a different one on another website or lower your calories to where you need as to not gain too much fat to fast.
0コメント