For most of the bodybuilding population, the eventual goal is nothing less than a strong, muscular physique with impressive, razor-sharp definition.
Everyone wants a great body, but for those people who strive for nothing less than an ideal body, they don’t just want to be huge: They want to be shredded. In pursuit of this goal, many plunge into their programs headfirst, eager to get started and gain muscle. Bulking up might be the motivation, but everyone is worried about gaining excess body fat at the same time.
To significantly gain muscle – and to add as much of it to your frame in as swift a period of time as possible – there is always the fact that you’ll inevitably gain some extra body fat to go with it.
This is just one of the realities of the bodybuilding process. If you’re truly committed to bulking up, there’s no other way around it: It’s a fact you’ll have to accept.
The reason for this is because in order to gain muscle mass, you have to consume a surplus of calories to support the necessary protein synthesis. The difficulty is that there’s no way to ensure that 100{2dd333ed9c7b2074fdfda098a56357c21ab487243e335d9241a31e34dbd5cf30} of all these extra calories go towards muscle growth. Some of it will inevitably end up as stored body fat.
As all bodybuilders know, in order to make dramatically change your appearance in the quickest amount of time, the most effective way to do so is to focus on gaining size. For a set period of time, gaining size will be your goal. Only then can your priority shift to focus on losing body fat.
Considering this information, it’s clear that the goal of the bulking phase is to gain muscle size, to build up as much as possible while doing what you can to minimize gaining extra body fat. However, it’s important to remember that during the bulking phase, your goal is not to lose body fat, merely to gain as little as possible.
There are three primary ways to accomplish this:
1) Make sure that your caloric surplus is limited to a precise amount. Because this surplus is what fuels muscle growth, it’s tempting to eat too much in the mistaken belief that this will help you gain muscle tissue, but actually the only thing you’ll gain with haphazard eating is body fat.
Generally speaking, the caloric surplus necessary for supporting muscle growth is approximately 15-20{2dd333ed9c7b2074fdfda098a56357c21ab487243e335d9241a31e34dbd5cf30} more calories than you’d eat to maintain your current weight. If you’re already at that level of consumption, you don’t need to go any higher.
2) Make good food choices. Most of your food intake should be in the form of high quality lean proteins, healthy/unsaturated fats and natural, high fiber carbohydrates.
Instead of thoughtlessly eating every food item at hand, be sure that you’re primarily keeping to lean protein sources. It’s also important to keep your blood sugar levels stable by choosing the right kinds of carbohydrates and avoiding large amounts of saturated fats.
3) Implement cardio sessions. While you don’t have to push yourself too hard, having a few cardio sessions during the week is a good way to minimize fat gains during a bulking cycle.
Keep these sessions no more than 10-20 minutes long, sticking to high intensity/low duration forms, as these kinds of session have the advantage of not causing the same amount of muscle loss as longer duration forms.
Once you’ve achieved the amount of muscle size that you want, a goal which is completely up to you as an individual, it’s time to move into a fat loss cycle. In this way, you can focus on stripping off the excess body fat gained during the bulking cycle, while still maintaining muscle size.
Simply remember that while bulking up, gaining at least some body fat is unavoidable. With this in mind, the key to keeping body fat down is to minimize the gain rather than trying to avoid it altogether, which is impossible. Focusing first on bulking up and only then on fat loss is the way to gain muscle quickly and effectively.
