Cutting and Bulking for Bodybuilders
There are two significant problems with the traditional cutting and bulking method of building muscle. First off, for a lot of people, it isn’t going to get the job done.
The idea behind it is that you can’t put on a decent level of muscle mass without gaining large amounts of excess fat along the way. The theory behind it goes something like this…
You spend three or four months training like a demon and consuming anything and everything you see. And as you’d expect, your weight on the scales, some of which is muscle mass and some of which is fat, rises. Then you go on a cut to drop the fat and expose all of the new lean muscle you’ve gained.
Like I said, that’s what’s supposed to occur. The truth with cutting and bulking goes more like this…
During the bulking cycle, you gain some muscle mass. But you also finish up putting on lots of adipose tissue as well. In fact, those that have less favorable genetics could end up gaining a lot more fat than they do muscle mass. Then when it comes to burning off the excess fat, you mysteriously end up burning off all the muscle you’ve spent many months putting on.
The result?
You wind up right back where you started at the exact same size, having thrown away several months of your life (not to mention all the cash you’ve blown on food and nutritional supplements). Plenty of individuals appear satisfied to spend their time cutting and bulking while at the same time totally dismissing the simple fact they’ve made no real improvement beyond their initial few years of exercising.
But there’s a 2nd dilemma.
Many guys start out resistance training as they would like to resemble one of the guys on the front of the health and fitness magazines. But if you add ten or twenty pounds of fat to your body then you’re actually going further away from this objective.
Sure, you will look larger in a shirt or jumper. Friends and family may well let you know that you’re looking big, and that is always good to hear. And you will feel that warm glow of satisfaction when you step on the bathroom scales and discover your weight rising.
However, if you spend half the year gaining weight and 12-16 weeks trying to get cut, there’ll only be a few weeks in the year, usually around the summer, where you actually LOOK like you train.
Why invest that effort and hard work into working out hard and eating right if you’re embarrassed about removing your t-shirt in public for most of the year?
That’s not to imply that the traditional technique of bulking and cutting doesn’t work for anyone. Thin teens who have a tough time gaining weight will frequently see excellent results. And it will be effective for some bodybuilders with plenty of knowledge of the manner in which their body reacts to diet and training.
But for everybody else, it’s largely a complete waste of time.
You can’t force your body to build muscle faster than your genetic makeup will allow by means of filling yourself with food. That’s because there’s an upper limit on the quantity of nutrients you’ll be able to ingest and turn into muscle.
If you’re currently eating beneath this upper limit, then you’ll build lean muscle faster by increasing your intake of nutrients. But when your rate of muscle growth has hit its limit, simply adding additional calories won’t immediately result in a more rapid rate of growth. What happens instead is that you simply become fat.
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