Brandon Bulking Phase 2018 - Part 1: Nutrition/Mindset
On a different spectrum from Dallas and his cut , I went through a 12 week massing/bulking phase starting on Easter and ending June 16th.
The focus of this article will be more on my nutritional approach. In it I will talk about topics including intended rate of gain, macro splits, and food composition. I will also reflect back on points in which I improved upon from last massing phase.
In my next article I will then go over how everything turned out as well as my training set-up.
Goal:
An often overlooked concept with bodybuilders is the actual part of building muscle. Too many younger trainees run their wheels with dieting too much. My intention post-photoshoot cut was to immediately start putting on some size and put on tissue. My longer term goal is to step on stage as a natural bodybuilder.
First, my goal is to strategically get to 200 lbs over the course of the next year. A pitfall of past training years for me has been not spending as much time in a gaining phase. So for my physiques sake and psychology, I have fully devoted to get as strong and as big as possible over the next year before I even think about cutting down to the stage.
In April, post-cut I was sitting around 178-179 lbs on average. Had lost some strength in pressing movements due to leverage and body fat changes. My phasic set-up was as follows:
Mass 5 weeks: April 1st-May 5th
Deload 1 week: May 6th-May 12th
Mass 5 weeks: May 13th-June 16th
Deload 1 week: June 17th-June 23rd
Rate of Gain
During my massing weeks, my goal was to go at a rate of around 0.5-1 lb per week or 0.25-0.5% body weight per week. There's usually two trains of thought when deciding to go at a faster or slower weight gain when bulking.
Slower rates of gain (more towards 0.25-0.5 lbs/week)
are usually done to minimize fat gain. I find this slower weight can be hard to track progress given the very small surplus and in fact could potentially have many training weeks eating at maintenance calories. In fact, it can be even harder to track whether or not strength gains in the gym are due to neural adaptations or muscle gain.
I prefer a slightly faster rate.
Muscle gain is a lot harder to make happen compared to losing body fat. You are trying to evoke an overloading stress to your body through training and in turn, need larger adaptations than previous baseline to make gains happen. Therefore, when massing, the trade off of being in a larger surplus to maximize theoretical muscle gain is worth it in my opinion. Even if this comes with a little extra fat gain.
Now, how do we evaluate what is the right sweet spot to go at?
Often overlooked, but obvious, indicators are how your training, recovery and sleep are going. These are the processes that are actually going to fuel these new adaptations. Yes, if you gain scale weight while training hard you will probably gain some muscle. But if we are trying to maximize everything we are doing, it makes sense to evaluate the processes that are limiting how much gains are made. Find a surplus to where your training feels smooth and you can predictably and consistently overload volume and intensity week to week, month to month.
If the surplus is too small, you'll often find you may be getting stronger, but perhaps not as quickly as you'd predict. You may find you have more sub-par sessions and body parts aren't able to recover from typical massing sessions you've done in the past.
There also is a tipping point to where a surplus can be too big. If you feel the extra food you are eating is making you more lethargic and is impacting how you feel in training, then in theory you will probably gain the same amount of muscle in a smaller surplus, but with far less fat gain (meaning more total weeks spent in a surplus/massing phase).
My goal over 10 weeks in a surplus is to end up somewhere around 185-186 lbs. This is a flexible goal and how training feels will be the main dictator at where I end up. Massing phases are the time to revert your focus father away on the pendulum of physique and tip it more towards training. Make sure you are doing things in the gym you could not do before at those body weights and you will more than likely be making progress.
Macros
From several years of consistency in tracking body weight and macros, my maintenance seems to be around 2900-3100 calories. So to start the massing phase, my calories were 3200-3300. As for macros split, I opted to try more of a higher carb massing approach.
High Carb Massing (C:415-485g /F:50-80g/P:210-220g to start)
Some brief benefits that come with High Carb Massing are the increased insulin levels, guaranteed training energy, and anti-catabolism via additional carbs. For losing weight, carb and fat ratio doesn't matter (see my article on KETOGENIC DIETS), but when trying to gain weight there could potentially be some practicality in using a higher carb approach.
The reason for this primarily deals with training. As I said earlier, the biggest predictor of how well you are progressing is how you are progressing through your training on the diet.
- Carbohydrates are your body's preferred fuel source for hard resistance training and a higher carb approach more or less guarantees adequate muscle glycogen storage session to session.
- Recovery is a limiting factor in consecutively overloading training day to day, week to week, and month to month. Carbohydrates serve a purpose as counteracting the stress hormone cortisol. This will help with fueling the adaptive processes to get your body recovered and relaxed as you progress through hard trainnig.
- Insulin, often a buzz word when it comes to weight loss diets, has some interesting effects while eating in a surplus. Insulin appears to be anabolic in the sense of its interaction with growth hormone. As we know carbohydrates and protein consumption yield in higher insulin levels throughout the day.
A disclaimer is that this approach is not "the answer" or the "perfect macro ratio", those terms don't exist. Its simply another tool in my toolbox that may result in a very small effect size on the overall picture. But for intermediate->advanced atheltes, sometimes its worth a shot to manipulate all the variables that we can potentially do! But this also comes with the background that I have more or less tracked calories and macros for 90%+ of the days over the last 3.5 years.
For more reading on High Carb Massing, I would HIGHLY suggest checking out my coach Steve Hall's podcast and website! In more detail, Steve goes into the practicality and basis of High Carb Massing as well as how to potentially implement it into your routine. Also, check out the Revive Stronger Podcast on YouTube or other podcasting outlets (including Itunes).
www.revivestronger.com
Food selection:
Veggies: spinach, tomatoes
Fruits: apples, blackberries, blueberries, bananas
Carbs: sweet potatoes, oatmeal, rice, pasta, tortillas, cereal, pancakes, rice cakes/jelly, dextrose (intraworkout), rice pudding
Protein: whey powder, casein powder, eggs/egg whites, turkey bacon, chicken, Greek yogurt, beef, turkey, salmon, steak
Fats: avocado, fats from meat, occasionally nuts/peanut butter, eggs, donuts
For my clients, I recommend a combined fruits/vegetable servings at 2-6 per day.
When bulking up, it's good to reduce the number of combined fruits/vegetables you are eating from when you were cutting (probably to the Lower end 2-4). You won't feel hungry all the time and less food volume, but higher calories will keep you focused and energized. I also recommend to sway more towards fruits when bulking as they are easier to get down and won't cause as much GI stress.
Initially on my bulk I opted to have on average 2 pieces of fruit: usually an apple on the way to work and some kind of berry in my Greek yogurt snack. I only started eating more insulinogenic (higher carb content per total weight) fruits like bananas later towards the 10-12 week range. I will throw spinach in most meals when cutting or bulking. Lastly, I would try and eat 1 tomato with dinner for my 2nd "vegetable"
For High Carb massing, I tried to stay towards carb sources that had minimal fats in them.
This lead me to eating mainly rice and pasta with my meats. Then for "snacks" I usually had either rice cakes, cereal, pancakes or rice pudding to fill out the rest of my carbs. It can be a lot to take in all these carbs and that's why I opted to eat very low fiber options. Cereal is also my go to pre-workout meal and is actually underrated when it comes to its vitamin spectrum. A BIG mistake in previous bulks is trying to eat all clean foods for carbs. This meant a lot of sweet potatoes, beans and brown rice and a LOT of fiber. It was not that satisfying and I would have got the same results as eating other foods that I'm putting in now.
If you have a extremist kind of mentality when it comes to diet and lifting, I highly suggest to NOT go the super clean food route in your bulking/off seasons. You are going to run out of gas sooner or later. You also need to desensitize your body from the blandness of food that comes with dieting. At the end of a successful bulking phase, you should be craving those bland foods again. This doesn't mean to be a jackass and go all out with stuffing your phase.
But for those extremist types, consciously plan out your treats to eat if that makes things easier. I ate cereal more or less every night and would get a donut before work at least once a week. I also tried to eat out more and enjoy company of friends (also something that is harder to do when dieting). Because of this, I'm more or less getting all the results I've worked for, but won't be stressed out all the time with rigid structure.
Mindset: transitioning from a physique athlete to a performance athlete
My mindset maintained throughout was to not care about leanness, striations and cuts. It was solely to eat for performance in the gym. I ate to recover, de-stress and fuel my gym sessions for those weeks. It's a flip in mindset when dieting. When dieting, you essentially stick to the diet to wake up for that new low weigh in or little level of leanness that you didn't have the day before.
I ate and trained to look bigger in clothes and to hit PRs. I started wearing more t-shirts and sweatpants as opposed to tanks. I wanted to feel my shirt getting tighter through the weeks. I also reverted my mindset to crave progress in the gym. Looking to beat previous month's and year's numbers over the course of training.
Its not even more so flipping a "switch". You will develop this mindset over time. I like to see more so as turning a "dial". Right out of your cut, you will still love looking at yourself in the mirror with all the hard work you put in to get lean. But as long as you understand that there will come a time where you won't look like that anymore, you are headed on the right track. Invest in your long term progress and stop carrying about what you look like with your shirt off. ESPECIALLY, if you are bulking up in the winter.
Notes from my previous mass:
I've always benefited from being reflective of my goals. Last fall, I bulked up from Late September to January. From there, I noted some loose ends that I could clean up for this phase:
- Get better at Planning: A key variable that is solely in my power is my nutritional approach and consistency. I felt that if I could nail weekly averages with macros, that my weight gain would be predictable and that I will be able to spend more time bulking. In the past, I’ve gotten more lackadaisical than I would have preferred with nutrition: eating based on emotions, lazy with planning meals out, not tracking as closely. Therefore, I wanted to keep refining that balance of trying to tighten up a little, but not go crazy with the rigidity.
- Nutrient Timing: (carbs before workout, more even protein distribution) My plan was to mess around with the more minutiae details that matter to more advanced athletes in regards to nutrition. My hope was to structure carb sources more appropriately around my workouts and space my protein more throughout the day. This in theory will lead to better workouts and more consistent muscle protein synthesis which hopefully can eek out a couple more gains when said and done.
- Sleep, managing stress: When dieting, I did a great job of having a normal sleep routine and minimizing stress. This helped me maintain a lot of my strength and muscle tissue in prep for my photo-shoot. With a tangible goal in mind, it was easier to center my lifestyle around cutting. I hope to take some of the tools I learned with dealing with stress, relaxing and nailing recovery. Advanced athletes are those who understand their energy the best. This is the knowledge to strategically pick out when and how to stress themselves out and when they need to sit back and put themselves in an optimal environment to grow.
- Focus on training: I’ve said this multiple times, but my main priority was to look forward to training. I will put out my mesocycle set-ups with programming in my next article. The goal is to become a performance athlete more than a physique athlete as I progress up to 200 lbs.
Part 2:
In the 2nd part of this article I will go the following points:
- Training: My mesocycle set-up in regards to training and how it coincided with my overall set-up and my high carb massing approach. I will touch on exercise selection, volume landmarks, and progression
- Measured Variables: I will take a look at my scale weight, macros, body measurements and training of the 12 weeks. I will also look at specific changes that were done to my macros and training as a result of some of the data. This will give an approach to what goes in the mind of coaches as they evaluate their data and determine when, why and how to make adjustments when bulking.
- Reflection: Some takeaways on went went good and what went not so good. Also, how I hope to implement this feedback next time I bulk (which will be late July)
stay tuned... :)