I find that lifters, especially new lifters often get so fixated on magic, complicated approaches to training and diet (including mine) that they forget to get the basics in place.  The simple fact is that the basics and fundamentals are where every diet and every training program should start.

Why?  Because they always work.  More advanced approaches should be brought in when they are needed, not just because the trainee is bored or wants to do them.

The bottom line is this:  Before you worry about advanced approaches, get your fundamentals straight. That’s what The Baseline Diet is all about.

Introduction

I’m going to start this article with a few questions. How much mass have you gained in the last few months (or years as the case may be)? If you’re like the average lifter, the answer is assuredly ‘Not as much as I’d like’.

Ok, next question: how much money have you spent on exotic supplements hoping they’d be the secret to freaky mass? Again, if you’re the average lifter the answer is probably ‘Way more than I should have’.

Next is a series of questions: How many meals are you eating per day? How many calories? How many grams of protein?  Carbs?  Fat? When’s the last time you ate fruit or vegetables?  Consistently? How much water are you consuming on a daily basis. If you’re an average lifter (and want to stay such), your answer is probably ‘Umm, I don’t know.’

This brings me in a roundabout way to the topic of this article (and it’s continuation which I’ll put up on Monday): while people are always interested in cutting edge new esoteric approaches to mass gain and nutritional strategies, the simple fact is that there isn’t much new under the sun when it comes to bodybuilding or athletic nutrition.  There are only three major nutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat) and you can only arrange them in so many ways.

We may know a lot more about optimal nutrition than we did thirty years ago but human biology is still the same as it ever was.  The same basic rules still apply and in this article and the next I want to talk about those basic rules.

A Quick Word on Supplements

I’ve written a lot of columns and Q&A’s for various magazines (print and online) over the years and, by far, the biggest question revolves around supplements.  A majority deals with basic stuff of course: protein powders, thermogenics, creatine but a number also deal with the more esoteric stuff on the market.

Bodybuilding magazines are in the business of convincing lifters that taking a lot of expensive supplements it mandatory to reach their goals; because that’s how they make money.  Telling a lifter to follow a basic progressive training program with a good nutrition doesn’t make money, getting them to buy a product for $45 per month month-in/month-out does.

The simple fact is this, your diet (and of course your training) will determine 90-95% of your success in bodybuilding (or any sport).

At most, supplements can add 5-10% to that level. Unless you’re planning on competing, and that 5-10% may mean the difference between winning and losing, spending a small-fortune on supplements is a waste. As well, until you get the 90-95% of your training and diet in order, the other 5-10% won’t make a damn bit of difference.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-supplements even if I get painted as such.  Sure, I think 99% of what’s out there is crap (and history supports me in that).  More importantly, I see too many lifters and athletes focusing on the wrong thing: they want the magic pill that will make them great, but they forget to worry about the stuff that actually matters.

Put differently, echoing my mentor: I’m anti-anything that detracts trainees from the stuff that really matters.  And supplements all too often do exactly that.  Lifters try to make up for failings in the important stuff with a magic pill, and the magazines and companies know and pander to this.

Ok, enough of that, let’s get to the article.

What is the Baseline Diet?

Most simply defined, the baseline diet is what every athlete needs to determine and put in place before they go mucking about with any supplements, or any goofy diet interpretations (including mine). That is, you should establish AND follow the baseline diet for at least a few months, to track your body’s response, before you try anything else.

Because until you determine what your baseline response is (and have the fundamentals of your diet in place), you can’t make any sort of objective conclusion about the complicated stuff in terms of results.

Now, much of what I’m going to discuss has been said many times before, as I said above there’s not much new here. But I still see enough lifters making the same basic mistakes in their overall daily nutrition that it’s worth repeating the basics again (and again and again).

I’m going to divide the baseline diet into six distinct categories which are meal frequency, caloric intake, water intake, and protein, carbohydrate and fat intake.  I’ll discuss the first three in this article and the second three in Part 2.

Meal Frequency

Meal frequency may be one of the more hotly debated areas of nutrition these days. While it’s always been  dogma (and in earlier versions of this article, I basically reiterated that dogma) that you must eat 6 times per day or more for optimal gains (or weight/fat loss), more recent research has called that severely into question.

Recent work into caloric restriction and intermittent fasting suggests that lower meal frequencies may have additional benefits. Some people are even fasting for many hours per day prior to food consumption with many claimed benefits (such as improved insulin sensitivity, calorie partitioning and fat loss).  I can’t do intermittent fasting justice in this article, again I’d refer people to Martin Berkhan’s Leangains.com for more information.

As I’ve discussed at some point in most of my books, there are more factors which go into choosing meal frequency than any absolute statement (e.g. you MUST eat 6 small meals per day) can cover. How many calories per day someone is consuming, along with several other variables all interact here.

A small female consuming 1200-1500 calories per day may prefer to eat fewer smaller meals (so that each is larger and more satisfying) whereas a large male bodybuilder seeking mass gains (who may be consuming 3000-4000 calories/day or more) may need to eat 6 times per day to get in the required food.

As I discuss in detail in The Protein Book, any given meal will maintain the body in an anabolic state for somewhere between 4-6 hours depending on its composition and form (a solid meal takes 5-6 hours to digest for example) and the idea that you have to eat every 3 hours or your muscles will fall off, or you’ll go into starvation mode, is simply nonsense. I discuss this in some more detail in the article Meal Frequency and Energy Balance.

Now, as many like to point out, higher meal frequencies have been found to improve various aspects of health (notably glucose tolerance and blood cholesterol) but many of these studies use a very unrealistic feeding pattern (e.g. 17 meal/day compared to 3). Whether 6 meals per day has a true benefit over 3 meals per day in terms of health is massively debatable.  As noted, emerging research is finding that intermittent fasting and lower meal frequencies may have major benefits.

But since this article is about a baseline diet for bodybuilders and athletes, who usually have a fairly high daily caloric intake, a higher meal frequency is probably still going to be preferred.  This is just a practical consideration, an athlete with a large caloric requirement will probably find it easier to get them in eating more frequently.

Just realize that it isn’t absolutely mandatory. As long as you’re eating every 3-5 hours (assuming large-ish solid meals), you’ll remain in an an anabolic state. Obsessing that it’s been 2.5 hours since your last feeding is simply silly; stressing out over nothing will do you far more damage than going 4 hours between meals.

For more details, you can read the full discussion of meal frequency in The Protein Book.

Nutrient Timing

Beyond the global issue of meal frequency, an area of major interest and debate is that of nutrient timing.  The original version of this article repeated the basic idea that breakfast was a key aspect of halting overnight catabolism, but the research and practical experience of the intermittent fasting folks calls that into question.  So I won’t repeat that particular bit of readily accepted dogma.

However, nutrient timing around training is currently a massive area of interest with some researchers going so far as to say that timing of nutrients (especially protein) around training is more important to overall results than total protein intake itself.  Maybe.  There are a lot of issues surrounding the studies (not the least of which is that most of them are done in the fasted state which means they have limited relevance to athletes who have eaten during the day) to date but the simple fact is that the research is fairly clear: nutrients consumed around training are critical to stimulating optimal gains in muscle mass.

Now, how soon after training is debatable, one study found that whether nutrients were taken an hour or three hours after training, the results were the same (in older folks, it’s critical that they be consumed soon after training).   So the whole focus on ‘You MUST eat within 47 seconds of finishing your last set or your workout was waste.’ is basically a lot of internet nonsense.

But the general point still stands, lifters should be eating something around training. Whether it’s before, during, after or a combination of the three, nutrients (and that means carbohdyrates and protein) around training promote better gains in muscle mass.

I can’t possibly give sufficient details on amounts in this article.  Again, The Protein Book has a 35 page chapter dedicated to the topic of around workout nutrition for those who want to know all the details.

Eating at Bedtime/During the Night

In the original version of this article, I made some comments about the practice of consuming nutrients right before bedtime and/or in the middle of the night.   The idea was that the time between the last meal of the day and breakfast was one of catabolism and the theory is that eating at this time might help with growth.  Maybe.

There is data that the gut needs ‘rest’ for optimal function (e.g. that around the clock feeding causes problems) but it’s all based on studies of folks in hospitals so it’s relevance to athletes is debatable.

Another consideration is that sleep should not be compromised to get more nutrients into the body.  Sleep is critical for recovery and forcing yourself to wake up to eat something probably does more harm than good.  I originally said simply this: If you wake up in the middle of the night (e.g. to pee), eating something might be worth considering.  If not, don’t worry about it.

Basically, I’m torn on this one.  Of course, as I mentioned above, the reality is that a solid meal takes at least 5-6 hours to fully digest.  If you eat a particularly large dinner meal, that will actually be providing nutrients through a good portion of the night anyhow.  I’m just not sure it’s worth worrying about, moreso if it means interrupting good sleep.

Total Caloric Intake

Although macronutrient composition affects success in bodybuilding and athletics, caloric intake is arguably as important. Invariably the lifters I’ve met who wanted to gain mass (but couldn’t) were either overtraining (or training stupidly) or simply not eating enough.  Usually it’s both.

In the late 90′s, we saw the rise (and subsequent fall) of the lean mass gainer, a low calorie drink that magically caused you to gain mass. In all cases, these products contained creatine which causes rapid water weight gain.  It was a neat trick but served only to confuse lifters who apparently thought that they could build muscle out of hopeful thinking and thin air.

On top of that, there is a pervading belief (perhaps we should call it a desire) to gain mass while losing fat at the same time. While fat beginners can pull this off, as can those returning from a layoff, anyone past the beginner stage will find this generally impossible without the use of repartitioning drugs or complicated diets which alternate distinct periods of over- and under-eating (such as the mass variant in my Ultimate Diet 2.0).

The strategy I regularly advocate is the alternation periods of specific mass gain (accepting fat gains) with specific fat loss (minimizing muscle loss). This avoids the buildup of excessive bodyfat levels, while allowing one to gain mass.  I discuss this more in the article General Mass Gain Philosophies.

The bottom line is this: building muscle requires a surplus/excess of two things: the building blocks of muscle (protein/amino acids) and energy (calories).  You can’t build muscle out of nothing and, without both in sufficient amounts, nothing happens.  I’ll discuss protein intake in Part 2, here I only want to look at total caloric intake.

Bodybuilders always want to know “How many calories for mass gains?” to which the simplest answer is “Enough.” In principle, for mass gains calories should be high enough that a small fat gain is seen (as measured by calipers) every couple of weeks. This should be more than sufficient to support muscle mass gains.

As as starting point I usually suggest 10-20% over maintenance calories for mass gains.  Of course, this assumes that you know what your maintenance calories actually are.  If you do, just add 10-20% to that.

If not, a caloric level of 16-18 calories per pound is usually a good starting place for mass gains; this then has to be adjusted based on real world results in strength, mass and body fat.   I’ve also known individuals who had to consume 25 cal/lb to gain weight/mass.

Why the variance?

The big variable here usually has to do with non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) which I discuss in some detail in Metabolic Rate Overview.  In short, NEAT refers to activities that aren’t exercise that burn calories.  Fidgeting, moving around, etc.  And people vary drastically in how NEAT responds to overfeeding with some people (the stereotypical ‘hardgainer’) often shown massively increased NEAT when they try to eat a lot.  So calories that would go to support muscle growth just get burnt off with excess activity.  But I’m getting off topic.

In any case, I suggest trainees start at that calorie level and make adjustments depending on biweekly body composition measures. So start at say 18 cal/lb and see how your caliper measurements (men should probably use abdominal, women thigh as these tend to be most representative of body fat levels) change after 2 weeks.

If they went up a little (maybe a couple of millimeters over 2 weeks) and you’re gaining strength in the gym, you’re probably at a sufficient calorie level to maximize growth without excessive fat gain.  More calories probably won’t increase muscle gain but may give disproportionate fat gain.

If neither weight nor body fat has increased, calories are too low.  At that point, I’d suggest adding another couple of hundred calories per day to your diet. Eventually you’ll find that calorie level that starts putting weight on you. Obviously, as you get bigger, you’ll have to add more calories as well.

Of course, if body fat has gone up significantly more than that, calories are too high and should be scaled backwards slightly.  I’d note that, if you start at the low end of my calorie recommendations, too many calories shouldn’t generally be a problem.

And as noted up above, my general experience with folks who can’t gain muscle mass is usually an issue of too few calories (or truly absurd training schemes) rather than too many.

Water Intake

While it should be a no-brainer, water intake is another place where trainees make basic mistakes (I am guilty of this myself). The effects of dehydration range from minimal (at 2% dehydration, strength and performance decrease) to painful (can anybody say kidney stones) to worse (at 10% dehydration, death can occur).

While there are many generalized water intake equations (such as 8 glasses per day), these may not be correct for everyone. To poach another guideline from my mentor, a good rule of thumb is 5 clear urinations per day, and 2 of those should come after your workout. Yes, that means looking in the toilet when you pee.

This gives trainees a way of individualizing water intake. Obviously someone who lives in a hot, humid environment (or trains in a non-air conditioned gym) will need more water than someone who lives in moderate temperatures and trains in a posh gym.

I’d note that, despite more dogmatic rhetoric to the contrary, all fluids contribute to hydration state (as do many high-water foods such as fruits and vegetables).  Yes, even caffeinated ones; research clearly shows that the small amount of fluid lost from the caffeine is still much less than the amount gained by drinking the drink.

It’s worth nothing that recent research has found that plain water is actually the worst drink for rehydration following exercise.  Milk was actually shown to be superior to either plain water or Powerade/Gatorade type drinks, most likely due to the potassium and sodium content.  You can read more about this in the artilce Milk as an Effective Post-Exercise Rehydration Drink.

Finally, thirst is a poor indicator of hydration state. By the time you’re thirsty, you’re already a bit dehydrated.

Your Assignment

So between now and Monday, I want you to take a look at your overall nutrition (I know it’s only a few days, I originally wrote this article and it’s second part with a month between them), looking at your current meal frequency, total caloric intake and water intake.

This means keeping a food log of everything you eat and drink during the day. You should keep such a log for a minimum of 3 days (including one weekend day, where most of us let dietary discipline lapse) up to a full-week. You’ll also need a basic calorie counter to determine caloric intake.

Now check what you came up with against the guidelines above.  Are you eating at a suffiicent frequency (~4-6 times per day with 3-5 hours between meals), are you getting sufficient calories to support mass gains, are you getting sufficient hydration (check your pee) daily.

If the answer is ‘yes’, you’re ahead of the game.  If the answer is ‘no’, you need to work on fixing those issues before you worry about anyting else.

Read The Baseline Diet 2009: Part 2.

In this article (which will actually form an introduction to a series of articles I’ll be doing over the next several weeks and months), I want to talk about some basic concepts related to mass gaining nutrition, primarily looking at some of the different philosophies of mass-gaining that are out there. As usually, I’ll look at each in my normal way, looking at the various pros and cons of each approach.

And, of course, I’ll give my own recommendations for what I think is actually optimal for most trainees under most circumstances. Please note my use of the word ‘most’ in that sentence; there are always exceptions, situations where I might do something different. Here I’m speaking more in generalities.

Old School Bulking/Cutting

In the olden days of bodybuilding, the standard approach to gaining muscle mass was to get big and fat in the off-season and this was called bulking. In modern terms this is generally referred to as GFH which stands for Get Fucking Huge

Both approaches revolve around the same concept: trainees train their balls off and eat as much as they can force down, gaining weight (and body fat) rapidly. In the old days, guys would then diet like maniacs and there are stories of guys bulking up to over 300 pounds before dropping to sub-200 pounds for their contest. Yes, insanity. Dieting is a little bit more sane now and it usually takes a good 6-12 months for the fat boys to get lean again.

I’d note that, to some degree, this idea still exists today among some professional bodybuilders. For example, here’s Lee Priest in the off-season and in competition condition.

Fat Boy Eating

Lookit Those Abs

There are also a good many stories of big strong powerlifters dieting down to seriously amazing bodybuilding levels of leanness and development. Dave Gulledge is a particularly good example, here’s pictures of him before leaning out and after.

Not Actually that Fat

Damn

So there’s clearly some merit to the ‘get big and strong and FAT’ approach to gaining muscle mass. When the trainee gets the fat off (which may take a year or more depending on the degree of fatness), assuming they don’t diet too badly and lose all the muscle, they often look absolutely amazing. It’s also a lot of fun to just eat and eat and eat and not care where the calories come from. Pizza, donuts, candy bars, whatever gets the calories down the pie-hole is good to go.

What isn’t usually talked about is the supporting ‘elements’ (read: drugs) that are involved here. Between increasing the amount of muscle mass gained while the folks in question get big and fat (and increasing the total amount of muscle that can be held) to sparing muscle loss while they diet off 150 pounds of lard, the drugs make a huge difference.

But the GFH approach to mass gain can backfire badly for naturals as there are biological limits to both the rate of muscle gain (per day or per week) as well as the maximum amount of muscle a natural lifter can carry. Simply, I don’t think this is generally ideal for the natural bodybuilder or athlete to gain muscle mass.

Athletes can’t usually afford to get that fat in the first place (performance suffers) and excess fat gain while gaining muscle mass for bodybuilders just means that much longer of a diet to get it back off. As mentioned above, and discussed below, given a maximum weekly rate of muscle gain, gaining weight at too fast a rate simply means that much more fat is being gained without increasing the rate of muscle mass gain.

Even for non-competitive bodybuilders, assuming the trainee is actually training for appearance reasons, getting excessively big and fat for part of the year really isn’t consistent with that goal. If you’re training for looks, ruining them by getting super fat just doesn’t make sense. That’s on top of other potential negatives of the GFH approach such as stretch marks and the potential to permanently increase the bodies set point (making it harder to get and stay lean when you diet back down).

I should note that, for very skinny folks or those looking for the most rapid rate of gain to reach their genetic limits, there is something to be said for the GFH philosophy. But, for most, I generally feel that the cons outweigh the pros and outside of a situation like a pro-football player or someone who just needed to get big and strong fast and didn’t care about the excess fat gain (or actually needed it to be competitive), I’d be unlikely to recommend this approach.

Lean Gaining

At the other extreme is the near obsession with lean-gaining, the idea being that folks are going to gain muscle mass without putting on an ounce of body-fat. Some supplements actually catered to this and the big fad in the 90′s were low-calorie mass gainers, products that claimed to magically put muscle on people without providing excess calories. And they did increase lean weight but only because they all contained creatine which increases lean body mass (via water retention) by several pounds. Thankfully, that fad has gone.

Lean gaining is usually based around insanely meticulous calorie and nutrient counting and timing, an obsession with clean eating, etc. without ever actually providing sufficient nutrients to grow at any meaningful rate. When you hear someone say that you can’t put on more than three pounds of muscle in a year, this is who you’re usually talking to: the guys who won’t allow even an ounce of fat gain. Or you’re talking to a natural bodybuilder who’s been at it for 10 years and is near his genetic limit. But it’s usually the lean-obsessed guys who aren’t gaining jack squat for muscle in a year.

The benefits of the lean-gaining approach, mind you, are that you get to look great year round; of course if your goal is contest bodybuilding (or sports), it also means literally no dieting time. If you model or make your living based on your physique, being able to do a photo shoot within a few weeks (or days) notice may be financially beneficial as well. This tends not to represent the majority of obsessives who try to use the lean-gaining approach.

The simple fact is that a bodybuilder who refuses to gain any fat and doesn’t put on any muscle between shows won’t be improving year to year. Unless they have perfect symmetry, size, shape, etc. their fear of body fat is preventing them from ever getting any better.

Athletes often have to add muscle mass (to improve strength, power or move up a weight class) and often don’t have very long to do it. Keeping calories too low year round hurts improvements in both mass and strength gains and even weight class athletes such as Olympic Lifters and Powerlifters usually train at a weight slightly higher than their weight class: this lets them eat more food, train more effectively and make faster gains; they can always drop weight and fat when needed.

The simple fact is that the body needs not only an appropriate training stimulus but also sufficient building blocks (protein, amino acids) AND sufficient dietary energy (calories) for maximal improvements. I discuss this in some detail in Calorie Partitioning Part 1 and Calorie Partitioning Part 2. Staying excessively lean (which means either doing tons of cardio, restricting calories, or both) isn’t consistent with the goal of trying to get stronger and more muscular for the most part.

Another drawback to the whole lean-gaining thing is that the meticulous attention to nutrition every day can drive people crazy. Of course, bodybuilders are usually a bit nutso anyhow and orthorexia is a very real eating-disorder. But worrying about every gram of everything that you eat every day of your life can drive some people insane (more insane); it also triggers some awesome binges when they lose control for even a second.

Before moving on, I would note that some lean gaining approaches, notably the mass variant of my own Ultimate Diet 2.0, as well as some of the intermittent fasting approaches (such as Martin Berkhan’s Lean Gains) take a more relaxed approach to the idea of gaining muscle mass while limiting fat gain. Rather than being based around keeping calories pretty low/controlled all the time, they are based around the short-term (1-3 days) alternation of low and high-calorie intakes.

The lowered calorie periods limit or reduce fat gains while the high-calorie periods support growth and gains. There’s more flexibility, trainees get some big-eating periods (helping to stave off insanity and binges) and there are other benefits of them for people who are determined to stay lean year round but want to actually gain some muscle mass. But these approaches are typically much different than the ‘typical’ approach to lean-gaining.

As well, for many they are simply not worth the time or energy investment and I want to describe what I feel is perhaps an ‘ideal’ approach to gaining mass (over the long-term) without either getting too fat or limiting gains by staying too lean.

Before getting to that, I need to discuss something that will not make a lot of readers happy.

How Fast Can You Actually Gain Muscle Mass?

We live in an instant gratification society and are constantly bombarded with amazing claims; while this is probably most true in the world of weight loss, it’s not much different when it comes to muscle gain.

Magazines advertise 20 pounds or rock hard muscle in a mere 8-10 weeks, a supplement promises 5 lbs of muscle in 3 days or whatever; all around we see claims of rapid gains in muscle mass. Sadly, this is all basically bullshit. Yeah, with glycogen loading or creatine you can increase lean body mass (not the same as muscle mass) fairly rapidly but beyond that, skeletal muscle actually grows fairly slowly.

How slowly?

On average, a natural male doing everything right will be doing very well to gain 1/2 of pound muscle per week. A female might gain half that or about 1/2 pound muscle every 2 weeks.

Let’s put that in perspective: over a full year of training, assuming the trainee is doing everything right, that’s 26 pounds of the good stuff for men (13 pounds for women). Which, if you think about it, actually isn’t that awful. It’s simply awful compared to what people think they are going to get based on the false promises in the magazines (or the claims of drug using bodybuilders).

That assumes that half-pound is gained week-in, week-out for the entire year. Oddly, and somewhat tangentially, it usually doesn’t work that way. Trainees may go a long time with no measurable gains and then wake up several pounds heavier seemingly overnight. I have no idea why, that’s just how it usually works.

I’d note that, under the right conditions (usually underweight high school kids), much faster rates of gain are often seen or reported. But these tend to be exceptions to the rule more than the norm and since I’m usually writing for the average male trainee who’s not 15 years old with raging hormones, I don’t consider those values very illustrative. And, occasionally, when the stars are right, and everything clicks, a true one pound per week of muscle mass gain may be seen for short periods. But again, that tends to be the exception.

Let me reiterate: the average male trainee is doing well to gain about 1/2 pound muscle per week, 2 pounds per month or about 24-26 pounds per year. I’d note that that will generally only happen in the first year of training and things slow down after that. A female may be gaining about half that much, 1 pound per month of actual muscle tissue or 10-12 pounds per year. I know it sucks but that’s reality.

I bring this up as it has some relevance to the weekly rate of weight gain that is acceptable for what I’m going to describe next.

A Happy Medium: Bulk a Little, Cut a Little

As many know, and altogether too many don’t know or realize, I’m usually a happy medium kind of guy. I find most extremist stances to be flawed and usually end up somewhere between the two in my recommendations; that’s on top of trying to look at the context of a given trainee’s situation. This is true for training, diet and most everything else you care to name. It’s certainly true for the topic of this article.

As noted above, there’s no doubt that gaining some fat will allow a faster rate of muscle gain. The drawback is that, gain too much fat and dieting time is extended and appearance suffers. And while staying lean is nice from an appearance standpoint, trying to stay too lean all the time tends to hurt mass and strength gains because the trainee simply can’t eat enough.

The solution of course is to simply alternate shorter periods of mass-gaining (let’s not use the term bulking since it seems to cause people so many mental problems) where the goal is maximal muscle gains while accepting small amounts of fat gain before dropping into a short dieting phase to strip off the fat without losing any of the muscle gain.

Please read the bold bits carefully, they are the key to all of this. What’s ideal for most situations in my experience is to try to maximize muscle gain (smart training, slight caloric surplus) by allowing a small amount of fat gain to occur. While this causes the trainee to get fatter (this should be done without getting outright FAT), this also maximizes the rate of muscle gain. While dieting, of course, the goal should always be to limit muscle mass losses (as outlined in pretty much any of my books). Done properly, alternating mass gain with proper dieting, the end result is more muscle mass.

This idea isn’t new mind you, and has probably been around for 30-40 years or more (McCallum wrote about it in The Keys to Progress and Dan Duchaine was an advocate of this approach). I simply happen to think it’s superior for most applications to either GFH or the ‘Gotta stay ripped year round crew’ for the average natural bodybuilder or athlete (or simply individuals interested in gaining muscle mass).

So let’s put some numbers and guidelines to this.

1. First and foremost, for reasons outlined in my article Initial Body Fat and Body Composition Changes, trainees should not be starting out their muscle gaining phase too fat. Males should be ~10-12% body fat before even considering going on any kind of ‘bulk’ (fatter trainees can usually gain some muscle while losing fat with a basic recomposition plan; this is beyond the scope of this article). For a female, this would be roughly equivalent to 19-24% body fat.

Bodybuilders with contest aspirations might even start out a little bit leaner, perhaps 8% for males and 17-20% for females; this is simply to facilitate getting into contest shape in less time. Any leaner than that and hormones and energy tend to suffer. And, yes, this means that many will have to diet first before they even consider putting on muscle. That’s life.

2. It would be ideal, if, after dieting, the trainee took two weeks at maintenance to stabilize at the new body fat level. The reasons for this are numerous but revolve around letting some of the hormonal adaptations to dieting normalize. I’ve written about this endlessly on the site and my full diet break concept is outlined in detail in both The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook and A Guide to Flexible Dieting. Briefly, take two weeks at roughly maintenance calories with at least 150 grams/day of carbohydrate.

3. Now you can start gaining weight. Assuming relative average partitioning (not superior or inferior), a weight gain of approximately one pound per week (of which half should be muscle) and half a pound per week for females (of which half should be muscle), or 4 and 2 pounds/month respectively should roughly maximize muscle gains without excessive fat gain. There will be some fat gain, of course, but, simply, any faster rate of weight gain (I’ve seen folks suggest 2-3 pounds per week) will only increase fat gain without increasing the rate of muscle mass gain.

4. When the trainee hits a body fat percentage of approximately 15% for men (24-27% for women), the mass gaining phase should end. How long this take will depend on the size of the person but realistically, a 170 pound male trainee with 10% body fat could gain 16 pounds (8 pounds fat, 8 pounds muscle) before hitting the 15% mark. At one pound per week, that’s 16 weeks of gaining. Which, I’d note should be broken up into at least two separate training blocks.

A female starting at 130 pounds and 19% body fat could realistically get to 154 pounds (12 pound fat/12 pounds lean) before hitting 24% body fat. For the female trainee, at one half-pound per week is nearly a year of training; again that would be broken up into distinct training phases.

5. After finishing the mass-gaining phase, a consolidation phase of two weeks (this used to be called a ‘hardening’ phase) where calories are brought back down to maintenance levels (and cardio, if not being done, is brought in) should occur before actively dieting.

Of course, the diet itself is a completely separate topic, some prefer to lose as slowly as they’ve gained, others are using the ideas in my Rapid Fat Loss Handbook to strip off the fat as rapidly as possible so that they can get back to gaining again. Both are valid and my article series on Fat Loss for Athletes is worth reading for more information.

Let me summarize the above a little more briefly: trainees should set a bottom and top-end for acceptable body fat levels. For males, 10-15% is a good range, for females 19-27% or so works. Diet down until you hit the low end, stabilize for two weeks, gain until you hit the high end, stabilize for two weeks, then diet back down while keeping the muscle. Over many months or a year of training, you should end up with more muscle than you started with which is the whole goal.

You can worry about being lean and having a six pack when it’s warm and you don’t look stupid being mostly nude. The winter is a good time to pack on some muscle mass and justify all that Halloween candy (“I’m bulking, bro”).

But in the same way that many diets fail for a lot of reasons, there are equally common reasons that trainees fail to make the muscular gains that they desire. I want to look at several of them, addressing potential solutions along the way

Not eating enough

Outside of poor training (which can be either too much or too little), not eating enough is the number one mistake I see most trainees making who can’t gain muscle. This is true even of individuals who swear up, down and sideways that they eat a ton but no matter what they can’t gain weight. It’s been said that ‘hardgainers’ tend to be overtrainers and undereaters and there is much truth to that.

Almost invariably, when you track these big eaters, they really aren’t eating that much. Research has routinely shown that overweight individuals tend to under-estimate food intake (e.g. they think they are eating much less than they actually are) but in my experience ‘hardgainers’ are doing the opposite: vastly overestimating how much they are actually eating in a given day, or over the span of a week.

Similarly, although such trainees may get in a lot of food acutely, invariably they often compensate for those high-caloric intakes by lowering calories on the following day (or even in the same day). So while they might remember that one big-assed lunch meal, they won’t remember how they ate almost nothing later in the day because they got full.

Some people simply lack the appetite to eat sufficient amounts to gain muscle (or any weight at all). While they may be able to force feed calories for a little bit, their appetite regulatory mechanisms kick in and they unconsciously reduce calories. Their bodies also tend to upregulate metabolic rate better than others, so they burn off more calories (a phenomenon called non-exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT).

But the simple fact is this: if such ‘big-eaters’ were actually eating as much as they think they are, they would be at least gaining some body fat, even if they were gaining zero muscle. If a trainee swears he’s eating a ton, but he’s not even gaining body fat, I know he’s still not eating enough (or even as much as he thinks he is).

Since I’m talking about body fat, I might as well address another very common cause of poor muscle gain and that’s trainees who fear putting on even an ounce of body fat. They’ll deliberately keep their calories low all the time and then wonder why they aren’t magically synthesizing muscle mass out of thin air. At this point, I’m not even including the folks who want to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.

The simple physiological fact is that, to gain muscle, you have to provide not only the proper training stimulus, but also the building blocks for the new tissue. This means not only sufficient protein (see below) but also sufficient calories and energy. While it’s wonderful to hope that the energy to build new muscle will be pulled out of fat cells, the reality is that this rarely happens (there are some odd exceptions such as folks beginning a program, and those returning from a layoff).

And while there are extremes (such as my Ultimate Diet 2.0 or some of the intermittent fasting schemes) that allow people to put on muscle while remaining lean, they always invariably alternate periods of low and high calories. With the high calorie part of the diet (e.g. the weekend on the UD2) providing sufficient protein and energy to drive muscle mass gains.

Now, although this is a slightly different topic, I entreat trainees not to take the ‘Eat enough to gain’ to the opposite extreme. While GFH (look it up) can work for many people, eating so much food that a trainee gains a disproportionate amount of fat is just as much of a mistake as not eating enough in the first place.

Unless you’re a sumo wrestler or football lineman, eventually the fat has to come off; the more you put on while gaining muscle mass, the longer you have to diet. Which is not only a psychological chore but often results in performance or muscle mass losses (especially if you diet badly).

What I’m getting at is some optimum level, an intake sufficient to provide sufficient calories and protein for muscle growth without becoming a total fat-ass. Which isn’t very helpful without some starting points which I’ll present now.

Muscle magazine claims notwithstanding, a natural trainee is usually doing damn well to gain 0.5 pounds of muscle per week (and a female might gain half of that). Yes, you’ll occasionally see a faster rate of gain but much more than that (especially for sustained periods) tends to be rare.

And while that may not sound like much, realize that a 0.5 lb per week muscle gain over the course of a year comes out to 26 pounds of lean body mass. And most won’t get that past their first year of training.

However, to get that rate of muscle mass gain will usually require some amount of fat gain, depending on how much over maintenance you’re eating, this might be an additional half pound of fat per week. So a reasonable weekly or monthly weight gain rate might be 1 pound per week or 4 pounds per month of which about half should be muscle and the other half fat.

Short dieting cycles can be inserted to take off the fat of course, a number of people on my forum have been using the Rapid Fat Loss Handbook to strip off fat between short bulking cycles so that they can get back to normal training.

I’d note that this shouldn’t take a huge number of calories over maintenance. Assuming a trainee is not burning off excessive calories through either a ton of cardio (or NEAT), you’re not looking at much more than 500 calories over maintenance to support about the maximum rate of muscle gain for a natural lifter. I’d suggest putting a majority of that on training days (and around training) with a lesser surplus on non-training days. That should help keep fat gains down somewhat.

Of course, this will have to be adjusted based on real world changes in body composition. If you’re not gaining any weight, you need to up calories. If you’re gaining a disproportionate amount of fat, you need to cut things back.

Problems with Protein Intake

While less common than simply not eating enough, I have found many individuals to have problems with inadequate protein intake when it comes to the desire to build muscle. Although they don’t usually want or need to gain a lot of muscle, endurance athletes tend to be the worst in terms of not getting enough protein, since they frequently overemphasize carbohydrates to such a ridiculous degree. But even among weight trainers, occasionally you find someone who simply won’t eat sufficient protein to support gains in muscle mass. Considering the rather high protein intake of even the average American, anywhere from 2-3 times the RDA, this is a little odd.

What usually happens is that these individuals have fallen into the trap of the endurance athlete and overemphasized carbohydrates to the point of neglecting protein (and usually fat as well); this was a much bigger problem in the 80′s and 90′s when sports nutritionists overemphasized carbs but isn’t heard of now (now, the opposite extreme, carbs are the devil, is more often seen).

Sometimes, in their quest to eliminate dietary fat from their diet, trainees quit eating meat, this seems to occur a lot among female trainees. Vegetarians can have greater problems but even eggs, fish and chicken can fulfill protein requirements easily. And while there is the occasional claim of someone building a lot of muscle with a true vegan diet, I’d say that most who claim veganism turned to that AFTER building up their muscle mass with a more traditional diet.

Occasionally you find someone who just doesn’t like protein very much. Women, moreso than men, tend to underconsume protein and overconsume carbohydrates. As low as the RDA for women is (44 grams/day), I’ve still run into women who aren’t even getting that much protein a day in their diet. You get the idea.

The point being that some people just don’t get enough protein. As with sufficient calories, adequate protein is critical for gains in muscle mass. The common number that is thrown out is 1 g/lb body mass and this is a good starting place. As I detail in The Protein Book, raising protein to 1.5 g/lb (another common value) may have small, cumulative benefits that current research can’t turn up. It usually can’t hurt unless it prevents sufficient intake of the other nutrients.

I would note that, for natural lifters, I don’t see much point to intakes over 1.5 g/lb. An exception is hardcore diets but I’m talking about muscle gain here. As caloric intake goes up, protein requirements go down and suggestions to eat 2 g/lb for naturals seems more of a ploy to sell protein powder than anything physiological.

As a final comment on protein intake, it’s very common to find wannabe bodybuilders taking protein intake to the other extreme, and making it the entirety of their daily diet. This ultimately sort of ties into the first problem I talked about: inadequate calorie intake. For the kinds of caloric intakes that many people need to gain muscle/weight at any decent rate, it’s nearly impossible to consume enough protein to do it. It’s also inefficient as hell, both metabolically and financially but those are separate issues.

For example, a 170 lb male may have a maintenance caloric requirement of around 2500 calories/day. To gain weight, he may need three thousand or more calories per day. Three thousand plus calories or more from protein alone is nearly impossible to achieve.

This is on top of the fact that protein calories aren’t used as efficiently for energy as calories from carbohydrates or fats (this can be great for weight control but is a real detriment for weight/muscle gain). That’s on top of the fact that protein plus carbohydrates is far more anabolic than protein or carbohydrates by themselves. Studies have shown that, once protein requirements are met, more muscle is gained by adding dietary energy (from carbs or fat) than from just plugging in more protein.

Is sufficient protein crucial for muscle mass gains? Yes.

Is it all a lifter should be eating? Absolutely not.

I suppose, for completeness, I should discuss the issue of protein quality, an issue that trainees (and especially bodybuilders) get themselves endlessly wound up about. In short (and, this is discussed in massive detail in The Protein Book), at an intake of 1.5 g/lb. from varied high quality sources, it just doesn’t matter. Quality matters hugely when you have someone eating a small amount of some single shitty protein. This describes conditions in third world countries, this doesn’t describe conditions for an American athlete eating plenty of protein from meat, fish, dairy, whey, casein, etc.

Which isn’t to say that different proteins don’t have varying pros and cons or aren’t more or less appropriate around training or what have you. I’m simply saying that, given sufficient protein and energy from high quality sources, protein quality isn’t nearly the issue that people (read: supplement companies) make it out to be. It certainly won’t be a deal breaker for muscle gains.

Training Issues: Cardio

Of course, diet isn’t the only place trainees run into problems, there are also issues related to training. To get it out of the way, let me talk about cardio training and mass gains, an area where opinions vary widely. Some say to do no cardio, some suggest it daily; the current fad of ‘intervals are the best for everything’ has people doing intervals multiple times per week while trying to gain muscle. What’s going on?

Frankly, for all but the most extreme hardgainer types (the guys who burn off a ton of calories when they try to gain weight), I think the inclusion of some cardio can be beneficial. It can help with appetite (by increasing it), keep conditioning up a bit, tends to improve recovery and may help alleviate some fat gain. Perhaps most importantly, it keeps the fat burning metabolic pathways running so that, when dieting is resumed, fat loss seems to occur faster.

However, too much will certainly hurt things. Reams of data suggest interference effects of excessive cardio on strength (and muscle mass gains); I won’t even bore you with the molecular mechanisms here (you can read AMPk: Master Metabolic Regulator for the details). But it’s only when it’s done excessively or at too high of an intensity (cough, cough, intervals) that it’s a problem.

I know that everything on the internet is true but this fad of keeping in lots of intervals when you’re trying to get stronger and bigger is frankly pretty stupid so far as I’m concerned. 20-30 minutes of boring old standard low to medium intensity cardio done 2-4 times per week is plenty and, surprise surprise, your legs might actually grow because you aren’t overtraining them with two weight sessions and two interval sessions per week.

Training issues: Weights

Of course, where the real problems usually start in terms of training is the weight room. To say that the training being performed by most individuals in most weight rooms sucks is an understatement. The problem is that much of the advice being followed is coming out of the professional bodybuilding ranks at least as it is disseminated through the bodybuilding magazines.

Yes, the internet has helped out with this and there’s a lot more realistic information out there but a lot of people are still trying to follow programs based on the training of elite drugged out bodybuilders. And, contrary to popular belief, 99% of internet trainees are not elite, or advanced. A lot of them aren’t even intermediates. But they are trying to follow programs aimed at those folks.

In my experience, the typical approach of blasting a muscle group once per week for an insane number of sets and exercises simply doesn’t work for the majority. Yes, fine, there are some who do fine on it. They usually have good genetics and hormones. But the number who failed completely with that type of training is legion. You can’t use the minority who succeed on it and ignore the majority who didn’t.

There’s a lot of reasons that type of training isn’t ideal for most people, this isn’t the place to discuss it. Fine, you get real sore, and you’re real tired coming out of the gym. But who cares if you aren’t making progress? Being sore and exhausted wasn’t the goal of this the last time I looked.

I should note that many fall at the opposite extreme of training, hitting a bodypart for one set once per week or what have you. They’ll go to complete muscular failure, hit the hard isometric hold and be blown out and shaking when they leave the gym. Again, since being tired isn’t the main goal, who cares. This can be just as big of a mistake for another set of reasons that I’m not going to discuss here.

The bottom line is that, in my opinion, in my experience, and in the realm of a lot of good research, something in between those two extremes appears to be best. A weekly training frequency of 3-4 times per week is usually quite doable although, for many (older trainees especially), four days may be pushing it unless the workouts are kept very short. And yes, some people get away training six days per week but they are usually in and out of the gym very quickly.

This will allow each bodypart to be hit roughly twice per week or, at the least, once every 5 days (about the lowest frequency I recommend for naturals). Upper/lower splits are popular but there are other ways to approach it as well.

A moderate number of sets, perhaps 4-8 per bodypart (more for larger, less for smaller) is usually about right as well. Research suggests that 40-60 contractions per bodypart per workout seems to give the optimal response. 4 sets of 10 would be at the low end of that, 8 sets of 8 (perhaps 2 exercises for 4 sets of 8 reps each) would be at the high end. A typical workout might last 60-90 minutes depending on how it’s split up.

One final comment on training before I wrap this up: an insidious (and stupid) idea that is out there (especially in the realm of bodybuilding) is that trainees should focus on irrelevant things: the feel, the squeeze, the pump. This is crap and guys who do this, unless they are on drugs, simply don’t grow. Muscle grows as a function of progressive tension overload, if you’re not adding weight to the bar over time, you’re not growing. This doesn’t mean that you have to add weight at every workout, but if you’re not gradually going heavier over time, you won’t be growing either.

The normal approach to clean eating (which I’m not going to get into here) becomes even more extreme and it’s not uncommon to see these folks diet on the same 5 or 6 foods eaten day in day out for 12-16 weeks. This list might include skinless chicken breast, tuna, broccoli, oat, rice, sweet potatoes and nothing else. Fat intake can be highly variable, many try to remove dietary fat completely (a huge mistake for any number of reasons) while bodybuilders who live on the edge will allow natural peanut butter. Whoa.

Along with that rather limited selection of foods, there are a host of ‘rules’ that go along with contest dieting, age old beliefs that should have been dismissed to the realm of lore and bullshit long ago. No sodium, no dairy, no red meat (sometimes but not always) and of course no fruit; there are assuredly others and which variety of lore you come across probably depends on what you’re specifically reading.

Of course, the people advocating these rules point to the folks who succeeded doing such, casually ignoring the folks who did the same thing and still looked like shit onstage. Nevermind the simple fact that, almost regardless of diet, contest bodybuilders have gotten into shape over the years. High carb/no-fat, they got into shape; high-fat/high protein, they got into shape, moderate carb/moderate fat, they got into shape.

But what if I told you that some of these strategies not only were not necessary to get into contest shape, but were actually slowing your progress and fat loss (or harming your health)? Because, in some cases, that’s certainly the case. In this article and the next I want to address several of these “rules” of contest dieting; this time I’ll tackle sodium and dairy. In the next part, I’ll deal with several others such as red meat and fruit intake while dieting.

No/Low Sodium

One of the most prevalent beliefs among physique athletes is that sodium must be kept low (or nonexistent in extreme cases). This, of course, has to do with the issue of water retention that sodium tends to cause, blurring definition. Now, let’s ignore for a second that sodium is a required nutrient in the body and that eliminating any required nutrient generally has negative effects. That should be obvious to anyone with an IQ bigger than their shoe size.

But let’s be realistic: definition only counts on contest day anyhow, what does it matter if you look a little smooth for the 12-16 weeks running up to the show? Adding to that is that is the fact sodium only causes water retention when folks move from very low to very high sodium. This is why that piece of pizza you snuck on your diet caused you to bloat like crazy. You see, when you reduce sodium too much, the body increases levels of a hormone called aldosterone which is involved in water balance (causing water retention).

When you throw sodium back into the mix, the body holds water. But guess what happens when you increase/maintain sodium at reasonable levels? The body decreases aldosterone. So sodium no longer causes any problem with bloating. Read through that again: sodium only causes bloating when you make the switch from low to high sodium, a few days on a higher sodium intake and everything will normalize anyhow.

Add to that the fact that physique folks want low aldosterone going into their contest. Removing sodium from the diet 4-12 weeks out cause more problems than it solves. Quite in fact, cutting edge contest gurus are actually keeping sodium intake high up until shortly before a show these days as it makes it EASIER to drop water a day or two out.

But none of that has to do with fat loss. To understand the role of sodium in fat loss, I need to tell you about a hormone called ghrelin. Released from the gut, ghrelin goes up when you diet and goes down when you eat. Along with leptin, peptide YY and a host of other hormones, ghrelin is involved in energy balance and appetite. When ghrelin goes up, so does hunger, metabolic rate drops and fat storage is increased (1).

Now, unfortunately, increased ghrelin (along with lowered leptin, etc.) is part and parcel of dieting. However, a recent study found that individuals placed on a sodium restricted diet showed a larger post-meal increase in ghrelin (2). Essentially, extreme sodium restriction just makes problems related to ghrelin worse.

In addition to effects on ghrelin, it also turns out that whole body hydration status affects protein balance and lipolysis with dehydration causing decreased lipolysis and protein loss and hyperhydration improving lipolysis and sparing body protein (3). Adding to this, a recent animal study (that will need to be replicated in humans) found that increasing hydration directly affected resting metabolism in skeletal muscle (4).

Interestingly, contest preparation guru Scott Abel has been advocating sodium loading for his athletes during their contest diet for many of the above described reasons. He has a reputation for bringing in his athletes lean and dry and you might want to consider that, along with the data I’ve presented, before you cut out your sodium prematurely.

Dairy

One of the more pervasive rules of contest dieting is the removal of dairy. Different competitors take it out at different times, typically arguing that ‘dairy makes them smooth’. Despite quite some time looking, I’ve yet to find out exactly what mechanism this is supposed to occur by or where this idea came from.

My best guess is this: back in the day, bodybuilders used to bulk up on whole milk. When it came time to diet down for a contest, they would remove milk from their diets (reducing calories and fat intake massively) and lean out; hence milk became known as a food that made you smooth (a polite way of saying fat). Add to that Arnold’s classic comment in Pumping Iron that ‘milk is for babies’ and a myth is born; dairy must be dropped while contest dieting.

So why is dairy in fact important while dieting? Well one important reason has to do with calcium intake and bone health status. Dairy foods contribute the largest amount of calcium to the diet and ensuring adequate calcium intake is crucial for bone health maintenance (especially for women); this is especially true in the face of a high protein intake (5). Simply put, a high protein intake with inadequate calcium intake causes bone density to be lost; a high calcium intake combined with a high protein intake has a beneficial effect on bone density (5). Female bodybuilders consuming tons of protein and insufficient calcium are risking their long-term bone health because of it.

However that doesn’t really have to do with fat loss per se, since calcium supplements can sufficiently cover needs. So what’s the importance of dairy to fat loss? Well, some aspect of dairy foods increases fat loss while dieting (6). At first it was thought to simply be calcium which in and of itself appears to affect fat cell metabolism, increase fat oxidation (burning) during the day and increase the excretion of fat from the gut without being absorbed. In one study, increasing dietary calcium caused an excretion of about 60 calories extra of fat per day. Over a 12-16 week contest diet, this could add up to an extra two pounds of fat lost (7). However, the effect is only seen with increased dairy calcium, not pills (8).

However, the effect is no longer thought to be due solely to calcium, it’s thought that other components of dairy foods may also play a role. Interactions with the high BCAA/leucine content of the protein or other bioactives found in dairy (especially in whey) may be playing a role (6). I should mention that whey, casein and milk protein isolate (MPI) protein powders also contain dairy and might confer the same benefit for those wishing to avoid dairy foods. I should also mention that some physique competitors insist on dropping out protein powder as part of their diet, in addition to removing dairy, they are losing out on any potential benefit from dairy proteins and the nutrients involved with them.

None of which really addresses why or how dairy got the reputation for smoothing people out. My best guess is that it has to do with the sodium content of dairy which, as discussed above, when coupled with a typically low sodium diet, can cause water retention. Cottage cheese (a frequent staple of bodybuilding diets) can contain nearly 500 mg of sodium per serving with foods such as milk, yogurt and cheese containing 150-300 mg or so.

As discussed above, with a normal sodium intake to begin with, the added amount from dairy shouldn’t cause problems. Since sodium needn’t be manipulated until a few days out from a contest anyhow, avoiding sodium during the contest diet (as described above) is a mistake anyhow. Who cares if your bloated 4 weeks out if you’re losing fat more effectively, you can always drop the water when it’s time to do so.

Another potential issue might be related to allergies to milk which can cause bloating. However, research shows that the true prevalence of allergies to cow’s milk is only 1-3%, although it is often self-reported at 10 times that level (9,10). I should mention that lactose intolerance (lactose maldigestion) is separate from a true food allergy; lactose intolerance refers to an inability to digest lactose often causing gas, stomach bloating and an upset stomach.

The prevalence of lactose intolerance varies by ethnic group but problems can be avoided by choosing lactose removed milk or using lactase tablets. Additionally, individuals with severe lactose intolerance often find that hard cheeses and yogurt can be consumed; consuming dairy with meals appears to eliminate problems with lactose intolerance as well (11). The active cultures in yogurt appear to improve lactose tolerance, in addition to keeping the bacteria in the gut health as well (12).

Clearly individuals with a true allergy should avoid dairy foods but it seems doubtful that every bodybuilder and fitness or figure competitor on the planet is in that 1-3% incidence found clinically. More likely, issues to do with sodium intake on a pathologically low sodium diet are the cause of the bloating and, once again, with normal sodium intakes, this should be a non-issue. In any case, as I mentioned above, who cares if you’re a little bloated during most of your diet, looks only count on contest day.

If dairy gives you problems, drop it a week out from your show since, if you’re doing everything correctly, you should be as lean as you’re going to get anyhow. Manipulate water balance when it’s necessary (1-3 days out from the show), stressing over it 16 weeks out, to the extent of avoiding a class of foods that can actually increase your fat loss is simply silly.

I’d note that dairy proteins (both casein, whey and whole foods) are discussed in detail in The Protein Book.

Summary

In this article I’ve only addressed two common contest dieting concepts, both of which are based more on lore than physiology. In an upcoming article, I’ll take a look at other ideas that are prevalent to contest diets including the removal of red meat from the diet, the idea of removing all dietary fat from the diet and the perennial favorite, removing fruit from the diet.

References:

1. Hosoda HJ. Biological, physiological, and pharmacological aspects of ghrelin. Pharmacol Sci. 2006;100(5):398-410. Epub 2006 Apr 13.
2. Brownley KA Dietary sodium restriction alters postprandial ghrelin: implications for race differences in obesity. Ethn Dis. 2006 Autumn;16(4):844-51.
3. Keller U et. al. Effects of changes in hydration on protein, glucose and lipid metabolism in man: impact on health. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2003 Dec;57 Suppl 2:S69-74.
4. Antolic A et. al. The effect of extracellular osmolality on cell volume and resting metabolism in mammalian skeletal muscle. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2007 Jan 18; [Epub ahead of print]
5. Dawson-Hughes B. Interaction of dietary calcium and protein in bone health in humans. J Nutr. 2003 Mar;133(3):852S-854S.
6. Zemel MB. Role of calcium and dairy products in energy partioning and weight management. Am J Clin Nutr (2004) 79 (suppl): 907s-912s.
7. Jacobsen R. Effect of short-term high dietary calcium intake on 24-h energy expenditure, fat oxidation, and fecal fat excretion. Int J Obes (Lond). 2005 Mar;29(3):292-301.
8. Lorenzen JK et. al. Effect of dairy calcium or supplementary calcium intake on postprandial fat metabolism, appetite, and subsequent energy intake. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Mar;85(3):678-87.
9. Bahna SL Cow’s milk allergy versus cow milk intolerance.. Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol. 2002 Dec;89(6 Suppl 1):56-60. Links
10. Crittenden RG and LE Bennett. Cow’s milk allergy: a complex disorder. J Am Coll Nutr. 2005 Dec;24(6 Suppl):582S-91S. Review.
11. Huth PJ et. al. Major scientific advances with dairy foods in nutrition and health. J Dairy Sci. 2006 Apr;89(4):1207-21. Review.
12. Shah NP. Effects of milk-derived bioactives: An Overview. Br J Nutr (2000) 84 (Suppl 1): S3-S10.

For many years (decades?) a common suggestion was that one should attempt to gain some muscle mass mass (through resistance training and possibly overeating) prior to beginning a diet. Well meaning individuals would suggest you spent 3-4 weeks or more training hard and eating well to gain muscle mass. The goal was to raise metabolism so that the diet would go more effectively.

In that current data indicates that each pound of muscle might burn an additional 6 calories (as opposed to older values of 25-40 cal/lb or even higher) (1), this argument is no longer tenable; to significantly affect metabolic rate would require a monstrous gain of muscle mass, far more than you could gain in 3-4 weeks.

Even if you gained 10 pounds of muscle, that would only add up to an additional 60 calories burned per day, hardly enough to worry about and certainly not enough to affect the following diet. Which isn’t to say that diets don’t work better after short or even medium periods of overfeeding, mind you, it’s simply not because of gains in muscle mass.

A more recent idea making the rounds in bodybuilding nutrition is that, prior to trying to gain lean body mass, people should diet down first. This reasoning is based on a variety of data that has examined the changes in body composition that occur when you overfeed either thin or fat individuals (see for example, Reference 2 or just about anything Gilbert Forbes has written over the past 30 years).

A Primer on the P-Ratio

The above recommendation is based on a lot of data on something called the P-ratio (which stands for partitioning ratio) which essentially represents the proportion of protein (LBM) you gain relative to the total weight you gain (this isn’t the technical definition of P-ratio, by the way, I’m just trying to simplify it a bit).

Now, a lot of factors control P-ratio including genetics, hormones, diet and training (to a smaller degree than you’d expect) and probably some I’m forgetting (3). But by and large, the primary predictor of P-ratio is starting body fat percentage. Basically, your starting body fat percentage predicts the great majority of what you will lose/gain when you diet/overfeed (4).

So, when you diet, the fatter you are, the less LBM (and more fat) you will lose. Conversely, the leaner you are, the more LBM and less fat you will tend to lose when you diet. This makes sense in evolutionary terms, the more fat you have to lose, the more your body can lose without having to burn off muscle tissue; the leaner you get, the less fat you have and the more muscle you end up losing. Anyone who’s dieted naturally to sub 10% body fat levels knows this to be true: the leaner you get, the more muscle mass you tend to lose

So what about overfeeding and gaining weight? Well, in general, the same holds but in reverse: leaner individuals will tend to gain more LBM and less fat and fatter individuals will tend to gain more fat and less LBM. This actually makes sense when you think about it. The fat individual loses a lot of fat/a little LBM when they diet and gains a lot of fat and little LBM when they overfeed while the leaner individual does the opposite. P-ratio appears to be constant going in both directions. That is, P-ratio appears to be constant for a given individual (5).

So, typically, when overfed, thin/lean individual will gain 60-70% lean body mass (LBM) while fat individuals may gain only 30-40% LBM. Note that these percentage gains are without exercise, simply with overfeeding from a starting body fat level. Although research hasn’t examined overfeeding nearly as much as underfeeding, we might expect intensive weight training to skew these numbers to an even better point.

So far, so good right; it sure seems like the leaner you are, the better your body composition changes will be during overfeeding? So get lean and then train and eat and you should gain piles of muscle back, right?

The Problem: Naturally Lean People vs. Dieted Down People

The problem with the above analysis, exciting as it sounds, is that there are significant differences between folks who are naturally lean (on whom the original overfeeding research was done) and subjects who have been dieted to leanness.

Let’s consider, for a second the likely physiology of those folks who stay naturally lean. Based on the Geneticcs Hypothesis (3), we’d expect them to have pretty good hormonal status in terms of thyroid levels, low or normal cortisol, maybe decent levels of testosterone, GH and IGF-1. They probably also show a normal nervous system output and an ability to increase fat oxidation when calories are raised as well.

We’d probably expect them to exhibit a spendthrift metabolism (6), one that cranks up in response to overfeeding to burn off excess calories. It wouldn’t be surprising if they were the ones who showed a great deal of Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT, 7) which is what allows them to burn off excess calories without getting fat. All of this, almost certainly with other factors would all contribute to their general lack of fat gain during overfeeding. Of course, if fat gain is limited during overfeeding, that would tend to mean that any weight gain will tend to be LBM, as the P-ratio data described above indicates.

The problem is that the above physiological profile in no way describes individuals who have dieted down to a low body fat percentage. Rather, dieted individuals typically show a biology that is absolutely not geared towards anything except packing the body fat back on. Typically, the metabolic consequences of dieting include a lowered metabolism, decreased fat oxidation, decreased HSL activity, increased LPL activity impaired hormonal status (including lowered testosterone and raised cortisol), decreased thermogenesis from a reduction in both thyroid levels and nervous system output and a host of other metabolic defects. All of these serve to both slow fat loss during the diet and ensure rapid fat regain when food is reintroduced.

For example, in the classic starvation study (the Minnesota Semi-Starvation study) men were dieted for 6 solid months reaching 4-5% body fat at the end of the study. Then they were refed and body composition was tracked. By the theory being advocated, they should have gained lots of LBM and little fat during refeeding, they were clearly super lean to start out with. But this is absolutely not what happened.

As would be expected based on the metabolic adaptations to dieting, their bodies were mainly primed to replenish fat stores. Reductions in metabolic rate, fat oxidation and thermogenesis all contributed to a preferential gain of body fat and these systems didn’t reset themselves until all of the body fat lost had been regained (8). Quite in fact, signals from body fat (i.e. leptin and the rest) are the mechanism behind this physiology (9).

The bottom line is that, in dieted down individuals, the body is primed to gain body fat at the expense of LBM to replenish what was lost during the diet. Again, this is fundamentally different than looking at genetically lean individuals (for whom a low body fat percentage is their normal level) in terms of what happens when they are overfed.

And even without this research available, anybody who’s dieted to a low body fat percentage can attest to the above. Regardless of the theories being advocated by the individuals looking just at Forbes’ data on P-ratio, the end of the diet is a time when you gain body fat the most easily. Even a brief look at the real world should have pointed out why the theory was incorrect in the first place.

Now Watch me Backpedal a Little

Having hopefully shown you why I think the idea that getting lean first will magically let you pack on the LBM without fat gain, I’m going to backpedal and say that that doesn’t mean I think that dieting first is always a bad idea. Quite in fact, there may be very good reasons to diet prior to going on a mass gaining phase. It’s just not for the reason that many are now advocating.

Part of the reason that preceding a mass gaining phase with a diet is one of practicality. If you want to compete in a bodybuilding contest, you need to be sufficiently lean to start with (10-12% body fat for males) to have a chance of coming in on time. That may mean keeping body fat in check by dieting prior to trying to add mass. Similarly, if you simply want to get lean for appearances sake, you need to keep body fat under control.

Meaning this: if you start a mass gaining phase at too high of a body fat percentage (say 12-15%), you’re going to gain some fat during that phase and end up in the high teens or worse. This makes dieting back to a non-fat assed body fat percentage a real hassle. Better to keep things in check by alternating periods of cutting and gaining.

As well, it seems empirically that once body fat gets to the 15% range or so for men, fat gains tend to accelerate during mass gaining phases. I suspect this is due to the development of systemic insulin resistance which causes calories to go into fat stores more readily. Keeping body fat levels below that may be helpful.

I should mention that there was always an anecdotal idea that mass gains were best with body fat about 10-12% body fat (for men, add 9-12% for women). While I had always dismissed this as being an excuse to stay fat, I suspect it’s probably close to correct. Based on what’s going on hormonally and physiologically at both low and higher body fat percentages, this may very well be a sweet spot for mass gaining. You’re fed and healthy enough to lift well and make gains but not so fat that other problems arise.

Practical Recommendations

Ok, enough theory crap. Based on the above data, here’s what I would generally recommend to bodybuilders or athletes who want to put on muscle mass (i.e. all of them).

1. If you’re above 15% body fat (about 24-27% for women), diet first. If you can get to the 10-12% (19-24%) body fat range or so, I think you’ll be in an overall better position to gain mass. Trying to get super lean will probably end up screwing you in the long run because your body will be primed to put back fat on (and most other physiological systems are screwed up as well) when you get super lean.
2. After finishing your diet, regardless of how lean you get, take 2 weeks to eat at roughly maintenance calorie levels before starting your mass gaining phase. The reason has to do with the physiological adaptations to dieting described briefly above. Although you can’t reverse all of them short of getting fat again (or fixing the problem pharmaceutically), 2 weeks at maintenance, which by definition should be higher calories than you were eating on your diet, will help to normalize some of them. Leptin, thyroid, SNS output should improve a bit, along with other hormones, putting you in a better place to gain mass without super excessive fat gain. Make sure to get at least 100 grams of carbs/day or more during this phase so that thyroid will come back up.
3. Only try to add mass/bulk until you hit the top end body fat percentage listed in #1 above. So that’s about 15% body fat for men and 24-27% body fat for women. What this would mean in practice is that you diet to 10-12% body fat for men (22-24% for women), eat at maintenance for two weeks to try and normalize things, and then add mass until you hit 15% body fat for men (22-24% for women) and then diet back down. Over a number of cycles, you should be able to increase your muscle mass while keeping body fat under control

Summing up:

So there you have it, a look at the impact of initial body fat and how it impacts on changes in body composition. Contrary to current (mis) interpretations of the literature, individuals who have dieted down to low body fat levels don’t magically put on lots of LBM when they gain. Quite in fact, if anything, the opposite is true. After an extended diet, the body is primed for fat gain.

However, that doesn’t mean that dieting prior to a mass-gaining phase is a bad idea and getting reasonbly lean prior to ‘bulking’ is probably the best strategy for the average natural bodybuilder.

References:

1. McClave SA, Snider HL. Dissecting the energy needs of the body. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2001 Mar;4(2):143-7.
2. Forbes GB. Body fat content influences the body composition response to nutrition and exercise. Ann N Y Acad Sci. (2000) 904:359-65.
3. Bray GA. GENETICSS hypothesis of nutrient partitioning. Progress in Obesity Research:7 (1996) 43-48.
4. Dulloo AG, Jacquet J. The control of partitioning between protein and fat during human starvation: its internal determinants and biological significance. Br J Nutr. (1999) 82:339-56.
5. Dulloo AG. Partitioning between protein and fat during starvation and refeeding: is the assumption of intra-individual constancy of P-ratio valid? Br J Nutr. 1998 Jan;79(1):107-13
6. Weyer C et. al. Changes in energy metabolism in response to 48 h of overfeeding and fasting in Caucasians and Pima Indians. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2001 May;25(5):593-600.
7. Levine JA. Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in resistance to fat gain in humans. Science. 1999 Jan 8;283(5399):212-4.
8. Dulloo AG et. al. Autoregulation of body composition during weight recovery in human: the Minnesota Experiment revisited. nt J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1996 May;20(5):393-405.
9. Dulloo AG, Jacquet J. Adaptive reduction in basal metabolic rate in response to food deprivation in humans: a role for feedback signals from fat stores. Am J Clin Nutr. 1998 Sep;68(3):599-606.

Training zone recap

I finished the second part by giving some volume recommendations for both training and maintaining loads for the different components (4 of them) of training: pure strength, intensive bodybuilding, extensive bodybuilding and really extensive bodybuilding. Without recapping that entire article, I’ll simply summarize the loading parameters for each below.

Notes: Tempo reads X/Y/Z where X is the lowering speed, Y is the pause, Z is the lifting speed. Some coaches add fourth value for the pause at the top. Rest intervals are in minutes, set length is in seconds. The really extensive zone should be timed for 1 to 2 minutes (up to maybe 3 if you’re a masochist) without focusing so much on reps. If you must count reps, 15-30 reps on a 2/0/2 tempo works fine.

Volume Recommendation Recap

Along with that I gave some volume recommendations for both training and maintaining loads, recapped below. I should probably have noted that these volumes aren’t necessarily volumes per exercise but rather volume/bodypart. So if you want to do two exercises for chest in a pure strength training cycle, you could do 3-5 sets of flat and incline or what have you. Same for the other loading zones.

One thing I didn’t mention is that, in general, within any given workout, you would work in the same order. So for any given bodypart, strength training comes first (if it’s being done at all), intensive bodybuilding second, extensive bodybuilding third, really extensive bodybuilding last. Additionally, if you’ve never worked in the pure strength training rep range, you should spend at least 6 weeks (if not longer) working in the intensive bodybuilding zone to prepare your connective tissues for the heavier loading.

So now I can finally give some sample routines, right? Well, not quite, I have a few more topics to cover first.

Another Comment on Rep Range Emphasis

Within any given cycle, unless you are specializing (see below), you’re probably best off picking a primary training emphasis, a secondary training emphasis and a maintenance training emphasis. Once again, this is simply to avoid having to try and hit everything at once. As you progress through a training year, obviously those training emphases will change (this is the whole point of periodizing in the first place).

So you might the intensive bodybuilding method as your primary emphasis, pure strength as a secondary emphasis and extensive bodybuilding (picking the higher end of the range since that overlaps with the really extensive range) for maintenance. This might mean warmups followed by 2-3 sets of 2-3 for maintenance of pure strength (which always goes first), then anywhere from 2-8 sets of intensive bodybuilding work (your primary emphasis which always goes second). Finally finish up with 1-2 sets of 12-15 to cover extensive bodybuilding and really extensive bodybuilding zones. Alternately you could do 1-2 sets of 10-12 and 1 timed set to finish out the bodypart.

Bodypart Overlap

In part 2 I talked about the issue of rep range overlap, pointing out that the training zone overlap with one another, allowing for consolidation of training (since it would be impossible to hit everything in a single workout).

In addition, I want to mention the issue of bodypart overlap since this further allow bodybuilders to decrease how many sets are necessary. For example, consider a workout where your training bench press extremely heavy, you’ve done 6 sets of 2 for pure strength work, 2-3 sets of 6-8 for intensive bodybuilding work, and 1-2 sets of extensive work. Let’s also say that you’re training shoulders and triceps in the same workout, both of which are worked during the heavy chest work.

Obviously it would be overkill to try and work either shoulders or triceps at full volume. It might even be overkill to do either in all repetition ranges. That is, during heavy bench sets of triples, triceps and delts are both getting some work in that rep range. You would only need a few total sets for each to round out the workout. Basically, this allows you to use heavy compound exercises to get a lot of work done for the smaller muscle groups so that fewer sets are necessary in the first place. Frankly, outside of the occasional arm specialization routine, it’s rare for me to prescribe more than a couple of direct sets for biceps or triceps: I let heavy pushing and pulling take care of it.

The same goes for pulling exercises: if you’ve worked the hell out of your back, your biceps have already gotten a ton of work. Doing more than a few sets for biceps would be not only unnecessary but complete overkill.

Bodypart Emphasis

Which leads into my final comments on bodypart emphasis (which could and should be an article all in itself). I want to introduce this by saying that, for all but beginner and maybe intermediate bodybuilders, it’s usually impossible to bring up all bodyparts at once. Rather, focusing on one or two upper body and one or two lower body bodyparts, while maintaining the others, works much much better. So in most of my sample workouts, at most two bodyparts are emphasized with the others at maintenance levels.

On that note, the first bodypart (or two) that you work in a workout will generally receive the greatest training effect. So if you want to bring up your delts (strength or size), train them first in the workout, putting chest second and working it at maintenance levels. Will this hurt your chest poundages? Yes. But it’s better than the converse where chest training will limit how much emphasis you can put into your delts.

o when you’re focusing heavily on chest and back, plan on working delts and arms at maintenance. If you want to focus on delts, work chest and triceps at maintenance. If you want to focus on triceps, work on chest and delts at maintenance. The same goes for pulling exercises.

Legs are a little more complicated because the amount of overlap isn’t necessarily as great. Hamstrings are certainly worked during compound leg stuff but it’s not quite the same as how hard delts or tris are worked during heavy benching. This means that you can use more volume for leg exercises (there are also fewer bodyparts to worry about: quads, hams/glutes/ calves) and the sample workouts will be set up that way.

At the same time, my comments on bodypart emphasis still hold: if you always train quads (squats) first, this will limit how much energy you have left to train hamstrings and I think that’s a big part of why so many bodybuilders have terrible hamstrings. Putting hamstrings first and quads at maintenance is a way to avoid this common problem.

Another approach (that can also be used for upper body) is to make one leg workout a quad emphasis workout and the other a hamstring workout emphasis with volume set accordingly. For upper body you might make one workout a push emphasis (with light pull meaning back/bis worked at maintenance) and the other a pull emphasis (with light push meaning chest/delts/tris worked at maintenance).

Training Frequency, Splits and Volume

Although I could most assuredly write pages on this topic itself (I need to get off my ass and stop with the fat loss shit and write a training manual), I only want to make a couple of comments for the purposes of this article.

As I said in Periodization for Bodybuilders: Part 2, I don’t think naturals should train a bodypart any less frequently than about once every 5th day (or twice a week on average). Of course, this isn’t an absolute but I find it to be generally true: any less than this and growth simply isn’t optimal. This gives a few workable possibilities for splits depending on recovery. One would be to use a Charles Poliquin split like

• Day 1: Chest/Back
• Day 2: legs/abs
• Day 3: Off
• Day 4: Shoulders/arms
• Day 5: Off
• Repeat

I would probably personally put some maintenance chest/back work on day 4 but that type of split would be workable for folks who have very flexible schedule during the week, overall good recovery or are using steroids or even some of the new prohormones.

Arguably my favorite split is an upper/lower split (also workable for powerlifting). This is good for people who need to train on the same days each week or who don’t have the recovery to train as often as the above split.

• Monday: Lower body (squat emphasis for PL’ing, or quad emphasis for bodybuilding)
• Tuesday: Upper body (bench emphasis for PL’ing or push emphasis for bodybuilding)
• Thursday: Lower body (DL emphasis for PL’ing or hamstring emphasis for bodybuilding)
• Friday: Upper body (light bench + back emphasis for PL’ing, pull emphasis for bodybuilding)

For folks with even poorer recovery ability, the above could be changed to a three day/week program alternating workouts. So each workout gets hit three times every two weeks.

• Monday: Lower body
• Wed: Upper body
• Fri: Lower body
• Mon: Upper body
• Wed: Lower body
• Fri: Upper body

In this scheme, I wouldn’t make any of the days a specific emphasis but volume could be cut back to allow everything to be hit.

On the topic of volume, you’ll note that I gave somewhat large set ranges for the different types of training. I wanted to comment on that for a second. I have found, over the years, that individual volume tolerance is, well, individual. Young males with high testosterone can adapt to higher volumes of training while your classic ‘hardgainer’ frequently does better with lower volumes (but higher frequencies and avoiding failure). Women generally need less volume than men and older individuals can’t handle the same volume as younger folks.

So whereas a young male with high testosterone might do 8 sets of 6-8 Intensive bodybuilding) for a given bodypart, a similarly aged male with low testosterone or a female or older male might only need/be able to handle 2-3 sets of 6-8 per bodypart. Just keep that in mind in the sample workouts; I’ll be using rather ‘average’ volume recommendations but you can adjust them up or down depending on your own personal recovery capacity.

Too much variety for me to give you more recommendations like that. Alternately, you could probably apply some of the autoregulatory concepts going around, training a given exercise until a given % strength cutoff if you don’t know how much volume you can handle. I’ll also note that volume tolerance can both be improved (by gradual volume increases over time) and detrained (by doing HIT/low volume shit all the time).

A Word on Progression

Bodybuilders make a lot of mistakes that prevent them from realizing their goals. That alone could make an entire book. Here I want to focus only on one thing: progression. Unless you’re drugged or genetically superior, your muscles only respond by getting bigger if you continue to challenge them. Within the context of this article series, progression means adding weight to the bar. Now, there are tons of different ways to progress weights and this is too long (and overdue) as it is. I’ll only make this comment: you should strive to add weight to the bar whenever you can do so in good form.

So if you get to the high end of a rep range and feel like you have a rep left over, add weight at the next workout. This will probably drop you to the low end of the rep range and then build up again. For really extensive bodybuilding, you would increase weight when you got to the high end of the time range.

Note that this doesn’t apply to pure strength training methods but explaining how best to progress this would take too long. Just remember that, in general, if you’re not getting stronger, you’re not getting bigger. And if you’re not getting bigger, you’re not getting stronger. So if you’re not adding weight to the bar over time, you’re just another bozo wasting his life in the gym with nothing to show for it.

Sample Workouts

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’m ever going to get around to writing Part 4 of this series which would have had some sample workouts. Maybe someday or when I write my training book I’ll get back to it. Hopefully the above at least gives you some ideas about how you might set things up.

Holistic Training

In his original holistic training schema, Dr. Hatfield proposed using three different intensity/rep ranges to optimally stimulate a muscle. This included sets of 4-6 done explosively, sets of 12-15 done rhythmically and sets of 40 done fairly slowly. Different types of workouts were done in a fairly complicated cycling pattern (Hatfield called this ABC training) and, frankly, keeping everything straight was a huge pain in the ass.

As a starting point, there’s fundamentally nothing wrong with this schema although I’m going to tech it up a little bit in a second. I also feel that Dr. Squat left out a type of training of utmost importance to the bodybuilder: pure strength training. I’ll discuss that below.

Different Fibers, Different ‘parts’ of the Muscle, Different Types of Growth

I’m going to assume that anybody reading this magazine has a basic understanding of fiber types. In (very) brief, there are three major types of muscle fibers: Type I (or slow oxidative), Type IIa (fast oxidative/glycolytic) and Type IIx (fast glycolytic). The old Type IIb fibers turn out only to exist in animal models, IIx describes the highest threshold fibers in humans.

Each fiber type has a distinctive physiology in terms of force and growth capability, fatigueability, etc. Type I fibers have the lowest force output and growth potential and take the longest to fatigue and Type II fibers have a higher force output and growth capacity and fatigue more quickly with Type IIa being intermediate between Type I and Type IIx. We might simplistically look at the rep schemes of holistic training as hitting a given pool of motor units: sets of 4-6 for Type IIx, sets of 12-15 for Type IIa and sets of 40 for Type I. This isn’t necessarily incorrect although it goes a little beyond that.

Dr. Hatfield may have been one of the first Americans to latch onto the idea that there were different components of a muscle that contributed to muscle growth. This goes along with the European idea of myofibrillar vs. sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (this topic is discussed in greater detail in my Ultimate Diet 2.0). Myofibrillar hypertrophy refers to growth of the actual contractile component of the muscle fiber while sarcoplasmic hypertrophy refers to growth of everything else: glycogen, water, minerals, mitochondria and capillaries. The key thing to note is that each component requires a differential type of stress to stimulate growth.

Pure strength training

As I mentioned above, the one thing that Hatfield (as I recall anyhow) left out of his holistic training was pure strength training. This can describe a lot of different types of training but let’s define it hear as anything below 5 reps. Heavy sets of 2 and 3 (doubles and triples) with a near maximum weight for example.

The key thing to realize is that strength production is a combination of both muscular and neurological factors: a variety of neural adaptations takes place in response to pure strength training that increases strength output without making people bigger. I know that there is a long-held belief that there is an absolute relationship between strength and size but it’s not that simple: athletes like power- and Olympic lifters increase strength without getting any bigger all the time and they do it by maximizing neural factors.

Now, I suspect that most bodybuilders could give the first shit about being strong, the sport is all about being big and freaky. But I will argue that improving the neural components of strength will help you get even bigger in the long run. The reason, actually, is fairly simple.

Stimulating myofibrillar growth means imposing some combination of tension, fatigue and damage components onto muscle fibers (stimulating sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is more about fatigue and energy depletion than tension per se). By improving strength in low rep ranges with pure strength training, bodybuilders can use more weight in higher rep ranges. This means more tension, more damage and more ultimate growth. It’s also nice to actually be as strong as you look: too many big but ultimately weak bodybuilders walking around out there in my opinion.

Intensity Zones

So with that introduction taken care of, let’s talk about intensity zones, since that is a key concept to all periodization schemes. The one problem I had with Hatfield’s scheme is that it wasn’t necessarily specific enough. As coaches like Charles Poliquin have pointed out, the issue of time under tension may be just as important to the overall growth stimulus as rep count per se. That is to say that 5 reps done in 60 seconds (a very slow tempo) isn’t the same as 5 reps done in 30 seconds or 5 reps done in 5 seconds. The first would be most likely to stimulate sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, the second myofibrillar hypertrophy and the third pure strength and power. As another example, I’ve seen folks perform 40 reps (Hatfield’s ‘long’ set) in 40 seconds which is defeating the purpose: a timed set of 60-120 seconds with no focus on reps would be more beneficial. So let’s look at the different intensity zones.

Strength training: The goal of pure strength training is to improve the neural components of strength production. Weight should be 85% of 1 repetition maximum or higher. Sets should last 20 seconds or less. Generally 5 reps or less done with a 2-3 second negative. Lift as fast as possible. Typically compound exercises such as squats, bench press, power clean, deadlift, etc. are chosen. Isolation exercises can be used for this type of training but your form has to be perfect or you’ll probably get hurt. Strength athletes commonly do many, many sets (6-10 sets of 2-3) but they are usually only focusing on a handful of lifts. A bodybuilder may need to hit more bodyparts which would mean cutting the total number of sets done.

Intensive bodybuilding method (or power bodybuilding): The goal of this zone is to increase myofibrillar size and muscle density. This zone also increases maximal strength although not to the degree that pure strength training does. Weight would be in the 80-85% of 1 RM range. Set length ranges from 20-30 seconds. A generic approach might be repeat sets of 4-6 reps on a 3-4 second down, no pause, 1 up tempo. Rest periods should be about 3 minutes between sets. Depending on volume tolerance and the number of exercises performed, anywhere from 2 to 8 sets per bodypart might be done. As with strength training, compound exercises are usually preferred; isolation exercises can be done but only with picture perfect form.

Extensive bodybuilding method: The goal of this zone is a combination of myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy with the lower end of the range (6-8 reps) being more geared towards myofibrillar growth (with some strength gains) and the higher end of the range (10-12 or even 15 reps) geared towards more sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Due to glycogen depletion, there will be an increase in glycogen and water (pump growth) storage, especially in the higher rep ranges. Weights should be in the 70-80% of 1RM range with set length lasting from 30-45 (or 60) seconds. Rest periods are generally 1-2 minutes. Anywhere from 6-12 repetitions or so on a 3 down, 2 up tempo. Anywhere from 3-6 sets might be done. Anal compulsive bodybuilders could probably subdivide this category into two different ranges, one spanning the 6-8 rep range and the other spanning the 12-15 rep range. A mix of compound or isolation exercises can be done in this zone.

Really extensive bodybuilding method (I’m not good at thinking up clever names for training like the other writers in this field): The goal of this zone is purely sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, with the emphasis on capillarization and mitochondria moreso than on the other components such as glycogen. As I mentioned above, I think the best approach to this type of training is to forget about reps and do 1 or 2 timed sets of 1-2 minutes with the goal being continuous movement. I would generally recommend isolation exercises above the compounds on this one. Admittedly, you’ll see god if you try to squat continuously for 2 minutes (which I once had a mountain biker I was training do) but you tend to fatigue cardiovascularly when you use those types of exercises.

Training vs. maintaining loads

Ok, now you’re thinking that there’s no way in hell you can possibly hit everything I described above, you’d be in the gym for 4 hours every day. Obviously trying to follow 6 sets of 2 in the squat with 4-5 sets of 4-6 with 2-3 sets of 12-15 with 1-2 sets of 1-2 minutes would be an absurd workload.

One thing to realize is that though I’ve made it look like each intensity zone is a distinct entity, please understand that that’s not the case. As I indicated above, there is a certain amount of carryover between zones and it’s better to think of training on a continuum. So even though intensive bodybuilding has as its main goal myofibrillar growth, there are still going to be strength gains. Sets of 6-8 will generate similar (but not identical) adaptations to the 4-6 rep range and the 12-15 rep range will generate similar (but not identical) adaptations to the 1-2 minute range. This allows for some consolidation of training when you start designing programs.

This is also where the whole concept of periodization comes in. The thing to realize is that it’s unrealistic to try and hit all components of a muscle sufficiently all at once. Even endurance weenies, who are known for trying to shotgun their training (distance one day, hills another, intervals a third, technique a fourth) are learning that it’s better to focus on one or two components of training during a given cycle and maintain everything else with the focus changing throughout the training year.

So in any given 6-8 week cycle, you would choose to focus on one or two of the above components (there are 4 total but remember the overlap) and simply maintain the others. What does this mean exactly?

Research has found that, in both endurance and strength training, the amount of work you need to maintain something is far far less than what’s needed to increase it. In general, you can cut the volume and frequency by 2/3rds as long as you maintain the intensity and you can maintain a given capacity for quite some time. So say you were doing 6 set of 2 twice per week to improve strength in the squat during one cycle. In the next you could maintain by performing 2 sets of 2 once or twice per week. The same would hold for the other components of training.

I guess while I’m on the topic, I should address training frequency briefly. In the example workouts I’m going to present in part 3 (sorry, I have to get this finished or Justin will have me head), I’m going to assume a body part training frequency of twice per week since I consider that, on average, to be the minimum for natural trainees to make good gains in strength or size. All of the numbers below assume that frequency. Obviously if you use a different bodypart training frequency, you’ll have to adjust training to compensate.

With that said, here’s a chart indicating both training and maintaining loads for each of the different intensity zones of training.

In Periodization for Bodybuilders: Part 3, I’ll start to look at some application of all of this with some sample workouts.

Now, if you go into most gyms, you’ll usually find people working out in vastly different ways: there are your pumpers, the guys who go heavy all the time, etc. But, for the most part, the guys who pump always pump and the guys who go heavy always go heavy. Most bodybuilders tend to stick in a fairly static rep range (could be 6-8 or 10-12 depending on what theory of growth they ascribe to) but it’s rare to see a given individual change that much. There are, of course exceptions.

Basically, it seems like bodybuilders are pretty much the last folks to jump on the periodization bandwagon. As above, most of them tend to stick with the same types of training year round and they pretty much always go balls to the wall. The idea of changing anything (except maybe exercise choice to ‘shock the muscle’ or what have you) just doesn’t seem to be as prevalent among that subculture.

The Problem with Non-Periodized Training

Before tackling the issues of periodization, let’s look at some of the problems inherent in non-periodized training. One is simply that people get bored doing the same thing all the time. Mental staleness can be as real as physical staleness (and recent research suggests that they are related anyhow) and changing something about training (whether it’s exercise selection, exercise order, rep count, or whatever) can get people more interested in training. More interest usually makes people work harder and that alone can generate results.

A second issue is that, even for bodybuilders, there are different components that contribute to maximal size; and each can be trained somewhat differentially. Of course there’s actual myofibrillar hypertrophy (an increase in the size of the contractile fibers). There’s also sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (an increase in non-contractile components of the muscle such as glycogen, water, minerals, mitochondria, etc). Capillary density can be improved (increasing nutrient availability to muscle fibers). You get the idea (note: this topic is discussed in greater detail in my Ultimate Diet 2.0).

A third issue, of course, is one of physical accommodation. Over time, the body often accommodates to a given training style. More accurately, it stops adapting (positively anyhow) and may actually start regressing. Changing training variables from time to time (even if it’s simply to back off the intensity and build back up again) can help to prevent physical staleness.

What is Periodization?

At its simplest, periodization simply refers to some sort of methodical (or semi-methodical) variation in training. Changes can occur in terms of volume, intensity, exercise selection, rep speeds, rest intervals and any other of the myriad training variables. Most athletes periodize to one degree or another. Usually the goal of periodization is to develop fitness towards specific competition periods. Some will even target a single competition and train an entire year exclusively for that (e.g. Lance Armstrong trained towards the Tour De France as his only major competition).

Obviously competitive bodybuilders will periodize towards their competition but I think that even recreational bodybuilders (guys who just want to be big and ripped or just bit) can benefit from structuring their training as well. That structuring, regardless of the specific type, goes under the heading of periodization. So with that basic introduction, I want to look at some of the common models of periodization and then move into how bodybuilders might approach periodizing their training.

Linear Periodization

Perhaps the most common (at least the most well known) model for periodization is the simple linear periodization model (usually being accredited to a Russian scientist named Matveyev). It starts from a fairly high volume of low intensity activity and moves gradually towards a lower volume of high intensity activity (the model is actually a bit more complicated than that and I’d suggest anyone who is truly interested in the topic pick up Mel Siff’s Supertraining book for a more detailed discussion).

So an Olympic or powerlifter would move from fairly high volumes with a low intensity (intensity being defined here as % of 1 rep maximum) to a low volume of high intensity activity. So the powerlifter might move, over the span of 16 weeks, from a rep count of 12-15 to 10-12 to 8-10 to 6-8 to 5 then to triples and doubles, finally peaking for the meet.

Bryan Haycock’s Hypertrophy Specific Training (HST) program essentially a linear periodized model moving from 2 weeks of 15′s to 2 weeks of 10′s to 2 weeks of 8′s to 2 weeks of 5′s to 1-2 weeks of negatives, then a week break and start over again. I should note that it is also periodized within a given 2 week cycle, moving from a submaximal weight to basically a repetition maximum (RM) load by the end of the 2 week cycle.

There are other linear approaches to periodization out there as well although they may be structured a little bit differently. Ironman magazine has long recommended that bodybuilders train in 8 week blocks, taking 2 weeks to ramp up the intensity (in this case defined as effort, taking each set to positive failure) and then working full bore for the next 6 weeks to make strength and size gains before backing off for 2 weeks and ramping up again.

I take the same approach in my generic bulking routine, 2 weeks of sub-maximal work followed by 4-6 weeks really pushing hard before backing off and building up again. Doggcrapp (DC) training is simlar, alternating 2 week ‘cruises’ with 4-6 week ‘blasts’. You get the idea.

Anyone familiar with the basic Hardgainer magazine approach should know that Stuart and the rest of the HG crew has generally recommended a similar approach, take several weeks to ramp up training and then work full bore for some period of time (some HG authors use cycles of 12-16 weeks while at least one recommends extending the cycle, adding weight to the bar, for as long as you can).

Tudor Bompa and Fred Koch (who seems to hav stolen Bompa’s approach pretty much verbatim) have both suggested a linear periodized scheme for bodybuilders that is more along the lines of bulking and then cutting. You start with a few weeks of anatomical adaptation (basically low intensity training to condition connective tissues), then move into hypertrophy training (generally a fairly high volume of work in the 75-85% 1RM range), then to maximal strength work (85% 1RM or less) then to cutting (a strange program centered around 100-200 reps per exercise, something I find profoundly silly).

On and on it goes, as I said above, linear periodization is probably the most common approach to periodizing. But it has problems.

The Problems with Linear Periodization

In recent years, linear periodization has come under fire from a number of different strength experts. Vladimir Zatsiorsky (author of “Science and Practice of Strength Training”) Charles Poliquin and powerlifting guru Louie Simmons all jump to mind. The problem, they note is this: while you are training one biomotor capacity (i.e. muscular endurance, hypertrophy, maximal strength), the ones not being trained are going to hell (ok, not their exact words). But you end up detraining one capacity while you’re developing another.

For example, a powerlifter working in the 10-12 rep range (more of a hypertrophy range) is going to be losing maximal strength capacity (and all of the adaptations that go along with that). An endurance athlete doing nothing but low intensity endurance training is detraining leg speed (for sprinting) and lactate threshold capacity (the highest intensity that they can maintain without accumulating too much lactic acid). Studies done years ago found that athletes moving into low rep ranges (for maximal strength) frequently lost muscle size. Adding back even one high rep set (remember this, it’s important) frequently prevented the problem.

I’d note that, for bodybuilders this isn’t quite so much of an issue as, outside of the different components that contribute to size I mentioned above, bodybuilders aren’t really training different biomotor capacities throughout the year. Rather, everything they are doing is going towards muscular size (or maintenance during dieting). So the criticisms of linear periodization in this context aren’t exactly right.

As well, many of the criticisms of linear periodization are based on the old idea of one long annual cycle starting from low-intensity and high-volume and moving towards high-intensity and low-volume. Modern training uses shorter cycles and HST, DC, my generic bulking approach, etc. are all based around repeating 8 week cycles rather than absurdly long 52 week cycles. So, again, the criticisms against linear periodization here aren’t exactly correct. However, I’m going to finish out this article as if there were better ways of doing it and look at them next.

Solution Number One: Nonlinear Periodization

One of the first proposed solutions for the problems above was something usually referred to as nonlinear or undulating periodization. Both Poliquin and Zatsiorsky recommended alternating 2-3 week blocks where a given capacity was emphasized and others were trained at maintenance.

So a Poliquin type of program might entail 2-3 weeks of 10-12 reps, 2-3 weeks of 5-6 reps, 2-3 weeks of 7-9 reps (the return to high reps help to avoid muscle loss), 2-3 weeks of 3-5 reps, etc.

Zatsiorsky’s approach was slightly different but he was addressing other types of athletes than simply bodybuilders. Basically, working in 2-3 week blocks, specific biomotor capacities (i.e. strength, power, endurance) would be emphasized while other capacities were trained at maintenance. So a 3 week block where aerobic endurance was emphasized would see lactate threshold training worked at maintenance and then the focus would switch, lactate threshold would be emphasized while aerobic endurance was maintained. I should mention that Bompa did occasionally give lip service to that type of alternation in his books, you’d alternate a few weeks of maximal strength training with a few weeks of hypertrophy training.

Solution Number Two: ‘Conjugate’ Periodization

Pedantic note: although it has come to be called ‘conjugate periodization’ popularly is not what was originally mean by the term. What I am going to describe below is really concurrent periodization where all different capacities are trained to some degree each week and throughout the year.

Conjugate periodization has probably been promoted most heavily by aforementioned powerlifting guru Louie Simmons. Claiming that old school linear periodization is dead (nobody tell Ed Coan), he believes that conjugate periodization (developed, of course, in Russia) is a superior way to train. For a more detailed examination of the conjugate system, I’d suggest “Supertraining” by Mel Siff.

In his system, all aspects of powerlifting performance (bar speed/technique, maximal strength, hypertrophy, general physical preparation) are trained at the same time, simply with a different emphasis on each. Bar speed and technique are trained with speed work (10 sets of 2 or 8 sets of 3 with a submaximal weight), maximum strength is trained with multiple low rep sets and hypertrophy is trained with multiple higher rep sets. All three rep ranges are used every week of the year (more or less). There’s more to it, of course and anyone interested in learning more about Louie’s system can check out Westside barbell or Elite Fitness’s website.

Other Options

Of course, the above hardly describes all of the possible options available. One is to simply combine training and train different aspects of muscle in the same training cycle. An old school approach to training was to follow warmups with 3-5 heavy sets of 5 (training a combination of maximal strength and myofibrillar hypertrophy) with multiple sets of 12-15 (training sarcoplasmic elements). First you go heavy, then you get a little bit of a pump. Technically, I’d describe this as a combination of tension and fatigue training and my generic bulking program is built around that idea.

Another is to hit each type of training but in different workouts per week. This is also sometimes referred to as non-linear or undulating periodization and you might do sets of 3-5 one day, 8-10 another, and 10-15 on the third. My Ultimate Diet 2.0 is structured in this fashion with each type of training (power, tension, depletion) set up to optimize with that day’s daily diet.

Others will do one heavy power workout and one higher rep pump workout per week, hitting each bodypart roughly twice per week. Bodybuilder and all-around smart guy Layne Norton is a big proponent of this and he’s got the results to back it up.

As you can see, there are lots of options and ways to get around the ‘problems’ which can be associated with linear periodization. However, rather than detail the above types of programs, I want to talk about some other ways that bodybuilders can periodize their training.

Read more in Periodization for Bodybuilders Part 2.