January 6, 2021

Slow mass gain: How you can prevent fat gain during the mass phase

Langsamer Masseaufbau: Wie Du eine Fettzunahme während der Massephase verhindern kannst

You will find widespread advice all over the internet:

If you want to bulk up, you need to bulk up.

However, there are a number of problems with this advice:

What does "bulk up" even mean?
What the hell does bulking mean?

In other words, this advice is so vague that most people not only eat way too much, but they also eat too much junk and too little protein.

"Well, the guy told me to bulk up and that's exactly what I did."

And so many exercisers (mainly beginners) end up getting too fat very quickly and are then forced to slow down and diet for a few months before they can start building muscle again.

Far too many people use a flawed approach to building muscle. This article will show you everything you need to effectively build muscle and gain minimal amounts of fat.

What is a mass building phase?

If you're trying to build maximum amounts of muscle and strength, then there's one process you can't skip - mass building.

In the traditional sense (the way we've outlined above), this means stuffing yourself for a few months, getting excessively fat, building up body image issues and then having to diet for a few months. And afterwards you'll realize that you don't look much better than you did before the bulking phase.

Not the best way to go about things. But is there a better way?

Yes, there is, and it's called slow mass gain.

A slow bulking phase is a phase during which calories are increased beyond maintenance calories and during which you consume enough protein to support optimal muscle growth while keeping your fat gain to a minimum

With this approach, you will build more slowly and the changes in your appearance will not always be as obvious.

Why would you want to build mass slowly?

I like the following analogy when explaining muscle growth and everyone seems to understand it immediately.

Think of your body during the bulking phase as a house being built. The protein and calories you consume are the building blocks needed for development.

If just enough calories and adequate amounts of protein (building blocks) are available, then the building process will proceed smoothly and according to plan. Progress is not sabotaged in any way.

But imagine that you suddenly start consuming more calories and more protein (which corresponds to the scenario of giving the construction workers more building materials.

At first glance, it may look as if building (up) can now be done faster. Well, the house's builders, just like your body, can only do a certain amount of work in a given amount of time, and providing them with additional building materials will not speed up the process.

With the house, these materials would be stockpiled, not used and would not speed up the building process. For your body, this would mean that the extra materials would be stored in the form of fat.

Your body can only build a certain amount of muscle in a given amount of time. At a certain point, further increasing your food intake will not help you build more muscle. You will simply get fat. And this is the economic law of diminishing returns applied to fitness.

Lyle McDonald has developed a model for how quickly you can naturally build muscle mass based on previous training experience.

According to this model, a beginner can build 10 to 12 pounds of muscle during their first year of training, while an exerciser who has been training seriously for 3 years can only build 5 to 6 pounds per year.

I must emphasize the importance of "serious training" at this point. If you've spent 5 or more years in the gym but have only been working out casually and not eating right, then you can probably expect to see some solid beginner gains if you start following a good plan.

Spending time in the gym doesn't always equate to productive workouts

In theory, Lyle's model is fairly accurate for most exercisers with average genetic predispositions and can be useful when it comes to setting goals for your bulking phases.

Now that you know these numbers, you can ask yourself how wise it is to gain 20 to 25 kilos in a year. Not very, I would say.

Apart from this, there are other advantages to building up mass slowly:

1. you can build muscle over a longer period of time and look good, or at least serviceable, all year round

I'm sure your hedonistic side will tell you "screw looking good, let's eat", but at the end of the day, whether we admit it or not, we all want to look good and attractive. Most guys I know started working out to impress girls.

However, if we don't have our bulking phase under control, we'll spend a few months of the year looking good and the rest of the year not liking what we see in the mirror.

With slow mass gain, you will still make progress in the gym and build muscle, but you will also look good all year round because you will never be more than 5 to 7 kilos of fat away from your best shape.

2. the diet phase doesn't have to be so long

I hate diet phases with all my heart and anything that can help me reduce the time in a calorie deficit is a worthwhile investment for me.

I'd rather do a slow bulking phase for a year and then diet for 4 to 8 weeks than do a classic bulking phase for 6 months, after which I have to define for 4 to 5 months to achieve the same results.

3. calorie partitioning is optimized

The term calorie partitioning refers to how your body uses the energy you provide it with and where it draws its energy from during a calorie restriction phase.

In other words, it means that your body uses more of the calories you consume for muscle recovery and growth and stores less of it as fat.

During periods of fat loss, this means that you lose more fat and less muscle.

Your body fat percentage has a direct influence on calorie partitioning. A high body fat percentage is associated with higher estrogen levels and lower testosterone levels (1). This is related to the aromatase enzyme, which is present in adipose tissue and converts testosterone to estrogen.

The more fat you have, the higher the levels of the aromatase enzyme and the lower your testosterone levels and the more you compromise your muscle building potential.

A higher body fat percentage is also associated with poor insulin sensitivity, which negatively impacts your calorie partitioning (2). For the average exerciser, this means that less muscle is built during a given period of time. For people with a body fat percentage above 22%, this also increases the risk of developing metabolic syndrome and diabetes (3, 4).

It is therefore important for your muscle building potential to keep your body fat percentage under control (no more than 15 to 17%, especially if you find dieting difficult).

4. it is much easier to judge the process visually

You can't see a muscle if it's covered in a thick layer of fat, can you?

How to build muscle without building fat

The process of slowly building mass can be summarized with three basic steps:

Provide your body with adequate stimulus by training volume with sufficient intensity in the gym. Avoid overtraining (7).
Provide your body with just enough calories to create an anabolic environment and support muscle growth.
Consume enough protein to provide your body with the building blocks it needs to repair and build muscle tissue.

Step 1: The training

Whole books can be written about proper training and the subject deserves its own guide, but general guidelines include the following:

You should perform at least 10 sets per muscle group per week to stimulate muscle growth. Up to a certain point, more is better. Once past that point, more load can have the opposite effect - muscle breakdown and lack of progress (6).
Splitting the total volume for a given muscle into 2 or 3 workouts can lead to better results as you perform all sets for the given muscle in a more recovered state. Instead of performing 16 sets for the back muscles in one day, you can perform 8 sets on Mondays and 8 sets on Thursdays, which will allow you to complete more repetitions with more weight.
Your sets should cover a lower repetition range of 3 to 6 repetitions as well as higher repetition ranges up to 15 to 20 repetitions to optimize hypertrophy and build strength (7).
Training to muscle failure should be avoided for most sets as it will not provide superior results, but may interfere with your recovery and subsequent training sessions (8).
Your program should include a combination of multi-joint exercises and isolation exercises to allow for strength development and a specific focus on the different muscle groups of the body.
The principle of progressive overload is crucial. Over time, you will need to do more work in the gym if you want more results. Ways to do this include more weight on the bar, more repetitions, shorter rests between sets, more sets, etc.

Step 2: The calorie intake

There are many methods for calculating your calorie intake, but I find the Harris-Benedict formula to be one of the most accurate for the average exerciser with a workable body composition and an active lifestyle.

First, calculate your calorie burn at rest (BMR):

For men:

66 + (13.7 * weight in kilos) + (5 * height in centimeters) - (68 * age) = BMR

For women:

655 + (9.6 * weight in kilos) + (1.8 * height in centimeters) - (4.7 * age) = BMR

Once you have calculated your calorie expenditure at rest, depending on your lifestyle, use the multiplier below to calculate the amount of calories you need to maintain your current body weight:

Sedentary - BMR * 1.2
Lightly active - BMR * 1.375
Moderately active - BMR * 1.55
Very active - BMR * 1.725
Extremely active - BMR * 1.9

Before you use the factor 1.9, you should be aware that most people with an office job who are otherwise active fall into the second or third category. If you have a very physically demanding job, then you can use the fourth multiplier and monitor your body weight for a while.

The fifth multiplier is reserved for people with a ton of lean body mass who are extremely active (e.g. competitive athletes).

Once you've calculated your maintenance calorie amount, a good rule of thumb is to add 200 to 250 kcal to this value to ensure you're building muscle.

However, even though this is one of the most accurate methods, it only gives you a starting point, which means you will need to eat accordingly for a few weeks and adjust your calorie intake based on your progress.

If you are gaining weight too quickly, then reduce your calorie intake by 100 to 200 kcal. If you are not gaining weight, then increase your calorie intake by 100 to 200 kcal.

Step 3: Protein intake

There are many recommendations for protein intake, ranging from 1 to 6 to 8 grams per kilogram of body weight.

The vast majority of scientific studies agree that exercisers should consume 2 to 2.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight to optimize their training adaptations (9, 10, 11).

So if you weigh 85 kilos and are slowly building mass, you should aim for 170 to 210 grams of protein per day and not overthink it.

A lot of fitness experts also recommend controlling your carbohydrate intake. For the average exerciser, this is a bad idea. It just adds extra complexity to the whole fitness thing and can make some people neurotic.

As long as you're eating enough calories and protein, you shouldn't worry too much about the ratio of carbs to fat. Eat according to your calorie and protein needs, make sure you eat plenty of nutritious foods and you will consume enough carbohydrates and fat.

Consistency and adherence to your diet and training plan is what matters most - not whether you manage to eat exactly 315 grams on a given day.

It's also worth noting that you should enjoy the process and have the flexibility to eat out and have a social life. The period of mass gain is a great time to do this as you have more calories to work with.

On the other hand, if you are consistently trying to reach some arbitrary macronutrient levels, then you will be unhappy and unable to enjoy a meal out.

How to monitor your progress while building mass

So you've done your calculations and you're ready to start slowly building mass or you've been in a bulking phase for some time. In either case, you're probably wondering how you can monitor your progress.

1. track your training

The best indicator of muscle growth is the increase in your performance in the gym. Simply put, if you're getting progressively stronger in the gym and doing more work, you're probably building muscle mass.

If you did 6 reps with 95 kilos on the bench press last month and you do the same number of reps with 100 kilos this month, then your chest, triceps and shoulder muscles will have gotten a little bigger.

If, on the other hand, you have gained 5 kilos over the last 4 months, but you haven't really increased your training performance, then there is a good chance that you have mainly gained fat and have been too lax in your training.

To track your training sessions, you can use an app for your smartphone or a notebook. Write down your exercises, your training weights and your repetition numbers for each training session.

Also keep a record of other information you consider important - mixed grip on deadlifts, use of weightlifting belts and knee wraps on squats, not enough sleep the night before, etc.

Keep a record of your training sessions and compare them over time.

2. track your body weight

To monitor your weight, I recommend that you weigh yourself several times a week and write down your average weight. Weigh yourself in the morning on an empty stomach after you have been to the toilet and write down your weight.

At the end of the week, calculate your average weight (and make sure you weigh yourself at least three to four times a week) and compare it with the previous week.

As a more advanced exerciser, you should not gain more than 1 kilo per month.

3. track your visual appearance

Keep a record of how well your clothes fit and how you look. In addition, you should take pictures of yourself at least once a month and compare them.

Take these pictures under the same circumstances and in the same body positions and observe how your body changes over time (e.g. in the same room, in the same lighting conditions at the same time of day with the same body poses).

We see ourselves in the mirror every day, which can make it difficult to judge our progress. However, if you look at your body on a month to month basis, you will see changes in your muscle development and an increase in body fat.

4. track your body measurements

Similar to progress photos, you should measure and compare the circumferences of your key muscles once a month.

Using a tape measure, measure the circumference of your neck, shoulders, chest, arms, forearms, waist, thighs and calves and observe how these values change from month to month. Also observe how the values change in relation to each other.

If your arms, chest and legs are not growing much, but your waist circumference is increasing, there is a good chance that you need to eat less junk food and get your diet under control.

Are you building up too much fat during the bulking phase?

So you've been in a bulking phase for a few months and everything is going well. You're stronger, bulkier and happier. But you've also built up some fat around your midsection and you're wondering what you should do.

Using the four tracking methods described above, you should have a pretty good idea of roughly how much fat you've built up. You should be honest with yourself:

Have you really built up that much fat, or is the reason you miss your prized abs because you can only see rough outlines of them?

There is a big difference between these scenarios and too many exercisers turn back too quickly and sacrifice their growth phase because their biceps veins are a little less pronounced or their abs are no longer visible.

If you think you've built up a little too much fat, then do a mini definition phase:

Reduce your calorie intake by 1000 kcal for four weeks and continue training as before. As soon as you have reached a usable body fat percentage, gradually increase your calorie intake and start slowly building up mass again.

The bottom line on minimizing fat gain during the mass phase

Get rid of this "either look good or gain mass" mentality. You can (and should) build a lot of muscle while staying relatively lean and not having to sacrifice your appearance at any point in your quest for maximum muscle gain.

The old notion of a mass-building phase is slowly fading, but there is still a lot of misleading advice out there.

I hope you now understand that mass building doesn't mean you have to look modest for 8 months of the year and that mass building isn't an excuse to let yourself go and build a ton of fat.

Not only will you have to diet longer after such a bulking phase, but you will also sacrifice your muscle building potential due to the negative effects on your calorie partitioning.

References:

Source: https://pumpsomeiron.com/slow-bulk-how-to-minimize-fat-gain-while-bulking/

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