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BRIEF BULKING PROGRAM EXPLAINED
How This Program Works
Most weight trainers who are lean, carrying significant muscle, and train without
chemical assistance, have at one time been either overweight, or have carried
significantly more weight than they do now. This is because eating itself, is
a very anabolic activity. The food that you consume has a very profound impact
upon your hormone status. As you know, your body is constructed from and out
of all of the nutrients that you supply it over time. Logically thinking, over
eating is going to trigger large amounts of insulin and IGF1 - two very powerful
growth factors within your body.
Similarly, many bodybuilders who have dieted down to lose body fat, and then
put weight on again, will have noticed that on regaining weight, the quality
of the weight gained is better than when they first held that weight, ie they
carry more muscle and less body fat. This is almost an over compensation rebound
effect. Your body is, after all, primed for survival. More muscle, functional
muscle, is generally going to create a superior animal in terms of hunting for
food.
Another factor to consider is that, in general, it's quite typical during a
good fat loss program to lose up to twice as much fat as lean mass, and even
people who struggle with fat loss will generally lose at least as much fat as
lean mass.
Now, so long as you gain more lean mass each week than fat mass, when you gain
weight, you will hold more lean mass and less body fat than at the start of
the weight gain cycle.
The Basics
This forms the basis of this program. You gain weight for a period of weeks,
until such time as you gain as much fat mass as lean mass, then reset your metabolic
rate for 7 to 10 days. You repeat these cycles until you reach a desired target
weight, at which point many bodybuilders will use a fat loss diet to lose the
excess body fat gained during this program. In other words you are controlling,
sensibly, the rate of muscle gain and the accompanying fat gain, if any, while
priming the body's anabolic drive.
The Program
You will have noticed that the weight gaining phase is split into cycles. The
first phase of the cycle, typically 4-6 weeks, is based on gaining weight rapidly,
followed by 7-10 days of calorie restriction. This serves 3 main purposes:
1. During the 7-10 days of calorie restriction you will lose some of the weight
you have gained. This will almost exclusively be fat loss.
2. When you first start over eating, in the first week you gain mostly lean
mass and little body fat. Each subsequent week will see the rate of lean mass
gain fall, and the rate of fat mass gain rise. This is in large part due to
a fall in insulin sensitivity which will be re-established in around 7 days
of calorie restriction.
3. During a period of over eating, your metabolism will rise, consequently you
will stop gaining weight. During a period of around 7-10 days of calorie restriction,
your metabolic rate will fall. This primes your body for the start of the next
weight gain cycle, and you should be able to gain weight again.
So now you know why your body is going to store fat when you increase your
calories and gain muscle. And you are also armed with a method to limit the
fat gain, and control and prime your body to continue to successfully gain muscle
while handling any particular fat gain.
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