What's going on, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj on www.SeanNal.com - www.RealScienceAthletics.com, and in this video of today I want to go over
one less often discussed reason for excessive fat gain during a bulking phase.
Now, when most people think about the idea of minimizing fat gains during a bulk it's
usually all centered around the nutritional side of things, in particular moderating the
size of the calorie surplus being used.
Now, this is obviously hugely important.
Your body can only make use of so many calories over a given day for the purpose of building
muscle, and if you go overboard with the size of your surplus then the excess calories are
just gonna be stored as fat.
And I'd say in most cases there really isn't any need to be eating any more than about
300 calories above maintenance for a beginner, around 200 for an intermediate, and even less
for an advanced lifter, since the rate of muscle growth is gonna keep slowing down the
longer that you've been training.
So, yes, keeping your calories moderated is definitely a key aspect of carrying out a
successful lean bulk.
But it's important to understand, too, that what you do in the gym is also going to directly
affect how much body fat you end up gaining.
And I'm not talking about cardio, but instead your actual weight training plan.
Most people think it's all just about diet but you have to think about the logic of what
it is that you're actually doing in the gym.
You're lifting weights and breaking down muscle tissue to stimulate a muscle building response
and then you leave the gym and you consume a surplus of calories that are going to be
used to carry out the recovery and the growth process, but the problem is that if your workouts
aren't being implemented properly for whatever reason, maybe it's too low of a training intensity,
maybe it's not enough total volume or frequency, not applying progressive overload in the right
way, then not only are you not gonna gain a significant amount of muscle from your training
but that extra calorie surplus that you're eating won't have anywhere to go except your
fat stores since the muscle building stimulus from your training wasn't strong enough.
And this often gets exaggerated even further since a lot of lifters go overboard on total
calories as well.
So they have a poorly structured training program that doesn't properly stimulate muscle
growth, and then they're stuffing their faces with huge quantities of food, and weight gain
shakes, and things like that, because they think that that's what they need to do in
order to get really big.
And as a result they end up going to the gym consistently over the course of a few months
and they end up gaining mostly body fat, which is a really depressing situation since they
then have to go through the whole process later on of cutting in order to get rid of
it.
And I've been there myself before, which I'll talk about in another video soon, so I know
just how frustrating and how tedious that can be.
Now, that's obviously on the more sort of extreme end of things.
It's not gonna be black and white like that in most cases, but the bottom line is that
if you want to not only maximize muscle growth but also minimize fat gains so that the highest
possible percentage of your gains are coming in the form of lean mass, remember that moderating
your calorie surplus isn't enough, you also have to be really diligent with your training
and you have to make sure that everything is properly set up so that the majority of
the calories that you're consuming are being used for building muscle.
And this is especially true if you're more toward the average to, maybe, slightly below
average spectrum, in terms of muscle building genetics, or if you're in the forty-five to
fifty plus age range where muscle building becomes increasingly difficult.
Now, I'm not gonna go into a bunch of details here in terms of proper programming because
that's not the point of this video, but just in terms of the basics, aside from using proper
lifting technique you need to make sure that your training intensity, your volume, and
your frequency, or all at the proper levels, and that you're applying progressive overload
as well.
So in terms of intensity, as a general guideline, I think going about one to two reps short
of failure on most lifts most of the time is a good approach.
I've talked about this many times before, and that level of intensity is high enough
to trigger the muscle building response effectively but it's not so high that you're gonna over
stress your body or your joints and end up limiting the amount of volume that you can
use.
Remember that training intensity is absolutely primary.
It's the underlying stimulus that sets the entire muscle building process into motion.
So, that's really the first thing that I would look at in terms of structuring your training
properly, because the bottom line is that if you just aren't training hard enough then
your body's not gonna have any incentive for growth.
Just going through the motions is not enough if you really want to build an impressive
physique, and challenging your body's existing strength capacity is what forces it to adapt
to higher and higher levels.
And then in terms of volume and frequency, you're gonna hear recommendations for this
ranging all over the map, but I think that assuming your training is centered around
that one to two reps short of failure level, you really don't need to perform endless sets
in the gym.
Some people do well on really high volume programs, but for the average natural lifter
with average genetics, I think a good middle ground approach works best.
And I'd put that somewhere between 8 to 15 sets for large muscle groups per week in total,
and between 4 to 8 sets for smaller muscle groups.
Because, keep in mind that most of your smaller muscle groups are already gonna be hit to
a certain degree during your compound lifts for your larger muscle groups, and so they
don't require as much direct volume.
I'm not saying that you can't do more than this, but I think that those ranges are gonna
be about right for the average natural lifter.
And you can then take those total volume ranges and split it up between anywhere between one
and a half to three direct workouts per muscle group per week.
It just depends what type of split you're following.
And as a general template, I like the approach of a full body workout three times a week
for beginners, upper/lower 3 to 4 times a week for intermediates, and then legs push-pull
4 to 5 days a week for more advanced lifters.
Any of those splits can be used effectively by anyone no matter what their experience
level is, and there are definitely other ways to break it up during the week as well, but
that approach works really well as a basic template to go by.
And then, of course, once your intensity is dialed in and you've got a proper plan in
place in terms of volume and frequency, you need to make sure that you're applying progressive
overload by aiming for consistent improvement on your exercises from week to week.
That's what's going to force your body to adapt to greater and greater levels of stress
and make sure that the calorie surplus that you're eating is being used to fuel those
increases in muscle growth.
As you get more advanced there are other methods of progressive overload that you can use,
but for the majority of lifters in the beginner to intermediate staged, progressive tension
overload is by far the most effective and the most reliable method, which basically
just means adding more weight to the bar over time.
So, train for additional reps to start once, you hit the upper end of your rep range with
a given weight, increase the weight the following workout, train for reps again and then just
keep repeating that process and making sure that your form stays the same with each weight
increase.
And this is why writing your workouts down is so critical as well, because that's going
to allow you to progress as efficiently as possible and it's also going to hold you accountable
during every workout.
So, those are just some of the basic fundamentals to make sure you have in place, but the bottom
line here is that minimizing fat gains during a bulk is both a product of moderating your
calorie intake as well as maximizing the effectiveness of your weight training plan.
Because that's when it’s going to ensure that the majority of the calorie surplus that
you do consume ends up as lean muscle rather than body fat.
Having a poorly structured weight training plan or being inconsistent with your workouts
doesn't just mean that you'll see subpar muscle gains but it also means that you're gonna
put on a disproportionate amount of fat as well.
So, thanks for watching, guys.
I hope this was helpful.
If you want to learn all the details behind mapping out an optimal training and nutrition
plan so that you can maximize your muscle gains while staying lean at the same time,
you can check out my Body Transformation Blueprint by clicking up here, or visiting www.BTBluePrint.com,
the link is in the description box.
For those who are new to the channel my brand new science-based pre-workout fish oil and
multivitamin are also now available over at www.RealScienceAthletics.com, the link for
that is also in the description.
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Thanks for watching, guys.
I'll see in the next video.