What’s going on guys?
Sean Nalewanyj here www.SeanNal.com - www.BodyTransformationTruth.com.
It is Monday afternoon here in Australia, start of another week.
In today’s video the subject is How To Clean Bulk Without Gaining Fat.
So how do you stay as lean as possible while gaining that muscle size and strength that
you’re after.
Now there are two pretty straight forward steps involved here.
The first step is nutrition related and the second one is training related.
In terms of nutrition implementing an effective clean bulk ultimately just comes down to controlling
the size of your calorie surplus.
That’s really the central thing.
So rather than just aimlessly eating a bunch of food without really tracking anything,
which is of course refer to as dirty bulking.
With clean bulking you just want to create a small, more tightly controlled calorie surplus
so that you’re providing your body with just enough that it needs to either maximize
or come close to maximizing muscle growth without taking any unnecessary excess.
Keep in mind that eating more calories does not guarantee more muscle growth.
Your body can only build a limited amount of muscle over any particular period.
So any excess calorie that you take in above and beyond what your body can use to max-out
protein synthesis in a given day or given week that’s just going to be stored as fat.
Wait for it.
Okay, so where was I?
Now that’s why I generally prefer that most people stick to a clean, or at least cleaner
bulking approach.
Because gaining a bunch of fat is really not fun, even though right now you might think
that you just want to get bigger.
And you don’t really care if you get fat.
Trust me, if you do gaining a bunch of fat you’re not going to enjoy it and I speak
from personal dreamer bulk experience.
Secondly, dieting for fat loss is very tedious and the more fat that you gain during your
bulk the longer you’re going to have to diet for later on.
Now people will tell you that in order to do clean bulk you need to stick to clean foods
and you need to increase your cardio.
But that’s not quite accurate.
You can still clean bulk while using a flexible dieting approach and without even having to
increase your cardio.
Because, again, it’s really just about controlling your overall net calorie surplus.
If you’re not really tracking anything in terms of diet then yes, eating clean foods
can help a bit because they’re just lowering calories by default most of the time.
Doing cardio can help because it will burn additional calories and reduce your surplus
by default.
But if you are tracking your diet then you don’t necessarily have to do those things.
Now you’ll hear different numbers thrown around but I would say for an effective clean
bulk you’re going to go somewhere between 200 to 300 calories above your calorie maintenance
level.
You can go a little bit higher and you could go a little bit lower depending, but somewhere
in that ranges can be about right.
And from a nutritional perspective that’s basically “it” when it comes to clean
bulking.
Just create a small calorie surplus, track it and focus on making gradual gains to somewhere
around that half a pound per week range.
And if you’re more advance then it’s going to be even slower than that.
Now most people think of effective clean bulking only in terms of nutrition but what you do
in the gym is actually just as important.
I know that this is very basic advice, but are you actually training hard enough?
Do you really train with a high enough level of intensity?
And is there sufficient volume and frequency in your plan?
Because if not that’s actually going to increase the percentage of your calorie surplus
that gets diverted to your fat stores rather than into your muscles.
I mean, think about the basic logic of muscle growth.
You go into the gym and you train to give it muscle, you stimulate a growth response
in that muscle and then you consume a calorie surplus.
And your goal is to have as many of those excess calories diverted to muscle growth
as possible.
But if that growth response is weak or if it's at least not as strong as it could be
because you’re just not pushing yourself hard enough, then your body may not even need
all of those extra calories that you’re eating in order to fully recover.
And as a result of that a reasonable percentage of your calorie surplus, even if it is a smaller
surplus to begin with, it still going to end up as body fat.
It’s a topic that actually doesn’t get talked about that often, but muscle growth
is an adaptive response to stress.
And if the stress isn’t high enough, you’re not going to make optimal gains.
You need enough total intensity within at least one to two reps of muscular failure
on most sets.
You need enough training volume, that’s going to vary a lot depending on different
factors, but somewhere between eight to twelve sets for larger muscle groups.
Maybe around five to seven sets for smaller muscles and you also need enough frequency.
So usually that means hitting each muscle directly no less than once per week and usually
closer to twice a week for most people.
You want all of those factors in place so that your body actually uses your calorie
surplus primarily to fuel muscle growth.
A lot of people just don’t train that hard.
If that’s the case then it doesn’t matter if your clean bulking from a nutrition perspective
because you’re going to gain fat, since the muscle growth response that you’re creating
just isn’t strong enough.
So the bottomline on clean bulking; it’s very simple and it just comes down to maintaining
a small calorie surplus.
It’s not necessarily about clean foods or about cardio and it’s definitely not about
supplements.
Just keeping that small calories surplus in place, and combining it with a training program
that is properly structured in terms of training intensity, volume and frequency.
And in doing that you’re going to maximize the percentage of your gains that come in
the form of muscle rather than fat.
You’re still going to gain fat no matter what.
Keep in mind that’s always part of the bulking process.
But doing this is going to help you absolutely minimize it.
If you do want to grab a complete step-by-step plan that shows you how to lay all of this
out from A to Z, the workouts, the meal plans, and the few basic supplements then you can
check out my body transformation blue print.
It will show you everything you need to know.
You can click here.
Or you can head over to www.bodytransformationtruth.com.
The link is the description.
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The official website is www.SeanNal.com.
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Talk to you guys again soon.