4 Crucial Tips to Make Your Lean Bulk More Effective (i.e. Build Muscle While Staying as Lean as Humanly Possible)
We’re heading in to winter, which means it’s time to…
- Abandon our shorts for jeans (this sucks)
- Put up our family Christmas tree (BEFORE Thanksgiving)
- Drink copious amounts of eggnog while watching Elf, Home Alone, and Jingle All the Way on repeat
- Start a lean bulk
What is a lean bulk, exactly?
It’s a training phase where you try to pack on as much muscle as you can, while staying as lean as possible.
Here are four tips to help you do this more effectively:
Tip #1: Eat in a small caloric surplus (250–300 calories)
A lesson I learned the hard way — muscle only grows so fast.
The first time I lean bulked, I failed miserably because I ate WAY too much food.
I put on 5 pounds of muscle and around 20 pounds of fat. Freaking terrible.
Remember this, no matter how hard you train, you’ll be lucky to put on half a pound of pure muscle tissue per week. Half a pound.
Trying to gain faster than that — by eating an extreme amount of food like I did — will just result in more fat storage.
Tip #2: Train to failure
This probably goes without saying, but muscles need a stimulus to grow.
On top of normal progression — adding weight, or reps with the same weight, over time — that stimulus is being pushed to muscular failure.
Two guidelines here:
- Don’t go past technical failure, or the point where form breaks down (at that point, you’re just exerting a ton of effort for very little return, and increasing your risk of injury)
- Only go to failure on the last set of each exercise
If you go to failure on every set, you’ll create too much fatigue, and limit progression in each subsequent workout.
Failure training is a valuable tool, but it’s not the only thing that matters when it comes to maximizing muscle growth.
Use it wisely.
Tip #3: Slow down the eccentric phase of your accessory lifts
A lot of the growth stimulus occurs when a muscle is being stretched under load.
In order to take advantage of this, take your time (and really control) the eccentric — or lowering phase — of each accessory exercise, and pause for a second or two at the bottom (i.e. the fully stretched position).
This will do a few things:
- Increase the time under tension
- Increase blood and lactic acid buildup
- Increase muscle damage
All of this is a fancy way of saying that the set will really hurt and suck, but it will lead to more growth.
Give it a shot!
Tip 4: Do some cardio (1–2 sessions per week, and/or walk)
I’ve mentioned this before, but I used to avoid cardio like the plague.
This was a poor decision on my part.
Not only because I missed out on various performance benefits…
- Increased work capacity (which allows you to handle more volume in the gym, and grow faster)
- Increased mental toughness (which helps you push through tough sets, like training to failure)
- Faster recovery (from getting fresh blood and nutrients to the muscles, clearing out waste products, etc.)
…but because the lower output (i.e. calories burned) made it much easier for my surplus to get out of hand. Which it did often.
Don’t go crazy with cardio (that would be counterproductive).
But 1–2 endurance training sessions per week — and/or accumulating 7500–10,000 steps per day — will greatly affect your muscle to fat ratio.
Make sure it’s included.
Wrapping Up
A few bonus tips just to make sure we cover our bases:
- Eat plenty of protein (0.68–1 gram per pound of bodyweight)
- Balance your macros (you need carbs and fats too)
- Get sufficient sleep (6–8 hours per night)
- Make small adjustments each time you hit a plateau (100–150 calories)
Again, winter is the perfect time to lean bulk.
The muscle you build now lays the foundation for the physique you’ll reveal next Summer.
Let’s make the most of it!
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