Quit the Bulk/Cut Cycle Make Lean Gains for Life!
I’m going to tell you from personal experience as well as what I’ve seen from a ton of people who’ve done the same thing. As you already know, the goal for my clients as well as myself is aesthetics. Here’s the problem with traditional bulking and cutting cycles: they’re cycles that you can’t get out of, where you’re bulky for the majority of the year and cut for a few weeks during the summer. Why not look cut for the majority of the year (if not all year long)?
A bulk is a phase of training when you’re consuming more calories than your body needs to maintain it’s current body weight. This puts you in an anabolic state, which means building. By “building,” I mean muscle, fat, and other tissue. The majority of mass gained during a bulk is fat, because it’s much easier to accumulate fat tissue than to accumulate either muscle or other connective tissue.
A cut is a phase of training when you’re consuming fewer calories than your body needs to maintain it’s current body weight. This puts you in a catabolic state, which means breakdown. When you’re in a catabolic state, you lose fat, muscle, and other tissue. This is NOT a good thing, but what’s great about training and eating properly is that you can combat the muscle and connective tissue breakdown and continue to lose fat, leaving you in a semi-anabolic/catabolic state. Figuring out how to cut fat and gain muscle at the same time is tricky since there are two conflicting processes going on at the same time. But this is the reason why you hired me: to help you accomplish this feat.
I advise against bulking for several reasons:
(1) It hides away the muscle you’ve worked so hard to build
(2) The fat that comes along with bulking demotivates you from lifting with intensity
(3) You spend the majority of the day eating food past fullness
(4) Your cardio capacity decreases so walking becomes an absolute chore
(5) You’re less mobile, functional, and sluggish
(6) You just look worse
(7) You’re less fit.This is not desirable at all, especially if your goal is fitness.
People will say you can’t build muscle while consuming calories that put you in a cutting phase (calorie deficit) but I disagree entirely. How many times do you hear people say they’ve made gains on a cut or that they train harder when they look better? All the time! The reason is that when you see the muscles working in the mirror as you workout, your motivation skyrockets, pushing you past your limits. What you see is what you get, and continuing to do this will only yield more results.
Another reason why I advise against bulking is that muscle building is already an extremely slow process, so why delay it even further by bulking? The reason I say “delay” is that the longer you bulk, the longer you have to cut the fat. Yes you’ll gain a good amount of muscle on a bulk, but you build fat along with it. Why not stay leaner and see the muscle pack on over time?
People cut and bulk because it’s an excuse to eat junk food, deluding themselves that they’re building muscle. The goal is not to do what other guys with mediocre physiques in the gym do. Rather, the goal is to do what the pros are doing (or at least do as much as you can to emulate their work ethic). If you think about it, the guys with the best physiques in the world (including Olympic athletes such as sprinters, swimmers, runners, gymnasts, boxers wrestlers, lifters, shot-putters, MMA fighters, basketball players, etc.) look so lean and fit all the time. They don’t bulk. Instead, they train intensely, eat properly, and work alongside a coach to make sure they’re doing everything they can to maximize muscle gain, athletic performance, overall health, and recovery. While doing all this, the athletes are usually in a slight calorie deficit or maintenance, which is great for peak physical performance.
Avoid the vicious bulking and cutting cycle and make lean gains for life!
