Thanks for starting this up nkl!
Its 2:08 am. Again, I'm on the cut/low-carb/hypocaloric portion of my ultimate diet 2.0 week. I absolutely, cannot sleep. I've taken 4 mg melatonin, and done two cardio sessions today. wow.
Here is a post I found at Lyle's that absolutely got me going. This is Lyle's reply to, it looks like, the infamous scimuscle
:
note: from the other forum, slightly different question, more about how to maximize one's genetic potential as fast as possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by scimuscle
In the bodybuilding pursuit, where one wants to add as much lean mass as possible over time, (and eventually also ending up lean), which is the best strategy for this?
A) Long, slow and steady bulk over a long period of time followed by a cut.
(extreme example- dave gulledge ballooning up to a 320 lb. fatass powerlifter and then finally cutting down after many years.)
B) Moderately long bulking periods followed by moderate cut periods, alternated over time. (very common, some guys use the 10-15 rule, bulk at 10% bf, cut at 15% bf).
C)Bodyrecomping: trying to gain lean mass slowly without getting fat in the process. (e.g.- martin's 'leangains' IF bulk, etc.)
Ideas? I am sure this has been discussed before, but a fresh thread here about bodyrecomposition bulking, (i.e. bodybuilding) should be fun. And I really do not know the answer to this as most peeps here seem obsessed with getting super lean, without nearly as much talk about getting fuckin' HUGE.
me:
maybe, maybe not, because you have to look at both the bulking time and dieting time
now, we know that, without drugs, there is a limit to how fast you can gain muscle. let's say it's about 0.5 lbs/week which will hold for beginners and hold progressively less well as folks get more advanced
further assume that you can gain, max, mayb 40 lbs muscle beyon where you started
so, in theory, that's 80 weeks of straight gaining. lots of wrong assumptions here, mind you. you wouldn't gain 0.5 lbs/week week in week out. but it'll make the math easier
that's just under 2 years of straight bulking to get close to genetic limits. again, in the ral world, it'll take longer than that.
now, gaining fat at a faster rate won't necessarly increase muscle mss gains beyond that
the danger with GFH that I see is that in maximizing muscle mass gains you may get disproportionate fat gains. that oculd hold for option 'b' as well, if you're eating way too much, you put on fat faster than necessary (e.g. with no benefit to muscle mass) although, in practice, that just shortens the time fram before you switch into dieting
so say you GFH for 1.5 years straight to gain 40 lbs of muscle. how much fat did you put on. at least 40 lbs. maybe more if you go nuts. that's a solid year of dieting to get lean again. So 3 years
will alternating bulking/cutting get it done faster. again, I'd say it comes down to how effectively you bulk vs. diet. but whereas 6 months of GFH would just be straight muslce gains, that same 6 months of alternating is, at best, 3 months of gaining mass. you don't get as fat but it still takes approximately twice as long to hit your muscle maximum
of corse, option c cuts down dieting time since you stay much leaner. but it might also slow gains in muscle mass (depending on how you implement it)
so it seems at a very rough first approximation to more or less balance out
I seem to have lost my train of thought
say you gain the same 0.5 lbs muscle/week doing it this way and assume 3 month bulk cycle + 3 month diet cycle. assume zero muscle loss on the diet. So you get 6 lbs LBM every 6 months. That's 7 cycles or 42 months to max out muscle and be lean again. 3.5 years which is basically the same time frame as with the GFH + diet for 1.5 years approach.
say taht by limiting fat gains all the time you reduce your msucle gain slightly. Let's say you cut it in half to 0.25 lbs/week but you eliminate all dieting time. So now it will take you 160 weeks to gain 40 lbs of muscle mass. or about 40 months. but you look much prettier the whole time doing it.
and some more:
IMO, 1 week cycles are not long enough to see sufficient results.
Layne norton (a bodyuilder) advocated 4-6 weeks of bulking followed by 2 weeks cutting to keep fat gain at bay
Kelly Baggett has his own approach where you do a short 3 day diet at the end of every 2 week cycle
you can use the bulkin version of the UD2 to gain muscel slowly while losing a bit of fat
I'm going to tell you the diet equivalent of what I told DannyG about training: you're going to spend the next year looking for the BESt approach to this when what you shoudl be doing (as, IIRC, an overfat beginner) is getting into the gym and training. fat beginners can lose fat while gaining muscle without doing ANYTHING esoteric
until you get the fundamentals of training and eating nailed down, looking for more complex approaches is not only unlikely to yield benefit, ti will end up hurting you down the road
here is the whole thread