The Growth Season: Muscle Hypertrophy

I must, I must, I must increase my bust

It's been decided, by next summer you will be the newest card carrying member of an exclusive fraternity, “The Meathead Brigade.” You've become an expert on health and fitness from your regular visits to websites like bodybuilding.com and T-Nation. You have a copy of the holy bible, Arnold Schwartzenegger's, The Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding. You’ve read the stories of athletes making ridiculous gains and watched the infomercials of regular Joe’s adding impressive muscle gains. If it worked for them, why not you? Your goal is to spend the winter and “bulk-up” by putting on 30 pounds of hard muscle.  And you’ve come up with a foolproof plan to attain this goal.

·      Eat big, get big: You started your diet plan (you found this great online diet on a bodybuilding website, a 5,500 calorie/day your favorite action movie-star follows).

·      Protein weight gainers morning, noon and night: You did the research on supplements, (flipped through multiple Muscle magazines) and you’re now an aficionado. Your gym bag now resembles a small pharmacy (because the real life Hulks in the advertisements wouldn’t lie to sell a product they are being paid to endorse).

·      Train big, get big: Your credo is “to live, breathe, and dream successful iron feats.” You’ve even adopted a pre-training rallying cry to psych yourself up (the actors from the movie 300 would be proud).

Surely, your physique and feats of strength will be the kind of things myths and folklore are made of. There will be tall-tails sung to the heavens about your triumphs (and will definitely get the adulation of the pretty girls in the cardio area). You are well on your way to become the next mass monster of your gym and glory is soon to be yours!

"I'm not fat, I'm big boned!"

Fast-forward 12 months later. Another summer has come and gone. True to your word, you spent the entire winter "working out" and sure enough you stuck to your food plan and gained more than 30 pounds. You religiously took every supplement your idol in the magazine ad recommended. But unfortunately, you envisioned a totally different body. You are feeling lethargic and your drive to train is dwindling. More importantly, it looks like the pretty girls on the cardio machines are paying even less attention to you now. Amazingly, the foolproof plan didn’t work!

News flash, muscle gains aren’t that easy!

So where did it all go wrong?

First off, if you want anything in bulk, go to Costco. If you want to grow, here is the plan.

When "bulking" plans go wrong

Instead of "Bulking," Grow: If you treat the cold weather season as an offseason of “bulking up,” you more than likely added unwanted weight in the form of excess fat. So logically, you "grew" by adding mostly fat, not muscle. Here’s another thing to rattle around in your noodle, if the offseason is a plan to grow, is it really an offseason? Anyone can "bulk-up" but not everyone can make muscle gains. Instead of bulking-up, maybe take a more gradual and modest weight gain approach in your nutrition plan. It won’t be fast but it will ensure an incremental muscle increase. Any rapid gain is not natural nor is it sustainable. Seriously, what is bulking up anyway? It’s become an excuse to be lazy about nutrition habits during cold weather. Let’s instead refer to it as the growth season (putting on lean muscle tissue). But if you allow your ego to get in the way or you are delusional about your abilities, there’s no helping you.

·      Your Nutrition Plan: What you don’t understand (or care) is that the movie star is paid to look like that. Damn it, we expect him to look like that! And he will do whatever it takes to get there. Beyond the speculation of the "supplements" he is taking, one must admit and respect the time he puts into training. He trains extremely HARD. He has all out wars with the iron. As a result, he expends a ton of energy to perform his training session. However, in order to recover from those sessions, he’s going to need to crush a lot of food. His body will be burning calories when he is not training because his body is trying to recover and begin the growth process. The body grows at rest, not during training sessions. Now, he didn’t start at 10,000 calories, he had a baseline to start from. As his training intensity spiked, so did his body’s demand for food. Note: Elite athletes and movie-stars have professional guidance in every area from nutrition to training programs. Everything is monitored and individualized for them.

"Look how vascular I am...If it's one
thing women love, it's a vascular man."

·      Your Supplement Plan: A supplement is literally something extra. You are supplying something to tend to a deficiency. This is an important element to understand. Too much of anything is going to be useless regardless of what anyone else tells you. And in many cases, people fall victim to supplement abuse because of their dependency on them. What you don't know is the mass monster from the magazine oozes some kind of Performance Enhancement Drug (PED) coming out his eyeballs and pees a steroid! He doesn’t mention all of the other kinds of the other supplements and PED’s he is taking beyond the one he is endorsing. Save your money. I’d recommend holding off on buying everything the mass monster at the supplement stores is peddling (for more information on PED's and supplementation check out the documentary, Bigger, Stronger, Faster).  

Muscle Hypertrophy Training: I'm a big believer in training for strength. However, I find most people train to look good and if that's your goal, muscle hypertrophy is a different animal. Strength requires more skill and attention to technique, while muscle hypertrophy just requires moderate weight in both compound and single-joint exercises between 8-12 repetitions. This is where most people fail (mostly guys) because they try to use too heavy of weight to make the desired muscles work appropriately, muddling a strength and hypertrophy program. Put the 50 pound dumb bell down you were "cleaning" as a biceps curl and grab a 25 pounder. Now try squeezing the biceps at the top and control it on the way down for 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions.

It might not be the fastest or sexiest plan but it is safe and if you follow it, it is guaranteed to get you results. Remember, muscle hypertrophy isn't about strength, it's about stressing the muscles appropriately. Look, I don’t care what you look like (only periodic pictures can judge you), as long as you are improving toward your goal safely. Who can take that away from you? Finally, I do recommend working on a strength training program to fine tune compound patterns before undertaking a muscle hypertrophy program because you can implement these skills seamlessly. Be sure to stay tuned for my upcoming blog about strength training. Best of luck in your training!

The Secrets to Building the Summer Body You've Always Wanted

Magic 8 Ball, will I get lean the summer?
"Outlook not so good"

The secret to achieving the summer body is in the plan. And guess what, the plan should have started in January…of last year. Ok, maybe I misled with the title of the article a little bit but please, hear me out. If you continue reading and don’t agree with what I have to say, I’ll gladly reimburse you the 5 minutes you wasted reading this blog. Humor me and let’s take a glance into the future by consulting the Magic 8 Ball (are those things still used, if not, I’m really starting to feel my age). 

If you were unhappy to start, do you think once you’ve achieved a tighter arse, thicker chest, or six-pack abs, your life will change? Don’t be fooled by getting caught up with a body image influenced by magazines, P90X infomercials, silly meathead “trainers” and the Internet. Can you get ripped in 12 weeks, sure, but then what and at what cost did it take to get there? Where do you go from there? Back to “bulking-up?” What purpose did getting lean serve in the short-term and affect the long-term plan? I’m not against someone getting leaner and looking better, I’m against the manner in which it is usually done. Just remember, there are consequences to get leaner. Here is a great blog about the drawbacks of getting too lean from Precision Nutrition, http://www.precisionnutrition.com/cost-of-getting-lean

This ISN’T a get ripped in 12 week program. No, this is an approach to not only look good but also feel good year round. This is about focusing on YOU by digging your feet into the ground and making tough choices that will define your lifestyle for years to come. And that’s what I do. I’m in the business of health and fitness, which means I’m invested in YOUR health and YOUR fitness for the long haul. By learning how to eat strategically and implementing that into moving well and using that skill to handle heavier weight, you’ll mold your body over time. And this journey will require patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day and unhealthy habits developed over time. Take it one day at a time and you will establish healthier lifestyle habits.

Thanks to a plan, "I'm too sexy for this shirt!"

Ok, so I sound a little bit like the Hulkster, peddling a similar mantra of “take your vitamins and say your prayers Hulkamaniacs!” But it’s true. Habits are not easy to change, if it was, it wouldn't be a habit.

To me, the formula to changing your body is simple: eat well, train hard (but smart) and get plenty of rest. Now before you roll your eyes and say with a frustrated tone, “But I’ve already done that,” please let me finish. Yes, the formula is simple but the implementation of putting it into action can be a challenge. If you have tried doing this in the past, I ask you to reflect on why you didn’t succeed in those experiences. Be honest with yourself. Have you been taught to lift heavy weight (and machines don’t count)? Are you recovering from your challenging sessions? Where are your food sources coming from?  If it's really important to you, what sacrifices have you been willing to make on those three things I listed above? Contrary to what you might think, improvement and changes to your lifestyle is not a crash course. Look, I’m not here to blow smoke up your arse and tell you this is easy because it’s not. I'm here to help you make the hard choices.

Food coma, "D'oh!"

Nutrition Plan: This is the most important but most difficult thing to change. Why, because it’s work. There’s 24 hours in the day, so the logical question is what does your daily nutrition plan look like? Now, there are many ways to go about a nutrition plan, the key is finding the right one that works for you. A good place I recommend to start is by preparing a food log and seeing where your food sources are coming from. From there, you can breakdown what your macronutrient (protein, carbohydrates and fats) intake is like. Each macronutrient has a purpose and is essential to the body. The right kinds of fats are necessary, but too much fat, (even healthy fats) in your nutrition plan aren’t. Carbohydrates aren’t the enemy but too many carbohydrates in your plan are. Protein is great but contrary to widespread gym belief; too much protein is not good for you. All three macronutrients are important but all three can be abused because of misinformation. The trick is having a combination of the three based on your body’s needs and structure. Whether you realize it or not, you have already been following a macronutrient nutrition plan to some degree. If you ask someone advice on how to build muscle, what do they say, “Eat protein!” Need energy, “eat carbohydrates!” Some nutrition questions to ask yourself, are you eating less dense foods that don’t satiate your hunger? Are your fats too high? Regardless of whether you are eating “healthy” foods, if you are eating too much of it, what happens? It stores as fat. Whether it’s from healthy food or unhealthy food, your body doesn’t know the difference. The only thing the body knows is that it has to do something with it. If your body can’t use it, the surplus of “healthy” food will store as fat.

"Gotta get my pump in bro!"

Train hard: Put down the dumbbells and stop bicep curling. It’s ok to have programs that last 12 weeks or more that don’t include isolated arm work or High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). Vary the program between strength and muscle hypertrophy. Take the time to get your body to build a skill-set by learning strength pattern techniques like: squatting, deadlifting, bench pressing and pull-ups. Rather than “workout”, try to practice lifting heavy weight in your training sessions. By building a skill-set, you have set into motion a great plan for improvement and to help in other forms of training. Don’t let ego get in the way, there’s a lot of skill and technique involved with moving heavy weight. When is a 500lb squat a real 500lb squat? If your hips get below your knees and you can stand up…while avoiding a trip to the emergency room after doing it. When you are finished with the program, a great way to de-load would be to transition to a less taxing form of training like muscle hypertrophy or fat burn. This doesn't mean it's not challenging, it's just less stressful on the body both from a training and recovery standpoint (bodybuilders can train more frequently because of the split training method compared to powerlifters that need more recovery time due to the strenuous nature on the entire body as a whole).

You should already notice you have gotten leaner by putting in the time and changing your lifestyle. Because your growth season has been successful you can continue to train to get leaner without missing a beat. There’s no skill taking an anorexic Barbie doll and making her skinnier, weaker and as fragile as a china doll. Again, make sure you have a safe and smart plan in place.

Look, I’m not against people getting lean. I am against people forsaking other important things to get there. Be honest and accountable by trying to step outside your comfort zone. Remember, if it were easy everyone would look great and we wouldn’t take pride in the hard work and results from the lifestyle changes (plus, I’d be out of a job). Best of luck in training for next year’s summer body!