Should natural lifters bulk/cut? My personal opinion and elaboration

[moreroidsmoredates]

First of all my issue with the terms bulking and cutting especially the practice of it, is that it stems off from enhanced bodybuilders.

People were able to gain tons of weight with the help of certain products.
They were able to gain a lot of muscle no matter how much fat they gained. Later on they would use certain products to cut off the fat while maintaining most (if not all) of the muscle.

You as a natural will not be able to do that.

Let’s take an example where someone goes on a “heavy” bulk and later goes on a cut to try to preserve the muscle mass while losing excess bodyfat.

You will notice that most of the time the person will lose a lot of muscle while he didn’t gain much muscle in the first place.

This is one of the reasons i personally don’t think it’s an useful practice for naturals to do them unless you fall in to the extremes; either too fat or skinny.

On top of that you will hurt your metabolism because it always tries to figure out what you’re doing.

A heavy bulk phase followed by a cutting phase is a mistake made by many natural lifters. Unless as I said before you fall into the extremes.

So what to do if bulking and cutting are both inefficient and relatively useful practices for naturals?

I recommend either a (very) small deficit or surplus depending on your goals. In other words; around maintenance calories.

Maintenance calories are the amount of macros and calories you need to maintain your bodymass.

But that your bodymass stays the same doesn’t mean that your muscle mass stays the same.

Let me explain.

When you start to workout (weightlifting) your body will trade off fat in order to support the muscle building process while trying to keep your bodyweight the same.

This only applies if you train for hypertrophy and try to progressively overload. I’m not talking about couch sitters who don’t workout (correctly).

Your workouts are as crazy as it sounds more important than your diet. The “ diet is 80% and workout is 20%” is a lie. It’s more the other way around.

If you’re either not too skinny or fat you should be working out in order to progressively overload while maintaining your calorie intake.

It will be slower, but worth it at the end.

Cutting and bulking bring both health and mental issues. Think of: depression, poor sleep, increased blood pressure, messed up metabolism etc.

 

[PrinceofDarkness]

this new gen is prone to pinning just look at our mods bro. I legit can't tell who is and isn't natty. Found out a decent amount of people at my gym are pinning its like the race to be better never ends. Problem is gear and even trt can fuck you up cognitively and I need my brain for school so its keeping me away.

 

[moreroidsmoredates]

this new gen is prone to pinning just look at our mods bro. I legit can't tell who is and isn't natty. Found out a decent amount of people at my gym are pinning its like the race to be better never ends. Problem is gear and even trt can fuck you up cognitively and I need my brain for school so its keeping me away.

Remember that you will always pay a price in some sort of way with the use of peds sooner or later.

 

[copingvolcel]

In my experience, you cannot gain muscle without gaining fat, so bulking is essential to make progress, but going above a weight gain of 2 lbs per month is just going to give you lots of extra fat.

All you need is enough calories to be able to increase your performance each gym session. You should be able to add reps or weight every time you go into the gym without compromising your form. Progressive overload is what causes the muscular adaptations that make you gain muscle. Without progressive overload, there is no size gained. However, which lifts you focus on matters also, simply going up to a 315 lb bench press will grow your chest, but it won't grow your arms by much unless you're genetically gifted for them.

Generally a 10% caloric surplus is enough to get good progress in the gym, you'll gain 2 lbs per month. On a good program, over the course of 1 year of slow bulking, you'll gain 24 lbs of weight, at least half of that will be muscle mass. This rate of muscle growth will continue until you get to a FFMI of 20 or 21, then progress will slow down to maybe at most 1 lb of muscle per month, maybe even 0.5 or 0.75 lbs, but bulking is still neeeded there. Then, when you get to a FFMI of 22 or 23, muscle growth will be so slow, that is is there that bulking is kind of useless because you'll gain maybe 4 lbs of muscle per year, so if you gain 24 lbs, 20 lbs will be fat.

When Greg Doucette talks about bulking being bad, he means for advanced lifters. For beginners and intermediate lifters you slow down the rate of muscle growth if you do not bulk. Because let's say you could gain 15 lbs of muscle in 1 year. Without bulking, you'd be lucky to gain half of that, but if you're advanced, muscle growth is so slow that with or without a surplus, there is no difference as long as your body fat percentage is not too low to make progress.

 

[FreakShowCel]

Just LDAR

 

[copingvolcel]

If you want FFMI examples, here is me:

Starting point (before gym) at 138 lbs at 6'4"
FFMI of 14.33 (bulking is essential):

Now (after years of gym) at 180 lbs at 6'4"
FFMI of 18.72 (bulking is still needed):

My physique is similar to this (but with bad ab and arm genetics):

This is someone who is at a FFMI of 25 (bulking is not very useful at this point):

And this is a steroid user who is probably around a FFMI of 28 or above:

 

[copingvolcel]

Average FFMI is 18 though, I just have bad genetics because I started with way less muscle mass than the average person but with a frame that can pack on way more muscle than the average person. When I fill out my frame, I will have gained nearly 100 lbs in total, most of which will be muscle mass. Like I could get to 230 lbs at 15% body fat realistically before I hit 30 years old.

 

[moreroidsmoredates]

In my experience, you cannot gain muscle without gaining fat, so bulking is essential to make progress, but going above a weight gain of 2 lbs per month is just going to give you lots of extra fat.

All you need is enough calories to be able to increase your performance each gym session. You should be able to add reps or weight every time you go into the gym without compromising your form. Progressive overload is what causes the muscular adaptations that make you gain muscle. Without progressive overload, there is no size gained. However, which lifts you focus on matters also, simply going up to a 315 lb bench press will grow your chest, but it won't grow your arms by much unless you're genetically gifted for them.

Generally a 10% caloric surplus is enough to get good progress in the gym, you'll gain 2 lbs per month. On a good program, over the course of 1 year of slow bulking, you'll gain 24 lbs of weight, at least half of that will be muscle mass. This rate of muscle growth will continue until you get to a FFMI of 20 or 21, then progress will slow down to maybe at most 1 lb of muscle per month, maybe even 0.5 or 0.75 lbs, but bulking is still neeeded there. Then, when you get to a FFMI of 22 or 23, muscle growth will be so slow, that is is there that bulking is kind of useless because you'll gain maybe 4 lbs of muscle per year, so if you gain 24 lbs, 20 lbs will be fat.

When Greg Doucette talks about bulking being bad, he means for advanced lifters. For beginners and intermediate lifters you slow down the rate of muscle growth if you do not bulk. Because let's say you could gain 15 lbs of muscle in 1 year. Without bulking, you'd be lucky to gain half of that, but if you're advanced, muscle growth is so slow that with or without a surplus, there is no difference as long as your body fat percentage is not too low to make progress.

If you’re at a healthy bf% you don’t need to bulk. You can recomp on that bodyweight.

I didn’t say bulking was useless in 100% of the cases.

If you’re an outlier in terms of weight whether that be either too skinny or fat you need to bulk or cut.

You will damage your metabolism if you do bulk and cutting phases as a natty. Not only that but the mental side effects aren’t worth either; think of mood swings, low energy, depression etc.

 

[moreroidsmoredates]

Average FFMI is 18 though, I just have bad genetics because I started with way less muscle mass than the average person but with a frame that can pack on way more muscle than the average person. When I fill out my frame, I will have gained nearly 100 lbs in total, most of which will be muscle mass. Like I could get to 230 lbs at 15% body fat realistically before I hit 30 years old.

Yes, you fell in the outlier category. That’s why bulking worked well for you.

 

[copingvolcel]

If you’re at a healthy bf% you don’t need to bulk. You can recomp on that bodyweight.

I didn’t say bulking was useless in 100% of the cases.

If you’re an outlier in terms of weight whether that be either too skinny or fat you need to bulk or cut.

You will damage your metabolism if you do bulk and cutting phases as a natty. Not only that but the mental side effects aren’t worth either; think of mood swings, low energy, depression etc.

That is false. Recomp does not build nearly as much muscle as bulking. A 10% caloric surplus is always needed, you cannot build muscle with nothing, it's like trying to build a house with no materials, it's not going to work, but if you give your workers more materials than they need, they're not going to build faster. The only way to build faster would be to hire more workers, and give them the extra tools, this means taking steroids and going on a huge caloric surplus, which goes back to your point. Big bulks worked for steroid users, but naturals need small bulks.

The main reason why I wasted many years making very little progress is because I wasn't bulking. You cannot gain muscle without gaining fat, the two come together, but you can build muscle, and then remove the fat later on. If you bulk slowly, you will minimize fat gain and be able to bulk for 2 years if you start very lean. Then the cut will last maybe 3-4 months. That is how to gain muscle the fastest as a natural lifter.

But don't take my word for it, watch these videos:

 

[copingvolcel]

Yes, you fell in the outlier category. That’s why bulking worked well for you.

There is no such thing as outlier category, bulking will work for beginners and intermediate lifters, once you get to advanced, which would be considered most people's goal physique, that is when bulking leads to diminishing returns and a recomp might be enough, around a FFMI of 23.