Should i bulk up

However, if we are only doing cardio and a lot of it without any strength training, we will not be able to build new muscle mass, which defeats the entire purpose of a bulk. We wrote an entire article on whether you can get stronger training once per week.

The main points are:. Regardless of whether you can train once a week or six times a week, you need to ensure that your workouts involve high-intensity, high-volume protocols. Your training program should focus on the whole body and incorporate compounded exercises. You will also want to make sure your diet is made up of clean food for the most part. Include high quality protein sources chicken, steak, salmon , carbohydrate sources oats, potato, yams and fat sources avocado, olive oil, nuts and seeds.

If you are obese, you will want to put yourself in a caloric deficit but continue to priotitize weight training to build muscle. Make sure you are following a progressive weight training program to ensure muscle growth. If you are new to working out and are at a healthy body weight, you should bulk first. The younger your training age, the quicker you are able to build muscle and therefore you should take advantage of this with a caloric surplus.

This will make it much easier for you to cut body fat after the bulk, as you will have a lot more muscle mass compared to if you started out by cutting. Maggie Morgan is a level 1 PN certified nutritionist who specializes in sport, exercise and performance nutrition, a strength training coach, and an elite level athlete.

Maggie has competed in bodybuilding, and is an international-level powerlifter. Currently undertaking her Masters in Counselling Psychology, Maggie is not only able to lead others in strength and aesthetics through her personal experiences and scientific nutritional foundations but additionally by addressing the psychological and behavioral implications of exercise and nutrition.

Helms, Eric R, et al. Longland, Thomas M, et al. Skip to content. Weight Lifting. What Causes Skinny Fat? What is being skinny fat? Get the app. Instagram Facebook Twitter Youtube. All Rights Reserved. Luckily, not much is different for starting or transitioning to a cutting diet. Whether you begin lifting above the recommended body fat levels to start off bulking or have reached it after months of bulking, a lot of the concepts are exactly the same.

If a bulk is when you have a daily surplus of calories anywhere from , a cut is exactly the opposite with a calorie deficit.

Your goal is to lose around 0. The scale and mirror will be your best judge of how many calories you need a day though. For example if the calculator says you need to eat calories a day to lose one pound a week, but you are only losing less than half a pound, you will need to take control of this number and experiment whether you drop calories or add cardio to get back to one pound of weight loss a week.

The same goes for bulking, if you are gaining too much weight too fast on a calorie count the calculator tells you to consume, maybe try a different one on another website or lower your calories to where you need as to not gain too much fat to fast.

As long as you are still using good form, you should try to keep gaining strength for a long as you can. As for those who are beginning to cut with zero lifting experience, flow the above bulking plan and you will be in the rare situation where you can gain muscle, and lose fat for hopefully a decent amount of time.

The only thing that will be different will be how many calories you consume. Cutting out a large amount of calories will make it very difficult to hit your protein requirements for the day usually about one gram per pound of bodyweight. This is when getting familiar with a calorie counter app or online program will be very important to stay precise and accurate on a daily basis. Always remember though, this should never control your life.

I know there is no magic formula but can you give a starting point as I keep doubting my decisions? The only way I know how to lose weight is by a kcal deficit but if i seem to be maintaining at something is surely wrong. I have been looking at weight lifting women and they eat ALOT a day. I want to be them. My overall aim is to be ripped and improve my strength and to generally be lean and drop this body fat percentage down as much as possible.

Have you read the diet guide yet? I weigh and have a BMI of I want to build muscle and gain strength on my whole lower body,arms and waist. But the only problem I have is my stomach sticks out a little but when I measure my waist it comes out 26 inches. But looking at my stomach in the mirror I can see slight definition. Is that fat or my abs starting to develop? You can try. Use the contact form. Hi thank you for this wonderful site. I used to only do cardio for the longest time and hence while i did lose both fat and muscle and drop dress sizes, I easily gained the fat back.

As per the diagnostic sheet, I need to gain about 12 pounds of muscle and lose about 15 pounds of fat. I did try only a calorie deficient diet but to my horror, I only lost muscle mass! Should I focus on first gaining the muscle since I am deficient and not even at normal levels of muscle mass or go into a calorie deficient diet with weight training?

And since you sound like you are probably a beginner to weight training, that deficit should be combined with a sufficient protein intake and an intelligent beginner program focused on progression. Again, awesome site! Is this healthy? The article above recommends to start bulking rather. Yes my end goal is to build more muscle eventually but I really want those abs as well.

Measuring my back near the shoulder and the side of my stomach, near my right hip. I bought one of these , but I just cant get the hang of it. Thanks for the advice, what Ill do is go to another Biokineticist and just have it double checked they could have been wrong , and like you say, I might not be lean enough, ill continue with my cutting phase until I see something developing. I started using a workout tracker before I found your site and I put some images up on their a month ago. I am guy.

I used to weigh a little over kgs last year during the same month. Now my upper abs do show but I still have love handles. What should I do?

My primary goal with my body is to be fit and athletic, beach body kind of. Great article! Still confused. I want to get bigger as in muscle mass but i want to barely have a thin layer of fat over that muscle. I do not know my BFI. Is there any tips? Read this one and this one. Thanks for the great article! I am basically a newbie to weight lifting, and just started 14 weeks ago with one week of rest. I want to get big and muscular, but knew I had to cut fat first.

I am making progress almost every week I go to the gym on my lifts, so I know I am getting stronger. Visibly, I am less fat than when I started, and a little more shapely muscular. Fourteen weeks is about three months, and though I have been cutting this entire time, my weight is exactly the same as when I started. Granted, the whole reason I am cutting while lifting is because I have read that newbies can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, which you mention in another article.

This is clearly happening with me; however, I am a bit confused as to why my weight is the exact same as three months ago. For example, maybe my TDEE estimate is off, and I should be eating less calories and losing fat faster. Any opinions? I would consider myself somewhat lean at this point, and while I am more lean than I have ever been in my life, and definitely improved over three months ago, I am not as lean as I want to be.

I have no clue what my real body fat percentage is, but I definitely want to have less belly fat than I do now, so I have decided to continue cutting until all abs are visible before I bulk. Like you mentioned, fat loss can happen waaaaay faster than muscle growth can. So if they are in fact happening at an equal rate, it would mean fat loss is happening quite slow not extra fast growth.

That makes a ton of sense. I also have pictures from Day 1, and there is at least a small difference compared to now. If I want to lose fat faster, I should just lower calories further, right? I can barely see my top 4 abs. Can I do those simultaneously, or does it have to happen separately? Thanks for your help. Hey great article man it really cleared things up! Like should I continue to lift heavy weights 4 times a week and just incorporate more cardio and a better diet?

And if I go into a caloric deficit will I lose strength and be unable to maintain my current muscle mass? This one would be a good place to start. This one. Love the Article.

I was told different paths i should take and not sure which one should i go first. Should I work on Leaning out first?

Then bulk up after I see enough muscle and possible visible abs showing? I am completely new at this and also do you have anytips on workout routines I should follow for a guy who has little muscle? Details here. Thank you So much for the quick reply! Nice article you linked. Should my main focus still be to lose fat? But as a beginner, if you combine the beginner routine and a focus on consistent progression with a diet designed for fat loss a small deficit, sufficient protein, etc.

Thank you so much! Got it! Thank you again for helping me point towards the right path. Excellent article! My protruding belly and love handles bother me but I do want to gain muscle like a fitness model. Before i started i was ultra lean and skinny with a visible six pack that i was quite content with, and now i have gained muscle on my arms, shoulders and back. However i have also put on some fat and my six pack is no longer visible.

I might have been eating too much whereas before i barely ate anything at all, and did a lot of cardio track bike racing and skipped a few workouts here and there. And what can i do to get visible abs again without stopping the bulk and sacrificing all the work ive put in so far? I know i can go back to one meal a day and ride track again but i dont want to lose my muscle gains… Any suggestions? Maybe reduce my carb intake and keep up my protein intake?

Or is this something i should worry about all together later on? I can send pics if it can help! Thanks in advance. Regards, J. Can you please look at my photos and give a tip to brother about it? I do have a friend of mine who currently competes and she has been carb cycling with ridiculous results. Your input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance brotha! I want to lose the fat I have at the moment, gain muscle, still be able to run decent times in the races and time trials I run e. From reading this blog today, what he said appears to be wrong.

Is any of what he said true in any way? What do you recommend to help me out with the aforementioned problems I have? Every bit of fat on my body is in the abdomen area.

Chest back legs and arms are chiseled. I want to get to but I want to get rid of gut too. Should I bulk more, or cut? He will definitely not going to build muscle nor strength right? If this person is beginning to lift for the first time, then yes, plenty of strength will be gains and most likely a decent amount of muscle too.

If you have a question or comment about this article, or just want to give me your feedback on it, feel free to contact me directly by using the contact form here. But what if you want to do both? Which goal are you supposed to start with? Bulk vs Cut vs Recomp If you want to build muscle and lose fat, there are 3 options for you to choose from: Bulk Bulking is a term used to describe a muscle building phase. This entails eating an amount of calories that causes a small caloric surplus to exist so that a slow rate of weight gain occurs.

The goal here is to gain muscle mass while keeping gains in body fat to a bare minimum. Cut Cutting is a term used to describe a fat loss phase. This entails eating an amount of calories that causes a caloric deficit to exist so that a moderate and sustainable rate of weight loss occurs. The goal during this time is to lose body fat while maintaining as much muscle mass as possible.

Recomp Recomp, short for recomposition, is a term used to describe losing fat and building muscle at the same time. This entails eating at your maintenance level each day, or perhaps being in a deficit on certain days and a surplus on others so that you break even in the end. The goal here is to stay around the same body weight while making small changes to your body composition more muscle, less fat over time.

The only question is, which option is best for you right now? Should you bulk, cut, or recomp? And no one wants that. I Want To Build Muscle If you want to build lean muscle without gaining excess body fat, spending all of your time in the gym, using a diet or workout that isn't customized to you, or doing myth-based nonsense that only works for people with amazing genetics, check out: Superior Muscle Growth I Want To Lose Fat If you want to lose body fat without losing muscle, feeling hungry all the time, using stupid restrictive diets, doing hours of cardio, or struggling with plateaus, metabolic slowdown, and everything else that sucks about getting lean, check out: Superior Fat Loss.

Could you provide some info regarding that. Thanks Harsha. When lean enough, you can switch to a surplus and start bulking. I use this website like my bible, will keep you posted! It can all work… although I tend to prefer the first way.