I am sitting at my desk, angry and befuddled. Every single day, I see multiple posts from people trying to bulk up, asking why they're putting on fat faster than muscle. When I ask them what their cardio/conditioning-work looks like, they say they aren't doing any. What the Fuck, people? Really? What the actual fuck?
Whew, take a breath. Let's back up, and ask a far more serious question:
Should you even be bulking? Why are you even bulking right now?
This guy should probably be bulking RIGHT NOW...
People are always asking whether they should bulk or cut, but for many people, especially people just starting out, eating at maintenance is likely the best option. You've decided to make a change. You've decided to start lifting. Cheers! Hooray! Pat-on-the-back, all that stuff. I'm glad you want to build size and strength. That's the first step. Do you need to immediately get on a regimen of "bulking" in order to "maximize your newb gains"? Maybe not.
If you've just started lifting in the last month or two, almost all of the strength gains you experience at this point are neurological in nature. "Neurological adaptation" simply means your muscles are getting better at firing. You're getting better at utilizing your existing muscle. Just because you have 4 cylinders in your engine, doesn't mean they all fire. Just because you have four dogs, it doesn't mean they all come when you call...
What you are learning, at the outset of lifting, are the skill sets related to muscle fiber recruitment, and coordinated muscle-firing-patterns. Your body is not in any hurry to build new muscle, before you figure out how to use the muscle you already have. Does that make sense? Your rapid "strength gains" as a newb are mostly related to the optimizations of your nervous system, not muscle growth.
Further, most of the size gains you experience in the first several weeks or months are mostly due to better nutrient partitioning. Through training, your body becomes adept at storing more muscle glycogen (sugar), in order to provide fast energy for certain types of activity. The average, sedentary individual has about 400 grams of glycogen in reserve, but through consistent training, you are able to store roughly twice that amount. (You also produce more blood and plasma, etc). This is the other component of newb gains.
But again, better nutrient partitioning simply means you have a larger fuel tank; not necessarily a bigger engine. Muscle/Liver Glycogen counts towards "Lean Body Mass", although categorically, it's not muscle. You "gained LBM", but it's not the gain of contractile muscle tissue; it's not true muscular hypertrophy. Does that make sense? Most of your "Newb Gains" are rapid strength gains due to neurological adaptations, and rapid size gains due to physiological adaptations.
It only complicates matters further, that many people are only lifting on 3-day per week, introductory-programs, whose volume of lifting is almost too low to justify an every-day-surplus of 500 calories. It is because of these reasons, I no longer recommend new lifters go immediately onto bulk. The exception is for grossly-underweight, borderline-anorexic individuals. Otherwise, you will make strength gains just fine eating at maintenance for the first 3-5 months after beginning your journey into the land of resistance training.
Your Blood Sugar Goes Up & Down After Meals.
We Will Refer To This Graphic Later In The Text.
And this is where we pick up our rant, again. WHAT is your extreme reluctance to perform any kind of cardio or conditioning work? Have you reasoned that if you only lift weights, and do nothing else, you will make the most gains possible? Or maybe you have heard somewhere that cardio will burn muscle? Or that you will somehow steal calories from your body that could have been used to build muscle? Is this what you think? Holy Crap, knock it off!
How many athletes are on strength/size-building routines, but also, you know . . . spending time running back & forth across the full length of a football field, or the basketball court, or whatever they are training to improve, without "burning" all their hard-earned "gains"? These guys "lift" to build sport-specific muscle, but they're also incredibly active, running & moving their body through space. Quite vigorously, in fact. But as long as you eat more than you burn, you will put on weight. Rest assured.
Do you really think a little running several times per week is going to dissolve your hard-earned muscle into a little puff of smoke? It's not going to "steal your gains", I promise you. Your desire to skip out on conditioning-work is most likely plain-old, textbook laziness. It's an excuse to not put forth the additional effort to improve. Will you please come clean, and admit that to yourself? You are being lazy by avoiding it. And then, after several months of poorly-tracked bulking with zero cardio, you have the audacity to wonder why you're adding tummy fluff...
Whether you are bulking, whether you are cutting, whether you are re-comping, cardio/conditioning-work should be considered MANDATORY, in some capacity. The battle-cry of the Lazy is "You can't burn fat in a calorie surplus!" Why yes, you can. You're not only in surplus, or only in deficit. It's not like a toggle-switch, wherein only muscle-building / fat-burning is happening at once. BOTH processes are happening simultaneously, most of the time throughout a 24-hour day.
Holy Crap, if you have gym access to a Prowler,
but you aren't pushing it around, why even exist?
Some of the time, even in surplus, you burn stored body fat (specifically during the overnight, as you sleep). The question is whether you burn it faster than you deposit it. If you are eating close to maintenance, or even in slight surplus, your body will definitely dip into fat stores, if energy demands are not too high. Obviously, sprinting or heavy lifting is going to primarily burn muscle sugar for fuel, but your RER (respiratory exchange ratio) will be increased such that you burn more fat later in the day and evening (search the "Afterburn Effect").
But daily Low-Intensity work (think "brisk walking") can also help chip away at your fat stores. Stan Efferding, a world-renowned bodybuilder, coach, and diet consultant, cites a study wherein one group of people who walked for 10 minutes, 3x per day, burned more fat than another group who "logged 10,000 steps per day", even though the 3x10-minute group only logged roughly 7,000 steps on average. This is because they walked briskly, with purpose, and didn't just idly collect dis-continuous steps throughout a day of semi-passive activity.
This means you don't need to suit up & break a sweat, and devote an additional couple of days each week to perform mind-numbing hamster-wheel "cardio". You can help mitigate fat gain during a massing phase by simply taking three 10-minute walks per day. (The emphasis here is on BRISK walking; upbeat, up-tempo walking, preferably up hills if you can!) So at the very least, get your 3 walks in every single day. You will be burning primarily fat, and you won't be diverting any calories from muscle-building. You'll burn stored fat.
Candles? You Guessed It: We're Burning Fat!
Should you also do Low-Intensity Steady-State? I would. Take one day per week to walk that incline treadmill for about an hour. It will only do you good. It assists recovery, and elevates insulin sensitivity. If your knees occasionally ache from squatting, this really helps. Should you also do "High-Intensity Interval-Training"? I would do this, too. It can be hill sprints, box jumps, Prowler pushes, Concept2 rowing machine, or something as simple as skipping rope. The point is to get completely winded. This will make you a more well-rounded athlete, and generally harder to kill. This will also translate into improved lifting capacity.
An HIIT session should only last 12-15 minutes. If you can go for 45 minutes, is it really "high-intensity"? You should completely and utterly gas yourself out during this window of time. The "pause" portion of an interval should be no more than 10-20 seconds at most, or as long as it takes to return to somewhat normal breathing. Get at least one of these in, each week. LISS is much easier to recover from, and can be done more often; but once or twice per week is recommended while bulking. And notice, the HIIT session & LISS session(s) are in addition to your daily 3x10-minute walks.
This is a general template for general cardio & conditioning-work, separate from whatever resistance-training program you are following. If you're coming from a point of zero-cardio, this may be a shock and a wake-up call as to your true state of "fitness". Bring this work in gradually, if you must, so you can acclimatize to the increase in output. You may even have to increase your calorie surplus slightly, to keep pace with your expenditure. (You may find your "+300" is now only a +100 surplus, or worse!) If your weight gain stalls, increase calories slightly.
I can just about guarantee these 3 things:
1). As long as you stay slightly ahead of maintenance calories, and you're eating enough to recover from this, you will still add muscle; you won't burn it off.
2). Rather than additional fatigue, you will find you have even more energy, and the ability to lift greater weight with less effort. You will recover much faster.
3). Provided your calorie surplus is slight (roughly 300-500), you will be much less likely to accumulate fat during your massing phase. You will minimize it.
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The Reason You're "Skinny-Fat"
Is Because You've Been Avoiding
CARDIO & CONDITIONING!
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