Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1640: Five Steps to Build Muscle Without Adding Fat

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover five things you must do if you want to add muscle and avoid adding fat in the process. 1640: Five Steps to Build Muscle Without Adding Fat Sal’s massive waste of time in pursuit of building muscle. (1:30) The challenges faced when trying to build muscle without adding body fat. (6:08) Five Steps to Build Muscle Without Adding Fat.  #1 – You have to send the RIGHT signal to your body. (9:48) #2 – You must go into a small surplus. (21:57) #3 – Utilize mini periods of maintenance or cutting within a long bulking cycle. (31:40) #4 – Track your lean body mass. (38:53) #5 – Prioritize your sleep. (45:40) BONUS: Use cardio as a tool. (50:07) Related Links/Products Mentioned September Promotion: MAPS Performance and MAPS Suspension 50% off!   **Promo code “SEPTEMBER50” at checkout** Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Osteopenia: When you have weak bones, but not osteoporosis The Importance of Exercise to Help Treat Osteopenia and Osteoporosis Mind Pump #1387: Turning Your Body Into A Fat-Burning Machine 5 Most Important Exercises for Muscle Growth in an Effective Routine – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1612: Everything You Need To Know About Sets, Reps & Rest Periods MAPS Fitness Products How to Manipulate Macros for Building Muscle – Mind Pump Blog The Myth of Optimal Protein Intake – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1345: 6 Ways To Optimize Sleep For Faster Muscle Gain And Fat Loss What is NEAT and Why Should You Care About it? - Mind Pump Blog When is Cardio a Good Idea? - Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. All right, you asked, and we listened. We always get questions from people on how you can build muscle without gaining body fat. So in this episode, we give you five important and imperative steps in order to do this magical thing

where you gain muscle without gaining body fat. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion. Legion makes amazing performance enhancing supplements. So they have protein powders, pre-workout supplements, multi-vitamins, and much more. It's one of our favorite partners. It's owned by one of our good friends. Go check them out.

Head over to buylegion.com. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump for 20% off your first order also All month long to work out programs are 50% off maps performance and maps suspension both half off You can find out more about these programs or just sign up at maps fitness products calm Wait if you sign up though. You do need to use the code September 50, that September 5.0 with no space for that discount.

All right boys, I think it's time we do a dedicated episode and really give people specifics on how to build muscle without gaining body fat. We get this question all the time. Can we just call this the Goldilocks episode? Oh, totally. You know what's funny is I really identify with this question because growing up working out,

all I wanted to do was gain muscle. I could really care less about being shredded. I was already skinny, so that wasn't an issue. So it was all about always trying to gain muscle, but the problem was because I had this particular insecurity of wanting to gain weight, I messed up a lot. In fact, I have, there's one instance that was where it's kind of became clear to me. And by this point, I'm probably, I'm probably in my early 20s.

And remember, I've been working out since I was 14. So, to me, that long kind of figure out, oh, I think I'm spinning my tires in the mud. And I remember it was just, period of time, I was actually actually grand open the club on Sanitris so you guys know which one that is because you guys worked there. Yep. And myself and my trainer, one of my trainer friends

and my fitness manager all decided that we were gonna do this bulk together and all of us wanted to gain muscle. And so I did probably the most aggressive bulk of my entire life. And literally my thought process was, you know what, that's it. Like I've always been trying to gain.

This time I'm gonna gain and it's gonna work and I know how to work out and all that stuff. And so I did, I gained, I think I got my body weight up to almost 240 pounds, which is very heavy for me and my friend. How many calories are you putting down? I, you know, it's funny. So here's, it's great.

We'll get into this. I didn't track, it was just eat everything I possibly could. To anything possible. And can I gain weight, right? And I did. I gained a ton of weight. And at the end of this bulk, I, I don't remember how much I put on 20 something pounds or something ridiculous like that.

And I got my body fat tested. And I remember being just crushed that I think out of the 27 pounds that I had 18 fat two pounds of muscle. It was like four pounds. It was something silly, like of lean body mass. Yeah. And then later when I went to get rid of some

of this body fat because I was definitely too heavy, it was uncomfortable. I remember at one point I was on the stationary bike because my staff was teasing me that I had no stamina because I remember at one point I was on the stationary bike because my staff was teasing me that I had no stamina because I was so heavy. I got on the stationary bike and I was breathing heavy and I was like, oh, I gotta do something about this. I cut all the way down and I literally was in the same place.

I was when I first started it. And so it was a huge, massive waste of time. So yeah. Don't you believe part of the problem or why this is so challenging is that most people fall in one of the two extremes. Either they were like us, they're insecure about being skinny,

so then they eat everything inside and they don't ever what the scale drop one pound because they're worried about being skinny. And then you have the opposite side who is so worried about adding any weight to the scale whatsoever that they're just been cutting forever. Yeah, they're cutting forever or just barely at maintenance

because they're scared of letting the scale go up. And so part of why I think this is so challenging is because I think most people fall in one of those two categories. Most of us got into fitness and working out because of our insecurities. That's what drove us there. And you normally kind of fall in one of those two categories. Most of us got into fitness and working out because of our insecurities. That's what drove us there. And you normally kind of fall in one of those two categories. And then you figure this out that, okay, I need to lift weights. And this is one of the

best things that I can do for my metabolism and look better or whatever your goal is. And then you go, okay, well, I don't want to put any body fat on. I just want to add muscle. Okay. So how do I do this? And yet, And yet, but I'm still working through my insecurities. Very, very challenging. Totally challenging. And I know, you know, in contrast to later on, when I started kind of figure all of this out, when I would do bulks, the scale would go up

not much at all, or it would go up a little bit, but then it was my lean body mass that was changing. And then the way I looked was significantly different, different in a good way. Not to say that when I bulked up to 240 and it looked different, I did, but it definitely didn't look like I gained lots of muscle. I looked like I got gained lots of body fat.

And so this is the big challenge. It's like, how do I gain that muscle without gaining body fat? Because some of the things that you need to do to gain muscle are also the things that can, especially if you don't do them the right way that can cause fat gain. And look, this could be true.

This is something that's a struggle for people who are looking to just speed up their metabolism. So you might have listened to our podcast in the past and your goal is to get a faster metabolism. So it's easier for you to be lean and then you hear us on the podcast. Say you should do a bulk and you're like, I just want to get lean and we say, no, no, if you do a bulk right, speed, different metabolism. Well, now this is even more important to you.

Like, well, okay, but I don't want to gain tons of body fat. Like, what's the deal? Well, I mean, there's a reason it's so difficult, right? Cause our bodies, natural tendencies to wanna be able to store energy for future emergencies, or if there's a shortage of food, or if it's hard to come by. So the natural mechanisms in place

want to be as efficient as possible at everything we do. And so now we have to sort of go against that system in place to be able to get that kind of desired outcome. What a great point. So you don't need a lot of planning at all to get your body to store body fat because when you're storing body fat, what your body is doing, it's storing energy like Justin said, for later as an insurance. This is a default way of gaining weight, like Justin said, for later, as an insurance. This is a default way of gaining weight.

It's very, very easy. I can get anybody to gain body fat. Gaining muscle, well, here's what you're asking your body to do. You're asking your body to add very expensive, costly tissue. Okay, so now we're gonna make your caloric requirements even higher, which means you have to find more food and feed yourself more Which in survival terms that's not necessarily beneficial, but that fact's actually detrimental or can be detrimental, right? so building muscle requires much more planning and structure gaining body fat is literally the default

And so it's very important you understand that. So that when you do move forward with a bulk, you do the planning properly rather than just trying to gain weight, which is really easy. Well, it's also a very fine dance too that you're doing because one is anabolic and one is catabolic. So you're sending competing signals in a sense, right?

Or you're asking for competing goals here. I want to build muscle, but then I also want to not put on any body fat or potentially lose some body fat. Totally true. So, you're kind of asking the body to do two conflicting things, which you're not gonna be able to do it simultaneously, but you can do it like throughout the course of a week

or weeks or months or years of, you know, kind of weaving in and out with what you're doing with your diet and your training. Yeah, and really to dive into that a little bit deeper, think about what you just said, right? You're telling your body, I want you to increase your caloric requirements. I want to add expensive tissue while simultaneously not adding more insurance to itself. We're not protecting yourself. So it's like, okay, your body's like, all right, you want us to burn more calories.

You want us to make ourselves more vulnerable to possible issues and you want us to get rid of our favorite insurance policy against, you know what does that environment look like? Yeah, so in other words, it's hope. In other words, it's really hard. Now when you throw on top of that, your insecurities around potentially gaining body fat or oh, I got to gain so much weight when you throw on top of that

Signals that can be misleading boy. It is this get very hard. So no, it's no wonder that this question is so often asked I'd say probably in the last six years we've done this show It's got to be one of the top three questions that we get on a regular basis. And so I think what's, what a good idea is, is for us, and not just talk about, okay, you know, here's kind of some of the stuff you do, but give people real specifics.

Like, here are the steps, here are the most important things you could do to ensure that when you do gain a new tissue that it's muscle and not body fat. So let's start with the first one. And I think these are, we've listed these out kind of an order of importance, definitely for the first one. Number one, you have to send the right signal to your body.

And the signal has to say, we need to build muscle. And the way you send that signal is through a effective and appropriate workout. So I'm gonna use another example to kind of illustrate how important this is. It wasn't that long ago that we started to identify that osteophenia and osteoporosis

was becoming an issue. It's probably, I wanna say the last three decades or so, this has become somewhat of a concern. Like we've noticed that, oh wow, especially in women, we're noticing bone loss. This can become an issue. I mean, if you're older and you break a bone, it can really cause a lot of problems. We started seeing bone loss in men. Okay, what strengthens bone?

What's one of the most important nutrients for bone health? Calcium. The recommendations were, everybody eat more calcium. So they were advertising, you know, have more milk, have more cheese, take these calcium supplements. This should definitely help with strengthening bone. Now, here's what actually happened. Nobody's bones got any stronger. And some of the side effects of this were calcium deposits and arteries, which are not necessarily good for you. And doctors and scientists were like, well, what the heck is going on?

Like, we're giving people's bodies more of these building blocks to build bone. Why aren't they building bone? Here's why my body is using it. There's no signal. There's no signal to build more bone. I could have all of the planks of wood and concrete and bricks and supplies that I want. I could have piles of these supplies, but if I don't have workers with directions,

it's just gonna sit there. It's not gonna do anything, right? You're not gonna build a house, unless there's directions to do so. And a workout is what tells your body, or working out properly, is what tells your body to build muscle. And this signal needs to be effective and appropriate.

Otherwise, everything else you do is a waste of time. Well, properly is the key word here. I remember when I was when I was coaching over at Orange Theory and they had the first time they had, it wasn't the, it wasn't the dunk tank. It was another company that did like the bio impedance reads or bioelectric impedance. Yeah, either the bioelectric impedance one or the one where you lay down and does like infrared

something I forget with the body scan. Yeah, it's like a body scan. Yeah, like a dexascant, that's what it was, Justin. And they did this and then they came back and then I had a lot of people in my class that came up and they wanted to talk to me after class about their body fat percentage. And they're like, Adam, I don't understand this.

It was consistent for the last two or three months. I don't remember the exact time in it. And I actually got fatter. My body fat percentage went up and I either stayed the same, some people stayed the same weight. So I'm actually lost a little bit of weight this happened. Maybe some people gained. So there was all kinds of ups and downs on the scale,

but consistently I had a bunch of people that were actually gaining body fat percentage, and it just did not make sense to them. I don't understand, like, how could I not be building muscle? I come in here every day, and I'm lifting weights in this class. I said, well, it's actually, there's a really easy answer to what's happened here, is you've probably put yourself in a clork deficit because you have this goal of losing losing body fat and you're lifting weights thinking that you want

to build muscle but you're not giving it enough calories to do that. You're doing it in a manner that is very like very much so like cardio. So I see you run on the treadmill for the first half of the class, then you go over to the weight area in this class and then you do it in a circuit style. No rest periods. You just one exercise of the next exercise. It's not much different than what you're doing right over there on that treadmill right before that.

And I would tell these people that, this is what I've been trying to tell you guys in class, after class, when I would try and like give them little bits of education around nutrition and exercise, is just because you're lifting weights, and it doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna get more muscle from that. People have this misconception of,

hey, if I just do the work, I just go lift weights, I will eventually build muscle and it doesn't necessarily work that way. If a dumbbell and a barbell are involved, therefore I'm doing the right thing. Not at all, you're programming how you do it, makes all the difference in the world. In fact, proper programming with zero weights

will build more muscle than crappy program with all the best, you know, weights that you could have access to. So let's talk a little bit about what makes an effective workout. Well, number one is it needs to be the right dose for your body. Okay. Oftentimes, especially fitness fanatics, we overdo it. We think because we can tolerate a workout that that's the effective dose.

It's not true, just because you can handle it doesn't mean that it's the right amount. Oftentimes, fitness fanatics overdo it. You gotta remember what you're doing in the gym or with your workouts is you're sending a signal, your body often has to heal and recover from that signal, but then it also has to adapt, which is separate. So healing would be like, I get a cut on my hand and it heals.

Adapting would be my body then develops a callus over that cut, so that next time, if I were to scratch my hand again, it wouldn't get cut like it did before. This is the same with resistance training. So it needs to be the appropriate dose, but let's get a like it did before. This is the same with resistance training. So it needs to be the appropriate dose, but let's get a little bit more specific. Let's start with exercises first. When it comes to exercises, they are not all created equal when it comes to stability, when it comes to corrective purposes, when it comes to building muscle. Some exercises are amazing at building muscle. Other exercises, not so much.

Which ones are the most effective at building muscle? It's the compound lift. Basic compound lift, gross motor movement type exercises. I can name most of them right now, right? Barbell squatting, dead lifting, bench pressing, rowing, overhead pressing. Like, those exercises I just named are more effective than all the other exercises that you can think of

on a one per one comparison basis when it comes to building muscle. Now, are there exceptions to this rule? Yeah, I'm sure there's exceptions. The body builder who's like, oh, I get more connection doing this. Okay, I get that. But generally speaking, those exercises by far are gonna build the most muscle. So if you're not doing those exercises

and you expect to build muscle without gaining body fat, you're literally taking out some of the most effective tools at your toolbox. Well, on speaking to that signal, you want that signal to be loud. Okay, and that's why the compound lifts, play major contribution to that because of every bit of muscle you have to recruit to be able to pull off a lot of these movements

through a multi-joint movement. To be able to wrap that into your programming is going to be essential when you're kind of constructing it towards building muscle, but also what have you been doing for a long period of time, especially for experienced lifters, you kind of get into a point where you get into a rep. And if you haven't changed up your programming and adjusted some of these acute variables, like the amount of reps you're doing, maybe shifting it more into hypertrophy, range versus

just doing our five rep type of protocol. These are things to consider in terms of adding a new stimulus for your body to adapt to. Maybe you're too adapted right now. Absolutely. That's a great point. Let's talk about general, and remember there's always individual variances, but generally speaking Studies show and our experience back this up that working body parts anywhere between two to three days a week is probably ideal for most people. So the old You know work your back and your chest and your legs and whatever once a week That old message is wrong Studies show that about two days a week or three days a

week is probably ideal for most people. Going to failure on your sets is too much intensity most of the time. So don't go to failure but rather stop one or two reps, short of that. Rep range is just and just touched on that. Most of the rep ranges build muscle. So anywhere and I'll be a little bit more specific. Rep ranges between five reps as high as 30 reps. All of them will build muscle. Which one do I pick? The one that you're not accustomed to doing.

If you're always in the five rep range, I guarantee if you move to the 20 rep range or the 15 rep range, you're going to see bigger changes. On the contrary or the flip side, if you're the person that's always doing the 15 rep range, you do some sets of five reps, and you do this for a few weeks, you're gonna see some of the best results doing that. Well, I think this is one of my favorite hacks, and I'm glad it's the first one, because it's still to this day,

like this is like my go-to move, anytime I transition out of a cut or a bulk. So regardless of what your goal is, when I make a decision that I'm gonna try and move my body fat percentage or add more lean mass, I also like to transition into another program. And it can be rep ranges, like you talked about, it can be tempos, it can be new exercises

that you weren't doing in there. Like any and or all of the above is ideal because the way I look at it is the more unique the louder, the more unique the exercise that are more unique the programming is compared to what I was currently doing, the louder the signal is and the more likely that any additional calories that I take in

will get allocated to building muscle versus storing body fat. I just think this is one of the best insurance that you can do when you're trying to achieve this goal. Totally. Now, in terms of total volume per body part, studies will show, and again, this is also backed by our experience.

Anywhere between about nine total sets per week, and maybe as high as like 18 sets total per week, will work best. Anything more or less than that in studies show that that doesn't really do as well. Now, there's a bit of a range there, right? 9 to 18 sets. This is where you got to kind of figure it out for yourself.

Where should you start, right? People that, well, should I start with 18 and back down? No, you're better off starting up with 9 and then moving up for there. I know Adam always says you want to do the least amount of work to get the most amount of results. This is very true when it comes to your total volume. I think if you're not sure,

I would start with the nine sets per week and see how everything is responding. And then you can move up from there. It's much harder to go overboard and then back down. Now I know that when it comes to workout programming, things can get very technical exercise order. What about tempo? We talked about frequency and volume and there's so many different factors

that make workout program a little bit technical. And so if you're somebody that's like, okay, I just want, I just want the specifics and I wanna follow something that I know as well, written, the best muscle building programs that we offer for bulking include maps and a ball, I would say maps aesthetic maps power lift maps strong are probably the ones I would say are probably the best for bulking split also thank you very much there's there's five programs right there that you can kind of choose from all

of them are really really good for gaining muscle they're really really good at sending the right signal which one do you Well, when you go on our site, mapsfitnessproducts.com, look at the program, look at the description. The one that's kind of most different from what you're used to, that one's probably going to give you the best results. If you train like a bodybuilder all the time, maps power left will probably be good or maps strong, and then vice versa. And don't get suckered into marketing and advertising around programming that's built for You know losing body fat like you'll get you'll like hit for example Yeah, it's widely marketed as the best program for burning for burning body fat

That has everything to do with you could built you could bulk in a on hit Yeah, this idea of that the the the programming is what's going to burn the body fat It's as that has everything to do with you nutritionally. You can take one program, run it in a calorie surplus, and it becomes a great program for building muscle and bulking. You can take that same program, run it in a caloric deficit, and it now becomes a great program for losing body fat. Right.

So let's talk about nutrition, because this is a very important component. And this is what I think, aside from workouts, it's where most people make the biggest mistake. So here's the first most important thing. You can't get around this. In order to gain new tissue, you need extra calories. Okay, so what does that mean extra calories?

It means more calories than are required to maintain your current level of fitness health and body weight. Okay, so if you're consuming 2500 calories a day and you're not gaining weight, you're not losing weight, you're just maintaining, in order to gain, you have to go above this. Now, here's where people tend to screw up, especially people like myself. I like the story I told about earlier, is we just go nuts with the bulk. So we go, I want a gain. Let's see how much I could possibly eat. Here's the truth. Even if you were to gain one pound of lean body mass a week,

which is a lot. That's a lot of muscle. Like lean muscle a week, that's a lot to gain in a week. Even if you did that, it would not require a thousand or two thousand extra calories a day. That's just way more than your body needs to gain that one pound per week. It's actually much lower than that. So the first thing I would say is start by tracking and then do a small surplus. For most of you, this means

anywhere between 200 to 500 calories above what your maintenance calories are, that's probably going to be the sweet spot for most of you in terms of the right amount of calories to bulk. Now those of you that are afraid of gaining body fat, because we just talked about, we kinda talked a lot about the person who's like, I just wanna gain weight and I don't care. Well, what about the people who are like, well, I wanna bulk, I wanna speed up my metabolism,

but I don't wanna gain body fat. You still need to go into surplus of calories to make this happen. It's not gonna happen at maintenance, it's definitely not gonna happen at deficit. So this advice is true for everybody who wants to bulk You got to go above your maintenance calories make it a small book bulk to 500 calories I have such a hard that's why I sometimes I don't like when we talk about the small surplus because it really depends on who I'm talking to if I'm I'm leaning like I'm definitely telling that to the insecure young version

of you or me, right? Like I'm definitely telling, like, you'll kid, you don't need to, you don't need to overdo it. 700 to 1000 calories every single day. And we're not, like, I'm telling that kid that he, or person that, you know, the surplus just needs to be very little.

But then I also know the other end of the spectrum where you have somebody who's so afraid to eat even the slightest bit over and you say, oh, you just need a tiny little surplus. And they're like 20 calories. Yes. And they're leaning on that or they might hit a surplus on one day

but then they have a day where it's a deficit the very next day and so it's averaging out to be maintenance still or lower. And so telling that person, I'm like, you know, don't be afraid to put it, like, listen, and I know this is a generic number, but you know, 3500 calories equals one pound of fat. So even if you overestimate by a hundred, every single day,

you still are only talking about a 700 calories surplus on that at that rate, it would take you over a month before you would even put on one pound of body fat. So don't, I mean, even though we're saying small surplus, if you're that person who's so afraid of adding little calories Do not freak out of adding an extra 50 or 100 because at the end of the day Even at that rate even if it was more than you needed a hundred extra calories a day It's still not gonna give you a pound of fat in a week or two no and it needs to be consistent by the way So you said something that I think is an important point like one day they're in a surplus and the next day they go down to maintenance. It needs to be a surplus consistently. Definitely by the end of the week because sometimes people are in a surplus

Monday through Friday, Saturday and Sunday, they go off, they skip breakfast, they sleep in, whatever, or they freak out over the fact that they were in a surplus for five days so they drop it down, Saturday. Then you do the math and it's fact that they were in a surplus for five days so they drop it down setters. Then you do the math and it's like you're barely in a surplus or you're not because it just wasn't consistent. So when I'm saying two to five hundred calories a day, that's what it's averaging out to and it needs to be relatively consistent for this to happen. Not just Monday through Friday but rather every single day or at least averages out to be that

much every single day. And the other thing is to make sure you're getting quality food in high protein. I remember another mistake that I made as a kid as I when I was bulking was I just eat everything inside. And I remember I wasn't tracking at first and then I began to track and then I realized, oh my God, I'm just eating sugar and fat

and I'm just coming, I'm hitting over on my calories, but then I'm not getting enough protein for my body to build and recover like I need it to. And so then you end up putting on body fat, but then I don't really add very much muscle. So it is important to make sure that you're on a good high protein diet when you're trying to do this.

Yeah, you know what's interesting is that they actually, there are some studies that shows very interesting effect where calories are controlled, but one group has high protein, the other group doesn't. So same calories, the higher protein tends to lean towards more muscle, even with the same calories. So protein is a very important macronutrient.

I would say aim for just to know you hit the mark. One to one body weight. Yeah, about one gram of protein per pound of body weight. That's probably overdoing it a little bit, but it's such a key way though Yeah, you know everybody like in our space loves you get real specific loves to get in the debates over if it's 0.7 or 0.8 or if you're whatever it's 1.5 per kilogram of lean body I mean it's dude Just whatever you weigh, eat a gram of protein for that, unless you are considered a severely obese, if you're severely obese,

then it does, there's a little value and you actually figure out your exact lean body mass. And using that. And using that, but for the general population, most people, unless you are, like I said, clinically obese, you're probably gonna be just fine targeting one to one and it's easy to pay attention to it. Yeah, and it's a bit challenging once you start really focusing on

upping your protein. If you're doing that from a whole foods perspective, if you haven't been used to eating that much meat in your diet, and there is the option of protein powders, but the reason I bring this up is because much like Sal when I was trying to bulk, you know, the majority of that started to come from protein powders, which were, you know, riddled with sweeteners and all these other things that they added with that in the calories. Got out of control, but also too, I wasn't really, you know, in a good ratio at that point too by bringing it, like focusing it all just on the protein powder. Yeah, the way I would use protein, you know, Adam's talked about this and I think this is

really, really smart, is you have a protein powder and you use it just in case. Right. And so what you do at the end of the day, if you're tracking, which I think is important, by the way, tracking is going to be imperative if you're trying to gain muscle without gaining body fat, trying to wing this is going gonna be really, really hard to do, and I would only reserve that for the most in touch in tune people. Oh my God, this is really hard.

Especially for this. Yeah, because it's already such a fine dance to think that you're not gonna. It's very thin line. Yeah. It has to be very controlled, and it's very, very challenging. So you should definitely be tracking if your goal is gain muscle without gaining body fat.

So at the end of the day, let's say you weigh 140 pounds and your protein now at the end of the day, you're like, okay, let me calculate it all up. Oh man, I'm at 110 grams of protein. Here's where protein powder now comes in handy. Now all I have to do is throw a scoop of protein in a glass of water, whatever, drink it, and I've hit my protein targets. I think that is a beautiful way to use protein. Protein powder. I don't think the best way is to aim for hitting the target right out the gates with it because you tend to negate the most important things that you can eat, which are whole foods.

Yeah, and then you end up to Justin's point having two or three shakes, plus two or three bars, and like 80% of now your protein is. Yeah, it came from process, which in the context of losing or gaining calories and stuff like that, that's fine, I'll get you by, but there's just the getting whole foods, there's so many other benefits from the whole foods that you're getting aside from just the protein that you're missing out on with that.

I'll tell you what, and I've done this a couple times. When my protein is from shakes versus when my protein is from steak or ground beef or chicken or fish, even if everything else is pretty much the same, I build more muscle, have more strength and feel healthier with the whole natural foods. So aim for that, you know what's funny is that I've had friends who compete in bodybuilding

and stuff like that, actually Adam, didn't you experiment with this yourself? I did this with a show where I did a couple shows where I did 100% Whole Foods, no bars or shakes whatsoever. And then I did other shows where I allowed shakes and bars as much as I wanted. If I wanted to, there was times where I had four bars and a shake in a day and allowed that. I was like, okay, I'm gonna just,

I'm just gonna stick to calories that's all in my macros, where it's coming from, I'm not gonna worry about it. And there was a clear difference, man, for me. It was a clear, and for me, it's obviously I'm being judged by the way, I had a look. So more than anything else, there was a look that I had that was not the same as on Whole Foods. And there could be many variables about that, right? it could be the fact that I'm not getting everything

You could be that labels can be a what up to 20 something percent off and so maybe the other ones were Saying they're much higher than in protein than they actually were or they're lower in calorie than when they actually were and so there was actually A discrepancy between calories where whole foods, if I'm weighing and measuring, so that should be really accurate in comparison to processed stuff. So I can't tell you exactly, but I can definitely tell you that I did it in enough times and compared that I got a better look when I was running everything from whole foods. Now, here's another tip, is to utilize kind of many periods of maintenance or cutting within your long bulking cycle.

So in other words, to give you an example, let's say you're doing a bulk and it's lasting 10 weeks, right? So it's two and a half months. So two and a half months, I'm gonna bulk, I'm eating two to 500 calories extra, I'm doing the good workout, I'm doing all the stuff, high protein. Within that period of time, I'm doing the good workout, I'm doing all the stuff, high protein. Within that period of time,

I think it's important to have a day or two in each week or a week after every three or four weeks where you eat at maintenance and throw in a couple days of lower calories. Now why is this important? Well, let's start with the psychological first. And I think this is the most important, by the way. And I know people oftentimes watching

don't care about this because they don't consider it. And they just look at the physiological, but I'm going to tell you something right now. The psychological is the most important. And if you think of anything that's ever stopped you from achieving your fitness goals, it almost always goes down to psychological aspects. So why is this important? Because it gets tedious, it gets boring, it gets frustrating when you're constantly pushing for the same thing over and over again. And how does that manifest?

My appetite goes down. I've been bulking now for five weeks at 500 calories above maintenance. Now I feel like I'm stuffing myself. I feel like I'm force feeding my, I don't wanna eat any more food. I just, I don't feel it right now. It's a job.

You throw in a couple days of maintenance or even a couple days of a slight cut, like a hundred calories below maintenance, and you watch what happens to your appetite. All of a sudden, you start to feel good. Because you give your digestive system a bit of a break. Yes, it's demanding on your digestive system

to really intake all this influx of food all the time. And there may be, you know, an assimilation factor to that as well in terms of now, you know, reintroducing that much volume, being able to assimilate the food and shuttle it to, you know, muscles as well. So I like a, I like a four, four week to, to one, one week, and I like to cut actually even more, so I even like to be a little bit more drastic. So instead of just trying to be maintenance, I'd like to be in a deficit by a couple hundred calories for a whole week and then go jump back into the bulk.

I find what it does for me too. Another thing that I always notice is whenever I would go on these bulks for a long period of time, and I'm sure anybody who's done this too is experiences like you just feel like at one point you're like, oh my God, all I do is eat and I can't, I can't gain anymore. I'm like stuck in this plateau. You take that person and all right, I used to do fast. I would do this just to show this an example fast the next day or run a calorie deficit for a week and then watch how much your appetite

kicks back up again. Then you feel like you're hungry again. And it's just easier to get back in that rhythm. Plus, in that week's time of being in a calorie deficit, if we did put a little bit of tiny bit of body fat on from your surplus, now that's gonna lean out, and then I'm gonna go right back to bulking again. So I love kind of this, and again, you could play with this, but personally, I like the four to one.

Most of our programs are broken in phases too, so that's another reason why I like it. You're running a four week phase in a bulb, but then also you go to phase two of one of our programs are broken in phases too, so that's another reason why I like it. You're running a four week phase in a bulb, but then also you go to phase two of one of our programs, and boom, I'm also doing a cut for like a week. So my body kind of responds to both the new stimulus and the calorie deficit, and then I'm back into a surplus. And here's what else I notice.

Now let's talk about the physiological. I notice for myself, and people that I've trained, it's as if the body, even if you're doing everything right, it starts to become resistant to what you're doing. So we're doing this bulk, we're doing this workout, we're doing everything right, and we're seeing muscle come up, and then I start to see muscle start to plateau a little bit, and fat gains start to accelerate,

as if the body is used to this signal and saying, eh, you know, it becomes resistant in other words. And cutting for a short period of time, in my opinion, resensitizes the body. Now, there are some studies that suggest, they're not clear, but they do suggest that we start to become desensitized to protein, for example, when it's high all the time and throwing in a little bit of a lower protein day resensitizes the body. Here's some more evidence for anybody that's ever competed in a stage presentation sport, bikini or bodybuilding or physique. The best gains you've ever experienced in your entire life are always right after the

show. It's like you were on this extreme diet, you're super shredded, after the show, you eat way more food, you go back to your workouts, and you don't gain body fat for a little while. At first, it's like you just build all this crazy muscle and you feel more anabolic than you've ever felt before. And so part of this mini cut that you're throwing in there is trying to simulate that and resensitize the body to your bulk.

And then of course to your point, Adam, if you're really sensitive to gaining body fat and you just want to gain lean body mass, it makes sense to throw in a little shortcut after you've bulked for a while. Now one more thing we should address with nutrition are gut issues. Gut issues tend to be more common in bulks than they tend to be in cuts. Anytime you have more food in your body, I think you're increasing the amount of potential inflammation, and you're just eating more of things that might irritate or bother your gut. Be very smart about this and wary about this. I know people who try to

bulk with lots of, for example, wheat products, pasta and bread. And although a lot of people have no problem digesting those things, when they start to push the calories with those things in my experience, and I'm just using one example, by the way, in my experience, a lot of them start to get kind of inflamed or bloated in their gut or they hold more water. Sometimes you see this with dairy, you know, somebody's like, I have no problem with dairy,

but then they start to push the dairy and all of a sudden they're like, oh, it's not agreeing with my gut. If you start to develop gut issues and digestive issues, you're less likely to build muscle, more likely to store body fat, and your health starts to decline. So you want to avoid this by trying to eat

the most easily digestible foods when you're bulking. It also, it'll throw you off mentally, too. Like you, let's say you're dieting really well and you are dialed in calorie wise, but you're eating something that is offensive to you or that you have an intolerance to. And then all of a sudden, you see this bloat and water retention.

And a lot of times what happens is you see that and you freak out and you go the other direction, oh shit, too many calories, I gotta back off. When really it's just some inflammation and water retention that you're doing with because you're eating something that your gut doesn't agree with. And so you're seeing a temporary response to that, not a, oh, I was eating way too many calories. And so this is what you see happen to a lot of people is they think they're following a plan really well. They eat a food that maybe they don't realize that they have issues with. And then that also gives them this blow, water retention. And

they go, oh my god, they jump on some cardio. Gaining body fat, obviously. Right, they think they're getting fatter, and so they jump on the cardio or reduce calories even more, when really their core can take and macro profile was perfect. It's just they had something that they have an intolerance to, and because they're in a surplus, it's way more offensive, right?

So then they see that. By the way, this happens with cutting, too. People will cut carbs and lose water. Oh my God, I'm losing body fat. No, actually you lost four pounds of water. So you feel the inner, but it's not really body fat. Which takes me to the next thing. It's very important that you track your lean body mass

if your goal is to bulk without gaining body fat. It's like how do you know that the weight that you're gaining, especially in the early stages, is muscle, not body fat. Now, there's two types of people that get confused by this. There's the person like me who thinks every pound on the scale is a gift from God. This is great. As long as I get heavier, I don't care.

And then there's a person so afraid of every pound that goes up on the scale that they're like, oh my gosh, I'm gaining body fat. Like, how do we reconcile this? Track your lean body mass. What's the best way to do this? Body fat testing. Now, here's the key with body fat. Like, how do we reconcile this? Track your lean body mass. What's the best way to do this? Body fat testing. Now, here's the key with body fat testing.

I don't care. Generally speaking, which way you test your body fat, there's definitely some that are more accurate than others, right? Underwater weighing is the most accurate. It's also the most inconvenient. Like, most of us don't have access to a dunk tank on a regular basis.

You have calipers, right? Calipers less accurate, but whatever. And then you have electronic impedance, which is probably the least accurate. But here's the key to all of them. Do them all exactly the same at the same time, the same hydration, the same fed state. That'll give you the most consistency

with your body fat readings. Because what you're looking for is not so much what body fat percentage I'm at, but rather the direction that it's moving. Because if I get a button, let's use calipers. I like calipers because that's what I always use with my clients. It's pretty easy.

They're inexpensive. You can buy a pair of calipers on Amazon for nothing and whatever. Here's the key with calipers. Same time, same place, same fed state and get tested by the same person. This is really important. It varies dramatically, person to person,

that's the only reason why I tend to be the one that all of us that kind of knock on the calipers the most, is because that, because it requires another person and another person consistently at all those points of pay. The time you're fed, how much water you have in you, the time of day, what day you're doing it, the same person, so I just prefer something that's more consistent, something that I have more control.

And so if that's a, you know, which I'm gonna call it, electronic one, that's fine. And again, to your point, which is exactly how I always have this conversation with people that are like, why red that this is X% accurate, and this is inconsistent, and those things are, no, it doesn't matter what it says.

We are just using this as a map for us. It's just a guy. Okay, you're at X, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Now we decide we're going to add calories or take them away or change your program. When I went back and I measured the exact same time, everything all lined up like Silesang in two weeks, what did we see? Did you go up in lean body mass from that or did you go up in body fat or did you stay the same?

And that's all we're using it for. Yeah, and by the way, don't marry the single result. What you wanna look at is trends. You wanna look at trends because it could change a little bit in a week and you could freak out about it, but really look at the trends after three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, which direction is it moving? And usually it looks like, it's not linear,

it's not like perfect lean body mass gain, but it's kind of the step ladder that starts to move in a direction. This is a really great way to kind of track your progress. What direction am I moving? Am I moving in the right direction, or am I moving in the wrong direction? And this is why I hate the scale for this reason.

Like, although I would use the scale as just another tool for me to reflect on, there's a lot of deception with the scale because it goes up and down so much. So much. Back to my point about having something that your gut doesn't agree with and all of a sudden you are inflamed a little bit or you start retaining water,

you might see the scale go up two, three pounds easily. If you hold onto some water because of something on it going on your gut, you'll easily do that and you don't want to all of a sudden make some drastic changes on scale. And the same thing is true in the opposite. Sometimes, you'll just have drink less water that day unless you are measuring and tracking every ounce of water you're consuming. Maybe today I was behind on water, I was less thirsty, or I didn't eat a lot of salty foods.

And so you have four or five glasses less of water one day than other, and then you could see that the scale goes down. So be careful of measuring with the scale and allowing that to influence you in the direction that you're going nutritional. You know what it used to do to me, this just to illustrate how it can deceive you

because I always wanted a gain. I would start to lean towards the foods that made me hold water. Totally. Because the scale would go up. Oh, you know, a burrito? Wow, that's a good mask, ain't it? Whoa, pizza.

There's some magical about pizza. Yeah, and then I'll wait myself at the end of the day instead of the beginning of the day because you can make yourself gain weight throughout the day by eating certain foods. Oh, I was so obsessed with this as a kid that I remember I would actually weigh every morning when I wake up and then my goal was to go to bed

a pound heavier than what I did. Oh my gosh, I did the same thing. And I would go stuff myself with stuff. I mean, that's how crazy. You need a pound of food, so you have to have food. That's literally what I would do. And so it's terrible. And I struggled

with adding muscle and keeping body fat off. It wasn't until way later when I didn't have all those issues when I was trying to gain the message. Here's how you should use a scale. Take your body fat test and then use the scale to subtract to figure out lean body mass. That's how I think you should use a scale. And that's it, by the way, only weigh yourself when you do your body fat test and you should body fat test no more frequently than once a week, I like once every two weeks. I think once a week might even be a little too much.

Yeah, it'll get in your head otherwise. Right, now the other one, and I know you sell a lot, I know Doug too was big on the Doug still, I think to this day actually uses this as his main marker, which is circumference measurements. Yeah, I like these. I like circumference measurements a lot, yeah. Cause especially in Doug makes the point of like,

really just focusing on your waist. You can measurements a lot. Yeah, cause especially and Doug makes the point of like, really just focusing on your ways. You can see a lot, you know, if your waist is pretty much the same while you're getting stronger and your body's changing elsewhere, you know, like especially, you know, with certain people that trap a lot of fat, you know, in their waistline. It's very visible. So that's one that you can see difference like right away

if you're doing good or you know you might need to adjust. Yeah I think this is part of all the metrics that we're talking about. You do the body fat tests, you use the scale to subtract a fine lean body mass and do the circumference measurements. I think you have a really really good idea if you do those. But yeah for men especially waist tends to be a good one because we tend to store body fat in our waist. And I remember piecing this together for myself, when I would bulk, I would wear a weight belt whenever I'd dead left or squat real heavy,

and I'd have to move down a couple notches or move up. And then there were times, this is later on, when I got really smart with bulking, I would gain five pounds on the scale, and the belt would be on the same small setting. And to me, that's like what you're looking for. Yeah, that is the goal. The goal is, can I put on, how much can I put on weight

and not let the waist move? Can you give bigger, but keep my head so- Yeah, if your waist can stay the same, while you continually put weight on, you're doing a really good job of probably building lean mass and putting on very little to no body fat. Totally. All right, so the last one or one of the last ones

is sleep. How important sleep is for building muscle and burning body fat. Now, consider this, right? If you are not sleeping optimally, you're not getting a time, you know, in bed or just not sleeping well at night, this is a stress signal to the body.

And remember, storing body fat is an insurance that your body has during times of stress and Building muscle is expensive and it increases your liability for survival So trying to build muscle when your body is stressed from lack of sleep Boy, that's that's a running uphill with a with a backpack that's heavy on your back like good luck That's really really tough now. I know a lot of people, they get away with having less sleep because of caffeine and pre-workout drinks, and they're like, oh, I still gained a little bit of muscle.

But you don't know how much muscle you could have gained. This is the big thing, especially if you've got good genetics and everything else is perfect, and your sleep isn't terrible terrible, but it's not optimized, and you're still making progress. You might dismiss sleep as something that's not important. Try getting, make it a focus to get good sleep,

just for one week, keep everything else the same, and I promise you'll blow yourself away by how big of an impact it has on. We just have to keep drilling this point of the importance of recovery, just over and over again, because the marketing out there is so much in opposition to this.

It's all about how much intensity and how crazy your workouts are, that It's all about like how much intensity and how crazy your workouts are that, and it's all about the insult, and it's not about the actual process of your body rebuilding itself and recovering fully, so that way, now you adapt in that direction versus just healing from the insult that you presented it. Which is where the real muscle being built is.

I mean, you don't have to send much of a signal in the gym if you do a really good job of feeding the body what it needs and giving it adequate recovery. I mean, if you do that, it's going to build muscle. The other thing was sleep too. And this is like, we talk a lot about behavior stuff. When you're trying to stick to a diet and be consistent, one of the things, and this actually took me a long time

to piece this together, where I would notice that on days where I had really poor sleep, the next day, my cravings would always be crazy. And I never connected that. I just thought like, oh, some days I have cravings, some days I don't. It took me a long time to connect the dots that how much it had to do with sleep.

Totally. I didn't notice that until way later in my career, when I cared more about sleep and I started paying attention to that, started to build routines around it, then I started to notice these things. And boy, like clockwork, if I have had a shitty night of sleep,

you can guarantee the next day around noon time or so, all of a sudden I'm craving this food that I haven't had or even wanted in maybe even years, and it's so weird how that happens when you don't get good sleep tonight. There's studies that support this 100% Adam. You're looking for dopamine, you're looking for serotonin,

so hyper-palatable foods. This is why you want junk food. When you stay up in the light, relate with your boys and you wanna go out and eat. It's never healthy, right? Your willpower goes down when you're tired. By the way, sleep deprivation is one of the number one ways that countries would break prisoners of war.

Like you want somebody to confess positions of their military or bases. One of the most effective ways to deprive them of sleep, it literally destroys your willpower and discipline. So if you're like eating healthy and being consistent with your workouts and you're like eating healthy and being consistent with your workouts and you're chronically sleep deprived, you're screwed. You've got that muscle, that willpower muscle

is totally destroyed. Also, one of the easiest, if somebody told me, if somebody came up to me and made a weird bet and said, hey, Sal, I would like for you to negatively influence someone's hormones in two days. And I'll give you money if you make it like really dramatic fuck with their sleep. That's it I would be the easiest way to do it. It's buy some air horns It's one of the it's one of the fastest ways that guys can get their testosterone levels to crash It's one of the easiest ways to get men and women's cortisol levels to spike

It's very easy to get a woman's estrogen and progesterone to get thrown off just by taking away or influencing their sleep in negative ways. That's how big of a difference it makes. So if you're trying to bulk and gain muscle like we said in the beginning, you're trying to tell your body, increase your liability and reduce your insurance, you need to give your body adequate rest because it can't be under lack of sleep stress and do that. It's just not gonna work. All right, the last one, you probably are gonna think has nothing to do with bulking whatsoever, which is cardio.

So let's talk a little bit about cardio. I know Adam, this was one that you really wanted to touch upon. Yeah, I know there's, I definitely know there's influencers and people in our space that are gonna disagree with this, but this is my opinion and I'll take on whatever debate you want to have with this. But when I'm coaching and I'm teaching somebody to do this, right, figure out their calorie intake and their programming to get that what

Justin called the Goldilocks, right, this build muscle, don't put on body fat, it's like the most perfect place to be. I actually don't want to add any more variables that I need to. And cardio is a variable that I do not need in order to build muscle or lose body fat. It is just a tool and a tool that I can use in my disposal whenever I want to speed that process up. And I don't want to abuse that. And I most certainly don't want to build what will look like, what, cause this is a consistent place I'd like to live.

You know, constantly kind of building a little bit of muscle, not putting body fat on. The majority of my life, I'd like to be kind of in this place. So if this is an area where I'd like to be, a majority of my life, as far as nutritionally and training, I want to take out as many variables as I can, or that I don't need, and cardio is one of those, I don't need that, and so I don't want to put it in there,

and then I have to adjust also my training and also my calories around this cardio regimen that I've built. So I'd rather build it around just nutrition and just training, and then I can use cardio as a tool to manipulate whatever I'm seeing when I'm tracking my body fat percentage week over. You know, I've never heard you present it that way.

That's probably one of the most compelling cases I've ever heard for not adding cardio during a bulk. So I have to completely agree with you. Now the other case that we often make is that cardio sends this competing signal endurance type training tends to tell the body to pair muscle down and become more efficient with calories, which is contrary to the goal that we have. Now, just for the sake of this podcast, and just to present an alternative side to this,

there may be some benefit to doing cardio for people where cardiovascular fitness, or their lack of cardiovascular fitness is preventing them from working out properly. This is where I see maybe some benefit, right? So there may be some of you that just affecting their workout. Yeah, like your so deconditioned, cardiovascularly that, you're trying to do 10 reps

on a exercise and it's just, you just don't have the gas, you just don't have the stamina. In which case, I think a little bit of cardio can help with that. So that would be a case. Here's the other side of this. I think it's important just to be active daily anyway,

just for health. And being healthier is always gonna help you build more muscle. But this doesn't look like structured cardio, rather this is more like just moving throughout the day. Yeah, that was more of the angle I was gonna present. And it looks a little bit more like Neatswood, like a non-exercise specific, but that's just really moving consistently throughout the day and making that a priority,

but that's just making sure all the systems are working and you're basically just doing all the things you can to keep a nice, thriving, healthy body so that environment is good for you to build muscle. I mean, I'll play Devils Advocate with my own point, right? The way, where I would maybe have different advice is if I do have a client that when I assess and they're extremely sedentary.

And that, so they're gonna fall in that category at your time. If you're somebody who gets less than 2000 steps a day because you work from home and it's at your computer all day long and maybe you walk the dog at most or that's about it. And then you get under 2000 steps a day. And all we're doing is, you know,

maps and a ball of three days a week. Like, oh yeah, I'm gonna assign some, you know, low intensity cardio for this person. Because yeah, for health purposes. Forget your goal of building muscle-loosing body fat has nothing to do with that. It purely has, I think it's in your best interest to be doing somewhat of cardio for overall health, which is only going to help you long-term anyway. So that's the only other place where

I feel like I would recommend this. And even if even then, I'd still even though I was playing devil's advocate, I still would probably build the routine without it. And then I would introduce it after the fact because to me, that's the most important part of this argument is that, you know, I'm thinking forever and I want to know what's working. Yeah, what's working without that. And then if I, now I see, oh, wow, I put on a little bit of body fat in the last three weeks from my bulk, I can either one reduce the calories or, hey, now maybe I'll introduce a half hour of, you know, steady state cardio in there.

And that is how I'm going to create the deficit. And so you can use it that way. And I would base that base off of how healthy of a calories. And my client, my client says, hey, Adam, I already feel like I'm cutting a lot. It's hard for me to only eat this. Well, I'm probably not going to restrict them even further. I might introduce more movement instead. Yeah, very well said.

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So Justin is at MindPump Justin. You can find me at MindPump Sal it's MindPumpFree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin is at MindPump Justin. You can find me at MindPump Salon, Adam at MindPump Atom. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs.

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