Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Should You Cut or Bulk? A Simple Science-Based Answer

Episode Date: October 24, 2017

You probably know what kind of physique you want, but you’re not quite sure how to best get there.My guess is you want to be lean, strong, and muscular, and you’re struggling to understand the next immediate steps.Should you “bulk” and focus on gaining muscle as quickly as possible, or should you “cut” and strip some fat and then bulk?Well, both bulking and cutting have pros and cons.Bulking adds both lean mass (yay) and body fat (boo), and cutting unveils your abs (hooray) but stunts muscle growth (hiss).Furthermore, many people discover that they look a lot smaller after a successful cut than they anticipated. Maybe, then, they should just bulk for as long it takes to get the size they want and then go on a long cut to show it off? Well, this is the dilemma that makes for a fitness purgatory of sorts where you don’t really commit to one strategy or another and thus stagnate in terms of progress.In this episode, you’re going to learn how to avoid this pitfall entirely, and it starts with answering the question on your mind:Should you cut or bulk?As you’ll find out, the answer depends mostly on your current body fat percentage.The long story short is if your body fat percentage is too high, your number-one priority should be getting lean, not gaining muscle, and if it’s relatively low, then you should focus on gaining muscle, not getting even leaner.And by the end of this episode, you’ll understand why. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, this is Mike and this episode is the first in a new series that I'm going to do where I answer one common question quickly and simply because while long form content is great, sometimes it's also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you exactly what to do and exactly how to do it in five minutes or less. And that's what I'm going to be doing with these short episodes. And in this case, I answer the question, should I cut or bulk? And I answer it for both men and women. Here it is. Hey everybody, this is Mike from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics. And every day, or at least every other day, people ask me whether they should cut,

bulk, or do something else altogether. You know, maybe try to recomp, lose fat and gain muscle at the same time and so forth. And I want to give you a short and simple answer here. If you want a more in-depth answer, and if you want to learn exactly how to do these things properly, then head over to muscleforlife.com and search for cut bulk, and you will find an article that I wrote on it. But the long story short is if you're a guy and you're at 15% body fat or above, or if you're a girl at 25% or above, then you should cut. Now, the next question of course is cut for how long? Now there isn't a set answer to this. I can't say, Oh, you should cut four, six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks or whatever, because again, it depends on your body composition. So guys, you want to cut down to

about the 10% body fat range before you start bulking, before you start increasing your calories and going into a gaining phase. And girls, you want to go down to about 20% body fat before focusing on gaining muscle as quickly as possible. Now, there are several reasons why I recommend that you do things this way. Why? If you're a guy, you're bulking up to, let's say, 15 to 17%, cutting it off there and then cutting back down to about 10%. And if you're a girl, it's 25, 27 at the top range of your bulks and then cutting back down to 20. And what it comes down to is one,

this way you are going to be generally happier with how you look because let's face it, none of us like to look fat. And most guys, once you get over 15%, your abs kind of fully disappear and you just start feeling fat. Same thing for girls. It can be a little bit demotivating to put in as much time and effort into your meal planning and your workouts as you are to just not like what you see in the mirror. So by never letting yourself get too fat, it can just encourage you to keep going. Another reason is if you do things this way, you are going to lose more fat and less muscle when you cut for a couple of reasons. The main one being that you won't have to cut for nearly as long as other people that get very fat have to cut. So as a guy, if you were to bulk your way

up to let's say 25% body fat, and then you have to cut back down to like 10% just to have good abs and be able to go into a bulk properly, that's going to take quite a while, which increases your chances of just failing altogether. But also, even if you stick to it, increases your chances of losing muscle along the way. And the same thing goes for girls. If you allow yourself to get too fat on your bulks, your cuts are going to be long and you might even feel the need to starve yourself or do a ton of cardio. And that's only going to make things worse in terms of muscle loss. So again, by never letting yourself get too fat, your cuts really shouldn't have to be longer than eight, 10, maybe 12 weeks on the long end, but probably closer to 8 weeks. The last benefit of cutting and bulking this way is a big one, and it is that you will gain more muscle and less fat when you're bulking. The reasons for this physiologically speaking are

kind of complex, but what it boils down to is that your body's muscle building machinery just works better when you're lean lean primarily because you have higher insulin sensitivity levels, which also helps you resist fat gain. When you're bulking, the lower your insulin sensitivity levels are, the more fat you are going to gain when you are in a caloric surplus and vice versa. And also your testosterone levels are naturally higher and your estrogen levels are naturally lower. When you were at a lower body fat percentage. The fatter you get, the more it depresses testosterone levels and the more it raises estrogen levels, which of course is not conducive to gaining maximum muscle and minimum fat.

So to summarize, if you're a guy at 15% body fat or above, or if you're a girl at 25% or above, then you want to cut. If you're the guy, you want to cut down to about 10%. If you're the girl, you want to cut down to about 20% before you go into a caloric surplus and try to maximize muscle growth. It'll just work out better that way. Trust me. And then when you do that, if you're the guy and you get up to 15 to 17% body fat, it's time to end the bulk, go back into a cut, get back down to 10%, rinse and repeat until you have the size that you want. If you're a girl, again, you're bulking your way back up to 25, 6, 7%, stopping, coming

back down to 20, rinsing and repeating until you have the total amount of muscle that you want. And then you can focus on just maintaining. You can stay lean year round. You can maybe have some fun with your workouts, try different things, whatever. All right. Well, that's it for this video. I hope you liked it. And if you did, please give it a like and drop a comment down below. And if you want to be notified when new cool things go live on my channel, then subscribe and I will see you soon. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet,

then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for

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