When we talk about mass gaining or being in a mass phase, the first picture that comes to mind, the one that best sums up mass gaining, is of Ronnie Coleman in the off-season at 153 kg.
From the translator: figuratively speaking, strength training creates a kind of hole or void in the muscles, which then has to be filled with food during the recovery period after the workout. And here comes the first BUT: who says exactly how much of this material (food) is needed to fill the void? What’s more, we know that just filling the hole isn’t enough. To gain mass, you have to eat slightly more than you’ve burned.
If we dig a hole in the ground and then fill it back in, we find that the same pile of soil we dug out isn’t enough to fill it. At first there’s a slight mound, but after a while a dip has formed over the hole.
And we know that if we put extra soil over the hole, the best case is that the ground ends up level.
The same point applies to muscle growth. Training breaks down muscle and creates a hole of sorts, and that void has to be filled with nutrients, with a slight surplus. A smart lifter is the one who knows and can say how big that nutrient surplus should be so that we aren’t left in a deficit after intense training. Otherwise, a large part of what was done in the gym goes unrealized.
That’s why the translator is of the opinion that it’s better to eat a bit too much, even at the price of a slight “padding”. That way it’s at least guaranteed that we’ve done everything to maximize muscle mass growth. What’s more, if you’re a skinny ectomorph type and/or your cardio is constantly high, there’s definitely no need to panic about getting too fat.
In my view it’s far worse when you have a good training plan and everything is “done right” in the gym, but you don’t grow simply because you’re afraid of getting fat and hold back on nutrients.
Of course, a lot also depends on your goal: if you don’t want muscle mass, then naturally there’s no need to eat more.
The second picture that immediately comes to mind with mass gaining is Lee Priest. Let’s look at Priest in these two pictures, the off-season and the pre-contest period.
From the translator: Of course, these are extreme examples, and even the translator dares to doubt that the difference is really that drastic, but in this context the article uses precisely these two pictures and physiques as examples.
And besides, they illustrate the mass-gaining period and concept well.
On the other hand, considering that in the pro world all the stuff is allowed (effective fat burners), I wouldn’t be very surprised if even men of such caliber occasionally experience such swings in condition.
It’s important to remember and understand here that during a mass phase you simply won’t look “good”. In this period you neither have nor SHOULD have a defined sixpack and separated muscles. It’s the period when you gain mass and build NEW MUSCLE, and you do it together with (inevitable) fat. Of course, fat gain should stay moderate, and it’s perfectly logical that a proper, thorough mass phase is always followed by a so-called cutting phase, in which the excess fat is burned off.
Many bodybuilders actually enjoy the mass-gaining period, because then you get to eat more than usual. The flow and release of anabolic hormones that this heavy calorie intake produces also gives many people a sense of inner well-being and builds confidence. Of course, who among us wouldn’t like to be big and massive.
Besides, the source of this satisfaction is certainly not only an ever-growing physique, but also the weights lifted in the gym, which keep going up too.
On the other hand, there are types who don’t enjoy such big eating at all; they downright hate it. They have no particular appetite, and they try to stay in a shape close to contest shape all the time.
From the translator: This approach can’t be considered right either, for exactly the reasons mentioned above. You simply don’t grow that way. Who’s to say where the line is at which the body’s needs are all neatly covered and we haven’t been left in deficit of any nutrient? I’d love to see the man who claims he can eat exactly as much as the body needs!
And obviously these “food phobics” train hard, which actually makes the situation even worse, since the work done in the gym isn’t crowned by a matching calorie intake, and there can be no talk of any mass gaining.
WARNING
Before we tackle the topic, a few aspects need clarifying. What follows is not a health or fitness article. Nor are the article and the recommendations in it about maintaining or achieving a ripped, dry physique. It also won’t talk about fat burning, the miraculous properties of whey, or how to keep your cholesterol level under control.
Here you’ll get, as laconically and unambiguously as possible, tips on how to simply get BIG. Of course, many people criticize this way of getting big, but the following tips guarantee a 100% increase in your muscle mass. You can be sure of that, and for the same reason I won’t be apologizing to the big nutrition and health gurus.
From the translator: Of course, I’m not trying to claim that a potbellied, high-body-fat, chubby endomorph should grab onto this kind of mass gaining, but slender ectomorphs who can’t put on mass by any formula should definitely take the following seriously. Skinny, bony types who are desperately trying to gain mass shouldn’t worry about their sixpack. Eat, eat and eat again as much as you can (of course, nutrient balance is important). The thin layer of fat you’ll get from eating like this is worth the muscle mass that comes along with it. If you’re already a “dry-bodied” type with a fast metabolism, getting that sixpack “back” later is no problem!!!
Of course, these principles don’t apply to absolutely everyone. The tips are aimed primarily at people who have great difficulty adding mass, who have no appetite, and so on. Nor is it meant that you should spend your whole life stuffing yourself like this. These tips, too, should be used in phases. For example, an eight-week period when we, so to speak, break the rules and simply eat in order to build muscle mass.
It goes without saying that if your body fat percentage has risen too fast and too far, you need to turn to aerobic activity as well. Once again: such a gorging period must not become a lifestyle, nor an excuse of “I’m gaining mass”. Let’s use these crazy eating periods as phases only!
1. Focus primarily on nutrition, secondarily on training
I don’t know why, but most people focus on training rather than nutrition during a mass phase. This is actually one of the most common and biggest mistakes people make.
Let’s be honest: most of the lanky, skinny guys are still beginners, too. And when you’re a beginner, it doesn’t take much for some progress to show up and for muscle mass gains to become visible. When you’re only just starting out with training, even the “most terrible and contradictory program stimulates progress. It doesn’t matter what we do in the gym; after a while we can already see progress.
Another reason training isn’t all that primary when gaining mass is that young, eager, skinny guys often “kill” themselves in the gym; you could even say they “tear themselves to shreds”. As mentioned earlier, their training program may not be the most ideal, but in their great craving and desire to get big they manage to survive even that. The mistake is that their knowledge of nutrition is close to 0, and their intense workouts aren’t fueled with enough energy and enough building materials for the muscles.
I remember my early “bench press and biceps curl” workouts. I trained the same muscles every three days on the same routine. For the bench press alone I did 8 sets, plus drop sets on top of that, plus other exercises. It was the same story with biceps. I remember being in such deep overtraining that I hated those workouts and always got through them with great disgust. The obsession with getting big somehow helped me survive all of it.
Worst of all, the 1500 to 2000 kcal I may have got per day did nothing to support my crazy efforts. After training all summer with such frequency, intensity and volume, I hadn’t gained a single KILO of weight by autumn. AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S WORST? WORST OF ALL, I CONCLUDED THAT THE WEIGHT HADN’T COME BECAUSE MY INTENSITY AND TRAINING FREQUENCY WERE STILL INADEQUATE. MADNESS, ISN’T IT???
And that brings us to a VITALLY IMPORTANT ASPECT: you have to focus on NUTRITION. With hypertrophy and mass gaining in general in mind, you must pay ENORMOUS ATTENTION to nutrition. Any “idiot” can “scrub away” in the gym for hours, doing endless sets, but supporting all that madness on the NUTRITION side as well takes KNOWLEDGE, TIME AND DEDICATION EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Young mass-hungry bodybuilders, make yourselves aware of this reality and you will grow!!!
2. Forget what you’ve read and heard about classic bodybuilding diets
A traditional diet consists of chicken breast, egg whites, tuna, oat flakes and so on. These foods are excellent from a health standpoint and are also necessary during a diet, but when gaining mass, these “clean foods alone are not enough.
Translator’s note: I would understand this statement to mean that when gaining mass you can freely choose a regular drumstick or thigh instead of chicken breast, the fish doesn’t have to be pure tuna (any fish is beneficial in general), and you can allow more egg yolks, quark, cottage cheese, milk and so on. They don’t have to be fat-free.
Keep in mind that we call it mass gaining (bulking) for a reason, and during this period you are not expected to live mostly on brown rice alone. Calories need to go up in order to stimulate an anabolic environment as much as possible and maximize muscle growth. Where you get your calories from isn’t all that primary; the source can even be cheeseburgers. But if they meet your energy needs, then go right ahead.
Translator’s note: Looking at the cheeseburger aspect, it really is so: if you have the money to buy them and they taste good, then by all means have them. But what you definitely must keep in mind is that your calorie intake shouldn’t become too one-sided. That means you can shovel in cheeseburgers, but you must make sure that all nutrients are represented in your menu in the DESIRED PROPORTIONS. What do desired proportions mean? It means that the ratio of nutrients in one bodybuilder’s menu versus another’s varies greatly, especially the ratio of carbohydrates to protein. Some bodybuilders believe their protein requirement is already covered with a 15 to 20% share of protein, while others, the so-called protein pushers, think the share of protein should be as high as 35 to 40% of total calories. You have to take this aspect into account yourself.
And one more important thing I’d like to say about this section: in my opinion, this article and its approach to mass gaining are good, especially when you’re dealing with young, skinny, bony beginners. But if you are seriously prone to endomorphy, where even the slightest overindulgence in food already produces a belly and “mega love handles”, then of course this talk isn’t for you. Maybe I’m being cruel and unfair, but I’ll say it anyway: if that’s the case, if you quickly gain weight in the form of fat, if you’re an endomorph with a slow metabolism, then BODYBUILDING IS NOT FOR YOU. I’LL SAY IT AGAIN: BODYBUILDING IS NOT FOR YOU! I’m not saying this in any belittling or condescending way, but in this situation you would be tormenting yourself for life. It isn’t worth that torment. You would have to do more aerobic exercise than usual ALL THE TIME and analyze EVERY MOUTHFUL ALL THE TIME. Find yourself some other alternative: powerlifting, weightlifting, strongman or the like. We have an example from Estonia right in front of us: Tarmo Mitt. He started out as a bodybuilder too, but soon realized that the sport wasn’t right for his metabolism and switched specialties!!!
Of course, the fat content of your menu shouldn’t go sky-high. But you do need fats, especially when you’re gaining mass. What’s more, the amount of fat in your diet correlates positively with your body’s testosterone level and production. This is especially true of saturated fats. And one more thing: foods containing saturated fats usually taste better too, which is a small bonus for those who have no appetite!
3. Consume calories in liquid form
This is quite common when gaining mass, but one step beyond that familiar tip is to try to have half of your meals in liquid form. Pre- and post-workout shakes don’t count, because those simply replace what the workout takes away from us. And after a workout your metabolism is running at double speed anyway, so a post-workout shake gets swallowed up whole.
Liquid meals are usually richer in nutrients and calories, and because they’re liquid, they are also absorbed many times faster.
Translator’s note: Take ordinary quark and try to strain it through a sieve, and see how fast it comes through – probably not very fast. But dissolve the same amount of quark in 500 ml of water and pour it through a sieve, and it goes through much faster! Food absorption works in essentially the same way: the finer and more liquid the food, the faster the stomach and intestines digest it and the faster the nutrients from it begin to be absorbed.
Faster absorption of food means the nutrients reach the muscles faster, which in turn means you can have your next meal sooner and take in more calories.
Besides, have two liquid meals in a row and you’ll see how you start craving the third one in solid form.
Translator’s note: I can’t quite agree with this. Liquid meals are good, but they should still be kept for before and after workouts. You can also use them as snacks between meals or alongside main meals, but they shouldn’t serve as a full meal. Only in an emergency. What good is a fast-absorbing liquid meal if we drink it down and the next meal is perhaps only 2–2.5 hours away???
4) Try to keep your vegetable and fruit intake to a minimum
Now that really is a tip. Do you feel like you’re about to have a heart attack reading this?
The truth is that vegetables and most fruits are diet foods: they quickly make you feel full and provide very few, or relatively few, calories. So you shouldn’t be eating them, or if you do, only minimally, because believe it or not, you’d only be doing yourself harm. Why fool yourself? We’re gaining mass, so when the cravings come, they need to be satisfied. We shouldn’t be stuffing ourselves with fiber-rich, low-calorie food that doesn’t actually meet our needs and only seemingly creates a feeling of fullness.
I can already hear you reading this with a gasp. Once again, this is mass gaining. You won’t live this way (10 meals a day) for the rest of your life, and it will probably last only a couple of months.
You certainly shouldn’t follow this tip after the mass-gaining phase. Quite the opposite: based on the arguments above, vegetables and fruits are very beneficial. On top of that, they provide vitamins and minerals.
5. The 80-gram casein protocol
Most bodybuilders are surely startled to hear about 80 grams of protein at once, but after point 4 this shouldn’t be a problem. The usual question here is whether such an amount is really absorbed or whether it just turns to fat. Unfortunately, the myth that only 30 g of protein can be absorbed every 3–4 hours refuses to fade away.
Those who are “bulking” shouldn’t worry so much about absorption or digestion. The limiting factor in how much protein we can turn into muscle is dictated by oxidation: it shows how much protein is burned off without being used for anything in particular. So the problem isn’t so much how much protein is absorbed as how much goes to waste through oxidation processes.
Amino acid oxidation depends purely on their concentration in the blood. That means that the more amino acids there are in our blood under normal conditions, the more of them are burned. The faster a large amount of amino acids enters our bloodstream at once, the more likely it is that a large share of them will simply be oxidized and wasted. That’s also why we never take, for example, 50–60 grams of pure amino acids at once.
Casein: avoiding oxidation
It’s an excellent slow-absorbing protein to take before going to bed, because it ensures a continuous and steady release of amino acids into the blood throughout the night. There is no rapid spike in blood amino acid concentration, and oxidation processes can’t simply waste the amino acids. This matters because, contrary to popular belief, sleep is an extremely catabolic period for a bodybuilder who trains INTENSELY. Why? Because we are simply starving. Our body starts breaking down muscle to feed the body’s needs.
Under normal conditions, 40 g of casein before bed would indeed be fine, in order to minimize catabolism. But our goal isn’t just to stay in balance; the goal is to maintain an anabolic environment for as long as possible.
That’s why 80 g of casein before bed is a good addition during our mass-gaining period. Casein breaks down slowly and “drips” in quietly all night, maintaining an anabolic environment throughout the night.
Translator’s note: I’m a big believer in eating at night myself. Not that it’s a 100% hard-and-fast principle, but I really do feel the need for it. I can’t sleep, I get up on my own because my stomach goes empty, especially when I’ve had an intense and good workout that day. Many experts claim it’s pointless. Certainly not. Such an approach would be pointless only if you really do get up in the middle of the night against your will and have to “force” that shake or piece of food down. But if the cravings are such that you can’t sleep, then the body must have a demand. And for a seriously training bodybuilder, that need for a night-time meal undoubtedly arises. That’s also why I’ve increasingly come to think lately that this night or evening meal doesn’t have to be 100% protein at all. Because when the need arises, it’s surely not only for protein, and I’m not talking about huge amounts of carbohydrates either. For example, a good evening or night-time meal is quark; I think it’s no sin if it’s the sweet version. The same goes for buttermilk and yogurt, with buttermilk of course being better, since it gives a considerably more moderate (smaller) amount of carbohydrates than yogurt. Per 100 g, buttermilk gives approx. 4–5 g of protein and about the same amount of carbohydrates, whereas yogurt usually gives 3–4 g of protein and 12–15 g of carbohydrates. So 0.5–1 carton of buttermilk during the night is a very welcome thing in the mass-gaining period. Marek Kalmus uses the latter option himself, and it was actually through him that I discovered the good qualities of buttermilk for night-time consumption!
As for the 80 g of casein, I dare say that amount perhaps doesn’t need to be quite so big, but 40-50 g might well be right!!!
6) It isn’t over until it’s really over
Even once you’ve finished your 8-week “eating” phase, you must not stop cold overnight. I know that after such a “binge” you want to start burning fat right away, so you can show “the world” the muscle you’ve gained, but immediate fat burning would be the worst option.
It’s the same effect as with people who use steroids: they don’t just come off a cycle automatically either, but taper off smoothly, followed by post-cycle recovery therapy. Between the mass phase and the fat-burning phase there should likewise be a transition period in which you let your body get used to the new muscle mass it has gained, so to speak, before you start tormenting it with a calorie deficit.
Think about it for a moment. Our bodies are “designed” to resist any kind of change. Remember – status quo, homeostasis. Our body and organism change only when it is truly necessary, and such situations don’t come up very often. Suppose you are a beginner and in these couple of months have managed to add, at best, 2 – 3 kg of quality muscle; for your body that is a serious INSULT. From “its” point of view it isn’t needed at all, and it would be only too glad to shed this actually pointless, “expensive” and energetically costly muscle mass. To avoid a return to the starting point, you need to keep your calorie intake at maintenance level for a while, so the body can get used to the new muscle mass.
As said, the best way to do this is to spend some time on a maintenance diet, consuming at least as much as you burn. And now you can freely eat fruit and vegetables. The weights should still be kept up, but be careful about overtraining. Since big meals no longer provide an anabolic environment, you are much more susceptible to overtraining.
If you feel you need a rest, take it, and don’t worry too much about your weight loss. If you’ve done it naturally, coming off a mass cycle isn’t quite like coming off a steroid cycle!!!
And don’t forget that as new muscle mass is added, your maintenance calorie intake is higher than before too!!!
Translator’s note: In closing, I’d like to say, especially to beginners: if you want muscle mass and want to compete, don’t start chasing a six-pack right at the beginning. Gain mass, and keep at it for many solid years. And as this whole article shows, you can do that only by eating like crazy. And so it is: you have to eat, I’ll just remind you once more to keep the ratio of nutrients in place. Every meal should contain 2/3 carbohydrates and 1/3 protein. It’s not enough to eat potatoes and gravy and think you’re supplying yourself well with nutrients. Potatoes and gravy, you could say the Estonian national dish, are otherwise a good option, but if that’s all you eat, it gives you only a big “slam” of carbohydrates. Potatoes are pure carbohydrate, and a flour-based sauce is pure carbohydrates. Even if there are a few bits of sausage or minced meat in it, that is too little to meet your protein needs. Besides, the bits of sausage these days are also mostly carbohydrates and fat. So if you’re a fan of potatoes and gravy, always have some piece of meat, cottage cheese or egg whites alongside.
Coming back once more to competing and mass gaining: yes, gain mass boldly. All the more so because if you’re a beginner, you don’t have much knowledge of dieting and getting in shape, and in all likelihood, when you start getting in shape for the first few times, you’ll lose muscle anyway. Yes, later, once you’ve reached a certain level and have the knowledge, you can try to balance on that line and TRY to grow quality muscle. But in quite a lot of cases this doesn’t work out even for experienced old hands, and quite a few of them simply don’t use it, because the line where the calories you eat go into muscle and where they start being stored as fat is EXTREMELY HARD to recognize, if not downright impossible. That’s why it’s always safest to overeat a little. Besides, in the bodybuilding world this approach is very common: you do an 8-10 week mass-gaining phase, followed as a rule by an equally long diet period (cutting), in which the poor-quality mass is shed.
And in general, before attempting anything, set realistic plans and assess both yourself and the situation adequately. Do you have the possibility to eat properly at all, does it make sense with your body type and metabolism type to even start thinking about going on stage, do you have the will and determination at all? If one of these aspects already raises doubts, then I do recommend that you simply train, lift weights, eat as much as you can, and simply enjoy being big and being able to lift a lot.
Translated from the article “Big Bulking Tips, David Barr.
Author: Translated by Janar Rückenberg
Come and train! ArtGym
