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For accountability’s sake and to show progression in my fitness, I’ve decided to document my goals, nutrition, lifts, and bulking/cutting/maintenance cycles on the website. This will be the first article in this series and it’s my bulking phase for the end of 2019! In this blog post, I’ll go over my timeline, nutrition numbers, and performance numbers. Let’s get started!
BACKGROUND
I’ve spoken a little bit about what 2019 was all about for me, fitness wise, in my 2019 Year in Review article which you can find here. Basically, I was coming from a long layoff and needed to build myself back up, get used to lifting heavy again, and regain my previous strength.
Having made good progress with that, I decided that the winter season would be a good time to focus on hypertrophy a.k.a. muscle building. The winter is holiday season, which means tons of good food, so I would put all those calories to good use and let them fuel my workouts, while enjoying myself (within reason). This made this phase of the year pretty fun, as I was getting stronger and enjoying all the extra food at the same time. It was also a nice mental break after some caloric restriction over the summer months.
On the training side, I decided I didn’t really want to pay for programming. I have before and really enjoyed and benefitted from it. But this time, I wanted to write my own programming so I could learn more about it and see if I could program for myself effectively. However, despite having weight trained pretty consistently over the past 5 years or so, I don’t have any certification or training as a personal trainer.
Therefore, I wanted some good guidelines to follow, from a well-respected group of individuals. I ended up using principles from the Juggernaut series of hypertrophy videos and articles and they. worked. PERFECTLY! HIGHLY recommended and you can find them on Youtube here. Using the info from this series, it was actually not that difficult to program. I was by no means perfect and yet made a ton of progress!
TIMELINE
I began the bulk on October 1st, 2019 and planned to end it on January 31st, 2020. That would give me four solid months to build as much muscle as possible without (hopefully) gaining too much fat. I’d then do a maintenance phase in February before transitioning to a cutting phase beginning in March.
STARTING POINT
My weight at the beginning of the cut on October 1st was 154 lbs. I really don’t know about body fat %, but I would guess, based on bod pod results from a few years back, that mine was around 12%. Throughout the previous month I was mostly trying to maintain my weight, but I wasn’t super strict with my calories. Depending on the day I’d consume somewhere between 1,800 and 2,200 calories with the odd day here and there where I’d go over quite a bit. I guess I was really feelin’ this upcoming bulk 😋.
NUTRITION
I’ve basically followed IIFYM (or flexible dieting or macro dieting, etc.), which stands for If It Fits Your Macros, for the past few years. If you’re unfamiliar with this style of nutrition, it basically says that you’ll keep track of your total daily calories and make sure you get a certain amount of macronutrients, i.e. fats, carbs, and protein. However you make that work is pretty much fine, as there are no foods that are off limits. This only takes into account how these numbers affect body composition and does not really take into account other needed vitamins and minerals. I just try to eat as many fruits and vegetable as I can.
When looking at these numbers each day, I’d prioritize things in this order-
Overall calories- You need a surplus to grow
Protein- You need to get enough to support muscle growth. I aimed for ~1 gram per lb of body weight
Carbs- After getting enough protein, I tried to get as many remaining calories from carbs as possible. When I did manage to get plenty, I felt I recovered better and had better energy throughout the day and for workouts
Fats- Your body needs these, especially to support hormonal function, but I tend to get a lot without trying, lol. If I got around ~70 grams or less I called it good
Again, I feel that I stuck to the goals/numbers/priorities MOST of the time. I was by no means perfect and did overindulge occasionally.
TOOLS
MyFitnessPal– I used the MyFitnessPal app on my phone to track everything. I kind of hate MyFitnessPal though if I’m being honest. It’s buggy, hangs up, and on some days (especially after updates) it just seems like it doesn’t work at all. However, its user base and food database are unrivaled, so I haven’t really found anything else to replace it with. You can enter goal weights and at the end of the day it’ll tell you that if you stay on track you’ll lose xx amount of weight. These targets are always HILARIOUSLY inaccurate. Don’t ever trust these numbers. A better gauge of how your food intake and calories burned play together IS available…
Apple Watch– During this bulk I really came to trust and rely on the calories burned tracking on the Apple Watch. If not a perfect measurement, it is at least really consistent with itself. Instead of guessing about how hard I worked in a day, or just always committing to consuming a certain number of calories, I simply looked at the total calories burned on the Apple Health or Activity apps. Whatever it said I burned, I’d eat in excess of that, somewhere between 200 and 500 calories more.
The Apple Watch tracks your calories burned at rest, which it calls “Resting Energy” and the calories you burn while working out or doing something active. It calls these “Active Energy”. No surprise there. Towards the beginning of my bulk I was pretty much always trying to consume a 500 calorie surplus, but I felt like I was gaining too much fat. After that I backed it off to a 200 or 300 calorie surplus for most days, and kept a 500 calorie surplus on leg days or any day where I burned a massive amount of calories.
Looking back, I definitely feel like in previous bulks I’ve tried, I didn’t consume enough calories, especially on back and leg days. I feel confident that the Apple Watch is giving me some pretty reliable data and if I hadn’t checked daily there would have been many days where I under-consumed calories, thereby robbing myself of some progress. I still stuck to a surplus on rest days, giving my body extra nutrition so it could rebuild itself and get fueled for the next workout.
PROGRESS
By the end of the bulk I weighed in at 165 lbs! That’s a gain of 11 lbs. I have to confess that I did not do a good job of documenting things with before and after pictures. However, even though some of that weight gained was fat, I don’t feel it was too bad. My belt fits snugger but I’m still wearing it at the same setting (most days). I can look in the mirror and see that I’ve gained size, especially in the areas I wanted to focus on, which were the quads, hamstrings, and chest.
TRAINING NUMBERS
The biggest indicator that I put on muscle though, was the increase in performance numbers from my workouts. I didn’t really test 1 rep maxes, since I was focusing on hypertrophy and adding volume each week. Again, take a look at those Juggernaut videos. They’re on point! 👌🏼 However, I did focus on progressive overload from week to week.
Each week, I’d increase the weight of each lift, at least a little bit, in addition to upping the overall volume from week to week. As an example, if this week I performed bench press at 200 lbs for 3 sets of 8, next week I might shoot for the same exercise with 205 lbs for 4 sets of 8. The following week I might up the weight to 210 but stay at 4 sets of 8, while doing an extra set of chest flys or pushups to increase overall volume for the week.
Little by little I made progress. I kept it small and incremental from workout to workout, instead of trying to make huge jumps. By the end of the bulk I HAD made huge progress. But as opposed to previous attempts, I didn’t injure myself trying to get there. I did take a deload week about once every 4 or 5 weeks to recover from so much volume. Below are some of the numbers from the workouts.
First week of October 2019 (Start of bulk) in black
Last week of January 2020 (End of bulk) in red
Flat Bench (volume day)
3 x 8 @ 175 (managed 1 set of 7 @ 185)/
3 x 8 @ 205 (managed 1 set of 8 @ 210)
Flat Bench (heavy day)
3 x 5 @ 200 (1 set was 195)
4 x 5 @ 225
Back Squat (volume day)
3 x 10 @ 210
4 x 10 @ 255
Back Squat (heavy day)
3 x 8 @ 225
3 sets @ 285 for 8 reps, 6, 5, then 1 set of 8 @ 260
Romanian Dead Lift
4 x 8 @ 195
2 x 10 @ 225, 2 x 5 @ 235
SUMMARY
Overall, I’d say I’m pretty happy with my progress and how this bulk proceeded. I was a lot more deliberate and consistent with everything this go around, compared with previous attempts. As I come to the end of a month at maintenance, I’ll begin a cutting phase next week. This is going to be the REAL challenge- trying to hold onto strength and especially size, while trimming away some unwanted body fat.
I plan to do this for a couple months and then re-evaluate to see if I want to keep cutting or return to building muscle. Hopefully I can continue to improve overall body composition as I transition back and forth between building muscle and cutting fat. If there are any questions please let me know if the comments below, or send an email to upgradedragon@gmail.com.
I’d say that while I’ve habituated the habit of working out and prioritizing fitness, at this point I’m far from an expert when it comes to gaining strength and manipulating body composition. If you have tips or suggestions on how I can improve, please let me know! Thanks and see you next time!
