Ep 152: My Complete Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint (Bulking to Get Lean and Fit Over 40)
Today, Philip (@witsandweights) hosts a live training with the Wits and Weights community. He shares how he built 10 more pounds of muscle at 43 and your complete nutrition and training blueprint for doing the same thing.
He discusses why you would want to gain weight on purpose, the fear of weight gain while building muscle, and the exact protocol behind it. Philip also talks about four bulking scenarios, how to distribute your macros, training principles, a new mantra to frame your mental state, and many more.
Philip also shares a downloadable bonus guide, his Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint, that details the EXACT steps to set up your nutrition, training, recovery, and tracking to build as much muscle as possible (while minimizing fat gain) for an effective bulking phase.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
1:16 Why would you gain weight on purpose?
3:58 What is bulking, and what drives it?
6:13 Why Philip doesn't recommend scales of fat percentage sensors?
7:52 Four different bulking scenarios
2:07 Your rate of gain and tracking what you eat
15:16 How do you distribute your macros?
18:32 Should you eat carbs before or after a workout?
23:26 How do I compensate for missing carbs after cutting out alcohol?
24:13 Do you adjust the next few days if you exceed your calories?
25:22 Training principles
30:11 New mantra to frame your mental state
32:10 Things you can track
35:05 Philip's muscle-building phase
41:35 Outro
Episode resources:
Embarking on a journey of muscle growth can often be shrouded in myths and misconceptions, particularly when it comes to bulking. Many individuals, especially women, fear the process, concerned that it will lead to excessive fat gain or an undesired bulky appearance. However, with the right strategies in place, bulking can lead to substantial and transformative muscle growth, all the while enhancing metabolism and forging a healthier body composition.
The podcast episode is not just about crafting an impressive physique; it is about empowering individuals with knowledge and tools to achieve physical self-mastery. With the host's personal experience of adding 10 pounds of muscle at 43, the episode offers listeners a pragmatic nutrition and training blueprint, irrespective of their dietary preferences or fitness levels.
The conversation tackles the process of bulking head-on, dispelling fears and providing a clear path forward. One of the primary focuses is on the importance of a calorie surplus coupled with a balanced intake of macronutrients. Protein, the building block of muscle, is emphasized, with the recommendation of consuming 0.71 grams per pound of body weight for effective muscle synthesis.
Furthermore, the episode delves into the intricacies of various bulking strategies, highlighting the optimal range of gaining body weight as a balance between muscle gain and fat control. For beginners or those who have taken a hiatus from training, a more aggressive approach may be warranted, with the potential for gaining a bit more.
Flexibility in nutrition is another key topic, with the discussion including a range of dietary preferences, from carnivorous to vegetarian. The importance of including a variety of protein sources, digestible carbohydrates, and healthy fats is outlined, as well as the potential for incorporating smoothies and treats to maintain mental well-being and diet sustainability.
Tracking progress is another pillar of successful bulking, and the episode emphasizes the need for a robust tracking tool to measure weight and muscle gains accurately. The psychological aspect of bulking is not neglected, with strategies to maintain motivation and navigate the challenges of mini-cuts presented.
Lastly, the episode touches on the broader impacts of muscle gain, including increased metabolic rate, improved body composition, and the psychological benefits of achieving personal fitness goals. The host's message is clear: with the right mindset and a tailored approach to diet and training, anyone can unlock the secrets to substantial muscle growth.
As the podcast wraps up, Philip invites listeners to engage with the community and continue their journey toward achieving their dream physique. The episode serves as a powerful reminder that bulking, when done correctly, can be an empowering process leading to a stronger, healthier, and more confident self.
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Transcript
Philip Pape 00:00
You can intuitively build muscle if you've never done it before, while also optimizing the process. So you can gain muscle, but you might gain a lot of fat. Or you might have a bunch of plateaus on the way if you try to do it intuitively, versus just getting the result you want as quick as possible. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip Pape. And this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights
Philip Pape 00:41
community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. So we are here today in our live training with the community talking about how I built 10 more pounds of muscle at the age of 43. And more specifically, the complete nutrition and training blueprint for how to do that. And if you're listening and watching, if you're watching the replay, you get a bonus guide that goes along with this that is much more detailed. And I might bring that up here in the training later on. But we're just gonna dive right in and talk about these topics, those who are alive through your questions in the chat. And we're just going to start by answering the question like Why would you gain weight on purpose? You know, a lot of people it's obvious, a lot of guys especially are like, yeah, I get I want to gain I want to build muscle makes sense. A lot of women might be fearful, some guys are fearful, you know, there's no gender divides when it comes to a fear of gaining weight, because so many of us have spent our lives dieting, not dieting, dieting, not dieting, and kind of chasing that number on the scale thinking that that's going to get us where we want to be for how, how we look how we feel, whatever, whatever reason we're going after. However, if you just just do some simple math with me here, if you weigh 150 pounds at 20% body fat, which for a male is kind of average above average, maybe probably average for most men, if not a little bit less for females just add 10% to that, if you're on a 50 pounds 20% body fat at the age of 30. And then you don't do anything the rest of your life in terms of training, or nutrition, which is the majority of people, right? Most people are not resistance training. Most people don't eat enough protein, etc. And what do you gain or lose weight over time, you're gonna lose 1% of your muscle every year. So after 30 years, by the time you're 60, you've now lost pounds and pounds of muscle. If on the other hand, you start training, you start eating the right way, even if you don't gain a lot of weight, right, even if you don't go on a muscle building phase just to maintain your weight, you are going to have at least avoid losing that muscle. And then if you do what we're talking about today, and you take time to build muscle, you can add 20 3040 pounds of muscle in your lifetime. For men, it's 40, maybe a little more for women, it's like 30. That's a lot of muscle. And if you just do simple math and say okay, I go from 150 pounds to 180 pounds of pure muscle, which implies that you've gained maybe you've done a fat loss you've gained to go down to fat loss over time to get there, you're going to be at a lower body fat percentage, right. So you're going to be like 16% body fat at 180 pounds. And so that's a that's a profound thing to just let sit with your brain that you can be 30 pounds heavier, but look leaner look more well muscled, get the physique, you're actually going for the shape that you're going for. Not only that, it gives you a higher metabolism, your baseline metabolic rates higher because muscle is more expensive, and your overall metabolisms higher because you're just carrying more weight, everything you do takes more energy, you can push more in the gym, etc. And then that means you can eat more. And that means fat loss is easier. And that means you're not dieting all the time you're instead energized all the time, energy fullness, food freedom, whenever you want. So that's what we're going for right? Throw in the chat if that's not what you want, in which case, today's session is not appropriate for you. Okay, so let's keep going. Alright, so let's bulk right, what is bulking? Exactly? The word itself scares some people because they don't want to get bulky, especially women I talked to but you know, you're not going to look like Arnold, I would love to look like Arnold It is never gonna happen. It's fat fat. It'll never happen without steroids. But I can still, you know, look great, especially for my age. And you can too. And so bulking is just the idea of gaining weight deliberately to gain muscle. There's four things that drive an effective bulk. And if you miss out on any of these, it's going to be significantly less effective and lead to more fat loss or just just not just fits and starts. And you can see those on the screen but they are your surplus. So that's eating more calories than you burn. Number two is protein getting sufficient protein, which is the building blocks of your muscle tissue in the form of amino acids, that's protein. So we're going for around a gram per pound of body weight is the universal evidence base standard. You can be a little bit less than that in a bit. loading phase to be honest, you can be as low as point seven and be just fine. Some guys, some women love protein love to eat meat. And they're higher than that. There's always a trade off with fats and carbs. So being at that minimum is what's important. Number three is training for progressive overload. This is honestly the one that most people miss. And by Miss, I mean, they might be going to the gym, they might be training, but they're not doing it effectively. They're not actually progressing over time, in some form of intensity volume sets, you know, to actually demonstrate that they're getting stronger and putting those calories to good use building muscle. And then number four is recovery. A lot of people shortchanges, they're like, Well, I'm eating more food. So recovery is less important. But sleep, protecting your joints, lifting in a way that allows you to get to the gym the next time, so you're not excessively sore, or have you know, achy joints, or give yourself tendinitis are all important ways to continue that building phase efficiently. And quickly, just like in fat loss, we want to get it over and done. Well, in a building phase, we want to actually, you know, pack on that muscle, because we know there's fat coming along for the ride. So you kind of want to balance the two as best you can. And then I see some questions coming in the chat. I'll either answer them if that makes sense. Or I'll hold off on them. Let's go with this one. I think I heard a podcast you don't recommend scales of fat percentage sensors. Why? What do you recommend set question for later, okay, I'm just going to answer that. Because they're inaccurate, they're highly inaccurate. So whatever number they tell you, you can't believe they could be off on any given day. However, if you take the trend over time, they tend to be much more valid. So if it says you're 22%, body fat, you might be 17, you might be 27. But if it says 22 Now, and then 21, the next week, and then 20, the next week and 19, the next week, you're probably losing fat. So that's it. Okay, so the the four drivers of the bulk, as I said, with a surplus, the protein, the training, the recovery. And then there's one more, that's kind of a bonus, but a lower priority. And that's the timing of nutrients. I'm a firm believer that you shouldn't train fasted, unless there's a really good reason to, and also that you can be smart about timing your carbs and protein around your workouts to give you more performance, and thus, more out of your training. Okay, so let's keep going here. Are we talking about the C food diet, SCE food diet here, a lot of people when they think of bulking, they think just eat whatever you want, you gain a bunch of weight. As long as I'm gaining weight, I'm gaining muscle. Yes, I know that if you're gaining weight, you probably are gaining some muscle if you're doing the other things. But we also don't want to gain too much fat. And the first book I ever did was back in 2019 and 20 timeframe. And I did just that I drink a bunch of whole milk, I eat a bunch of processed foods, I eat whenever I wanted, I didn't track and again, like 50 pounds and a few months, including a lot of muscle, but also a lot of fat, and then it took time to cut it off. I'm going to lay out the four different scenarios here. And why I think one of them is optimal for most people. Okay, so the first one is a lean bulk when people think lean gain, main gain. What's What's the other words people use? Gain tain right? They think, Okay, I'm going to gain as slowly as possible so that I don't gain any fat. But I still gain muscle. The problem with that approach is now you're just stretching out for many more months, if not years, the time it takes to build the same amount of muscle you could have built in a few months, and then cut off the fat in like a month or two, you know, the timescales don't make a lot of sense, unless you're okay, delaying the muscle gain, because you just don't want to be in a fat loss phase ever. And that's a valid reason. If you never want to diet ever, and you just want to take longer doing this process, you can do that. The second rate of gain, okay, so for those listening, the lean bulk is very barely above maintenance. So like point one 2.2% of your body weight a week, in that time in that rage, a little bit more aggressive than that is what I would call the optimal range. And that is point two to point 3% of your body weight per week. Now, this is been held up time and again by studies including one by Dr. Eric helms at all that came out in 2023. It was reviewed in mass. I had Dr. Bill Campbell on the show, and he talked about it. And I think I did a whole episode on it as well. So I'm pretty confident that this rate again, from my own experience, as well, is solid, and it's not that aggressive, but it's aggressive enough that you're gonna see meaningful weight gain over time. So point two to point 3% body weight per week is that sweet spot where your use an individual can probably maximize muscle and not leave much on the table, but also avoid getting too fat. Okay? However, if you're a beginner, or if you're D trained and you have or you haven't been training effectively for a while, you might want to go a little more aggressive and this is what I call the aggressive rate of gain. And that's point three to half a percent body weight a week. And you'll see this recommended by a lot of coaches. You'll see A male centered coaches like guys, like Danny Morgan, or Cody McBroom, or whoever might talk about these rates of gains like half a percent of your body weight a week, yeah, you're gonna gain a little more fat, but you'll definitely gain all the muscle. However, I think it's too aggressive for late intermediate or late novice, early, intermediate or more advanced athlete. If you're a beginner, however, I would go for that, because your body is going to respond favorably to the muscle building signal, and probably pack on a really good ratio of fat to muscle. All right, and then the most aggressive rate is the dirty or dreamer bulk, right, the one that I went through before and I don't know, maybe raise your hand, if you've tried this before, it's kind of like the easiest one to do. And, and it's fine, but you're just going to gain a ton of fat. And the only reason I would suggest doing this, either, you're a beginner, and you're totally cool with the fat game, maybe you're lean, maybe you're skinny, 22 year old male. And it's like totally worth going after that for your first novice linear building phase. Or if you're trying to push your max lifts. So here's a very interesting thing. I used to have a theory that if I pushed the amount of weight that I gained, that the muscle would scale up, because now I'm able to lift a lot more. We know that like adding tons of weight, mass moves mass, your lifts go up. Why would that translate extra muscle, but what we find is beyond this optimal rate of gain, you're only gaining pure fat. And the strength gains are not relative, their absolute, meaning the you're only gaining, you're only gaining strength because your weight is going up, you're not actually getting stronger relative to your weight. And that makes sense because of leverages cross sectional area, all that that gives you a better ability to push more force, but you're not gaining more muscle doing it. So if you're a power lifter, if you're going after competition, you don't max lifts for that reason, strongman, whatever, yeah, maybe it worked. Maybe it makes sense for you, right? Other than that I would go with aggressive for beginners are optimal for everyone else. Alright, so we have questions in the chat, if anything is not clear as we move forward. So how much should you eat, I'm going to suggest that you have two options. One is make it easy for yourself, use macro factor, use my code Wits, & Weights for the free trial, try it out, you're going to love it, and it's going to calculate everything for you. Because this can get a little bit complicated, it actually gets more complicated than losing fat. Okay, and I'll explain why in a second. So if you want to do it by hand, just for fun, or because you don't want to use an app and you want to make it hard on yourself, which is fine. And then update it every week, based on your metabolism, this is how you would do it. First, you will find your maintenance calories, the only way to do that accurately, is not a wearable, not a calculator. It's to track your food for two or three weeks while you maintain your weight as best you can. Whatever you ate on average, is your is your metabolism, it's very hard to do by hand. So I suggest just using macro factor get moving past it and being efficient, but you do it by hand. That's how you do it. Now once you've got your maintenance calories, let's say it's 2500, you're gonna pick a rate of gain, like we just talked about. So aggressive or optimal, most likely. So we're going to say for this example optimal at point 3%. And then you're just going to calculate your weekly gain as your wait times the rate. So here we go. The, in this example, imagine you're 180 pounds, and you want to gain rate at point 3% pounds a week. 180 times point 3% is point five, four pounds a week, it's about a half a pound a week, right about a little over two pounds a month. So the surplus you you need to eat above your maintenance calories is only five, four pounds a week times the 2500 calories divided by seven days. All right, a lot. I know it's a lot of math here. So so that gives you 193 calories. Now you're probably wondering where does 2500 come from? Okay, you've probably heard of the 3500 Calorie rule when you lose fat. A pound of adipose tissue is about 40 4200 calories and a pound of muscle tissues about 800 Something calories, because it's much more dense. If you subtract the two, you get 3500 calories. Well, when we're losing weight, we just want to lose fat. So we calculate for fat. When you're gaining muscle, you want to gain some muscle and some fat. You don't want to gain fat, but you're going to and assuming a 5050 ratio, right? Because it's another question you might have, I would say most people can assume 5050 is in the ballpark of what they're gonna get. And my last two building phases. That's exactly what happened with me when I wanted that optimal rate. If you do that, and you say, Okay, I'm gonna take half of a pound of adipose tissue and half of a pound of muscle tissue and add them together, you get 2500 calories, not 3500 calories. So a lot of people might be gaining too quickly, thinking they're gaining at a certain rate when they're actually getting more fat because of that, okay, so the surplus you need is probably less than you think. And this is how you would calculate it. If you use macro factor. It does it for for you, and it adapts to you, as it realizes that you are gaining at a slightly different ratio than 5050. So if you gain more quickly or slower than it expected, it knows you're actually gaining a different ratio of muscle to fat. And we'll adjust accordingly each week. Okay, macros are next people wonder how do I distribute my macros. So again, macro factor will do this really well for you, based on the evidence, but let's start with Protein Protein is the muscle macro array, we needed to build new tissue, we're going to aim for point seven, one gram per pound of body weight. And so in the same example, we just use, if you're 180 pounds, you're going to eat 130 to 180. It's a big wide range. And if you're not already eating sufficient protein, I would say, figure that out first, at maintenance, understand what foods you can choose to get there. And then once that's locked down, you know you'll you'll be ready to go into your building phase. For most people, I recommend eating two to five feedings a day for practical purposes. Many of you probably heard the recent study, the big meta analysis that showed that you could even eat 100 grams of protein all at once, and your body is still going to use that effectively over time by just extending the window of muscle protein synthesis. But who wants to get 100 grams of protein in one meal, that's that's the thing. So in reality, you're trying to scarf down 3000 Plus calories a day for most people, women is probably less and you don't want to feel distended when you eat. And you want to be able to eat throughout the day and not feel hungry. So two to five feedings says it makes sense for most people, practically speaking, there's no need to fast, definitely no need to train fasted, and you're not trying to lose weight. So just eat. That's at the end for hard gainers. That's one of the problems is they come to me say, Look, I can't lose weight, how many times you get in a day three times, okay, we hit that's part of the problem, let's eat four or five, six so that you get more of an appetite. All right, fats, fats are pretty simple. I like.
Philip Pape 16:56
Generally for my clients, I just tell them eat what they like, and the fats are going to work themselves out, especially in the gaining phase. But if you need a number 20 to 30% of calories is in the ballpark for most people. If you're more, if you come from a low carb environment where you ate a lot more fattier foods like dairy, meat and such eggs, you can go a little higher, it's just going to eat into the carbs a bit, but you have a lot of calories to work with. So 20 to 30% is reasonable. And then the rest of the calories come from carbs. And why do we need carbs for muscle building? I am going to say that is almost 0% of the time do you want to go low carb while you're building muscle, unless there's a medical reason, like if it's related to diabetes, type one diabetes, particularly if you've got some sort of intolerance to like a million carb based foods, or something like that. Otherwise, I want you to experiment with your body and performance. Bringing those carbs up to a decent level which could be to something three something 400 Something grams of carbs, which might sound crazy to a lot of you I did a whole episode called more muscle, more carbs. And I got some hate on that from the people who are just anti carbs still, and I don't get it. Because we do it. If you do it and you try it, you'll see what it does for your lifts for the amount of reps you can bang out in the gym, for how you sleep, or how you recover. I mean, the list goes on and on. And we know from the evidence you can build five times as much muscle having moderate high carbs versus a low carb or keto approach. I'm not saying you can't build muscle on keto. I'm not saying that's not what you like, don't do it. I'm just saying if you're agnostic to it, go for the carbs. Got a comment in the chat? Let's see. Would it make a difference to eat the carbs within an hour or two after the workout? If during the day carbs have been part of the diet? Intake nighttimes my preferred time for workouts within an hour or two after the workout? If during the day carbs have been part? Would it make a difference? Oh, you're saying after. So bowling No, not as much. That's a good point. If it's at nighttime, and you want to get to sleep and you don't want your sleep interrupted by your digestion, and you're working out that late, I would say experiment number one. But number two, I think it's more important to get the carbs ahead of time, then necessarily afterward and then the next day you're just going to refuel anyway. But like with any of these these very specific answers, I would say experiment with yourself for like two weeks and see how it affects your sleep. See how it affects your recovery and see how it affects your performance the next time in the gym. Okay, so protein carbs around workout sets. So my general recommendation is like within an hour or two before within an hour or two after have some protein and carbs have like 2530 grams of protein or more and have at least a one to one or more of carbs to protein. Hey, this is Philip and I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life. their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique, and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. If we are, we'll get you started this week. Now, back to the show.
Philip Pape 20:46
Alright, so as far as what should you eat, I don't want to spend too much time on this. When I work with clients, I don't give them meal plans, like I want, I want people to come up with their own meal plan based on the options available to you based on what you like, and your lifestyle and preferences. But I'll help you figure that out. It's pretty simple. You need a lot of everything. So everything goes. That's the general idea here. You know, 80 90% Whole Foods is always a great approach with the rest of it being indulgences as opposed to 100% Whole Foods, which can be unsustainable, as well as hardly any a Whole Foods, which isn't great for your health. So starting with protein, you've got me you've got dairy, you've got plant based proteins as well. You know, if you're vegetarian, you have the option to go higher fat like ribeyes instead of sirloin, like a whole milk versions of dairy instead of one or 2%. So this is your option, add a little more flavor and pizzazz to your food. Carbs anything goes but like white rice, and potatoes and fruits are great sources of carbs that go down pretty easy, could add more calories. If you need them in the form of olive oil, maybe a little butter. I don't like lots of butter, because the saturated fat but some butter in your stir fry. And in your, you know, rice can be delicious. Smoothies are a great way to just breathe, digest a bunch of food. So it goes down easy if you need the calories. And then indulgences like this is your moment, if you like the bagels and you weren't eating that during fat loss, or if you like ice cream or pizza or whatever, have it, have it occasionally. And give yourself that mental relief to say yeah, this is a flexible approach. I love living this way. But I'm not going to do a dreamer bulk of like, you know, candy and junk food and pizza doughnuts all the time. Alcohol is the other thing I wanted to address. Alcohol is never a positive for your health just period. It just never is. But it's a lifestyle thing. And it's your choice. If you enjoy it for other reasons, it does increase fat storage, it does inhibit muscle protein synthesis, and it does disrupt sleep. And it does increase your visceral fat accumulation as part of the fat that you're gaining. So if you want to avoid all those things, I would limit or replace alcohol with non alcoholic versions. I'm a big fan of na beer these days, there's a lot of great brands and even non alcoholic liquor is available. So give that a shot. Let's see a cut out alcohol and I'm having trouble making up for the missing carbs. Okay, so I want to poke at that Aaron because alcohol does have some carbs I agree but it also has a lot of other empty calories. It's called it's you know, its energy, its alcohol, but it has to get metabolized by the body and it doesn't get used for anything other than fat storage. Missing carbs. I'm feeling my finding myself full but still needing more calories and the foods jessen's To replace the alcohol. I mean, you could have that's where you could have a beverage if you're looking for a beverage you can have a smoothie of some kind with dense foods in there, you know, think anything based on a nut like peanut butter, think adding oil to foods like that, you know, more refined carbs, which I know is like a huge nono in some spaces. Like we're fine. No, everything's got to be the whole or brown varieties. But like white rice, white pasta based foods, if you're gluten tolerant, not everybody is. But if you're gluten tolerant, it's a long list. Fruit. Also, you know, the more denser fruits that are that have a lot of calories. So what else comes to mind if you if anybody else has ideas, throw them in the chat. When you go over your calorie count from indulgences, you just take the loss, I think you're seeing the loss or you adjust down the next day or two. Okay, it's an interesting one. If you're in a gaining phase and you go over calories, just start the next day it's fine. Like you'll just get a little bump that day, if you're in a fat loss phase. Okay, whatever phase you're in, I don't like making up if that's the principle, I don't like making up the calories. So I would just look at what I did. Readjust the next day come up with a better meal plan and learn from these minor mistakes so that you continue having a flexible approach going forward. But don't ever make make up for it. dates, dried fruit. Yeah, great dates, dyed fruit, dried fruit, raisins, yeah, great options, and then supplements. Creatine. I mentioned creatine here just because I think everyone would benefit 20% of people are non responders. The tiniest tiniest piece of fraction of people are allergic. It's very rare thing I like to mention it. So if you have a weird reaction, that's why but most people are responsive. And it's good. It's supposed to be good for brain health as well. They're finding the evidence. Okay. So training, alright, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on training today, because it's more about nutrition. I do have a lot of podcasts I've done specifically about training. But here are my principles. Okay, spend enough time building muscles. So you actually get the benefit. That's the first big one. A lot of people, they do all the training things, right. But then they only spend two months and then they stop. So six months, I like six months, some coaches say four or five, I like six because it's that stretch goal. And lets you think of your schedule ahead of time, and plan it out with the seasons. So for me, I like to like right now I'm in a fat loss phase, ironically, as I give this muscle building talk, but it's going to be done going into spring. And then I'm gonna just bulk all the way till February. So for me, it's like nine months, I love it. And now you're going through the fall of the party season, the fall, you're going through holidays, all of that. So spend at least six months building and plan out your week gain accordingly. Workout 3d five days a week. So if you if you're gonna build muscle, you can't be a one or two day mean, unless you're an advocate of low volume training and have a really good program for that like as a powerlifter something, most people are going to benefit from three to five days a week, or six. But I mean, three to five is usually optimal. As far as what what the program should look like, oh, there's, there's a million, there's a million out there. I mean, you could buy ones from like mine pump from Andy Baker, there's stuff on TrainerRoad, there's a million programs that are work. Principle wise, I like anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half, where you're doing about four to six movements, you're doing about three to five sets, and they're in the four to 15 rep range. And I realized that's like a wide range. Because all of it can be effective. We're trying to build muscle, we're not going for maximal strength. But a strength based program can still build muscle. That makes sense. So I like a little both, which were the which I call power building where I'm doing like a compound lift, then I'm doing a compound lift accessory. So I might do a deadlift that I might do like an RDL. And then I might do two or three more isolation movements. You can do body part splits, bro splits, you can do push pull legs, you can do upper lower can do conjugate, the list goes on and on. You can do Texas method, high medium, you know, heavy light medium, the sky's the limit. Okay? Don't use that as an excuse to prevent you from making progress. Christo says working on maps powerlift right now, and I'm super impressed with the results. Beautiful. It's a great one, my clients, I can give them access to all the mind pump programs I own. They're a big fan of coaches just kind of giving away their stuff. So if you work with me, we'll give you those train zero to two reps from failure. Proximity to failure is one of the most important principles. Because if you're going into the gym, you're banging out 10 reps and you've got five reps in the tank, you are just not giving your muscles the stimulus they need to grow. So 02 reps from failure. Usually that means two reps or so on a big lift closer to zero reps on isolation work, use long enough rest periods. Okay, this is another one. If you're going to the gym and constantly doing the intensity stuff like 30 seconds rest, you may not be getting the most benefit from some of the bigger movements, where if you took the three minutes or even four minutes to rest, now you could hit all the sets and get all the effective reps. Now conversely, intensity techniques rely on the opposite approach, deliberately sorting the rest period, so that you're closer to the effective reps on the next set right away. So I just want to make sure that people are using long enough rest periods when they need them. And and I wanted to mention that, okay, adding weight and reps every session, this is the gold here progressive overload, right, something has to go up something, either you bang out an extra rep, or you increase the weight, or both, or you even at a set, whatever the programming calls for, you can't be static, if you're gaining weight in your body and you're not going up in weight in the gym. Not only does that demonstrate you're not building muscle, it demonstrates you're getting weaker, because your heavier body should be able to push more weight. So it has to go up it just has to and if it's not, something needs to be addressed. Okay. And that's, that's a good opportunity to kind of dive in. Last but not least pick a program you can stick with that you enjoy. That's it, like pick something you love. If you tell me I hate going to the gym. Well, maybe that's not the right program for you. Or you're just not, you know, using one of these principles. Okay, I'm wired up today. I don't know this stuff excites me. You guys like this stuff? Okay. See nutrition wise, what do you think about the approach of three to four weeks on a surplus fall by one week on a deficit and repeating the cycle for the purpose of minimizing fat gain. I don't like it Christos. I don't. If you're in fat loss, and you took a diet break, the only thing that's going to help with is your mental state. We know that there's no physiological benefit. Same thing happens the other way around. If you're gaining muscle, and then you take a break. Yeah, you're not going to gain more fat, you're not going to gain more muscle. Right? It makes sense like you're just slowing it down. I do like the idea that I was going to talk about it later if I get to it, but if not, it's in the guide. I like taking up getting cut in the middle of a long building phase potentially, to lop off some fat and then continue. But you got to be very deliberate about it. I wouldn't do it frequently. loved my energy. Good. Good. Been talking all day. So I'm losing my voice here. All right, your new mantra. All right, I've got a, I've got a quote up on the screen. I'm gonna say it out loud for those listening. And I want you guys to kind of say this to yourself. You're if you're on mute now want to say it out loud with me, please do. I'm excited to gain weight for the first time in my life, because I'm an athlete who wants to be lean and well, muscle, I'm intentionally gaining weight with a plan. And we'll be putting all those calories to good use. I accept the fact that I'll gain some fat. But that's a small short term trade off to gain so much muscle, more than I've ever gained in my life. I will focus on my lifts, how great I feel, and all the other positive things that come with gaining muscle. Okay, I think this is important. I think framing and mental state is important. Because you can't focus on the fact that you're gaining fat. Because you'll get discouraged. You just Well, I did a whole episode called why I'm getting fluffy before I get jacked. And I have those insecurities. And I look in the mirror and I'm like, Yeah, you know, but then I realize that it's, that's nothing for what I'm gaining out of this process. And most people just don't have the mental fortitude to even attempt it. And so you guys are all here, you're ready to go. This is step one. Okay, as far as how do you know you're making progress? You've got to track the things that tell you you're making progress. sounds obvious, but a lot of people will come to me like, I'm stuck. I can't gain weight. Same thing with the opposite. I'm stuck. I can't lose weight. Why are you tracking your food? No. Okay, track your food. Right? Or, I mean, there's a million reasons why but it often comes down to you just don't have data. And if you're gonna tell me that it's too tedious, then I'm going to say okay, then it's not as important to you, as it should be. Like, there's no way around it. You can't intuitively, you can intuitively build muscle if you've never done it before, while also optimizing the process. So you can gain muscle, but you might gain a lot of fat. Or you might have a bunch of plateaus on the way if you try to do it intuitively, versus just getting the result you want as quick as possible. So things that you can track, you can track your scale weight, of course, to know that you're gaining, you track your Trend weight, which macro factor does for you. That's a three week moving average. you track your body measurements, not to focus on your waist, because that's going to go up. But your biceps, your thighs, your chest, your neck, those should go up and indicate fat or muscle gain. You can measure your body fat using the Navy formula, if you want, you definitely need to log your your lifts and know that you're progressing. You can log your biofeedback I find it less important during gaining and losing, because all biofeedback tends to be positive. But if you track your biofeedback, and you're like in a hard gaming plateau, you might notice that, hey, I'm hungry. Well, that's a good indication you're not eating enough. And then bloodwork is always nice to have just as a before and after. So you can track other things beyond that. If you have like an aura ring, and Apple Watch all this. It's fun, cardio, health, all that. But these are the main things. If I had to pick two or three, what would they be? Well, I didn't even have food on this list, right? Because we talked about that separately. So it would be food. But then I would track your average weight. And I would track while I let it. I don't like these questions, but you have to only pick a few right?
Philip Pape 33:24
I shouldn't have taken the bait. So I would track weight, and I would track do you have to track your training? Gosh, I feel like you have to. Yeah, wait and training. That's it. Everything else you can kind of tell by how your pants feel how you look. Right? Your weight tells you you're you're putting in the calories in your training log tells you you're getting stronger, good body measurements, I like them weekly, just for to make it a habit I do on Sunday mornings and then put them in a spreadsheet. And by the way, I'm gonna I have a tracker for that it's going to be part of part of something that's coming up that I'm gonna mention in my bonus surprise at the end. So I'm not gonna, like I say now, Okay, keep going. So don't be done. What holds people back? Okay. Not tracking stuff. Like all the stuff we just talked about. Going too quickly or going too slowly, of course, because if you go too slowly, you're just going to stall out. And if you go too quickly, you're going to get too much fat. Not doing it for long enough like we talked about not training hard, not recovering hard gaining and staying there meaning you know, your heart gaining and then you just don't do anything about it. Fear of getting fat we talked about and then letting life deter you like making an excuse. All this happened, oh, I got injured. Oh, I look, I had surgery. I didn't let it deter me. I know people all the time get injured, and they work around it. I know people that they have to go on a three week vacation. They make it work. Like you can make it work that that is life. Like that's the norm the norm is life. So unless you know there's like three months where you're going to be in a cave without access to a gym, and even then you could like rig up some rocks. Well, you need food too. But anyway, don't let life deter you. Okay, So, we're already we only have 20 minutes left, see this, I knew what would happen. The rest of this presentation is a walkthrough of my real life muscle building phase, proceed with caution only if you truly want to unlock the most muscle gains possible and save time and hassle. Should you continue in the same morning as in the guide. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna fly through this because I want to leave like 10 minutes at least to answer questions, and then everyone here is going to get the slides. And they're going to get the blueprint itself, that's going to explain everything, when you can always reach out to me if something doesn't make sense. Okay, so my plan was, I wanted to get jacked, I want to go after as much muscle as I can. I barely I just started training hard, like four years ago. And I know a lot about this stuff, but I don't have the results I want yet out of it, I have great results, but I want to keep going. So I'm gonna gain at four I did this is over, I gained at point 3% body weight a week. I did it for I aimed for six to nine months, it ended up being 10 months, including a month of layoff in between because of life. I had surgery and I had a rapid fat loss phase that I did. And my target weight was 185. It started at 165. I later adjusted it to 190 and never lock yourself in to an exact number be adaptable. Was I successful? This information will all be in the the blueprint and even way more detailed than this where I explain everything. What was I successful? Well, I gained 11.3 pounds of lean mass, and I gained 12.9 pounds of fat. If you assume there's like a pound or two of fluid in the lean mass, then the ratio is maybe slightly worse. But it's still almost 5050 I'm happy with that, like for a guy who has been training, you know, for years. So I consider myself intermediate 5050 is great. For a beginner, I would say a little more lean mass than that. And then for an advanced athlete a little bit less. So my effective rate of gain was point four, eight, which was almost exactly what I was going for. And all my all my circumference measurements went up. So my waist went up three inches, you know, chest, an inch, bicep inch and a half thigh, 1.7 neck half inch. And I'm very happy with that. And so body fat wise, it went up about 5% what I know from my own personal experiences, I feel leaner than I ever have at 190. I mean, now I'm like 183 because I am in a fat loss phase and going back the other direction. But you will find that every time you gain every time you cut fat, you're able to go higher and higher and higher weight but still feel leaner, it's a great thing. Okay, my metabolism was all over the place. This is why you should use macro factor to be honest, because there's no other way to do this easily. My metabolism, if you look where it started, when I started gaining, it actually went down, then it kind of stayed around. Then I had rotator cuff surgery. And then it shot way up. As my shoulder healed itself. It shot up by 200 to 300 calories. I couldn't train as you know, I couldn't train at all after the surgery. And then I had to slowly get back into it. I didn't let life deterred me, I kept working on it. I went to maintenance that I went back into again. And my metabolism actually kept dropping this whole time. Not sure why like my activity was fine. But I think it was just because I wasn't training hard during this period. And then we had our shred Tober rapid fat loss phase. For 14 days, my expenditure dropped even more than I started building again. And ever since then climb, climb, climb, climb back to a reasonable level. Now, in previous building phases, I've been up to like 3400 calories. So I ended this one around 3100. And this just tells you that our bodies can, you know, be unpredictable, is split says. But it does give us good information of like what happens in different phases. And when somebody asked me, should I stop tracking because I'm sick? Or because I'm this or that? Assuming the tracking itself isn't a stress a stressor or problem? I say yeah, keep tracking because it gives you information on what your body does during these anomalies. Okay, so that's my metabolism, my trendweight went up from one, about 168 to 190. And you can see that it was pretty smooth, even though the scale weight goes up and down constantly. But the trendweight kept going. And I had surgery, I lost weight, a little bit of weight because my metabolism shot up as you saw on the last slide. So I went into what amounted to a hard gainer phase, unintentionally, I actually ate more and more and more, but I couldn't keep up. And then finally it turned around. And I started to gain again. Then I had the rapid fat loss phase where I lost about four pounds of body fat, which was cool. And that's an example where he like to crystallize his question, you could use a mini cut or micro cut in the middle of a phase to help you extend it. And then I continued from there and it was smooth sailing pretty much for the rest of the build. If you look at my nutrition, I'm pretty consistent. I'm pretty boring. People who are boring tend tend to be successful with this stuff. Because they just eat the same things and are just dialed in. Not everybody's like that and you can still get great success even if you're If you have more variance, you have to be consistent, but you can have more variability. So if you look at my graph here, my protein carbs, or protein, fats, carbs pretty much stayed where they needed to be the whole time. And you can see the nutrition trended with my expenditure. So it went up and down, you know, every week, depending on what I needed to keep the surplus the same. And then all the spikes are just like parties or nights out or I was like GABA, just wanna eat what I want today, which you have a lot more flexibility to do that in a building phase. The blue that doesn't have a color is probably alcohol. So occasionally I drink. I rarely drink these days, maybe once every few weeks, but that's what those are. Okay, measurements, I already mentioned that they went up, I'm not going to dwell on this, this is all my, you know, my waist went up as a gain fat, and then my chest, biceps and thighs all went up as I gain muscle. So I was happy with that. And you should be too if you see things go into that direction. My body fat went up as expected by about four or 5%. This is based on the Navy formula, which uses my neck and waist. So it's a simple ratio. Little bit complicated formula, you can put it in a spreadsheet, or you can Google it, and you can track the trend. I don't care about the number. I care about the trend now am I leanness when I started at Wayne 168 I was about 15 16% body fat, which you might say well that's not even that lean. And I agree and so my fat loss phase now my intent is to get closer to 10% which I've just never been there my entire life. I've always been a bit fluffy or overweight and that's why I love shaving my body this way. Okay, any other questions? Cool. Well thanks everybody for coming again. I will send out everything by email. If you don't get that you can always reach out to me Philip with one L at Wits & Weights comm or Instagram at Wits & Weights, or our Facebook group or everywhere else. So pixel for coming. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong
