Found this while screwing around google, thought i would share for those interested!
Bulk, Cut, Bloat: The Basic Science of Weight Manipulation and Powerlifting
By Brandon PattersonPublished: March 11, 2011Posted in: Nutrition, PowerliftingTags: bloat, Nutrition, powerlifting, weight gain, weight loss
At some point, nearly every competitive athlete who participates in weight-divided events will engage in weight manipulation. The unique demands of powerlifting have led to a universally adopted pre-meet weight management routine involving “bulking,” “cutting,” and “bloating.”
Bulking
Bulking is simply the process of gaining weight to either stimulate muscle growth or improve “leverages” in certain lifts (I use quotes here since leverage generally refers to anything that makes a lift easier, regardless of its impact on an actual lever). Bulking for muscle growth involves consuming excess calories and protein to promote post-exercise protein synthesis, as even the most sound hypertrophy program won’t work without an energy and substrate surplus.
Bulking for leverage is a different tactic. When bulking for leverage, the goal is adding bodymass—water and fat as well as muscle—to make lifts easier. The bench press responds favorably to bulking because extra bodyweight improves barbell stability, which allows more force to be directed towards moving the bar, and because a heavy bulk increases torso girth, which can shorten the bar path. Squats are helped by the added mass both lowering the lifter’s center of gravity, and by strengthening the abdomen by widening its base and packing the core in with a buttressing layer of fat. When you take into account that these two lifts are also the ones that are helped the most by equipment, it especially makes sense for a geared lifter to bulk. The deadlift can also be helped by bulking, though the effects aren’t as noticeable.
There are two ends of the spectrum when it comes to bulking. The first, “dirty” bulking, involves jamming all the food into your gullet that you can. The goal is to maximize your intake of protein and carbs (to keep protein synthesis up), as well as fat (to make sure you’re putting on a good layer of blubber.) During a good dirty bulk, you could eat an entire day’s worth of calories by breakfast. You’ll live off of junk food because it’s the only way to keep your calories up.
J.M. Blakely’s dirty bulk methods are some of the best known, though it’s hard to appreciate just how intense they are until you add up the calories. Dave Tate’s recollections on Blakely’s advice offer a blueprint that I’ve made into a (conservative) chart:
That’s about four days worth of food for the average American male. And it doesn’t even include snacks, which in this case are fistfuls of candy bars. You can find Dave’s full story and forum follow-ups here: T NATION | 37 Tips and Tales from Dave Tate
Mark Rippetoe has re-popularized “GOMAD”—Gallon Of Milk A Day—as another bulking strategy. When added to your normal eating habits, drinking a gallon of whole milk every day will add an easy 2,400 calories and 120 grams of protein to your daily intake. There are other techniques, most involving an “Always Be Eating” approach fortified with fast food.
In a PLUSA article on his bulking method, Blakely acknowledges a litany of health problems associated with the dirty bulk: elevated cholesterol, lipids, and blood pressure; sleep apnea; poor levels of liver enzymes, thyroid hormones, and pancreatic indicators; and of course, fat gain. Fat gain can lead to diabetes, heart problems, and increased cancer risk. The extra fat also makes daily activity harder because the added tissue saps oxygen from your blood stream and restricts mobility. Even just the extra weight can increase wear on your joints—Blakely notes that a good bulk leads to gaining 2-3 pounds of fat for every pound of muscle gained. At the same time, chugging sodas and downing candy can weaken your teeth, which is a bad thing when you spend a lot of time clenching your jaws into knots during PRs. Finally, the dirty bulk almost eliminates low calorie, nutrient-dense foods like fruits and vegetables, which can increase risk for multiple diseases.
Now, I’m not quite sure there’s such thing as a “healthy” bulk—overeating probably doesn’t improve any normal marker of good health. But lifters who are interested more in gaining muscle (as opposed to simply gaining weight) can take a very different approach and still increase muscle mass without getting too fat or wrecking their diet. This is commonly known as a “clean” bulk, and it involves eating almost nothing but foods with distinct nutritional benefits beyond their ability to provide energy, while monitoring calories in a way that minimizes fat gain without lowering muscle growth.
The trick to a clean bulk is knowing how much muscle you can reasonably gain. The commonly accepted figure for natural lifters is that a younger/newer male lifter can gain about half-a-pound of muscle a week, while older/experienced male lifters can gain half that. Age/experience-equivalent women lifters can gain about half of what men can; individuals with favorable hormonal levels (particularly exogenous) can gain much more, and should consider doubling the calorie recommendations below.
This small amount of muscle means that massive amounts of excess calories and protein aren’t needed for maximal growth. The old classic of consuming 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight will ensure enough protein comes in, and a regular calorie surplus of between 500-800 calories a day will keep you in positive energy balance; men under 200 pounds and most women should probably aim for the lower amount. The latter can be tricky to figure out, and will require some sort of calorie counting. One way to figure out your normal daily intake is to track what you eat for a few weeks, use a calorie database to determine the caloric content of what you ate, and then aim to eat 500-800 calories more than that every day, which goes towards a targeted weight gain of a pound every week. It’s a long build-up, but much more accurate than relying on a generic formula.
You may wonder why so much protein is needed for such a small amount of muscle. There are actually several reasons, the first being that protein is shared among a number of body processes, and not just building muscle. Second, the protein that is used for muscle first has to be used to restore and replenish muscle cells that have simply died as a normal part of tissue turnover, and then repair muscle fibers that have been damaged during training back to a normal state. When all that’s done, the remaining protein can be diverted to adding new muscle.
Let’s say a male lifter who’s been stuck at 240 pounds for a while tracks his calories over a period of two weeks, and realizes he gets in about 3800 calories a day, and about 200 grams of protein. To start a bulk that’s clean but still hits all the targets for guaranteed growth, he’d need to consume about 360 grams of protein and about 4300 calories daily. His foods over the course of a few days might look like this:
There are some short cuts to getting in your protein and calories without resorting to combo meals and boxes of donuts. For protein, buy large packs of chicken and bake or grill all of it at once, then keep the leftovers in the fridge; from there, supplement with protein shakes as needed. For extra calories, oats, nuts, pasta, dried fruits, brown rice, whole grain breads, potatoes, and a variety of oils like coconut, olive, and walnut are good options. Juices and milk can help fill in multiple gaps quickly and easily, as liquids have a smaller satiety impact than solid items. Since these foods aren’t as calorie-dense as dirty bulk foods, you may find the classic bodybuilder approach of eating multiple small meals will help avoid stomach-stretching marathon sessions of eating.
In the end, a reasonable approach for most of the population would be a midpoint between dirty and clean that facilitates a normal life as much as it does weight gain. For a clean bulker, this might mean cutting loose on Friday night, eating a protein bar to catch up on calories, or having family dinners where the kids have some say in what to eat. Dirty bulkers might slap on restraints by programming in routine fruits and vegetables, or by sticking entirely to enjoyable foods while monitoring calories.
Bulk, Cut, Bloat: The Basic Science of Weight Manipulation and Powerlifting
By Brandon PattersonPublished: March 11, 2011Posted in: Nutrition, PowerliftingTags: bloat, Nutrition, powerlifting, weight gain, weight loss
At some point, nearly every competitive athlete who participates in weight-divided events will engage in weight manipulation. The unique demands of powerlifting have led to a universally adopted pre-meet weight management routine involving “bulking,” “cutting,” and “bloating.”
Bulking
Bulking is simply the process of gaining weight to either stimulate muscle growth or improve “leverages” in certain lifts (I use quotes here since leverage generally refers to anything that makes a lift easier, regardless of its impact on an actual lever). Bulking for muscle growth involves consuming excess calories and protein to promote post-exercise protein synthesis, as even the most sound hypertrophy program won’t work without an energy and substrate surplus.
Bulking for leverage is a different tactic. When bulking for leverage, the goal is adding bodymass—water and fat as well as muscle—to make lifts easier. The bench press responds favorably to bulking because extra bodyweight improves barbell stability, which allows more force to be directed towards moving the bar, and because a heavy bulk increases torso girth, which can shorten the bar path. Squats are helped by the added mass both lowering the lifter’s center of gravity, and by strengthening the abdomen by widening its base and packing the core in with a buttressing layer of fat. When you take into account that these two lifts are also the ones that are helped the most by equipment, it especially makes sense for a geared lifter to bulk. The deadlift can also be helped by bulking, though the effects aren’t as noticeable.
There are two ends of the spectrum when it comes to bulking. The first, “dirty” bulking, involves jamming all the food into your gullet that you can. The goal is to maximize your intake of protein and carbs (to keep protein synthesis up), as well as fat (to make sure you’re putting on a good layer of blubber.) During a good dirty bulk, you could eat an entire day’s worth of calories by breakfast. You’ll live off of junk food because it’s the only way to keep your calories up.
J.M. Blakely’s dirty bulk methods are some of the best known, though it’s hard to appreciate just how intense they are until you add up the calories. Dave Tate’s recollections on Blakely’s advice offer a blueprint that I’ve made into a (conservative) chart:
Food | Calories (kcal) |
4 breakfast sandwiches | 1800 |
4 hash browns | 600 |
2 packs mayo | 160 |
Chinese buffet binge | 4000 |
Large pizza w/ the works | 3040 |
Olive oil | 2000 |
Total | 11600 |
That’s about four days worth of food for the average American male. And it doesn’t even include snacks, which in this case are fistfuls of candy bars. You can find Dave’s full story and forum follow-ups here: T NATION | 37 Tips and Tales from Dave Tate
Mark Rippetoe has re-popularized “GOMAD”—Gallon Of Milk A Day—as another bulking strategy. When added to your normal eating habits, drinking a gallon of whole milk every day will add an easy 2,400 calories and 120 grams of protein to your daily intake. There are other techniques, most involving an “Always Be Eating” approach fortified with fast food.
In a PLUSA article on his bulking method, Blakely acknowledges a litany of health problems associated with the dirty bulk: elevated cholesterol, lipids, and blood pressure; sleep apnea; poor levels of liver enzymes, thyroid hormones, and pancreatic indicators; and of course, fat gain. Fat gain can lead to diabetes, heart problems, and increased cancer risk. The extra fat also makes daily activity harder because the added tissue saps oxygen from your blood stream and restricts mobility. Even just the extra weight can increase wear on your joints—Blakely notes that a good bulk leads to gaining 2-3 pounds of fat for every pound of muscle gained. At the same time, chugging sodas and downing candy can weaken your teeth, which is a bad thing when you spend a lot of time clenching your jaws into knots during PRs. Finally, the dirty bulk almost eliminates low calorie, nutrient-dense foods like fruits and vegetables, which can increase risk for multiple diseases.
Now, I’m not quite sure there’s such thing as a “healthy” bulk—overeating probably doesn’t improve any normal marker of good health. But lifters who are interested more in gaining muscle (as opposed to simply gaining weight) can take a very different approach and still increase muscle mass without getting too fat or wrecking their diet. This is commonly known as a “clean” bulk, and it involves eating almost nothing but foods with distinct nutritional benefits beyond their ability to provide energy, while monitoring calories in a way that minimizes fat gain without lowering muscle growth.
The trick to a clean bulk is knowing how much muscle you can reasonably gain. The commonly accepted figure for natural lifters is that a younger/newer male lifter can gain about half-a-pound of muscle a week, while older/experienced male lifters can gain half that. Age/experience-equivalent women lifters can gain about half of what men can; individuals with favorable hormonal levels (particularly exogenous) can gain much more, and should consider doubling the calorie recommendations below.
This small amount of muscle means that massive amounts of excess calories and protein aren’t needed for maximal growth. The old classic of consuming 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight will ensure enough protein comes in, and a regular calorie surplus of between 500-800 calories a day will keep you in positive energy balance; men under 200 pounds and most women should probably aim for the lower amount. The latter can be tricky to figure out, and will require some sort of calorie counting. One way to figure out your normal daily intake is to track what you eat for a few weeks, use a calorie database to determine the caloric content of what you ate, and then aim to eat 500-800 calories more than that every day, which goes towards a targeted weight gain of a pound every week. It’s a long build-up, but much more accurate than relying on a generic formula.
You may wonder why so much protein is needed for such a small amount of muscle. There are actually several reasons, the first being that protein is shared among a number of body processes, and not just building muscle. Second, the protein that is used for muscle first has to be used to restore and replenish muscle cells that have simply died as a normal part of tissue turnover, and then repair muscle fibers that have been damaged during training back to a normal state. When all that’s done, the remaining protein can be diverted to adding new muscle.
Let’s say a male lifter who’s been stuck at 240 pounds for a while tracks his calories over a period of two weeks, and realizes he gets in about 3800 calories a day, and about 200 grams of protein. To start a bulk that’s clean but still hits all the targets for guaranteed growth, he’d need to consume about 360 grams of protein and about 4300 calories daily. His foods over the course of a few days might look like this:
Day One | Calories | Protein |
2 cups high fiber/protein cereal w/ dried fruit and milk | 500 | 36 |
Whey protein shake | 240 | 48 |
16 oz sauteed chicken | 650 | 95 |
Large baked sweet potato | 160 | 4 |
1 cup roasted pistachio nuts | 700 | 26 |
Workout shake | 300 | 40 |
Stirfry: 16 oz chick, vegetables, oil, 1/2 cup cashews, sauce | 1193 | 105 |
1 cup brown rice | 685 | 15 |
Total | 4428 | 369 |
Day 2 | Calories | Protein |
6 boiled eggs | 462 | 36 |
2 bananas | 210 | |
2 cups skim milk | 170 | 16 |
Smoothie: 3 scoops whey protein, 3 cups skim milk, 2 cups berries, 1 cup oats | 1382 | 124 |
Pasta bowl: 10 oz ground beef (85/15), red sauce, 2 cups enriched multigrain pasta | 1690 | 104 |
Whey protein shake | 360 | 72 |
1 peach | 68 | |
Total | 4342 | 352 |
There are some short cuts to getting in your protein and calories without resorting to combo meals and boxes of donuts. For protein, buy large packs of chicken and bake or grill all of it at once, then keep the leftovers in the fridge; from there, supplement with protein shakes as needed. For extra calories, oats, nuts, pasta, dried fruits, brown rice, whole grain breads, potatoes, and a variety of oils like coconut, olive, and walnut are good options. Juices and milk can help fill in multiple gaps quickly and easily, as liquids have a smaller satiety impact than solid items. Since these foods aren’t as calorie-dense as dirty bulk foods, you may find the classic bodybuilder approach of eating multiple small meals will help avoid stomach-stretching marathon sessions of eating.
In the end, a reasonable approach for most of the population would be a midpoint between dirty and clean that facilitates a normal life as much as it does weight gain. For a clean bulker, this might mean cutting loose on Friday night, eating a protein bar to catch up on calories, or having family dinners where the kids have some say in what to eat. Dirty bulkers might slap on restraints by programming in routine fruits and vegetables, or by sticking entirely to enjoyable foods while monitoring calories.