 Trying to pack on 10 to 15 pounds of muscle the next year. Watch this. Our first caller is Cade from Washington. What's up, Cade? How can we help you? Hey, so I just had a question regarding basically Optimizing muscle growth because so for I've been consistently training for about 10 years with a goal of Just health and longevity, but recently I found myself in a really good spot So I'm about five ten about one fifty four one fifty five So I'm like ten ish percent body fat and I just I don't know I got it in me that I kind of want to see if I can push my body to do something like a Physique competition. So I was trying to see what would be a checklist that I could do to basically optimize Muscle growth over the course of one or two years to put on maybe like 15 20 pounds Okay, this is definitely Justin's wheelhouse. Yeah, I was gonna say I'll go ahead and feel this I think I think there's a lot more we need to know right so I would like to know Kind of what you're currently doing training wise. Are you following any sort of program regimen? Do you follow any of the maps programs currently right now? And if you don't yeah, so I have for you guys programs I have anabolic performance aesthetic and power lift, okay I'm just finishing up anabolic, but I've kind of tweaked it To where I'm still working out. It's not really trigger sessions. I'm working out seven days a week basically where I'm kind of splitting Some of the end of the workout because I don't really feel like I can give The like I'm in the third phase right now So like the super set with the the arm workouts I kind of push that off on its own day with maybe Either a chest workout or a shoulder workout and then do some very light accessory stuff Just to get a little bit more volume. Okay, so you're pretty much falling on a ball You're just kind of splitting it up, which is totally cool I do that sometimes where I split it up on the other days But you're still following what's in the program. Yes So the other question I'd have too is that if you know, if you're a client of mine I would love like a an off-season kind of bulking, you know stretch with you And then we would do show prep and get ready So if I could get like a year of your time I would want to run like anabolic power lift try to pack on as much muscle and we'd do that in a bulk So I at 10% body fat. You're already pretty lean In fact, this is kind of like right when I was in season and off season off season I like to hover right around that 10 maybe I let myself go as high as 12% But I like to keep myself close to single digits getting ready for a show So I didn't have to do a long cut so your body fat percentage is perfect kind of where you're at and I would love to run like a power lift and a Bolic split type of routine within a calorie surplus to pack on some good size for you for and I would want to do that for about three to six months depending on You know where our body fat is hanging around and stuff and then Switch you over to like a maps aesthetic and lean you out and get you ready for the show and maps aesthetic was really inspired by Kind of my show prep heading into a show and and I would start it off Still in like a calorie surplus or maintenance and then towards the you know final six to eight weeks I would transition into a cut and when you're this lean when you're right around 10% You don't need to be cutting longer than about probably six weeks I think that's the mistake that some of these competitors make is they won They allow their body fat percentage to get so high and then when it's time to cut They're doing like these 16 week cuts. I I never cut longer than four to six weeks Because I maintain my body fat percentage about where you're at if you're around 10% You can easily drop four or five percent in six weeks No problem, especially if you got a healthy metabolism and you're in your dialed in so that's kind of what I would want to do with you Yeah, to add to that I'd say a big thing to focus on is gonna be your your calories Obviously want to get about a gram of protein per pound of body weight, but you you should be increasing your calories by about 500 to a thousand over what your maintenance is so do you know what your maintenance calories are? Do you know how much you're eating right now? So actually it's kind of so I've been probably about three four months now Where I've been just like intuitively eating. I have a good idea that I'm around Anywhere I mean it fluctuates, but I could be anywhere between like 27 to 3000 calories and I've actually been basically recombing for a couple months where I've Consistently seen that I'm a little bit bigger and losing body fat at the same time. So yeah, so estimates are Notoriously inaccurate even for experienced people. I mean I estimate and then when I go count and add things up I find that I'm off by oh, that's me. That's me counting like I have an idea of how much the food I eat is I just didn't like actually write it down. Okay. Yeah, cuz that's obviously that is a I mean That's the first step. So I'm glad you went that way is that you know, if we you and I were working together I would need you to know yeah to the calorie, right? So I mean I encourage people using like fat secret or my fitness pal So we can log it and we can make subtle adjustments. So yeah track it and then once you get the exact number I'd go actually I'd probably go are you are you more of a I'm assuming you're more of a hard gainer than an Easy gainer considering your your body weight and your height. Is that would you say that's fair? Oh, yeah, okay? I would go a thousand calories over maintenance now if you start to put on too much body fat You could always bring it down to 500 over maintenance But I would add a thousand over what you're doing and then you know go back to your training The food is gonna make the biggest difference obviously if you're following one of our programs is probably working all right for you But it's gonna be the food That's the big challenge and if you're eating close to 3,000 calories, I mean we're talking close to 4,000 calories That's that's a bit challenging for people to consistently what people tend to do As they'll do 4,000 calories for a few days and then you know They'll drop off for another few days and actually totals out to be not that much of a of a surplus so consistently a 1,000 calories surplus per day Go with that and then if your body fat starts to climb too quickly You could cut that in half But you got to be in that surplus to really pack on you're talking about 15 pounds of muscle and to be honest with you Been working out for 10 years 15 pounds of muscle in a one year after 10 years of training to be hard. It's gonna be really hard I would say more realistic would be closer to seven, but who knows at the end of the day I wouldn't get too hung up on that stuff anyways like really my goal with you is if we're gonna do our first show and get ready for it It's okay. Let's get your calories up as high as we can without putting on too much body fat Right so because what I really want to do is I want to get you at a place where you know Let's say you're you say you're around 3,700 calories or so right now We're let's say we get you up to like 4500 Calories and it's like man. I'm eating as much as I can and it's awesome. I'm not putting on really body fat I'm hovering around this 10 to 12 percent We're in a really good place to transition you into a cut because your calorie intake is so high I can peel you down 500 calories tell you to walk a thousand more steps a day and you're gonna start to lean out real nice And that's where we'd like to be and the lot the other thing I would add if you're not tracking this right now Is to start to track your steps. Are you are you you have any idea of like how much you move on a daily basis? Um, it's not that much I mean I go for a couple walks and so honestly, that's the majority of it. Maybe like five six thousand Okay, cool. So that's a room to be much more active. Yeah, that's a great That's a great put for so for what you're trying to do That's a good place to be because that gives me a lot of room to increase your steps and I wouldn't do that yet right now We're we're bulk phase put on size add the calorie style sayings Transition into one of the other programs that you finish anabolic I was talking about trying bulk for the next program and get your calories up as high as you can maintain your steps We're at and then when we switch into your cut The first thing we're gonna do is reduce your calories by about 500 calories and increase your steps by say just 2,000 steps a day. Yeah through walking one other thing too is a lot of people especially if you're natural so if you're not Enhanced with any anabolic or anything like that Most people gain more mass with about four days a week of resistance training maybe five at the most Even though you're taking the volume up and splitting it up You might be better off Reducing the overall volume doing about four days a week. Maybe in the gym the other days you could stretch and That's good work. That's a really good and you'll probably see yourself pack on more muscle And I know it's hard to imagine especially been working out so long But you'll know within the first couple weeks Yeah, if you try that go four days a week for the next couple weeks Focus on you know kind of getting stronger bumping your calories You my guess is and I would bet and put money on this that you're gonna see a nice little bump in Muscle and how young are we? I don't what's our age on 28th. Okay. Yeah Yeah, I agree with Sal and in fact 28th about when I started to piece this together In my mid 20s and early 20s. I was seven day a week It was about intensity and thinking the more I train the more muscle I'd put on I'll never forget switching to a three-day a week program And it was a hard transition because I was like this just didn't feel like I'm putting enough work in But then my body started to pack on muscle and that's all I needed. I needed to actually lay off a bit And and and just follow good programming and eat and recover and I started I started to see myself put on a lot more size after I'd already been training for over a decade So you may be in a similar situation been training as long as you have you're still young you probably you want to get after it and Honestly scaling back a little bit and only training three times three times a week May do you really well so and then what's great about that, too Is that also leaves us a lot of room to add into your cut, right? So it's a burn call. Yeah. So when we get into the cutting phase, it ain't about packing on any more muscle It's about maintaining the muscle that you work so hard for and moving more and burning more And I would that's I would use those extra days to get you more active and burning more calories when we get into our cut phase Well Quick do you have any like small checklist of things that you would do outside of like nutrition sleep and Exercise to kind of try to optimize gains outside of sleep exercise and nutrition. I mean I'm being honest On your own don't go that route but but if you do it's gonna be hard to come back from but not okay So all joking aside stress And then supplements can help creatine is gonna be probably the most Official supplement that you can take and if you're not hitting your protein targets with your food You could supplement with protein powder, but aside from what you just said. There's really not much else I mean I assumed that yeah, that's the cornerstone and then just if there was any other like small little tidbits that maybe I could add But yeah Yeah, manage stress pay attention to what your your stress levels and sleep looks like if you're if you're if you're not Optimizing sleep. That's a that's one of those things that when you're in to your 20 you tend to overlook He included that he said sleep training and nutrition. Yeah side of outside of that. I would say just stress You know, yeah, I can't think about is actually Through you guys I got an ruler unit, but it started leaking so I had to send it away So my sleep has been less Restful, okay, well when you get it back, it'll make a difference. Definitely All right, man. Well, thanks for calling in. All right. Yeah, thank you for having appreciate it Yeah, I know I know I've said this many times, but There's a difference between How much training you can tolerate and how much training? You know what the appropriate most effective amount of training is right? Yeah, those are two different things You can almost always tolerate more training than what is considered optimal and once you go outside of optimal Whether you go below or above optimal you're getting you're slowing down your progress. You're not gonna get as many gains Okay, so so and what we tend to do especially when we're very experienced and we were trained for a long time when we love The process is we tend to inch towards what we can tolerate. Oh, I can do more. Oh, it's not affecting me negatively Oh, I can do more. Oh, it's not but without realizing that you're actually reducing your body's ability to you know Build muscle and improve so that's that's the part because most instances you provide more work a lot of times You get a lot more benefit that way So this is why it's a little bit of a challenge mentally To to scale and find that that sweet spot where you're actually gonna move forward I think that's great advice because he's he's at that age when this is most likely, right? I remember I remember being ten years deep into training and stuff and like that was in the heart of yeah more More is more is better more intense is better and you can handle a lot Yeah, and it was right around it was maybe a little bit before 28, so I was probably like 26 When I did that like cut I never might literally from 17 when I started lifting to probably 26 so nine years or so nine ten years Seven days a week, you know and a bad week and only if I did five It was because I couldn't get to it or I was doing something like snowboarding or wakeboarding something else on that day So I was so active and thinking that the more effort more work I put in the more muscle I would get and I remember like I can't remember what what it was that I read and I was like I backed off to three days a week and it was hard I remember thinking like oh, this isn't working like right away because you're not you're not getting the pump every day You're not getting pumped every day, so you're like oh, I'm shrinking and we get bad I'm like no I'm gonna stay the course trust the process for like a month and it was pretty quick after about a month or so I Noticed strength, and that's what really started me. Oh, let me hang here for that I remember hitting like dumbbell bench press bigger numbers than I'd ever within a couple weeks Yeah, and so I was like, okay, let me let me stick this out for a little bit So he's probably right in that age where it's you still at that I want to do more my story is a little different in that I read Mike Mentzer's heavy-duty book Doreen Yates was the reigning Mr. Olympia He talked about over training all the time And so I went high volume and I brought the volume way down and the frequency down and I saw great gains I still still would consistently inch towards that doing as much as I could tolerate That's how insidious that tendency is so check it and here's the Okay, always do this what this what helps me. I always ask myself. What's the worst that could happen, right? So I'll cut down. I just recently did this so I cut down my volume I said, what's the worst that could happen after a few weeks? I notice it's not working I go back to what I was doing before and I'll bounce back real quick So let me give it a few weeks and they don't like clockwork less work work better for me So it's very insidious. So consider that if you're in a similar situation, you know something I didn't tell him to do that I did That I remember I was a lot of my peers were kind of criticizing I thought was they interesting that they thought this way They were they encouraged me to like get on stage right away like oh and I get why because they're like Get the nerves out see what it's like. Just who cares what you look like just do the next show You can get on to and I didn't I wanted to win like so I was like I'm not ready, you know I need to prepare so I spent a year of Practicing cutting for a show before I cut for my first show because a lot of Competing is timing it's Learning learning how to manage your calories and your your burn and intake and then how to manipulate that to get your body To peak on a day. It's a lot more than you think it is. Oh, it's weird Like you get when you it's you know what it is It's when you get really lean, you know when you're like 10% 9% you look good at the beach You know holding a couple pounds of water Whether or not your muscles have glycogen or not you can tell but not really you're down to 3% body fat on stage a Little bit of water a little bit of a lack of fullness in your muscles You look like a different person and you'll see people the day before the day after look way better because they missed their timing I mean, so that's I mean what you're saying is like so on point. I think people have no idea They don't realize that when you compete It's not just about all the basics you got to know all that stuff But it's like how do I time this and not just for the day by the way Literally for the morning when I'm doing the pre-judging or what I'm doing I mean, I practice for a year and then I went and did six shows with a course of two years And I tell people that I don't think I ever brought my best physique to stage I always looked better the day before the day after the night of I just it's hard It's really hard to and if you're constantly building and you're manipulating changing things It's very inconsistent and so it's tough to peak Right at that time when you're supposed to so I encourage somebody who's thinking About competing to do a dry run when you don't have to get on stage with that and just say hey I'm gonna try and get the leanest ever got I'm gonna try and get my physique and pick a date and say I'm gonna try and get perfectly shredded at this time and see what happens and what you'll find is I bet you Two days before or two days after or the day before or after you find that your physique ends up looking better And you learn a lot about how your body responds to all those little subtle things you're talking about Hey, if you enjoyed that clip you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe