How do I bulk? “Eat way more.”
When most newbie lifters ask the big guy in the weight room how to bulk up, everyone gets that response. While “eat more” isn’t the answer you want to hear, if you want to get big, you need to eat more.
It’s really the best way to gain weight.
You’ve got to up the calories if you want to gain weight, but you must also work out right. Muscle doesn’t grow without calories.
We’ll teach you how to develop muscle the right way, since you’re probably not going to the gym to lose it. This article will teach you all there is to know about bulking and how to do it properly.
How Do I Bulk Up?
Bodybuilders have used the term “bulking up” since Arnold Schwarzenegger motivated an entire generation to hit the gym. While the term “bulking” may conjure up pictures of a muscular-bound lifter in a stringer tank, it merely refers to the process of gaining lean muscle mass over time.
Bulking has nothing to do with gaining weight. The distinction is crucial: adding muscle to your frame will boost your weight on the scale, whereas gaining excess fat will move the weight up without necessarily improving your appearance in the mirror.
In principle, increasing muscle mass is straightforward, but in fact, it can be difficult. In both the kitchen and the weight room, a proper bulk necessitates attention to detail. Fortunately, everything boils down to simple math when it comes to the fundamentals of weight gain.
Caloric Intake
You must consume more calories than your body burns on a regular basis to bulk up. Thermodynamics can’t be ignored. It’s impossible to gain lean body mass without a calorie surplus unless you’re brand new to lifting or have been gone for an extended period of time.
Increasing your calorie surplus will result in faster weight gain, but you’ll likely hit diminishing returns in terms of extra muscle gain. According to research, a moderate calorie surplus of 300–500 additional calories per day is sufficient to gain “healthy” weight. Some people may require a little more or a little less, but this is an excellent place to start.
Keep your expectations for muscle building in check, even if you have the correct calorie surplus.
Macronutrients
The rate at which you gain weight is determined by the number of calories you consume, but the quality of that weight is determined by its composition. For well over 50 years, broad protein guidelines have remained unaltered, however recent research has mainly concluded that increasing dietary protein above normal recommendations has a positive dose-response connection with muscle gain.
If you want to grow muscle, you need include enough carbohydrates in your calorie diet. While carbs, contrary to popular opinion, have no direct effect on scale weight, they do have a significant impact on resistance exercise performance, which is the trigger for muscle gain. (3)
While dietary fat is less crucial for muscle growth than protein, it is the most calorically rich macronutrient. Fat has a calorie density of nine per gram, making it a highly efficient technique of achieving your calorie goal. Because fat is found in most meat, poultry, and dairy items and is less satiating than protein, it’s simple to eat too much of it.
To change your weight, you must consume enough calories each week. Your calorie intake must be correctly regulated to ensure that weight increase is predominantly lean mass and not spare fat. Your diet is also influenced by your “training age,” or the number of years you’ve spent lifting.
According to research, the further along you get in lifting, the more precise your diet must be. If you’re fresh to the gym, you have the luxury of being more free with your calorie surplus, which advanced bodybuilders don’t have.
I recommend this calculator to calculate how many calories you need.
Training For Gains
Because calories and macronutrients are the building blocks of muscle growth, training is how you put them to work. You can end up with a big pile of bricks and no building to show for it if you don’t follow the appropriate workout routine.
The first few years of lifting will almost always produce wonderful and addictive outcomes, but they will drop off soon after that.
To keep progressing as an intermediate lifter, you’ll need to become more sophisticated with your lifting.
And, once again, if you want to see bigger improvements, you must make each lifting session more difficult.
Some people who are satisfied with their current degree of muscularity might train at the same intensity and eat the same foods to achieve a specific look or performance.
And that’s good, but don’t expect to get big and bulky by doing the same routines. This is a huge part of how to bulk.
More Isn’t Always More
Muscle growth is correlated with exercise volume, according to one of the most well-supported research in physical training. Simply put, pushing your body to work harder in the gym will result in more muscular growth.
However, this is only true to a certain extent. Individual tolerance for lifting amounts varies greatly, and it’s difficult to fill a cup that’s already full. In fact, adding more sets when you’re barely keeping up with your current effort might be counterproductive, even halting muscular growth.
While bulking allows you to increase your volume and generate bigger gains, it’s not the only way to get cannonball delts and sliced hamstrings. Adding a few specialist techniques like drop sets or cluster work, as well as increasing the intensity of complex exercises and reducing rest durations, might help your gains even more.
Remember, you want to train with intensity, however if you train too hard, you can end up getting hurt. Know your limits.
Muscle Recovery For Bulking
Your workout is only as good as your recovery. The hours between entering and exiting your gym are when muscle is rebuilt, making it bigger and stronger.
Skeletal muscle needs between 48 and 72 hours to recover after a bout of resistance training, and possibly longer if you’re in your over 40. To that aim, make sure you’re not lifting weights for at least one or two days every week. You can still do some active recovery or mobility exercises to make your next session even better than the one before it.
Bulking Supplements For Bodybuilding
Gyms all across the world would go out of business if a picture-perfect physique could be found in a pill or a tub. Fortunately for gym owners — and regrettably for the rest of us — achieving the body of your dreams involves a lot of hard work and heavy lifting.
If you’ve got your diet and training down, there are some effective bulking supplements to consider:
Pre-Workout For Bulking:
Beyond Raw Lit:
Beyond Raw Lit is one of the best pre workouts, period.
Why? Because of its concentration on brain-boosting substances known as “nootropics,” or smart medications.
As I mentioned in my Beyond Raw LIT review, it contains a potent combination of brain-boosting chemicals that have been proved to improve focus, memory, and mood.
This is an excellent pre-workout pill for anyone who wants additional energy and focus without feeling overburdened.
Of course, it still gets you energized and juiced up for the gym, it doesn’t just make your brain function better.
Beyond raw lit is one of my favorite items on the market:
If you look at the ingredients, you’ll notice that they’ve included some of the best, most potent nootropics to help you focus and think more clearly.
It contains a significant amount of caffeine, beta alanine for pumps, creatine monohydrate, and, most importantly, brain-enhancing components.
Creatine For Bulking
In the fitness industry, creatine has a well-deserved reputation. Creatine monohydrate is in practically every supplement stack on the market for a reason: it’s safe and effective.
Creatine is an extremely effective supplement for building muscle, mass, and strength. There’s tons of science backing this, too. In fact, it’s one of my favorite fitness supplements to take.
Creatine is arguably the top supplement for increasing strength, meaning it’s one of the best for athletes, especially football players. It helps us gain good weight, be strong, and be muscular.
Supplement Clinical Research
One study by the University of Oklahoma found that creatine improved “high-intensity anaerobic peak power” by 19.6% in TRAINED athletes. [2]
Researchers stated:
“Our findings indicate that creatine, supplemented concurrently with resistance and anaerobic training, may positively affect cell hydration status and enhance performance variables further than augmentation seen with training alone.”
The way creatine works is by increasing ATP output, which is pretty much your body’s ability to exert energy and force.
In other words, creatine is probably one of the most important weight gaining supplements for football.
Benefits of Creatine
As I said before, creatine is one of the best weight gaining supplements for football. It also helps you get stronger and heavier. It can also help with speed because it increases your endurance.
Creatine Benefits:
- Increases muscle ATP
- Helps you gain weight
- Gives you more energy
- Improves strength
In short, taking creatine is one of the fastest ways to speed up muscle growth, weight gain, and enhance athletic performance.
Check Current PriceMass Gainer For Bulking
Mass gainers, as their name implies, can be quite beneficial for growing muscular mass, but only if you absolutely require them. The whole point of mass gainers is to help you get calories faster.
Think about it, when you’re bulking your body needs a high caloric intake. Eating 6 meals a day is hard, so you can cut it down to around 4 with a mass gainer.
Mass Gainer Benefits:
- Helps you gain weight
- Gives you more calories
- Improves strength
Mass gainer isn’t 100% required, but it is certainly helpful when you’re eating 4-5,000 calories a day on a serious bulk.
SARMS For Bulking
Woah look at these results! These are absolutely incredible! What do I take to get results like this? A little secret supplement called SARMs. I wrote a full review on SARMs, and I strongly recommend you check it out.
These supplements are great for bodybuilding because of their protein-based molecular structure, which allows them to provide many of the benefits of steroids with FAR less negative effects.
Let me show you how safe they are:
Supplement Clinical Research:
Study Says SARMs Are Very Safe
One scientific study conducted by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine, found that SARMs present an unprecedented opportunity to improve physical function, bone health, and strength gains, without causing many of the negative side effects steroids are known for:
“The last decade has witnessed unprecedented discovery effort to develop selective androgen receptor modulators that improve physical function and bone health without adversely affecting the prostate and cardiovascular outcomes. SARMs hold promise as a new class of function promoting anabolic therapies for a number of clinical indications, including functional limitations associated with aging and chronic disease, frailty, cancer cachexia, and osteoporosis.”
SARMs are great for bulking because they are known to pack on tons of muscle and shred fat. You ultimately gain about twice the amount of muscle than fat lost, so it’s pretty common to see 30 pound gains in a couple months. SARMs, especially RAD-140 is a great way of how to bulk.
Bulking Mistakes
Knowing how to bulk appears to be as simple as piling your plate high with your favorite high calorie meals. In reality, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes of an effective weight-gain program than meets the eye. However, there are a few potential mistakes to be aware of.
Some people find it easier to stick to a diet based on restriction rather than abundance. A caloric “limit” is simple enough: you’re only allotted a specific number of calories each day.
However, while going above your caloric target isn’t as technically damaging to your goals when bulking up, it’s far too easy to do so. Since you’re aiming to gain weight, an additional scoop (or tub) of ice cream at night may seem insignificant. Playing fast and loose with your caloric ceiling over time can result in significantly more additional body fat at the end of your bulk than you intended.
Remember, we’re bulking but not adding tons of fat.
How To Bulk- The Big Picture
Muscle isn’t easy to come by. It’s unlikely to come if you’re not eating right or training hard enough. It takes a lot of patience and dedication, as well as the correct supplements, to build an excellent physique.
All those extra meals will add up to more inches on your arms, chest, and thighs if you approach bulking the proper way – by eating enough, working out like you mean it, and prioritizing your recovery. Muscle gain is never easy, but it is always worthwhile.
If you want to take your physique to the next level, then definitely consider buying my top tier workout program: “Workout of The Gods“
It’s SPECIFICALLY designed to get you a greek god like physique that is guaranteed to turn heads and earn you respect.
You’ll feel more alpha, more respected, and you’ll get tons of female attention. Imagine yourself in those shoes for just a second.
