It is a big question I get asked a lot in the Fitness Industry:
Can I build muscle and stay lean at the same time?
People will often hear people refer to a DIRTY BULK - where body builders tend to eat so called "bad food" to increase their calories in order to build muscle. In this blog I am going to be looking at what we should think about as general population that aren't using steroids and generally want to look better, increase muscle mass for a little vanity but also stay lean. Is this possible.... YES.
FIRSTLY - Start by tracking your food, how will you know if your eating too much or too little unless you track your calories and start to understand MACRO Breakdown, this is how much Protein, Carbohydrate and Fat you are consuming per day.
To build muscle you will need to be eating adequate protein to build and repair the muscle tissue as you train.
Here is a video to explain using MY FITNESS PAL.
So here is an example of how to start -
I have a client who is male, 5ft 10 and weighs 75kg he wants to increase his muscle and stay lean to show it off.
He currently eats 2500-2800 calories a day clean food but doesn't track Macros.
He trains cardio approx 700 calories per workout and weight trains upper body x3 per week, Chest & Shoulders, Back & Arms and Abs.
What would my advise be to him to start seeing a difference?
So his daily allowance with an active input which means my fitness pal already gives him an extra 500 calories per day for being active is 2940 per day to gain 0.2kg muscle per week.
That's almost 500 calories more than his current input on his lowest days.
He needs to shift the balance of his training so a maximum of 30 minutes say HIIT a day so probably around 300 calories of cardio then increase his resistance training to 5 days per week with the following split, Legs day, Pull day (Back) a push day so Chest, a Shoulder and core session and a smaller muscle group day so fine tuning say Arms and smaller muscle groups that need work or a Lower back day.
We would then look at his macro split and see if he is eating enough protein to aid growth and recovery, enough carbs to maintain energy and enough fat to stabilise his hormones.
It then becomes a game of trial and error once we have all the data we can then tweak things bit by bit until we find a balance that delivers him his goals.
For example if he wants to do more cardio than I prescribe because he enjoys it I would need to increase his calories even more to warrant this. He isn't seeing a big change in his muscle mass probably due to training intensity, so we may need to look at training to failure and his protein split may need to increase to say 45%.
Everyone adapts and changes differently we are all individuals and no one plan fits all you must learn how your body works by gathering data. When we make any changes we start with the basics then we tweak them to the individual and create our own road map.
You can achieve anything you wish as long as you set small goals and as you hit them you tweak and adapt things to move continuously in the right direction. When building muscle what you do in the gym is very important. You need to learn to move with good form and train to failure once you have mastered these simple principles you can achieve great results.
I have attached a video on training to failure when you train alone.
I can also help you with your nutrition by prescribing you specific plans for your goals and set you programs for the gym.
You can find me on the following:
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