Lean Bulking
I initially started my fitness journey in a bid to lose fat mass. I was always overweight in my childhood, and adolescence, and didn’t really shift this pattern until my late teens / early twenties. So I have always been somewhat susceptible to wanting to remain as lean as possible, whilst gaining muscle mass. Following a decade of experience with all sorts of diet and weight training protocols, if I was asked how to remain lean, whilst maintaining muscle mass, my answer would be simple. Don’t attempt to do it!
The Lean Bulking Phenomenon
In the past decade, smartphone cameras have become even sharper, image-based social media has become more competitive, and as a result, the pressure to remain beach lean all year round is intense for the average lifter. Our perception of what is realistically achievable has been completely warped by professional influencers who must remain lean because their engagement and income depend on it. Steroid and TRT use is higher than ever, as well as the number of influencers who never address the role of these drugs in their lifting journeys. That is one problem.
Another problem is when content creators who are natural conveniently forget what first built their physiques so they have something fresh to talk about. The template is predictable.
Step 1 - Display old pictures of bulks when they “didn’t know any better” and gained a large amount of bodyfat, in addition to muscle mass.
Step 2 - Explain the error of their ways.
Step 3 - Encourage unsuspecting novice and intermediate lifters to do the same.
Alex Leonidas is about the only online fitness content creator who I have heard, that shares my interpretation of this pattern. That being, that the initial ‘dirty bulk’ or traditional bulk was actually pivotal in building muscle mass at the beginning of influencers’ careers, and without it, they never would have attained the size required to make their results from ‘lean-bulking’ appear significant.
However, to state this is not very sexy. It is much more appealing to sell the promise of a strategy that will set you apart from the pack and consistently pack on size while maintaining abs.
The Reality
The reality is that gaining muscle mass, as a natural lifter, is an extremely slow and challenging journey. We can all point to that one buddy who defies this reality, but he is most likely not the one reading articles like this.
In my last bulk, I packed on 8KG over 22 weeks, and I had to scrap for every extra rep on the bar and a few hundred grams increase on the scales. I was eating an enormous amount of calories, and I gained a significant amount of fat mass. But, this bulk was the best I performed and felt in my fitness journey. I was full of energy and loved every second of it. And it was the first time I started looking like I lift when walking around with clothes on. I was getting those remarks about how I obviously train in the gym.
Rewire Your Brain
Attempting to hold onto your abs all year comes from an unhealthy fear of loss and fear of commitment. If left unchecked, these mental blocks can hinder your gains for years.
Sometimes you need to burn the boats, leaving you with no other option but to storm the beach and conquer new territory.
Fat loss at the end of your bulk will be easy, so put your beach-lean physique on hold temporarily to reach new levels of gains. Because the beautiful thing about muscle mass is that once you put in the hard work to build it once, it is much easier to maintain and rebuild if you ever lose it in the future.