Hey Jordan,
I was wondering if you generally agree that bulking and cutting cycles are the best way to put on strength and muscle?
If you do, when would you have people generally stop gaining and losing weight? For example, I’m male, 5’10", 24 years old, ~184 lbs, and ~35" waist. Based on this info would you recommend bulking or cutting and why? If you were to recommend bulking, when would I stop and transition into cutting weight? Similarly, if you were to recommend cutting, when would you recommend I stop losing weight? I’m guessing this would be based on waist measurements but I’d love your take on this topic.
If you think that bulking and cutting cycles are not the best method for putting on strength and muscle, what is your go-to approach for someone in my demographic?
Thanks,
Jack
SJ,
Thanks for the post and welcome to the forum.
As far as what are the best ways to put on muscle and gain strength, here’s the most optimal scenario and anything else is a compromise:
Demographic
18-25 year old male, slightly underweight, played many sports in high school in a town of 40-99,000
Independently wealthy
No past medical history
Heterozygous for Myostatin knock out gene
Homozygous for fully functioning ACTN 1 and 3 genes
Low second to fourth digit ratio
Environment
Live within walking distance of black iron gym
Consistently gain weight while being exposed to progressively overloaded training
Excellent coaching
Drugs
As far as your case, you’re underweight. Cutting doesn’t help anyone gain strength or muscle really, but I suppose that wasn’t really your question. You are underweight currently, however.
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Doesn’t insulin sensitivity decrease as your body-fat percentage increases? I agree that I need to gain wait however if my waist is > 35 inches my body fat percentage would skew further weight gain towards fat and not muscle. For long term results - wouldn’t it make sense to cut for maybe 6-8 weeks to bring my waist down to 33-34 inches. That way my insulin sensitivity would increase and even if I lost 10 lbs during the cut and only weighed 174, I’d be more likely to put on more muscle the subsequent months of training in a hyper-caloric state until my waist hit 35 inches again?