Long-term programming for physique

For context, my goals are aesthetic (losing fat + improved physique) and getting stronger. I have no plans to compete in Powerlifting or any other competitions. Also, to be clear, I have no interest in looking like a bodybuilder.

After grinding it out in LP for too long, I’m currently in week 7 of The Bridge. I’m planning on running the GPP Hypertrophy template next, followed by the HLM template.

In other words, I’ve got my programming planned out for the next few months, and I’m starting to think about what my programming may look like longer term. One option would be to try running the Hypertrophy and HLM templates back to back until I stop seeing progress. Have folks tried this? How has it gone for you?

More generally, for intermediate lifters with goals similar to mine, what does your programming look like? What do you think it may look like a year from now?

You could probably run GPP Hypertrophy and HLM back-to-back until you stop responding to that and then go over to (the soon to be released template) 4x/week Hypertrophy and 12 Week Strength.

I’m confused by your goals. It sounds like your main goal is to be “aesthetic” but “have no interest in looking like a bodybuilder”. I’m not really sure what that means. Could you please be more specific in your goals? If you’re looking purely for aesthetics then there are better alternatives out there (of course, at a tradeoff of more aesthetic focus means less strength focus). While you will get some nice aesthetic upgrades from BBM programming, it’s more of a side dish as opposed to the main course. If I were you I would probably create a more descriptive/comprehensive list of goals ordered by priority. With that we may be able to direct you down the proper path to achieving your goal set. Your goals as listed are not totally clear; we cannot give you advise on how to best achieve your goals if we aren’t totally sure what they are exactly.

If you have serious body comp changes to make then you have to cut and bulk until you’re reasonably close to your aesthetic goals.

My general strategy that I’ve pieced together from the internet-- ie BBM, RTS, Powerlifting to Win, JTS, and even Mike Matthews is:

If you’re over 15% bf, cut 1-2 lbs/wk until you’re under, or until your weight loss plateaus or your strength dips too much. This usually means 10-20 weeks. Then reverse diet until you’re at maintenance. Stay there for 1-3 months. Then cut or bulk.

If you’re under 15% bf bulk less than 1 lb/wk until you’re a little over. The more advanced you are the slower you should gain.

Generally you need breaks from pure strength work. These are called pivots. Ideally youll make weight changes on pivots and maintain on strength cycles. Fortunately BBM makes this pretty easy. Their pivot blocks are the endurance and hypertrophy templates.

So if you have more than a little weight to lose you might run GPP endurance followed by GPP hypertrophy on a cut. Otherwise you might do a 7 week cut running one of them. On a bulk you might mostly bulk on gpp hypertrophy but also gain a little weight on the strength templates before and after. Something like: Bridge 2.0 and gain 2 lbs, GPPH and gain 5 lbs, 12 week strength and gain 3 lbs.

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@FredM I’ll give a quicker bulk a shot once I’m finished with this quick cut. If I even end up with close to the same 2:1 fat/muscle ratio I got this time on a quicker bulk it would be a success. I was thinking about giving their powerbuilding group programming a shot in my next gaining phase, that looks like a royal butt ton of volume so that would likely have good synergy with a fairly aggressive bulk. I’ll also be starting back fairly lean again as well, back to about 10% or so via Navy Method. So we shall see.

Fred- I think I’d have to disagree with your assessment of BBM’s “Recomp” for skinny fat. I don’t think they really advocate a recomp. They advocate reducing waist measurement below 40"… 37" or lower ideally. That should be the primary goal of NLP not the strength gain for an overweight person. NLP only lasts a few months… its not that important in overall training. Adding some LISS and eventually maybe some HiiT and sacrificing some strength progress most likely is a reasonable suggestion if waist is over 40". Calorie manipulation may or may not fall into the equation depending how fast fat is being shed.

Now skinny fat could also be defined as a a male with a 38" waist and weak. This person would be treated differently. As NLP progressed some conditioning would be added but not as aggressively. You would expect that fat loss would occur, especially in the beginning, as muscle is added.

Now the argument could be made that if you started at 37" and bulked up to 42 or 44 then cut back down and repeated the resultant cycles would result in a larger total lean mass gain compared to sensible eating and hovering between 35 and 37. Problem. I’m aware of no research or papers that show this is optimal. (Outside of exogenous steroidal use) Couple that with the health risks of being over 40"… Why do it?

I’m not sure who you’re disagreeing with. I didn’t define skinny fat (having >40" waist is just fat for MOST men), so your two examples aren’t representative of anything I said.

And Jordan’s recommendation for anyone with less than a 40" waist on the SS forums was always to recomp or gain weight. I don’t think his recommendations on this forum have changed all that much. If you really need to to find examples I can, but maybe try the search function first.

Like PWard I’m skinny fat with a 35" waist. I’m 5’ 11", weigh 190 lbs, and my 35" waist still represents a noticeable gut. I also have man boobs. Telling me to recomp (which Jordan did on SS forums when I was even bigger) is basically telling me to be unhappy with my body and relatively weak for… I dunno… basically the rest of my life.

Jordan and Austin themselves (and Mike T) have said numerous times intermediate programming is about muscle mass. If you’re skinny fat, you don’t have enough of it. I’m not going to magically lose my man boobs and bench 3 plates by recomping from here. Even though the Navy method is telling me I’m 16-17% bf and my waist is well below the 40" “danger zone,” I need to lose weight right now before I can gain it. I could of course take the SS path instead and bulk till I"m 240 and 30% bf. Even though I’ll be adding mostly fat, I will still be adding enough muscle mass to accomplish my strength goals most likely. But I don’t feel like being miserable for 3 years and getting divorced.

So as I said. If you have more than a trivial amount of body composition changes to make (replacing more than a trivial amount of fat with more than a trivial amount of muscle) recomp is a losers game, IMO – yet I see bbm recommend it all the time.

I don’t think they really recommend recomp in the way you suggest but more so if weight loss is not the immediate goal aka 38-39 or up waist then maintaining while training can have significant effects to untrained individuals then won’t trained aka intermediate or late novice you can choose your own body composition goals .

im current 5 10”. 208 @ 36 1/2 waists don’t consider myself fat or chubby . Albeit I’m not lean . Your perspective can have a lot of affect here too .

If if I were you I would cut to 12ish % or low 30 waist then slow bulk up over a few years take it 50 Cala at a time . Nothing good comes from fast changes

I don’t care if weight loss is your immediate goal lol. Listen, basically everyone I’ve ever seen on the nutrition forums has the same problem as me. Maybe they’re not “skinny fat.” Maybe they’re happier with their body comp than I am. But they all essentially want to replace X amount of fat with Y amount of muscle. Not only that, but X=Y for quite a significant few of them. I see Jordan recommend recomp to those people all the time. Again, if you disagree, try the search function. You’ll find them. Maybe you’ll even find me. The people that are super skinny or have >40" waist don’t ask as many questions because, again, the protocol is very well defined. The rest of us are left to scour the internet for advice. Many of us fell into the SS trap of gaining weight even when were >20% bf and aren’t happy with results

I’m suggesting recomp is a bad recommendation. Maybe even for the novice population. I disagree with it. Having spent a lot of time trying to get stronger while not bulking or cutting, I can tell you – this sh** is just a whole lot easier and more rewarding when you’re gaining weight. It’s a bad recommendation because it’s a waste of your most productive muscle building state. The more novice you are the more efficiently you can add muscle. So why on earth would you try to get stronger while you aren’t adding a significant amount of muscle (unless you’re Jordan/Austin and happy with the amount of muscle you already have)?

Your recommendation is pretty random and I’ll have to ignore it. I physically can’t have a 30" waist. Even when I was 165 lbs in HS my waist was 32". I disagree with your crazy slow bulk strategy as well. The math doesn’t work out. I’m maybe 19% bf at 190 lbs. I want to be closer to 15% bf at 200 lbs. The math dictates I have at least a few more bulk and cut cycles in my future. I do agree it’ll take me a few years though :confused: