The Sole Purpose Of Bulking

Bulking is a process of gaining weight and/or mass. The Purpose of bulking is to promote size overall. Today, you will learn why you should bulk, and how to bulk. Let's dive right in.

The reason why people Bulk is to gain size and mass.

Typically done by Bodybuilders and athletes who want to improve their physique and develop more "muscle" when bulking & when they cut (which is the opposite of bulking), they're going to maintain more muscle mass which makes their appearance better and muscular. Sure, this works, but overall, Is it Really Necessary To Bulk to gain size and mass?

Bulking Myth's and Facts

We know that a caloric surplus isn’t necessary to gain muscle.

In research, subjects ranging from overweight police officers[1] to elite gymnasts[2] have been found to gain muscle even while losing weight.

Even trained men with 4+ years of lifting experience have been found to gain 2.3 kg of lean mass in 6 weeks while losing 0.6 kg of fat mass in a study by Burke et al all the way back in 2001.[3]

That’s pretty close to maintenance and very relevant for someone who doesn’t want to cut and bulk.

To make things extra clear, I’ve split your questions into two separate ones:

Q1: “Can I gain muscle without having separate bulking and cutting periods?”

A1: Yes. Definitely. People gain muscle while being in deficits all the time. There is thus no reason to think you can not gain muscle while being closer to maintenance. You should actually gain more.

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Q2: “Is having separate bulking and cutting periods more optimal for muscle growth?”

A2: We actually don’t know. There is very little scientific data comparing bulking tactics. Scientists seem to have other worries than optimizing swollenness.

There do exist some studies we should look at.

Garthe et al 2013[4] compared a moderate caloric surplus with a bigger one. Low and behold:

Just look at that dreamer bulk on the right.

So a bigger surplus seems to lead to more muscle gain. This is also supported by MacKenzie-Shalders et al 2016, a study looking at rugby players which found:

“a significant correlation between total energy intake and gains in lean mass (r = .43, p = .04) was demonstrated”

But, as we can see, a bigger surplus also leads to a pretty huge increase in fat mass.

Bigger increases in fat mass mean 1) a shorter bulk and 2) a longer cut after.

This leaves us with two questions:

Is a more drastic bulk better than a less drastic one for gaining the most muscle over a given period of time?
Is bulking at all more conducive towards gaining the most muscle mass over a given period of time?

We actually don’t know. Eric Helms of Auckland University is doing a study on this at this very moment, but it’s still in the starting phase. It’ll be cool to see the results though. It may lead to a pretty big shift in the industry.

You can gain muscle both bulking and eating at maintenance.

Big surpluses likely lead to fewer total gains over a longer period of time. The cost of that extra fat gain isn’t worth it.
A lean bulk where you gain as little fat as possible—but still eat in a surplus—would likely outperform eating at maintenance.
But if you want to eat at maintenance, stay at the body-fat level you’re currently at—and look sexier than socks on a rooster year round—you can definitely make some great gains that way too.

Footnotes

[1] Effect of a hypocaloric diet, increased protein intake and resistance training on lean mass gains and fat mass loss in overweight police officers.

[2] Ketogenic diet does not affect strength performance in elite artistic gymnasts

[3] The effect of whey protein supplementation with and without creatine monohydrate combined with resistance training on lean tissue mass and muscle s... - PubMed - NCBI

[4] Effect of nutritional intervention on body composition and performance in elite athletes.

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