Just received a message alert from AM 640 Radio (local Toronto station) that read:

“Mark McGwire admits using steroids when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998. Sent 3:13pm

Makes for an interesting prelude to the Olympic games.

BP

False Advertising or just perpetuating a myth?

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I thought you might enjoy the conversation I had over the holidays. Great questions from Andrew who really helped me spell out my theories on muscle building.

BP

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Hey Brad, I’m a big lover of Eat Stop Eat, and a massive proponent of many of your thoughts and theories, so don’t take any of this as confrontational or second guessing in nature, I just wondered which variables you would manipulate in order to gain LBM most effectively whilst following the ESE lifestyle?

Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m sure I’ve seen you comment that you don’t believe eating much above your BMR is necessary, neither is excessive protein intake or mega dosing your peri-workout nutrition. So I guess my real question is, if you HAD TO gain say 5-10lbs of skeletal muscle as quickly as possible, naturally, and assuming you’re already training using a program with built in progressive overload, which nutritional variables would you tweak? Would love to know exactly how you would go about it. Thanks for reading, and have a great New Year!

Great Question! If I had to gain 5-10 pounds of Skeletal muscle as quickly as possible, I’d be screwed. I’m 32 and have been training for over 15 years. Without drugs, I’m not putting on another ten pounds of skeletal muscle. Another ten pounds would put me well above the normal range for my height. Now, I can put on 10 pounds of lean mass…I could do that in an hour or two…add ten pounds to my bench/squat/deadlift/clean…I could do that too..maybe over the course of a year, but ten pounds of actual muscle, not happening.

B

OK, apologies. Allow me to rephrase the question if you will. What if you were 21, 180 lbs @ 5′9” and had all the time in the world to eat, sleep and train? How would you then optimally add actual muscle, whilst adhering (possibly the wrong word, I don’t even see ESE as something you need to adhere to, it’s so easy!) to Eat Stop Eat?

Ah…Ok that’s way more fun.

I’d do stuff you can do for high volume, that is taxing on the big muscles and that doesn’t break you down. I would workout in the gym 2-3 times a week working the muscles but not blowing myself apart. But that wouldn’t be the big stuff, the big stuff would be 2 times a week outside with a couple of buddies doing a combination of sled dragging and farmers walks. Each session would be two to three hours long. The goal wouldn’t be to burn out, or to be a sweaty mess, but just to do lots of work.

At 21 I wouldn’t rule out ‘eating big’ since their is probably still some juvenile muscle growth going on…but I would still ‘temper’ it with Eat Stop Eat.

I’m still not convinced that a 5?9? frame can add 10 more pounds of straight muscle (depending on how long you’ve been training for), but based on my experience this would be how I’d try to get there.

Thanks for the response. Great advice, much appreciated!

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Building more Muscle.

Considering some of the things happening in the news today, I thought this was timely. Biggest mistake we make with regards to building muscle is false expectations of what is actually possible.

Hi Brad!

I read almost every article u wrote, and your view is very impressive.
But I have 1 question (maybe off topic, sorry)
You say the amount of protein is not so important, the quality of the food is not so important (ok avoid crap), 2-3 workout per week is enough to keep or build muscle.
What is then the mistake what most of the average  gym rat make?
Ok we can see some real life example like you, but every competitive bodybuilder use (or they lie) the old method (6-8 meals, lot of protein above 300 grams, lot of training, cardio everyday) and not only for the end of the preparation, but from the beginning.

Hey Wood,

The average gym rat makes the mistake of thinking they can get ’steroid-like’ growth without taking steroids, plain and simple.

I don’t think bodybuilders lie when they say they eat 8 meals a day, protein above 300 grams, lots of training and Cardio. I think this is 100% true.

I’ll even admit that this might be the right way to do things when you are on 3 grams of test a week, combined with some GH and Insulin, plus maybe a little Clenbuterol.

And, I’ll also admit that there is a possibility that even the non-bodybuilder-guys who use a “small amount of drugs” like cover models (and I suspect even before and after models), might benefit from eating this way.

I’m no expert when it come to drugs and the way they alter nutrient needs.

But for normal, non-drug using adult human beings it is your genetics combined with your training that determines how much muscle you can add, your protein intake and food quality has very little to do with it. They still plays a role mind you, just not the role that advertisers would make you think.

Bottom line: You can NOT get drug like effects from powdered protein.

BP

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I do not think that we will progress in our understanding of the science behind muscle growth until we begin to openly discuss the use of anabolic steroids.

As far I am concerned there is only 1 thing that has shown a clear, reproducible dose-response relationship with muscle size in humans (other than height).

It’s not protein or calories. It’s not even workout length, weight lifted or even Growth Hormone.

While all these things may (or may not) play a role, the only thing that has a clear dose response relationship is testosterone.

We know some athletes use it. We know some recreational lifters use it. We know some fitness models use it. We even know that some h0llywood celebrities use it. (I’m saying ’some’ to keep me out of trouble).

We also know that for various reasons a large percentage of these people lie about using it.

This skews all of our data.

Because people lie about using steroids we have no idea what the natural limitations of the human body are. It is a GIANT confounding variable in the study of exercise and muscle growth.

For instance:

Eating high amounts of protein has been a giant let down for most people, so why is it still be touted as a muscle builder? Well, maybe protein works differently for guys and girls who are on 2,500 mg of Testosterone per week.

Eating big? A great way to make you fat. UNLESS…more calories may actually mean more muscle when you are using D-bol and Trenbolone.

It always kills me when I hear big guys (typically power lifters) tell little guys that the key to getting big is to eat McDonalds 8 times a day. For some reason they leave out the side order of Anadrol.

Without mentioning the steroids, the ‘prescription’ for getting huge muscles is also the exact same prescription for becoming an obese North American.

Now, I’m not advocating steroid use, but what I am saying is that to truly start to understand what causes muscle growth, we need everyone to be open about steroid use.

This is why most fitness magazines are useless, as are most fitness websites. Having people tell you about their awesome new workout that helped them put on 30 pounds of muscle without telling you about their new steroid stack that went along with the workout is just useless information.

As is ‘muscle building advice’ from guys who have been the exact same weight for the last 5 years.

The bottom line is that we are not nearly as far along in understanding muscle growth as we would like to believe, and we are not going to move forward until steroids are openly discussed.

BP

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I spend a lot of my time reviewing research. Enough time that I can tell you that there are definitely GREAT research papers, and then there are HORRIBLE ones that make you scratch your head trying to figure out how they ever were published in the first place.

Truthfully there are many more papers that seem to fall in the horrible category the truth is, even the worst paper ever published still has some value.

There is no such thing as research with absolutely no value.

While these seems like a typical ‘Pilon ramble’ let me assure you…we’re talking about bodybuilding.

You see for some reason, over the last decade we decided that bodybuilding is dumb, useless, and a complete waste of time.

We junked bodybuilding and replaced it with functional training, sports specific training and the like.

We threw out bodybuilding before we completely understood it.

And just like research papers, there is no such thing as a completely useless type of exercise.

There are things to be learned from bodybuildling.

Good things.

**Before I go any further I need to be clear..there is next to NO research on bodybuilding.

Everything you read on line or in magazines is nothing more than theories and conjecture.

What I’m about to write is no different – these are my theories on bodybuiding.**

Body building and weight training are NOT the same thing – they are close cousins maybe, but they are not interchangeable.

Weight training involved using your muscles to move a weight.

In power-lifting the goal is to move as much weight as possible. In Olympic lifting the goal is to perfect moving a weight through a certain ‘movement’ as efficiently as possible.

In bodybuilding the goal is to contract your muscles using weight to add some resistance.

Similar but very different.

In fact, while things like Olympic lifting and Power-lifting are definitely ‘weight training’ I am starting to think that body building is ‘muscle training’.

Again – similar, but very different.

I think the difference lies in the mental approach.

Here’s an example.

Stand up and let your arms hang at your sides.

Now, with your arms still hanging flex your biceps as tightly as possible (don’t curl your arms yet, just leave them hanging but flexed).

Keeping that same intense level of flex, slowly curl your arm up at the elbow until its fully curled – concentrating on the flex the entire way.

Pause for a second or two at the top then while keeping your bicep flex, slowly lower your arm back down.

That is a bodybuildling bicep curl.

Now imagine this same degree of concentration while holding a weight.

You are using weight to resist the contraction, but the mindset is all about the contraction and not the weight.

Using this technique, a guy that can curl 60 pound dumbbells for sets of 6-8 may only be able to curl 40-45’s before he has to break his concentration on the contraction and start thinking about moving the weight.

From my experience, you can lift a helluva lot more thinking about the weight then when you are thinking about the muscle…but if you want to make a muscle bigger..then there may be something in this approach.

My random speculation -

In the muscles that grow well for you..I bet you really ‘feel’ the exercises that you normally choose.

For the muscles that don’t grow well for you…I bet you really ‘feel’ the weight.

For me, I feel the contraction in my chest every time I do bench press or dumbbell press.

But shoulder press, I feel the weight moving. I’m strong on this lift, but I just don’t ‘feel’ it in my shoulders.

Coincidentally, my chest is much more developed then my shoulders.

(like I said, we’re theorizing here)

So, if the feel is important, then what do bodybuilders do right?

1) They pick exercises that they feel in the muscles they want to work.

2) They do things like ‘preexhaust’ a muscle to ‘help’ it feel an exericise.

3) They concentrate on the muscle in question during the workout.

All of these techniques are things we through way in favor of becoming Olympic lifting /power-lifting /functional training/athletic training wannabees (not meant to be derogatory, just saying..)

But, if your goal is simply to grow a specific muscle, or group of muscles in order to change the way your body looks, then there may be something we can learn from the way a bodybuilder approaches ‘working a muscle’.

In the end, the answer to losing weight will be to eat less, and the answer to building muscle is working out ‘more’ but this may be one little step towards a better definition of ‘more’.

BP

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