How to Lean Bulk

Check out my client Courtney’s transformation where he lost a whole bunch of fat.

Is it possible to build massive muscles without gaining much fat, so you can look bulky and shredded at the same time?

Yes, it totally is and today I’m gonna show you exactly how to do a lean bulk with this step by step guide.

I spent a lot of time doing both clean bulks and dirty bulks and I could say for sure that the results produced by each of these methods are completely different.

With a dirty bulk, you’re obviously going to have the advantage of enjoying yourself a lot more during the bulking process.

You can get away with foods like candy ice cream chips To the point where it may not even feel like your dieting at all.

But with a lean bulk, you’re going to know that you’re dieting. Even though you’ll be feeling full you’re going to be sticking to good high-quality sources of food.

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The type of food that most people would associate with dieting. So where do we start? Well, first of all, we got to pick our goal.

I know a lot of people are telling you that you can build muscle and burn fat at the exact same time

and even though this sounds very appealing its simply not true if you’ve already gone through that beginner stage of lifting weights.

After what we call the Neubie gains phase…after that passes you’re going to have to pick a goal and actually stick to it.

When we do a lean bulk our main goal has to be to bulk, the goal is to put on muscle and the secondary goal is to limit the amount of fat that you gain throughout that whole process.

This is kind of comparable to having the main goal of cutting while trying to minimize muscle loss as much as possible during your cut.

It’s very important to set our primary goal and think of it in this way because when you’re bulking you will always put on at least a little bit of body fat

I don’t care what anyone else is telling you a proper bulk requires a calorie Surplus and a calorie Surplus will make you gain some body fat.

The point is to minimize the amount of fat gained. That is what I would define as a successful lean bulk.

To find out exactly how many calories you can use my free macro calculator on gravity transformation.com. or an even easier way to do it would be to multiply your weight by 15.

If your goal is just to bulk and you don’t really care about gaining fat then you can multiply your weight by 18.

You would also be better off multiplying your weight by 18 if you’re a hardgainer. But multiplying by 15 is a really great starting point for a lean bulk for most people.

Whether you simply multiply your weight by 15 or use let’s say the most Advanced calorie calculator in the whole world the number you get is still not going to be 100% accurate this is merely a starting point.

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You’re going to have to adjust that number based on how your body responds. If you notice that you’re gaining a lot if fat, then your Surplus number is probably a little too high.

If you’re staying too lean and I can’t even if mass then you could probably raise that number higher.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to find out for sure without a little bit of trial and error to treat the number that you get as your starting point.

During a lean bulk, you’re going to stick to mostly single-ingredient real Foods. Now even though you could bulk with a If It Fits your Macros type of strategy.

Every time that I’ve done If It Fits your Macros to bulk and I’ve eaten some sloppy cheat Foods but made them fit my macros,

I’ve gotten worse results than what I would get when I would actually keep my diet clean while still maintaining a high amount of calories.

So the best foods to do a lean bulk with are protein sources like eggs especially egg whites, chicken breast, ground turkey, shrimp, and all Whitefish.

If you’re a vegetarian you can go for sources like seitan, black bean, and mung bean pasta, spirulina, and nutritional yeast.

For carbs stick to low glycemic sources like brown rice, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, grits, Ezekiel bread, quinoa, buckwheat, couscous, beans, legumes, and barley.

And then for fat stick to good sources like olive oil, fish oil, avocados, and other good sources of fat.

To bulk, I recommend that you stick to a diet moderately high in protein moderately high in carbs and moderately low in fat.

For protein just to keep it simple we’re going to keep it one gram of protein per pound of body weight 

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but you can drop lower for example three-quarters of a gram of protein per pound of body weight while bulking should work fine.

For fat, a simple way to figure it out is to multiply your weight by .3. This is going to give you a relatively low figure for your fat number.

And you can definitely bulk up with a higher fat diet but I always preferred a higher carb diet for bulking because it helps give you the energy to push yourself during your anaerobic lifts.

So with weight training, you’re able to lift progressively heavier and heavier loads which ultimately leads to more protein synthesis for Naturals and results with you building more muscle.

My bulking plans would always have a lot higher carbs than even protein and pretty low fat.

So we’re looking at roughly a 40-40-20 split. Even though this is an old-school split I still think it’s the best way to bulk.

But if you are carb sensitive you may want to adjust your macro split. I would give it at least two to four weeks though before making adjustments.

And when you do adjust if you’re just in your calories you can incrementally adjust it by 250 calories.

So for example, if you’re gaining too much fat you could try to decrease your total calorie intake by 250.

If you’re not gaining enough muscle you can see if upping your total calories by 250 can help you gain more muscle without gaining too much fat.

Even though bulking is primarily about diet we should talk about your workout as well. It’s not really necessary to do cardio during a lean bulk even though a lot of people think it is.

You can just decrease the number of calories that you’re eating and get the same effects as if you did cardio to burn those calories.

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if you want to be able to eat more food which is typically not the case when you’re bulking correctly then you could add on cardio.

But once again I can’t really picture a scenario where you’re eating a surplus of calories and you’re still so hungry that you have to add cardio in.

With your workouts, you want to focus primarily on heavy weight training. Shooting for about five to eight reps for all your heavy compound lifts.

Stick to exercises that involve the use of barbells dumbbells and only to machines that have a totally free range of motion.

Those are going to be the most effective for building muscle. Try to hit each muscle group at least twice a week.

when we’re strictly talking about gaining muscle split training is going to work better than working your whole body during one workout.

I used to have two favorite split training structures that I would follow. The original one was chest shoulders and triceps in one day.

the next day would be legs. And the following day would be back and biceps. Then I would take a day off and repeat.

The second split that I think ultimately gave me more results was an opposing muscle group split.

It would be chest and back in one day then legs the next day and finally shoulders biceps and triceps.

then again I would take a day off and repeat. Whenever bulking was my main goal I would be in the gym 6 days a week.

again guys I know that doesn’t sound as glamorous as being the gym 3 days a week but

if you’re a natural and you’re trying to stimulate more protein synthesis to build more muscle you’re going to have to use frequency of training to your advantage.

obviously, don’t train if you’re really sore or you need an extra day off but I highly recommend you’re hitting every one of your muscle groups at least twice a week.

that’s it guy’s I really hope this tip has helped you out visit my website gravity transformation.com where you can get done for you workout and diet plans that are proven to work

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My passion for fitness began when I was 14 years old. I naturally fell in love with training and haven’t stopped since. At 18 years I acquired my first personal training certification from ACE after which I opened my first of 3 transformation studios in 2011. I love to share my knowledge through personal training, my online courses, and youtube channel now with over 3,000,000 subscribers! I can happily say that we've helped over 15,000 people get in great shape over the years. I'm always here for my customers so if you need help don't hesitate to send your questions to support@gravitychallenges.com

Founder // Gravity Transformation, Max Posternak