hey coach am currently doing your jekyl and hyde arms specialization workout, and even though that i like to add some meat to my upper arm i am still unhappy with current body composition so i wa wondering if i eat a calorie surplus on arms days and maintainance on other days while one day a week i do a 24 hour fast so i creat a weekly deficit of about 3000 kcal , would that allow me to drop some flab while gaining some muscle.
thanks.
If you are a non beginner, not using performance-enhancing drugs with normal genetics, you will not be able to add a significant amount of muscle while dropping a significant amount of fat.
It is possible to add “some” muscle while dropping fat but it will be a very slow process and will make things a lot harder.
While what you mention looks good in theory, it’s not how the body works. First of all, muscle is not built primarily on the day you train a muscle but in the 24-48h after the workout has ended. So simply jacking up calories on the day you train hard will not be enough to build muscle maximally on your arms.
Not to mention that your body has a limited capacity to use nutrients to build muscle, especially when you are natural. So there is a limit to increasing calories on one day and getting more muscle growth.
Lastly as I mention growth for a muscle occurs mostly in the 24-48h after a workout has ended. If you trained legs (or chest/back, it doesn’t matter) the day before hitting arms, that extra nutrition will be use in large part to repair the damage from that workout. Not saying it’s a bad thing, just that it is likely not the proper timing to maximize arm growth.
The 24h fast will help you lose fat. Normally it should drop between 0.5 to 0.75lbs maybe up to 1lbs of fat on that day (depending on the amount of glycogen stored in your muscles as well as body size). You will lose a lot more weight though. 5-7lbs. But that is from loss of water and glycogen. The downside of that is that you will be weaker the next day and will have a worst workout.
Honestly I don’t remember that program at all. So I don’t know if it is a specialization program over 3 days, 2 days or 1 big day. So it’s hard for me to make recommendations.
But with the approach you mentioned what you can realistically achieve is a drop of 0.75 - 1lbs of fat per week while building a little bit of muscle, but necessarily targeted on your arms.
WHILE i’M NOT A HUGE FAN OF CHASING TWO RABBITS AT THE SAME TIME (I prefer to focus on one goal, achieve it then move on… so go with your priority, trying to achieve two things at once pretty much always lead to unsatisfactory results) I’ll at least give you one recommendation for you plan.
If you really want to focus on your arms, calories should be increased from the end of the arms workout up to about 24h after it. So if your workout is at 4pm and ends at 5:30pm then the period where you increase your calories would be from 5:30am on arms day up to 5:30pm the next day.
For the sake of illustration we will assume a maintenance level of 2500 calories per day.
In the 24h from 5:30 on arms day to 5:30 the day day you would consume 3750 calories… so let’s say 1750 calories from 5:30 on arms day to bedtime at 10pm. Then 2000 calories from breakfast (let’s day at 7am) up to 5:30pm the next day. This means that it would leave you 500 calories from 5:30pm to bedtime. On arms day the day until 4:00pm would be the same as on your maintenance day, so let’s say that you had 1250 calories from 7am to 4pm.
To make it simpler…
ARMS DAY
From 07:00 to 4:00pm = 1250 calories
From 5:30 to bedtime = 1750 calories
NEXT DAY
From 07:00 to 5:30pm = 2000 calories
From 5:30 to bedtime = 500 calories
Of course adjust the numbers based on your maintenance level.
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wow to think you took that much of your time to answer a member , your are really one of the most humble coaches . the program actually have a three day model:heavy loading,density loading and volume loading while doing lower volume for other muscle groups but i guess ill go on to tackle the fat first then when i am sub 10 percent bodyfat i ll work on arm specialization.
thank so much