Bulking cycles - T.C. or anyone from Biotest or T-Mag, Can you help me????

If you read the Mag-10 plan for success, it is recommended that you work out for two weeks at very high intensity and then follow it up with two weeks of recovery training.

If you read the Myostat Part II article, the same workout regimen is recommended. The only difference is to cut calories down to +500 for the gaining phase if you’re not using Mag-10.

There seems to be a very high emphasis on this type of training, at least from the Biotest think tank, and that says a lot. I have used it now myself for the better part of 12 weeks. While my gains have been pretty phenomenal, those two “off” weeks KILL me psychologically.

Although it’s mostly in my head, I feel like I’m losing all my newly gained strength, size and stamina. It’s very depressing, folks! Yet when I go back to hitting it hard, I’ve found that I’m actually STRONGER.

My question is this: I don't know too many people from this forum whose bulking cycle is only two weeks. Most are a LOT longer. Why is there such an emphasis on this regimen? Does the body respond better to two-week bulking cycles and two-week recovery cycles? What if you only work out 3 days per week like I do? Do those principles still apply?

If they’re recommending this type of training program for use with Myostat, there must be a good reason for it. It’s even been said by Biotest that the “specifics” of training in this manner can be left up to the individual, but that the important thing is to hit it hard two weeks and then do two weeks of recovery training.

Any advice and/or sharing of experiences would be helpful.

I don’t think the ‘Growth Surge Project’ (GSP) that all this is based on was originally designed with Mag-10 or anything else in mind (I don’t think Mag-10 is even mentioned in the article). It just turns out that a bottle of Mag-10 lasts 2 weeks and so fits perfectly into the scheme.
What is introduced in the GSP is periodization, i.e. you change intensity and effort and is not really (very careful here) related to ‘bulking’. The idea is to push the limits (or if you want to, slightly overtrain) for two weeks and then allow for recovery for two weeks. The traditional systems work under the assumption that you recover from workout to workout (more or less), thus you practically never see any mentioning of ‘recovery periods’ not to speak about recovery workouts in BB magazines.
So keeping all this in mind, 3 days a week might work but you should keep the volume high.
I suggest you read the GSP for more information.

Coming back to bulking - you might still want to eat more the first week of recovery or even over the entire 4 weeks of one cycle since you should still be supercompensating. But I'd still guess you'll have to cut the carbs a bit. The best indication is taking a scale and some calipers and trying for yourself. There's really no way around.

This of course is all my take on this, Chris Shugart and John Berardi might well disagree :)

Jim’s right… Chris and John designed the Growth Surge training cycle independent of MAG-10 or any idea of androgen use.

As it happened, I’d also arrived at similar conclusions, that it’s most efficient to truly strive for growth only at limited, targeted times, such as for 2 weeks at a time, rather than every week or most weeks.
The Growth Surge Project is theirs, but it’s not very dissimilar to my own thoughts.

And as you said, it happened to fit in well also with the androgen cycling plan that was already a preferred method in many circumstances (and I think always preferred if a person is not going to be using recovery agents, as many MAG-10 users will not be.)

Thank you both for the great responses.

After much inner thought and using the responses you both have given me and re-reviewing the Growth Surge articles, I’ve come to a conclusion on how to train. I figured I’d share with you what I’m going to do and you could comment, if you’d like.

My bulking stage will last 3 weeks, only because I train 3x per week and have little chance of overtraining. My recovery period will be one week.

The first week off of recovery (first week on bulking) I will increase all my lifting weights by about 5% and cut the sets by one third. I did this yesterday, and found that I was quite fresh and able to move up in all the weights.

The second week I will attempt to do the same weight levels as the prior week, only this time I will attempt to do the full load of sets.

By the third week, if all goes well, my body should now be ready to attack a full set load with even greater poundage. Then it’s back to recovery.

Once again, thank you for your input.