I always frame it as 5 years of growth, 5 months of cut. Seems like a good ratio of time to enjoy the eating, progress, gains, etc, if you work hard and can deal with not being shredded.
Even if you end up in the same place as 5 years of careful dieting, leanness, and size, it boils down to what means/path the individual chooses and sticks with.
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
I always frame it as 5 years of growth, 5 months of cut. Seems like a good ratio of time to enjoy the eating, progress, gains, etc, if you work hard and can deal with not being shredded.
Even if you end up in the same place as 5 years of careful dieting, leanness, and size, it boils down to what means/path the individual chooses and sticks with.[/quote]
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
I always frame it as 5 years of growth, 5 months of cut. Seems like a good ratio of time to enjoy the eating, progress, gains, etc, if you work hard and can deal with not being shredded.
Even if you end up in the same place as 5 years of careful dieting, leanness, and size, it boils down to what means/path the individual chooses and sticks with.[/quote]
Thats actually a really good template![/quote]
HA! I’m just flying by the seat of my pants, here…
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
I always frame it as 5 years of growth, 5 months of cut. Seems like a good ratio of time to enjoy the eating, progress, gains, etc, if you work hard and can deal with not being shredded.
Even if you end up in the same place as 5 years of careful dieting, leanness, and size, it boils down to what means/path the individual chooses and sticks with.[/quote]
Thats actually a really good template![/quote]
HA! I’m just flying by the seat of my pants, here…[/quote]
I thought Steely didn’t have time to post. What the hell, man?
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
I always frame it as 5 years of growth, 5 months of cut. Seems like a good ratio of time to enjoy the eating, progress, gains, etc, if you work hard and can deal with not being shredded.
Even if you end up in the same place as 5 years of careful dieting, leanness, and size, it boils down to what means/path the individual chooses and sticks with.[/quote]
Thats actually a really good template![/quote]
HA! I’m just flying by the seat of my pants, here…[/quote]
hey, it ain’t often we get information of any substance.
[quote]RATTLEHEAD wrote:
Look at the progress zraw has made with his post contest rebound.[/quote]
do you not think his increase in cough would be a bigger factor rather than a ‘rebound’
how else do you explain gains of pretty much pure LBM and practically no fat
btw <3 zraw i am just pointing out the obvious
to the OP - diminishing returns come into play so to answer your question, no.
you cannot just increase your size in perpetuity.
[/quote]
The OP said in the hypothetical reason that maximum drug use allowed, should have read that.[/quote]
Was this in response to the Zraw comment or the increasing size in perpetuity?[/quote]
Zraw comment[/quote]
Ah, gotcha.
With all the problems with performing clinical trials on humans, the effects of AAS are pretty hard to come by. I can only think of one study out of England performed on human males but these days it’s just generally assumed that AAS = getting swole.
My question is: Do you folks think that AAS can actually move you PAST your genetic ceiling? I know it’s kind of an impossible question to answer, but just curious.
Perhaps someone can correct me if I have the wrong way of viewing all this. For the life of me, I simply can’t understand the whole “robbing oneself of gains” thing in regards to to talk of long term bulking. And here’s why.
As I’ve said over and over agin, ad nauseum, muscular gains natural lifters come at a snail’s pace after the third year of training provided everything is done right from the start. But let’s be a bit more realistic and flexible and take into account most people stumble and make mistakes when starting out and say gains will slow after the fourth or fifth year or be so small that they will be unmeasurable, unless your scale counts grams or your eyes can visualize grams of LBM. Being that we speak of dedicated people who will be lifting for decades, what is leaning out, or even getting contest-ready shredded over the course of three or four months here and there over the course of decades of lifting going to do for long term gains?
I’m going to use arbitrary numbers for my example, but it’s the best I can do for this discussion. Let’s take a natural lifter for whom nature has deemed to have the potential of gaining 40 or so pounds of LBM.
First year gain: 20 or so pounds LBM
Second year gain: 10 or so pounds LBM
Third year gain: 5 or so pounds LBM
Fourth to seventh year: very small or negligible gains
Eighth year: no more gain
I am not talking about strength here or what can be accomplished by adding more body mass to get stronger. I am talking solely about LBM!
So, what is going to happen if a young lifter decides to compete in second or third year if he wants or just to even go on a highly restrictive, yet rational cutting phase for whatever reason? What is this going to do over the course of the first decade of training and possibly decades to come provided that we’re talking about someone who loves lifting? Granted, I’ve heard the whole “but a natty is gonna lose muscle during a cut?” Yeah, how much?! One to three pounds that can be gained in a couple of WEEKS after the cut or contest! Seriously, what will be the advantage of permabulking if we’re simply talking about LBM gains. YES, there might be a bit of a disadvantage for the guy who cuts here and there in the short run, but in the long run, if the two compared stay natural, there won’t be much of a difference in LBM gain by the seventh to ten year mark!
Disclaimers:
If you like permabulking, have at it. You’re NOT “doinitrong”!
If you’re someone involved in something in which permabulking aids in your absolute strength, hats off!
If you like the “full house” look, that’s fine; that’s your preference.
I don’t mind if you get mad at me for using an example of a natural with an upper ceiling of a 40 pound LBM gain. It’s besides the point, and you can go on thinking natty gains just continue and continue so long as you eat and lift and that a permabulk will lead to an outrageous 80 to 100 pounds muscular gain that wouldn’t have been able to be accomplished if one were not to trim down or enter a show here and there.
My outlook might be wrong, but I don’t think it is. If you think something else, please explain it in a civil manner and I’ll talk to you in a civil manner. Not in the mood for further talk like, “C’mon man! You’re nuts! We got a guy here who did it! No one would say he’s fat! Why are you using the word permabulker?!”
