nutrition: 3000 calories. 250 protein, 250 carbs, 110 fat. 4 meals per day. gain .5-1lb per week. If more cut calories, if less add calories.
training: 5/3/1. six days per week. rest on Monday. cardio 5000 steps per day (3 hours per week total)
pharma: 500mg test cyp. 200 mg NPP. 16 weeks.
Stats: 47 years old. 5’11" 190lbs. 15% bodyfat. training for 6 years. goal 220lbs @ 10%bf by May 2023. 345lbs 3/2020 lost the weight to run first cycle from a good bodyfat starting point. current trt 200mg test cyp & 100 mg NPP per week.
best lifts BP 370 – DL 560 – OHP 205 – SQ 470 – ROW 315
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I’m really excited for this blast! The dedication you’ve consistently shown on that amazing cut is mind blowing, I can only imagine what it’ll be like when you switch to growing!!!
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I’m 13 pounds away. Bet I’ll have it by the first week of May. Time to eat.
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I am not sure OP has the dedication to stick to a diet or training regimen (kinda a low will power guy here). JK, I am sure OP will kill it. I would make a straight line tracker for weight gain and base my calories off of that. Not keeping up with the linear weight progression, add some more food. Exceeding it, and looking soft, cut back a bit.
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Is it better to start at 3500 and cut back if gaining to fast or to start at 3000 and go up if not gaining.
Been in a very aggressive deficit for a long time and doing 20 hours per week of cardio. Afraid to rebound.
I have a cuff and have been tracking blood pressure M-W-FRI for the last year.
Start at 3000 and work up. That’s always a better approach.
Be careful of overtraining. It would probably be wise to take a week off before starting your blast. You need to cut back on that cardio when building muscle. Since you’ll be doing that you won’t know where your calorie intake will need to be. Another reason to start slow.
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cutting cardio to 3 hours per week
Since your cycle is going 16 weeks, I feel you have room for a slow, conservative start. If you were only going 12, I’d say go big outta the gate.
I don’t blame you for being reluctant to up calories. You’ve worked extremely hard to get where you are.
If you want to be extra careful, yeah I’d say start 3,000. With the decrease in amount of cardio, increase in calories, and increase in drugs, you will still see gains on 3,000 in the first few weeks, for sure. It’s beyond week 4-5 that I believe you will need to go 3,500+ to continue to see hypertrophy. You said you’re going 16 weeks, so you’ll still have plenty of room to make gains after the conservative start.
Around week 4-5, Your body will have metabolically adapted to the new normal of 3,000 and Test will have reached near-peak concentration. Then it will be time to eat big or leave results on the table.
Also, just a friendly reminder of something I’m sure you’re already aware of…High Test and NPP will bring water under the skin in the first few weeks. This might make you look, feel, and believe that you’re just getting fat. Know that if you cut NPP out completely at any given moment, your waist measurement would drop almost overnight. This can really mess with your head when the bulk starts.
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didn’t know about the water under skin, thanks for the heads up.
NPP, by itself, doesn’t do this. It’s the combination of high test + NPP. You can take a look at my cycle log pics for photo evidence of this.
Bulk was coming in nice and solid until Test reached higher concentrations and then the combo caused so much water under my skin that I looked like melted ice cream and couldn’t even control it with an AI.
I dropped NPP altogether and just bumped Test to 400 and looked better in only a couple days.
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That should be the max on a bulking cycle. You may find you need to dial that back to recover from your weight training.
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Would finding a new maintenance and staying there for a few weeks be a good idea with someone just coming off a cut?
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Probably. I think it is of more importance to stay at maintenance after a bulk more than a cut. If you go right to cutting after a bulk, it is going to be hard to hold muscle (especially if AAS was used for the bulk, but not cut). Going from cut to bulk, the body should be primed to gain weight. I still think 3-4 weeks at maintenance is a good idea.
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I remember reading something about fat cells shrinking and taking a while before they become inactive or something to that effect. Making rebound fat gain much easier. I’m assuming clean eating and drugs minimize this?
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Are you planning to cruise afterwards?
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yes. been on trt since 4/2020. will go back to 100mg of test cyp per week.
I haven’t heard that. I have heard some pretty interesting stuff in regards to BF set point. It appears our set point for BF % is movable. When dieting down to a lower BF%, staying at maintenance for a while will help you stay where you are (vs. going straight into a bulk). I think this effect is mostly hormonal (if you maintain for a while at a BF % that is lower than you are used to, your body will get used to it, and you won’t feel as hungry as you would have when you first got to that BF%).
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This! This! This! I wil never forget, for as long as I live, how quickly I gained size and strength many years ago coming out of a hard cut. I cut from from 225 down to 205 for summer and when I started eating again, OMG man!
The gains were equal to, or greater than, when I first started TRT.
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