Lifting Him up

Routines for strength and mass

There has been an on going discussion on numerous sites about bulking or building muscle and fat. The traditional view is that you eat like crazy, work like crazy and then when you have bulked sufficiently you begin a cut to lose the fat accumulated during the bulk. There are some that advocate a "slow bulk" where you eat clean, work hard and seek to gain mass without gaining excess body fat. While I am by no means an authority, that is the direction I am heading. My current plan is to follow a carb cycling model that will allow me to loose body fat and gain muscle mass while getting stronger. I have been using some sort of a 5x5 training model for months (yes even BGB is based around a 5x5 model). For the next few weeks I am going to use a DC style rest-pause method of training. This is higher reps to failure, rest/pause and then knock out a few more reps, rest a few more breaths and then knock out a few more. Increases of weight or reps occurs each workout. Each exercise has a goal for reps, when that goal is reached, the weight is increased. You are trying to break either your rep or weight goal every workout.

Today was my first session. The focus was on the upper body. While my weights are lower than the big guys, I am learning the process. It was a fun session, that wore my arms out. I am looking forward to learning more and giving this a full try. What has worked for you as you have tried to build lean muscle mass?