Is it possible to gain muscle without getting fat?

My buddies all seem to think the only way to get bigger is to bulk and then cut. But i'm at the point where all i want is some more muscle. Can you do that or is the bulk/cut technique the only way to actually gain muscle

it's the most effective way definenately

but you can keep your BF low while gaining weight, it just means alot of cardio work with "muscle" training. The gains won't be that fast and impressive though and bulking then cutting is prolly easier to do.

u dont have to get fat to gain muscle but you're bound to put on alittle fat. depends on how well you diet.

diet + genetics mostly


You can't take in extra calories and have your body not store any of it as fat... but you can add muscle without 'getting fat'

hey cham....if your wanting to build muscle fast then your going to need to work your ass off in the gym and eat massive amounts of food! And when i say food i mean any kind of food you want, it doesn't matter...chicken, steak, mcdonalds, whatever it doesn't matter. Calories are what make your muscles grow, so your first and foremost concern is to take in as many calories as possible. You have to choose either building muscle or cutting..These to concepts do not go hand in hand..The only possible way to achieve a synergy with building muscle and cutting at the same time is through steroids :P But no one needs to mess around with that. Let me know if ya got anymore questions bro.

Rev

Yes, you can certainly do a 'clean' bulk where you minimize fat gain, but no matter what, you will need to gain at least a small amount of fat. Doing this requires a lot of calorie counting to make sure you stay in a strict window for your program or undereating (which will impact your lean mass gains). So you either go more carefully or more slowly (or both) and it can be done.

A lot of people 'bulk' just because it's easier to eat too much than try and maintain strict food logs when you need upwards of 4k calories a day.

If you're looking to 'bodybuild' in that you are primary after getting bigger muscles ... you definitely need a lot of calories.

i recommend doing it how john stone did it or w/e

cut first

then bulk

because if you don't cut you sure as fuck won't know how to keep the fat low when you do bulk

also, bulking is fucking expensive and a longterm commitment

cutting costs no more than regular eating

John Stone didn't eat enough his whole first year, or that's what he says in his logs. He lost a lot of fat, but didn't put on lots of muscle.

I wish I cut first before I started because I was sheepish in the beginning of my bulk I'd gain fat I couldn't afford .. oh well, I'm ok with being 15-16% for another fer months.

Drink a gallon of whole or 2% milk every day for a month. Don't worry about counting calories. It's the healthiest way to increase muscle mass with minimal fat gain.

^what? lol?

also, bulking is fucking expensive and a longterm commitment

Obviously, it's more expensive than cutting, but I stick to a ton of eggs, fatty beef, and peanut butter.

It's pretty cheap, clean, and gets the calories way up there.

^what? lol?

Lol if you want to, but it works. It's Mark Rippetoe's recommended approach for gaining mass. Brendan, a CrossFit trainer in Santa Cruz, tried it and put on 28 pounds in six weeks.

This is him doing a workout demo before he put the weight on:
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_MashupBrendanDLL Pullup.wmv

This is him in a video after. He's clearly a lot bigger:
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_CFNSCTour2Pullup .wmv

More discussion about it here:
http://www.crossfit.com/cgi-bin/moveabletype/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=314 7

Brendan explains it further the next day in comment #39 on this page:
http://www.crossfit.com/cgi-bin/moveabletype/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=314 9

Mark Rippetoe explains it a bit more here:
http://strengthmill.net/forum/showthread.php?t=431


If you don't believe me, ask Rip yourself (http://www.strengthmill.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=36). He usually responds the same day. That forum is great. You can ask him anything, and he'll even critique your form if you link a video.

i believe it can work, i just really doubt its the healthiest way to do it. milk has a shit ton of sugar

Its very possible to gain muscle and lose fat. Ask anyone who has gone through infantry basic training. Its harder to gain muscle when you aren't supplying your body with an excess of calories though.

28 lbs in 6 weeks? Definitely some fat gain there, probably >50%. There's just no way to add 4 lbs of muscle a week.

Also, I think one thing people don't realize about losing fat is that - if you are muscular underneath - you actually wind up looking BIGGER as an illusion created by the revelation of muscle tone. Take a look at the pictures of this guy in this article for an example:

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1268956

So, a lot of dudes who do something like military basic training where you lose a lot of fat and gain some muscle wind up looking like they lost a lot of fat and gained a lot of muscle.

From T-nation.com:

"So your body can add fat cells, but it can't remove them. This is a big problem: the more fat cells you have, the easier it is for your body to store fat. So by adding new fat cells to your body you're actually making it better at gaining body fat as well as worse at losing it! By following an all-out bulking approach, you can stimulate adipocyte hyperplasia, which will make it harder to lose fat and easier to gain it over time."

very interesting

It's not a question of fat versus muscle. It's fat versus lean mass, which includes not only muscle, but also skin, bone, organs, connective tissue, and everything else that isn't fat. When you gain weight, you get more of everything. It all depends on what his body fat percentage was before the gain and after.

Let's say it was 7% before. At 172, that gives him a fat mass of 12 pounds. If his body fat percentage stayed constant, at 200 he would have a fat mass of 14 pounds. So that's 2 more pounds of fat and 26 more pounds of lean mass. For the gain to be in excess of 50% fat, his percentage would have had to go up to about 13%. That's not unreasonable, but he's the only one who knows what happened for sure. His girlfriend (who presumably would know better than any of us) says that "he didn't gain fat - but a helluva lotta muscle" in post #452 here (http://www.crossfit.com/cgi-bin/moveabletype/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=314 7).

Did he gain fat? Yes. Did he gain muscle? Yes. Again, we don't know the exact breakdown of the 28 pounds. What we do know is what he says in his post about the effects. His back squat increased by 20 pounds, and his metabolic conditioning got better. He is stronger and fitter as a result of the weight gain, regardless of how it was distributed across his body. The milk served its intended purpose, so yay for milk. CrossFitters tend to care more about what they can do than how they look. Looks are merely a nice side effect of increased fitness.

It's not a question of fat versus muscle. It's fat versus lean mass, which includes not only muscle, but also skin, bone, organs, connective tissue, and everything else that isn't fat. When you gain weight, you get more of everything.This is 100% not true. That's crazy talk.

Talking in terms of lean mass gain unless the guy is on drugs we're talking and upper limit in the 5-6 lb range over 6 weeks, and that includes some weight for water. To add 25 lbs of muscle would take about 3-4 years naturally. John Stone gained 25 lbs of muscles in 4 years, 25 lbs of muscle will take a normal guy and make them look like a small body builder.

20 lb increase in a back squat over 6 weeks is also not notable. My back squat goes up 5 lbs every week unless I am injured without needing to gain 4 lbs a week and I am not a novice. This is not a good metric to measure performance by.

I love Rippetoe, but I have no idea what he's talking about when it comes to mass gains in his books. He makes it sound like people regularly pack on 25 lbs of muscle in a short period of time. The body just can't increase lean mass that fast without drugs.

Sorry to take such notice of these comments, but drinking a gallon of whole milk a day is just a tremendously dirty bulk and, in my opinion, pretty bad advice unless you're a serious ecto.

I will say cereal and milk is what i eat the most. it's my filler food and it just works. I do think you need healthy oils to balance it out though. There is worry in some studies that milk can cause heart disease.

This is 100% not true. That's crazy talk.

So by your logic, if I were to go from 175 pounds to 875 pounds, I would not gain any extra skin, water or additional blood vessels, and my heart would stay exactly the same size despite the fact that it would have five times the body mass to circulate blood through. Your back squat also increases by 260 pounds per year, every year. In five years, you'll be squatting over 1600 pounds. That's impressive.

Lean mass is not 100% muscle. It is the mass of all non-fatty tissue (muscle, bone, blood, water, organs, skin, etc). Ask any doctor, dietitian, or health professional.

John Stone is currently eating close to 400 grams of protein every day. The majority of that winds up in his urine. He's going to destroy his kidneys if he keeps that up. He's huge and ripped though, so as a bodybuilder that's all he cares about.

I never claimed that Brendan gained anywhere close to 26 pounds of pure muscle. Everyone knows that's impossible to do in six weeks. Most of the research I've read says that 1 pound of muscle per month is an upper limit for most people. He hit a plateau, he drank a bunch of milk, and his fitness increased. The milk worked.