With summer time nearly here I can almost see people gearing up on the cardio to get rid of this past winter’s bulk.

Which is why I decided that now might be the time to talk about the practice of bulking up, to build muscle.

In theory bulking up (for anyone new to bodybuilding, bulking up is the practice of eating more and training hard and heavy to help build more muscle, and usually this is done during the winter months) sounds good, after all, more calories plus hard training equals more muscle, right?

In a perfect world maybe, but there are plenty of factors to consider, the first of which is, how lean are you?

I will use myself as an example, when I bulked up I was a young man in my late teens and I could have been used as an anatomy chart by the local college.

In-other-words, I was as ripped as you possibly could get.

However, if you can barely see your abs I don’t think bulking up is the best strategy.

Because even with the best plan in the world, you are still going to gain some fat along with any muscle that you gain, so if you already have too much fat on you already, this, chances are, will just add to the problem.

I can hear some people shouting right now,

“But hey I’ve read that all the pros bulk up in the off season!”

While it is true that some professional bodybuilders bulk up in the off season, consider this, most if not all of them, have super genetics, which means more of the weight they do gain will be in the form of muscle—and not fat.

For the average bodybuilder out there, they might gain one pound of muscle for every two or three pounds of fat that they gain.

So packing thirty pounds in the winter will lead to a lot of fat that you must burn off come summer time.

Plus, due to all the fat that you’ve gained, there really is no way of knowing how much muscle you have really gained.

So by the time you diet down, you might only end up with five pounds of muscle for all of your work.

In part two of this post I will discuss how to go about gaining muscle without the need to bulk up in the traditional sense.

KEEP PUMPING!

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I must admit that I find it kind of funny when I read the muscle mags today.

Not because they do not give good info, no, because they do in fact, they give tons of great information.

What I find funny is when the current crop of today’s top professional bodybuilders and top amateur bodybuilders talk about using free weights.

It is almost like it is some kind of revelation or something.

That is why I titled this post what I did, because back in the fifties, sixties, and seventies bodybuilders did not have all of the fancy equipment they have now, but that was O.K. because they all knew what worked.

Hard work on the basics, like bent over rows, squats, and dead lifts.

Then we got distracted by the fancy machines and the high carb diets and got away from what always works—hard work on the basics and plenty of protein.

And now it seems that the new breed of bodybuilder is finding out what so many already knew back then—if you want to improve your back—train it hard and heavy (relatively speaking of course) with the basics like chins/pull-ups, dead lifts, and all forms of rowing and it cannot help but improve.

Of course, the same goes for just about any body part.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against machines because they have their place, however, they should be used as more of a finisher than a main exercise.

I guess it is true what they say—the more things change the more they stay the same.

TRAIN HARD!

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I little while back I read a training article about current Mr. Olympia Dexter Jackson and in the article he said something very important.

He said that whenever he feels a little twinge when training he takes a week sometimes two weeks off from training and he never has had a major injury.

Please don’t quote me on the above statement as I am doing it from memory so I doubt that is EXACTLY what he said. However it is what he does when he feels a twinge somewhere:

HE TAKES OFF FROM TRAINING!

Yes, I know most of you can’t even think of taking a week off from training (I agree as I can’t imagine it either) let alone two—however think about this for a minute, Mr. Jackson has been a professional bodybuilder for a long time and has steadily moved up the ladder and now he is Mr. O.

So I think he is worth listening to.

Plus, consider the alternative—if you continue to “push through it” and boom you tear something—I think your training will be disrupted for way more than two weeks.

So the next time you just ground out ten hard reps in the squat and something in your right quad just does not feel right—consider ending your workout right then—you might just prevent a minor ding from turning into a major injury.

STAY SMART

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Years ago when I curiously picked up a copy of Muscle And Fitness at my local grocery store (this was before the net) I would never have imagined that I’d still be bodybuilding decades later.

Through all the fits and starts (and injuries), something inside me stayed true to bodybuilding.

I can still remember walking or riding my bike up to that grocery store and eagerly scanning the magazine rack to see if they had the new copy of Muscle And Fitness.

Later when I started to read Muscle Mag International I was like the proverbial kid-in-a-candy store because I actually had two (yes two!) magazines to look for every month.

I am sure the store managers got sick of seeing this skinny kid coming into the store the same time every month and buy nothing but one or two magazines (if they were in) and alright I’ll be honest—my favorite chocolate bar.

Honestly all I wanted were those magazines and my candy bar and nothing else.

Then I would rush home as fast as I could and devour each and every page in both magazines and, of course, try out all of the new routines.

I knew nothing about bodybuilding, supplements, proper eating and the like, and that was O.K.

What I knew was that I wanted muscles like the bodybuilders in the magazines had and that was that.

So that was my beginning in the sport.

Of course, we all got/get started differently, for some it is an older brother that we looked up to and want to be like, yet for others it was a trip to the movies where they first laid eyes on an action hero with muscles.

How we got hooked on bodybuilding does not matter, the simple fact is this, we are more than hooked on bodybuilding and all it encompasses, somewhere, somehow bodybuilding—the iron and steel, the clang of the plates, the strain and sweat of getting just that one last rep, became part of us.

To those who do not know the joy of all those early wake up calls, just so we can test ourselves—to push past previous limits before the sun peeks itself out to start another day—that is O.K.—Because we know, and that is enough.

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