photo credit: Lord Jim
What Builds Muscle?
The answer to this question could be an entire series of articles in itself, but for now, I will provide the gist of process. Excess energy in the form of food + a solid weight training program + rest = the most important factors. There definitely are other factors involved, but for most of the population, if all they knew was to eat well, train effectively and rest often to recover, they would likely succeed in their pursuits. Speaking of keeping this process simple, here are some tips.
How Can I Use Carb Cycling to Build Muscle?
As we have learned over the past 2 articles, manipulating your daily carb intake is the main idea when carb cycling. When building muscle, there MUST be a positive energy balance, meaning one must be consuming a surplus of calories over their maintenance intake. If no caloric surplus is present, the trainee can forget about building any new muscle mass.
When using this approach in pursuit of muscle gain, the focus of the protocol is to eat a surplus of calories on training days and eat just enough to maintain on rest days. One could potentially be working out 3-4 times a week depending on the training program, and over feeding only on those days. A surplus of about 500 calories on the training days will provide the food energy to grow and recover.
For this example we’ll again take a look at a 200lb male with a maintenance caloric intake of 3000 calories. His training program will consist of 3 non-consecutive workouts and 4 days of rest per week. We’ll set his protein intake to about 250 grams per day regardless of the rest of his caloric intake. On training days he will be consuming about 60 grams of fat and filling in the rest of his intake with carbs. On rest days, he could manipulate his energy calories to his liking, but for example I will provide the way I personally would set up his diet.
Workout Days (maintenance calories +500)
250g protein
490g carbs
60g fat
Rest Days (maintenance calories)
250g protein
275g carbs
100g fat
His energy balance by the end of the week will be +1500 calories which should result in about a ½ pound of body mass gained per week. Weight gain (or loss for that matter) is hardly linear; therefore what I have provided is only an example. Take note that the amount of weight gained can be skewed by water retention, sodium levels, females’ menstrual cycles etc. Thus, if one decides to take this approach to gain muscle mass, it’s very important to monitor progress and make sure the scale weight is moving upwards over time.
How does this Approach differ from the Traditional Bulking Methods?
On a traditional, muscle gain approach one often eats a surplus of calories daily as opposed to only on training days. While each method works wonderfully, eating over maintenance only on training days may limit fat gain to an extent. On the same note, the amount of lean body mass gained in the same time frame will also be compromised. However, some have reported experiencing leaner gains when using such methods and I suppose that by lowering carbohydrate intake on rest days may increase insulin sensitivity somewhat. This in itself may have a positive effect on calorie partitioning. I have experimented with both methods, and I prefer to place my surplus calories around workouts and eat at maintenance on my rest days.
Any of you ever used carb cycling to build muscle? What worked best for you?
