Gains in lean mass are basically the same for everyone, but lean people tend to gain some fat (suggesting they are in a surplus), and heavier people actually tend to lose some fat. Surprisingly, it shows that the people who had a higher body-fat percentage gained more muscle and less fat. But what Greg did was organize the participants by body-fat percentage to see how lean their muscle gains were. This data comes from Dr Brad Schoenfeld’s study on how protein timing affects muscle growth. Here’s a graph from the upcoming research that Eric Trexler, PhD, and Greg Nuckols, MA, have been working on: This preliminary graph shows a trend for leaner gains at higher body-fat percentages. It seems that the higher our body-fat percentage is, the leaner our muscle gains are while bulking. Perhaps bulking at 15% body allows us to gain 2 pounds of muscle for every pound of fat that we gain (67% lean mass), whereas bulking at 30% body fat would give us 1 pound of muscle for every 2 pounds of fat (33% lean mass).
However, that doesn’t tell us about how our body-fat percentage affects how lean our gains are. Gaining a ton of weight makes it more likely that we’ll gain muscle and strength.Ĭross-sectional data that body fat’s impact on fat-free mass accretion is, if anything, more permissive than inhibitory.
In fact, it seems that the opposite is true. So it’s clear that having a high body-fat percentage doesn’t prevent us from becoming muscular or strong. This is what the most muscular man on earth looks like. Some of the top powerlifters also fit that mould. We see a similar body composition among football linemen. If we look at sumo wrestlers, though, we see people with high body-fat percentages who have the highest degrees of muscularity ever measured. The first part of this idea is that having a higher body-fat percentage makes it harder to build muscle. The problem is, that doesn’t seem to be true. The idea is that by keeping ourselves within that healthy range, we can make leaner gains. That’s why we often hear the advice to stop bulking at 20% body fat and then cut back down to 10–15% before we start bulking again. Most bodybuilders believe that if we let our body-fat percentage drift too high while bulking, our declining insulin sensitivity will make it harder to build muscle, causing more of the weight we gain to be stored as fat. As our body-fat percentage rises and we move outside that healthy range, our insulin sensitivity starts to decline, eventually leading to insulin resistance. One of the benefits of being lean is that it improves our insulin sensitivity. What’s the Best Body-Fat Percentage for Bulking? They’re still in the middle of going through the research, but so far, it seems that we’ve had it backwards. Now they’re looking into the idea that being at a lower body-fat percentage improves our insulin sensitivity, allowing us to build muscle more leanly. Beginners benefit from training to failure, intermediates don’t.
But when added together, the benefit not only became statistically significant but also quite large, showing around 50% more muscle growth by adding in isolation lifts.įor another example, they looked at the research on training to failure and found that although the results were mixed, if we sort the participants into beginner vs intermediate lifters, a clear pattern emerges. They specialize in reviewing muscle-building and strength research, and they’re known for making meta-analyses out of the data in the studies they review.įor example, they took all of the research on isolation lifts, many of which lacked the statistical power to find any benefit. Greg Nuckols and Eric Trexler are the hypertrophy researchers who founded Monthly Applications in Strength Sport ( MASS), along with Eric Helms, PhD, and Mike Zourdos, PhD.
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