Posts by Shane Duquette
Calisthenics Vs Weights: Which Builds More Muscle?
Both calisthenics and weight training can stimulate muscle growth. That’s not answering your question, though. Resistance bands, bodybuilding, and powerlifting all stimulate muscle growth. So can cardio. So can flexing your muscles (study).
We’ve helped thousands of people bulk up over the past decade, some using weights, others with pure calisthenics. We’ve seen how their results compare. There’s also research comparing the results people get with calisthenics vs weight training. We can take that into consideration, too.
We don’t have a bias. We don’t sell weights or gymnastic rings. Our brand isn’t built on one approach or the other. We’ve trained both ways. We’re happy to use and recommend whatever gives the best results.
Dive In
What Is Dirty Bulking? Are the Results Worth It?
There are countless weapons lifters wield against the skeletal armies of atrophy. One such weapon is the “dirty bulk.” It disregards standard nutritional recommendations, using whatever means necessary to get into a calorie surplus. Usually, that means eating plenty of junk food.
We’ve dirty bulked in the past. We’ve had clients do it, too. Most were everyday people, but some were college, professional, and Olympic athletes. You’d be surprised at what they eat to get into calorie surpluses.
Dirty bulking can be good for building muscle. It won’t necessarily make you fat, either. Some dirty bulkers gain muscle more leanly than some clean bulkers. The Devil is in the details, and we’ll delve into all of those details.
Delve Deeper
Does Flexing Build Muscle? Yes, But It’s Not What You Think
I came across this fascinating story about Charles Atlas years ago when I was writing an article about training for muscle size. If you don’t know, we’re a muscle-building site for skinny guys, and Charles Atlas was the first person to mass-market a workout program specifically designed to help skinny guys bulk up.
His story is much more interesting than I expected. First of all, it’s a flexing program. You buy the guide, and then you do a flexing routine at home. The “dynamic resistance” from flexing is supposed to stimulate muscle growth. There’s nothing wrong with that idea in theory, but does it actually work?
There have been studies measuring muscle growth from flexing, too. We can look at the results of a recent one.
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Does Collagen Help Build Muscle? A Quick Research Overview
Collagen is a popular “anti-aging” supplement for maintaining skin elasticity, keeping our joints strong, and helping our connective tissues recover. So far, the research has shown that collagen does indeed offer all of those benefits, in a small way—probably (study, study).
Lifters often run into nagging aches and pains in their joints and tendons. Supplementing with collagen seems like a reasonable way to improve recovery. That raises an obvious question: what about muscle growth? Does collagen help build muscle?
Jacinto and colleagues tried to answer that question by comparing whey protein against collagen protein, then seeing which yielded more muscle growth. It’s a neat study. Let’s delve into it.
Delve Deeper
Does Cardio Kill Muscle Gains?
Cardio can kill muscle gains. We’ve known this for many decades. It’s common knowledge among lifters and shows up in studies. Most recently, a study found that cardio cut muscle growth in half. We’ll go over the nuance of that study in a moment.
That isn’t normal, though. Most people who combine weight training with cardio build muscle just fine. The latest meta-analysis found that cardio didn’t interfere with muscle growth at all (meta). In fact, I’ve noticed the opposite.
If you’re clever, you can use cardio to build more muscle. We’ll go over some interesting research. It’s something I’ve seen with clients, too. The guys who get the best results are often the ones who get fit while they’re bulking up.
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How Many Calories Do You Need to Gain Weight? (With Calculator)
You’ll often hear that the number of calories you need to gain weight depends on your age, sex, height, weight, activity level, and metabolic health. That works well if you’re overweight like everyone else. It works less well if you’re starting off thin and trying to become muscular, neither of which is typical.
If you’re trying to gain weight or build muscle, you can forget most of those factors. They’re for estimating how lean and muscular you are. If you lift weights, you can be lean and muscular at 20 or 50, so those proxies won’t do you much good. If you have a rough idea of your body-fat percentage, you can be much more accurate.
The other thing to consider is how fast you’re trying to gain weight. If you’re bulking leanly, you’ll need fewer calories. If you’re bulking more aggressively, you’ll need more.
So, I’ve made a simple calorie calculator that will ask you all these questions and spit out an estimate. Once you have that estimate, we can talk about what to do with it.
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Maintenance Training Volume: How Many Sets to Maintain Muscle?
The other day, I wrote an article about Reverse Bulking, my favourite method for maintaining gains after bulking. The idea is to keep lifting weights, keep eating a good diet, and keep living a healthy lifestyle, but to start listening to your appetite again. Most naturally thin guys tend to eat less, lose weight, and reclaim any leanness lost while bulking—while maintaining their gains.
The idea of Reverse Bulking brings up a couple of questions. Perhaps the most important of those is how hard we should train to maintain our muscle size and strength. More specifically, how many hard sets do we need per muscle group?
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Reverse Bulking: How to Maintain Your Gains After Bulking
Reverse bulking is for people who are sick of eating so much food but want to maintain the gains they made while bulking. I haven’t seen this discussed anywhere else, which is strange, given how well it works. I’ve been using this method on myself and clients for over a decade now, but we never named it, and I don’t think we’ve ever mentioned it our articles.
The idea is simple: most skinny guys hate eating enormous amounts of food. When they finish bulking, they want to go back to eating like regular human men again. But they’re worried that if they do, they’ll lose all their hard-won gains. That’s where reverse bulking comes in.
Full Article
The Newbie Gains Guide for Skinny Guys
If you’re new to lifting weights, you can build muscle incredibly fast. Lifters call this phenomenon “newbie gains.” Most men can gain over 20 pounds of muscle during their first year alone. Skinny guys can often do even better.
We specialize in helping skinny guys build muscle, and we’ve worked with over 10,000 clients over the past decade. We do this all day, every day, with clients ranging from everyday desk workers to professional and Olympic athletes. There are methods to get incredibly consistent newbie gains. But there’s a catch.
Although most new lifters build muscle quickly, some “hardgainers” fail to gain any muscle whatsoever. What’s going on here? Why are some guys able to build a lifetime of muscle in a single year, whereas others spend an entire lifetime unable to build a single year’s worth of muscle?
In this article, we’ll explain what newbie gains are, how they cause such rapid rates of muscle growth, how to take advantage of the phenomenon, and how to avoid becoming a “hardgainer.”
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Average Bulking Results: Weight Gain, Measurements & Photos
Before-and-after photos are great, but there’s a problem. The guys who post them tend to be the ones who got the most impressive bulking results. Other times, the most disastrous results spread the furthest. Either way, the results you see online rarely represent the average.
Muscle-building studies have their limitations, too. They’re measuring what happens with different workout variables, dietary supplements, or rates of weight gain. They seldom tell you what to expect if you do everything properly.
In this article, we’ve taken 23 bulking transformations from our online member community. These guys started posting their photos and measurements before they started bulking, before knowing what results they would get.
We didn’t select the best transformations, we selected a random sample. That way, we can show you the full range of results, including the average.
By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how much weight you can gain, how much muscle you can build, how much bigger your arms can get, and how long it will take.
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