You have to do one at a time. How much fat you gain with the muscle depends on the quality of your diet, but you have to eat extra food. You simply cannot gain weight or muscle without eating at a caloric surplus. It's biologically impossible. Calories in have to be higher than calories out. At 168 pounds, you're not running the risk of getting fat any time soon, so I would say you should bulk.

From the sounds of it, you're probably "skinny fat" like I was. That is, tall and skinny, but have a bit of a tummy and not very muscular at all. My inclination was to try and lose my gut by cardio and dieting. I spent two years trying to do this. This does not work. You just get skinnier and skinnier and the gut never goes away. You have to add muscle first. Then once you have the foundation of lean body mass, then you can get rid of the gut. This took me a solid 2-3 years to figure out. Don't make the same mistake. Suck it up and take the extra 4-5 pounds of fat for the six months. It'll be worth it in the long run.

But when you bulk, don't eat like an idiot either. When I first bulked, I thought, "Hey, I need to eat 4000 calories, I'm going to go buy a bunch of cheeseburgers!" Don't do that. You'll add more fat than muscle. And once again, I wasted an entire year. Now that I finally got this shit down I'm REALLY kicking myself for wasting so much time and effort in the gym when my diet wasn't in check. Working out aimlessly won't get you anywhere. Or worse, it'll get you the wrong results.

It's totally counter-intuitive, but the skinny-guy-gut doesn't come from excess fat, it comes from lack of muscle. When you add 10-15 lbs of muscle to your frame, your shoulders broaden, your chest gets big, your back gets big, and suddenly that little pooch looks tiny in comparison. Eat big. Eat clean. Get the muscle first. Then trim up.

Awesome advice Mark. I'm doing pretty much exactly what you did when you were "skinny fat". I have managed to drop some weight, visibly reduce my gut, and even built some muscle, but nothing too drastic.

I'll focus on the big 5 exercises and eating more.

I'm really going to have to post this again, cause it just blows my mind how many people still believe in bulking and cutting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi-jnsG0Z...r_embedded

frankly if you're body always has a supply of protein, you simply won't lose muscle. I'll second that by saying that if you eat fat in combination with protein, you can even go longer without having to eat any protein.

note in advance: it is only possible for beginners and intermediate bodybuilders. Meaning that people who are very close to their genetic potential won't be able to pull this off. But no one on this forum get's close to that, perhaps jckxyz (whathever his name was ).


full text if you want to read it:
http://www.scoobysworkshop.com/GainMuscleLoseFat.htm

(09-30-2011 07:00 AM)crazyhorse Wrote:  I'm really going to have to post this again, cause it just blows my mind how many people still believe in bulking and cutting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi-jnsG0Z...r_embedded

frankly if you're body always has a supply of protein, you simply won't lose muscle. I'll second that by saying that if you eat fat in combination with protein, you can even go longer without having to eat any protein.

note in advance: it is only possible for beginners and intermediate bodybuilders. Meaning that people who are very close to their genetic potential won't be able to pull this off. But no one on this forum get's close to that, perhaps jckxyz (whathever his name was ).


full text if you want to read it:
http://www.scoobysworkshop.com/GainMuscleLoseFat.htm

+like

Nothing personal, but while mark might have more dating experience and psychology experience than most of us here, his advices on workout is probably not that great. Face it bro, you have been doing this for years and 6 pack is no where near sight for you.

I have a friend who insist he knows everything there is to know about body building, completely refuse to count calories(despite counting calories have been a PROVEN method to get every single successful body builder their 6 pack) and the result is, his stomach is getting bigger and bigger heh.

You could always cycle calories for purposes of body recomposition. Right now, I eat 3000 or so on workout days and 2000 on rest days. It's working out pretty well.

This Scooby video sounds like very generic advice marketed in such a way to get normal people to believe both are possible at once. The way he has it set up, the caloric deficit is so small, and the gains are so small, the process is getting slowed down overall. So if you wanted to lose 8 lbs of fat and gain 6 lbs of muscle at once, you'd be looking at probably a year and a three months to get there under his method. Whereas that's two months of bulking and two months of cutting and maybe a month of maintenance in between the conventional way. Not to mention, most people lose their ability to both gain and lose at the same time after only six months of weight training. So sorry, it smells of a marketing gimmick to me. I would need to see some scientific research referenced by him to believe him any further.

But the answer as always, is do the research yourself and then try it out. What I've given you as advice is tried and tested for decades and has worked best for me. And I've tried (and screwed up) a variety of things.

And Brian, I don't pretend to be a fitness expert. But I've been working out and reading up on fitness and nutrition for a few years now, and I have made significant results over that period of time (losing 35 lbs of fat over a year; adding over 100 lbs to my bench press, etc.). Skinny guys with guts who want to get stronger, I do have personal experience with and have succeeded with myself, so I feel qualified to answer them. Your insistence of a six-pack as the metric for fitness success is pretty lame. There are scrawny guys who have six packs simply because of genetics or anorexia.

So I speak from experience of what I studied and has worked well for me. If you have gotten great results in the gym, and can speak from experience and research you've learned (not asking your "bro" for advice), then by all means share it. Tell us your weight before and after and the gains in your lifts you achieved. But if you have no idea what you're talking about, then just don't post.

iv'e worked with this guy for a while now. you may want to check out his stuff or shoot him an email. he's never steered me wrong yet. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/pectacul...chest.html

i started working out 6-8 years ago. started weighing at 135 and benching probably 135 and now am up to 215 and am benching at 365.

but to answer your question, if i was doing a 3 day a week split itd do chest, tri, and shoulders one day. back and bi's another day and legs on the 3rd trying to keep 48 hours of recovery time in between. good luck.

Thanks, kevin bacon. I reckon that your split is better for me than Mark's structure because he's been doing this for 6 years now and I am rather unexperienced and haven't improved my strength toooo much. So I will mainly stick to the core strength excerises the way you suggest it.

(09-30-2011 04:15 PM)Mark Wrote:  This Scooby video sounds like very generic advice marketed in such a way to get normal people to believe both are possible at once. The way he has it set up, the caloric deficit is so small, and the gains are so small, the process is getting slowed down overall. So if you wanted to lose 8 lbs of fat and gain 6 lbs of muscle at once, you'd be looking at probably a year and a three months to get there under his method. Whereas that's two months of bulking and two months of cutting and maybe a month of maintenance in between the conventional way. Not to mention, most people lose their ability to both gain and lose at the same time after only six months of weight training. So sorry, it smells of a marketing gimmick to me. I would need to see some scientific research referenced by him to believe him any further.

I love it that you use the term marketing grimmick, since the guy offers free advice. Please explain that one to me.

I've tried both and honestly my gains weren't any different. I came to the conclusion that protein is by far the most important element in your diet. If you have a constant supply of protein you simply won't loose muscle. Not even on a calorie deficit. The second thing you'll need to be aware of is that you'll have enough carbs to refill muscle glycogen

In fact I can even say this. If your nutrition is set up in a way that you can loose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Well it's going to require a whole lot more discipline then simply bulking.

I don't see how people stop gaining muscle and loosing fat after six months? changing the diet would be the key here, or you can up the intensity of your workouts.

As for the scientific argument, well who did you rather believe a guy who has studied everything with zero results or a guy who can show you results? it's a no brainer. To give an exemple, a populair myth is that you need to eat every 3-4 hours or else you're body will start burn muscle. They tested this with two groups one had whey protein and one had chicken protein. Off course the whey protein group started losing muscle, this is a protein that gets digested very easily by the body. Tadaaa a new myth born. If you simply eat fat in combination with your protein, it will stay even longer in your body.

Another popular one is the you have to eat before you go to bed.

But the answer as always, is do the research yourself and then try it out. What I've given you as advice is tried and tested for decades and has worked best for me. And I've tried (and screwed up) a variety of things.

And Brian, I don't pretend to be a fitness expert. But I've been working out and reading up on fitness and nutrition for a few years now, and I have made significant results over that period of time (losing 35 lbs of fat over a year; adding over 100 lbs to my bench press, etc.). Skinny guys with guts who want to get stronger, I do have personal experience with and have succeeded with myself, so I feel qualified to answer them. Your insistence of a six-pack as the metric for fitness success is pretty lame. There are scrawny guys who have six packs simply because of genetics or anorexia.

I didn't post this to critique your personallly.

So I speak from experience of what I studied and has worked well for me. If you have gotten great results in the gym, and can speak from experience and research you've learned (not asking your "bro" for advice), then by all means share it. Tell us your weight before and after and the gains in your lifts you achieved. But if you have no idea what you're talking about, then just don't post.

Yeah, the second part was aimed at Brian.

I've seen the "must eat every 3-4 hours" thing debunked. I've also seen the "can't eat before bed" thing debunked as well.

There are more and more people coming out and saying you can do both (cut fat and gain muscle) at the same time. A lot of it is hype and nonsense meant to make a quick buck. The only instances I've seen it back up by scientific research is when it's done by carb cycling or intermittent fasting. Both of which require very strict dieting and nutrition.

The six month thing refers to newbies who have never lifted weights before. The first six months you lift weights your body will burn fat and build muscle at the same time, regardless of diet. This is the only time in your life this happens naturally. It's well-documented.

I'm just very skeptical when it comes to the fitness niche. It's full of even more garbage than the dating niche and honestly many nutritionists and scientists still disagree on what's fact and what's fiction. So you really have to pick your way around it.

I would still tell a skinny newbie with little gym experience to bulk first. Newbies will lose fat while bulking anyway. Bulking also takes the least amount of discipline and gives the quickest noticeable results on a skinny guy to keep him motivated. If a guy can't bench press half of his own body weight, and is 18% BF, then going through all of the extra effort and stress to do both at once doesn't make much sense to me. Build a baseline of strength and muscle and then worry about body composition.

But like I said, I'm no expert.