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October 8, 2025 • 32 mins

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You MUST "bulk" to build muscle... right?

Eat more, gain weight, accept getting fluffy, then cut it all off later with a fat loss phase... right?

Not necessarily.

What if bulking is inefficient for YOUR goals? What if you could build muscle while staying lean year-round?

Learn why you might NOT need a calorie surplus to build muscle and a unique approach called aggressive maintenance where you can skip bulking entirely while getting the strong, lean, aesthetic body you're going for.

Main Takeaways:

  • Traditional bulking optimizes for throughput (total muscle gain), while aggressive maintenance optimizes for efficiency (muscle gain per unit of input)
  • You CAN build muscle at maintenance calories when 3 things are dialed in
  • Certain individuals partition nutrients more efficiently toward muscle vs. fat and are better candidates for skipping the bulk
  • There are "hidden" but powerful factors that enable muscle growth without bulking

Episode Resources:

Timestamps:

0:00 - Rethinking the bulking dogma
2:06 - Speed vs. efficiency in muscle gain
7:00 - Throughput vs. true efficiency explained
10:15 - MPS limits and surplus reality
12:20 - Age, partitioning, and staying lean
14:10 - How muscle grows at maintenance
16:20 - Energy partitioning and activity
18:10 - The aggressive maintenance protocol
21:00 - Protein, training, and carb strategy
24:30 - Glycogen, neural gains, and energy flux
26:40 - Who should skip the bulk
29:10 - Pitfalls, expectations, and precision 


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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Pape (00:01):
If you want to build muscle, you need to bulk.
At least that's what you hearall the time.
You have to eat more, you haveto gain weight, you have to
accept getting a little fluffyin that calorie surplus and then
cut it off later with a fatloss phase.
What if that approach isinefficient, at least for you?
What if you could build musclewhile staying lean year-round?

(00:22):
In this episode, you're gonnalearn why muscle protein
synthesis does not require acalorie surplus the way you
think it does.
You'll discover the principlesof what I call aggressive
maintenance, and you'll find outwho can skip bulking entirely
and still make gains versus whomight still want to bulk,
including the hidden factorslike sleep and energy flux that

(00:44):
many people ignore.
Welcome to Wits and Weights,the show that helps you build a
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering, and
efficiency.
I'm your host, certifiednutrition coach Philip Pape.

(01:06):
And today we're talking aboutsomething that often challenges
conventional wisdom in thelifting world: building muscle,
but without bulking.
If you've ever felt trapped bythis need to bulk and cut, and
you wonder, is there a smarterway to add lean mass without the
fat gain roller coaster?
This episode is definitely foryou.

(01:27):
But I also want to give acaveat that to get the quickest
gain in muscle, you're gonnahave to have a surplus of some
kind.
I'm just gonna get that out ofthe way.
But we're not necessarilytalking about the quickest path
here.
We're talking about efficiency.
And efficiency often meanslooking at the next six months,
the next year, the next twoyears, and where you want to be
with your physique at any giventime to get the final result,

(01:51):
which may take a little longer,but the way you get there is
more sustainable for you.
So we're gonna break down thescience and the systems behind
what I call aggressivemaintenance.
I've covered this topic hereand there in the context of body
recomposition.
But today I'm specificallyfocusing on the muscle building
side, not so much the fat lossside.
This is really aboutengineering the whole system,

(02:11):
your nutrition, your training,your recovery, your nutrient
partitioning, doing itefficiently so that you are
biasing muscle rather than fatall while eating around
maintenance calories and nothaving, quote unquote, to bulk.
And I'm gonna tell you who canbenefit from this the most.
Now, before we get into that, Idefinitely want to share a
couple listener reviews thatcame in recently on Apple.

(02:35):
Just two.
The first one I really love, itis from Laura Lai 1964.
She says Philip providesrelevant and evidence-backed
information on nutrition andresistance training.
If you were ever on the fenceabout whether you should
introduce resistance training tosee change, listen to this
podcast.
Science-backed evidence provesit's a huge key to longevity,

(02:55):
and Philip breaks it all down.
He has top-notch guests on aswell, which has led me to other
great podcasts.
One more thing.
He's so fun to listen to,always has a smile in his voice.
Thank you, Philip Bape.
And you just made me smile,which is hopefully why you hear
that on a regular basis.
I try to be optimistic aboutthis stuff.
I think, like a stoic, we havemany things in our control.

(03:16):
And if we focus on all onlythose things, an optimism bias
can lead us to amazing results,no matter what life throws at
us.
And that is the definition ofresilience.
The second review isinteresting.
The headline is I didn't knowwhat I didn't know until now
from host new normal big life.
So this looks like a podcaster.
I'm a sponsored adventuresports athlete and have been a

(03:39):
competitive athlete most of myteen and a young adult life.
However, this podcast taught methere are many factors
impacting my health andperformance that I didn't know
about.
Learning about what standardlab work really tells us about
our health is a game changer.
Thank you so much.
So that was probably inresponse to some recent episodes
related to blood work,performance blood work.
This is a service we nowprovide.

(04:00):
I'm not going to get into ithere, but the long and short of
it is if you're looking tounderstand the interactions and
the root causes of things thatmay be going on with your body,
despite having tried all theother things like training,
nutrition, lifestyle, it couldbe another way to peer inside
what's happening with yourbiomarkers, with your hormones,
et cetera.
Go to witsandweights.com slashblood work for that.

(04:23):
But when it comes to thesereviews, anyone who leaves a
review, we are actually runninga say contest, not a contest, a
giveaway right now that anyonewho leaves a review is entered
for a giveaway for three monthsin physique university in our
mastery track.
That's a $261 value.
And everyone who submits areview is gonna get a surprise

(04:43):
bonus.
Deadline is October 15.
Go into Apple and add yourfive-star radio review there, if
you haven't yet.
And I will be monitoring thoseand then I'll send out the
results to the Facebook groupand to our email list.
All right, let's get into theengineering behind building
muscle without bulking, becauseyes, it is possible.
I want to start with theefficiency problem that comes

(05:05):
with traditional bulking.
As much as I love caloriesurpluses and bulking for people
who want to get the fastestresults, and you will, and the
bulk cut cycle, which has beenthe standard approach in
bodybuilding and hypertrophy andstrength training for decades,
and it still is, again, a triedand true approach, where you

(05:25):
spend months in a caloriesurplus.
In my opinion, six to ninemonths is ideal, sometimes
longer, to maximize your musclegrowth.
Along for the ride comes somefat, but you are maximizing the
muscle growth, meaning you'rehitting that ceiling of how much
muscle you can, you know, slabsof muscle you can add to your
body every month.
And to do that, you're makingthe trade-off that some fat
comes along for the ride.
And then you do a cut or a fatloss phase to cut it down and

(05:49):
rinse and repeat.

Now, let me be clear (05:50):
this bulking is the fastest way to
gain muscle.
Whether you're a man or awoman, whatever your starting
point, doesn't matter.
It's the fastest way to gainmuscle.
If I were to put any caveat onthat at all, it would be as if
you are significantlyoverweight.
If you're significantlyoverweight, you definitely want
to lose some of that body fatfor health reasons, but also

(06:12):
because you can actually build adecent amount of muscle while
losing weight in that context.
So putting that aside, we'retalking about people who are
kind of in the average range ofweight.
Even if you have a little extraweight to lose, you're kind of
in that average range.
If pure speed to muscle growthis your only goal, a calorie
surplus is the best way to go.
And my usual recommendation fora beginner is around 0.3 or

(06:33):
0.4% of your body weight a week.
Potentially more if you'redoing it in a very precise,
controlled way, or you're areally good responder and you
want to take advantage of that.
Potentially less if you're notsure or you're worried about
gaining too much fat or beingnot super consistent.
But then you need a fat lossphase after that, no matter
what, right?
You gain the muscle plus thefat, then you diet it off.

(06:53):
And the whole cycle takes maybea year, maybe two years to
really get leaner and leaner.
And that's fine in the schemeof your whole life.
How long really is that whenyou've been struggling for years
and years and years?
So if you're into that, whichis the way I do it personally,
it's very efficient.
I mean, it's very, I'll sayit's efficient from a long-term
perspective.
It may not be efficient in theshort term, depending on your
goal.

(07:13):
So I'm happy to help anyonethrough that who's struggling,
who needs help.
You can come into physiqueuniversity.
That is what one of the thingswe teach.
We also teach body recomp,which I'm talking about today.
It's all all roads to Rome leadto Rome.
Okay.
So from an engineeringperspective, this is really a
throughput approach.
You are maximizing the input tomaximize the output, more fuel,

(07:38):
more materials, more resources,and it works.
But it's not efficient by allmeasures.
Let me explain the difference.
Efficiency is about the outputper unit of input.
Throughput is the total output,regardless of the input.
So a bulking cutting cycleoptimizes for throughput, right?

(08:00):
You're trying to maximize thatmuscle and you're also getting
more fat along for the ride.
What we're talking about todayoptimizes for efficiency, at
least on a shorter term scale.
That's the I have to keepsaying that because over a
several year period, I actuallythink bulking and cutting, if
done right, if doneconsistently, if you don't stop

(08:20):
your training, is the mostefficient.
But for a lot of people, it'snot the most practical, nor is
it a state they want to live infor months at a time, let's say.
What I mean by that is a lot ofpeople don't want to be fluffy
for many months out of the year.
That's okay, I get it.
And it's okay to not want thatand to make a trade-off to get
to avoid that.
Okay, so muscle proteinsynthesis, MPS, is the process

(08:44):
by which your body builds newmuscle tissue.
Research shows that MPS ratesplateau relatively quickly
compared to calorie intake.
Gone are the old days of thedreamer bulk where you're eating
five or six thousand caloriesor something like that, because
you think there's really nolimit to muscle gain as long as
you just eat more.

(09:04):
Yeah, I'm gonna get fat, butI'm gonna get more and more and
more muscle.
No, it actually has a plateau,right?
So the curve goes up quicklyand then it quickly hits a
limit, like a fixed limit.
So beyond that calorie surplusthat gets you to that limit,
which is around two to threehundred calories above
maintenance for a lot of people.
Additional calories then mostlyincrease your fat mass, not

(09:26):
your lean tissue, right?
That's why it's uh hard forsome people to kind of find that
level until you do it once andsee what happens, and then you
can refine the next time.

So think of it like this (09:34):
your body has a limited capacity to
synthesize new muscle at anygiven time, period.
Right?
It's not like a constructionproject where throwing more
materials and workers speedsthings up.
Your body's muscle buildingmachinery can only work so fast.
That is the rate limiting step,to use another technical term,
the rate limiting step.
Okay.

(09:54):
So if you're an adult over 30,and that's an important
distinction between, because ifyou're under 30 and you're
raging with hormones and you'vegot a lot more responsiveness
and ability to build muscle, youmay want to throw my discussion
today out the window altogetherand just go hog wild on that
surplus.
Because who cares?
You've got all the time in thefuture ahead of you, and you're

(10:17):
super responsive to the muscle.
You've got the hormones andeverything else.
If you're over 30, especiallyif you're over 40 or in your
50s, pushing body fat higherjust to build muscle becomes a
little bit less efficientbecause your nutrient
partitioning gets a little bitworse as you age, meaning a
higher percentage of the extracalories might go to fat rather
than muscle.
You just are a little bit lessefficient putting on that
muscle.
Sorry, that's just what happenswhen we get older.

(10:39):
At least you're doing it,right?
Versus your peers who areletting their muscle wither away
into decrepitude into old age,which is not what we want.
But as you get old, yourinsulin sensitivity decreases,
your recovery, you know, gets alittle bit harder.
Even if you eat more, even ifyou sleep more, it's still
declining slowly over time.
Your joint tissues, connectivetissues get a little less

(11:00):
pliable, et cetera.
So what we're really after hereis directing the limited
resources toward muscle ratherthan fat storage as
laser-targeted as we can.
And that is kind of that whenyou think of like an engineer
applied to physique development,where I'm coming from.
So, yes, bulking is faster, butI'm gonna talk about aggressive
maintenance here.
Aggressive maintenance can bemore appealing and more

(11:22):
efficient, especially if youwant to stay relatively lean
year round.
And I'm sorry to all my lifterbuddies who are all about
strength PRs, okay?
If you're all about strengthPRs, I'm not talking to you
because you really should beeating.
You know that.
And you're not here to listento, but you all at the same
time, we all have that vanitybone inside of us.
That's like, what if I justtried with Philip's saying for a

(11:44):
year or two and see what thedifference is?
Experiment.
You're gonna avoid thatpsychological roller coaster of
gaining and losing weight, andthen you're gonna build muscle
in a sustainable way that youcould potentially just rinse and
repeat forever.
Now, you can rinse and repeatbulking too, but again, you are
stretching up and down a lotmore in a lot more extreme way
than what we're talking abouttoday.
All right.

(12:04):
So that again, this is wherethe system efficiency comes in.
So now I want to talk about thenext piece, how muscle growth
works without this big surplusor without this modest surplus,
I should say.
To understand this, we have tolook at the mechanisms of muscle
growth, which happens when thesynthesis of protein exceeds the
breakdown of protein, which ismuscle protein breakdown, MPB.

(12:26):
And you actually do not need acalorie surplus for this to
occur if three conditions aremet.
The first condition is thatyour protein intake is
sufficient.
Duh.
Okay.
If you're a new listener, Idon't mean to patronize you,
you're gonna learn somethinghere.
If you've been listening for awhile or any other fitness
podcast for the last howevermany years, you know this that

(12:46):
protein is super, superimportant.
The research consistentlypoints to 0.7 to one gram per
pound of body weight, or 1.6 to2.2 grams per kilogram of body
weight of intake per day.
And at these levels, you'rebasically maximizing those raw
materials available for proteinsynthesis.
It's as simple as that, guys.
Get enough total protein a dayand you're gonna meet this first

(13:09):
criteria.
Don't get hung over or hung,don't get hung over either.
Don't get hung up on the mealtiming and the type of protein
and all of that.
Total protein's probably gonnaget you there.
Now, if you have a veryrestrictive diet, it's gonna be,
it's gonna create someproblems.
Restrictive meaning you'revegan or vegetarian, for
example.
You know, no knock on you guys.

(13:30):
I'm just saying it's harder toget the full, complete amino
acid profile without being alittle more deliberate.
Okay, so total protein.
The second criteria where youdon't necessarily need a surplus
to build muscle, is that yourtraining provides the adequate
mechanical tension andprogressive overload.
Those that's really all we'relooking for is training close to
failure and always progressing,making things slightly more

(13:50):
challenging in the gym so thatyou get stronger because
strength builds muscle, and viceversa.
And the signals you're givingyour body when you do that is
the most important signal toadapt.
And your body's gonna take theprotein you're eating and build
more muscle tissue.
And then third is yourrecovery.
I'm sorry to hammer this hometime and again, but guys, we
have to sleep.

(14:11):
We have to manage our stress.
I've been using my breathe thatmore.
I actually put it as acomplication on my Apple Watch,
just so it's staring me in theface every day, doing more
breath work and things likethat.
One minute at a time doesn'ttake a lot.
These are the most powerfulhidden levers that allow the
process to actually occur.
Now I know what you're thinkinghere.

(14:31):
You're like, okay, but wheredoes how is it possible to do
this while at maintenance?
Doesn't it all net out?
We're gonna get to that.
Let's talk about energypartitioning because this is
where things get interesting.
Lean individuals tend topartition their nutrients a
little more efficiently towardmuscle than fat.
And train lifters tend to dothe same.

(14:52):
People with good insulinsensitivity are better at
directing nutrients where theyneed to go.
And as an aside, one of thebest things for insulin
sensitivity is being activethroughout the day and walking.
Okay.
Just had to put that in there.
Resistance training itselfimproves partitioning, even at
maintenance calories.
So, what does that mean?
What does that mean?
That means versus someone whois sedentary, simply by having

(15:16):
an active, trained lifestylewith plenty of protein and
adequate leanness, right?
You're not excessively overfat, you will get more out of
your nutrients toward muscleversus fat versus a sedentary
person.
And that's a huge advantage.
Even not sitting a lot for yourjob and getting up and moving
will move that needle towardthat direction.

(15:37):
There's something called bodyfat set point theory.
Okay, and and and there's mixedevidence on this, and the way
it's communicated is oftenspecious, or what am I trying to
say?
I don't want to say this thewrong way, but basically, people
are closer to a lean but notextremely lean body composition,
let's say 10 to 15% for men, 18to 25% for women, they often

(15:59):
have better recomp.
Okay.
Now you would think thatsomebody with extra fat has
better recomp.
I would say someone in extrafat, I would lean toward trying
to lose the fat actually and bein a deficit because that's
gonna be the best net benefit.
But for most people in kind ofan average leanness, they're
gonna have better recomp, theirhormonal profile is gonna

(16:20):
improve, they're gonna havebetter nutrient utilization, and
they're gonna be running kindof super efficiently and they're
gonna maximize muscle gainbased on what you're already
consuming.
Again, we're not talking abouta surplus.
Surplus is always gonna make itmore in terms of muscle gain,
period.
There's also the concept ofmyonuclear domain theory.
When you train, you gain musclenuclei.
And these nuclei persist evenduring maintenance or slight

(16:42):
deficits.
So that means muscle memory isa real thing.
It really is.
And I see this in someone whois detrained, comes back years
later, starts to train again,and wow, they just regain and
build that muscle so fast.
They just gain it back fastwithout needing to bulk because
the cellular machinery is inplace.
So these are interestingconcepts, aren't they?
All right.
So that brings us to the whathere, the aggressive maintenance

(17:05):
protocol I've been alluding toand dropping hints at.
What the heck is this?
And I haven't seen anyone elseexplain it this way or use this
term, so I should probablytrademark it.
But I have seen plenty ofexperienced lifters talk about
this in other ways.
It's eating around maintenancecalories, allowing for those
daily fluctuations in calories,the daily fluctuations in your

(17:26):
metabolism.
You're pushing training hard,you're optimizing your protein
intake, and you are eating in away where you're never in a
deficit.
So to never be in a deficit, itmeans you have to knowingly be
in the tiniest, tiniest, tiniestsurplus.
Does that make sense?
Okay, because you you'rekeeping yourself fully recovered

(17:48):
and optimized, and you'rekeeping your tank just a little
past full, but you're not addingso much where now it goes to
fat storage.
Okay.
You're also not adding enoughto maximize muscle, as I keep
mentioning, but you are stillbiasing it toward muscle gain
and maybe some fat loss.
But today's not about recompper se, even though this is a

(18:08):
good technique for recomp, in myopinion.
Studies show that trainedindividuals can increase lean
mass while decreasing fat masswhen protein is high and
training is well structured.
Again, that's recomp.
And then there's recentresearch on energy flux.
That's the total energyturnover, basically eating more
and moving more to expend more,right?
To increase your metabolism,not cardio per se, not like

(18:31):
chronic cardio, but justwalking, movement, eating, being
active, that doing thatpromotes leanness and muscle
gain, even at maintenance.
And there's plenty of anecdotalevidence from experience
lifters out there, and you seeit on Instagram as well, where
you don't really have to bulkand you can still slowly gain
muscle.
I had Holly Baxter on the show.

(18:53):
She was talking about the samething.
You're tuning your nutrientdelivery, your recovery, and
your mechanical stress just theright way to direct your limited
resources toward muscle.
But you have to be consistent,right?
You have to be consistent.
So when it comes to likeprotein, I want you to get your
total protein that start thereand then start to distribute it
across your day, not becauseit's some magic formula to

(19:13):
maximize protein synthesis,although it should bump it up a
little bit, a small amount, butmainly because that's going to
enforce the consistency andensure balanced meals, good
satiety, habit forming, etcetera.
Okay.
And I like whole sources ofanimal-based protein followed by
supplementation like wheysupplements.
Plant-based protein is in thereas well.

(19:35):
It should kind of naturallyfall in there if you're eating a
diverse omnivorous diet.
If you're vegan or vegetarian,you're gonna have to rely a
little more on pea and riceprotein and plant-based sources
of protein, watching for thefats and carbs and trying to
keep it balanced.
All right, for resistancetraining, again, the consistency
matters.
And that means having theappropriate level of volume for

(19:56):
you, which is moderate to highvolume because you've got a lot
of resources coming in.
So 10 to 15, up to 20 sets permuscle group per week, maybe not
20, that might be too much,unless you're in a surplus.
So this is where there's somesmall differences between this
and a full-on surplus, but Ibelieve that you're getting
still most of the ability toprogress because you're not
dieting.
The fact that you're notdieting gives you a big

(20:17):
advantage here.
Focusing on compound lifts asthe foundation with hypertrophy
movements as your developmentaland accessory work, using that
periodization, you know, usingyour program long enough to
progress, but then avoidingstalls and fatigue by rotating
things in the right way, right?
I'm not gonna get into thedetails of programming today.
Energy availability, becauseyou're not in a surplus, is also

(20:41):
crucial.
What I mean by that is carbs.
Carbs around your main, aroundyour training is gonna maintain
your glycogen and yourperformance, even though you
don't have the higher overallcalories.
So your carbs should still bepretty darn decent, right?
If you're eating, let's say,let's say your maintenance is
2,500 calories, that meansyou're eating about 2550 or 2600

(21:01):
a day.
Because remember, this iscalled aggressive maintenance.
You're being aggressive bypushing it a little bit past all
the time.
So you're probably gonna have,let's say, I don't know, it
depends on your body weight, butlet's say you weigh 160.
You need, you know, 140 gramsof protein, maybe 60 grams, 70
grams of fat, and then 250 gramsof carbs or something, maybe

(21:22):
300.
It depends, you know, men,women, depends on where your
expenditure is, right?
But we shouldn't be low carb orketo here, generally.
You're gonna get much betterresults for muscle building when
the carbs are there, hittingsome minimum threshold.
They don't have to be extremelyhigh, just hitting that minimum
threshold.
And, you know, if you don'thave that energy, then your
body's gonna draw on otherenergy systems like your fat and

(21:46):
that we call that fastedtraining.
You probably will find adrop-off in performance.
But if you're still gettingyour total carbs for the day,
even if you're training fasted,it's still gonna compensate
quite a bit for that.
All right.
So there's a lot of flexibilityhere.
And then your micronutrientsare really the hidden levers,
your vitamin D, your magnesium,your zinc, you know, all of
these things affect yourperformance, your muscle

(22:07):
adaptation.
Sleep, of course.
Okay, sleep is huge, hydrationis huge, all of those things.
The goal is to engineer theentire system to gain lean mass.
Now, you should be dialing inthese things anyway if you were
to prepare for fat loss.
But what you're doing here isjust making this a sustainable
way that you do things.
This is who I am, this is whatI do.
I am pushing the maintenancecalories just a little bit.

(22:31):
And when you do that, whatmight happen is over a six-month
period, you might gain a couplepounds.
That means you did it right.
And a couple pounds is nothingbecause hopefully all of those
two pounds extra are muscle andsome of the pounds that are
hidden are muscle as well,meaning you gained more than two
pounds of muscle and lost somefat and it did out.
So you've gained weight, butyou've actually gained more than

(22:52):
the gain in muscle.
That's really what we're goingfor here.
And that's awesome.
And you can tell that bymeasuring your body, you know,
your waist size, how you look,how you feel, how your clothes
fit, et cetera.
And of course, that you'reprogressing in the gym.
So, you know, speaking ofefficiency and gym and
programming, I know some of youare thinking, well, what the
heck do I do in the gym?
If you're kind of new to thisand you're busy, like a lot of

(23:13):
you are, you're trying to savetime in the gym.
I definitely want to tell youabout our new Ignite training
template we just came out inPhysique University.
It is a four-day upper-lowersplit.
It uses supersets and othertime-saving techniques like drop
sets, but still incorporatescompound lifts and solid
principles of progression.
Each session takes about 30minutes max.

(23:35):
That's why I love it.
To get it, you have to be inphysique university.
So anybody listening who'sthere, go get it.
It's already out.
This is from Coach CarolHanshu, who's our assistant
coach in the group.
And if you don't have it, ifyou're not in physique
university, join right now.
It's only $27 to join.
You can cancel right after yougrab it if you want.
I don't care, but I hope you'llstick around because you see
the value in the courses, thecurriculum, the coaching, the

(23:57):
live calls, the QA's, all of it.
You can then use code FREEPLANto get the free custom nutrition
plan that I will put togetherfor you.
So you're gonna get a freecustom nutrition plan, and then
you're gonna have access to allof our training templates.
The free nutrition plan isworth multiples of the price
alone.
You get all of that.
Go to wits and weights.comslash physique to join.

(24:18):
Remember to check the box forthe plan and then use code
FREEPLAN to get it for free.
Click the link in the shownotes or go to wits and
weights.com slash physique forour ignite four-day upper lower
time-saving training template.
All right, now I want to talkabout some of the less discussed
aspects of building muscle atmaintenance that really make a
difference.
Glycogen.

(24:38):
Glycogen's role goes beyondjust energy.
You're filling up your glycogenstores, signals your anabolic
pathways, anabolic meaningbuild.
You can refill glycogen atmaintenance without bulking by
using carbs.
And I mentioned this already,but you've got to have
sufficient carbs and ideallytime them around your workouts,

(24:59):
which creates an anabolicenvironment without needing a
surplus.
The next thing is neurologicaladaptations.
These are significant,especially if you're a newer
lifter.
Your early strength and sizegains are gonna come from neural
or neurological efficiency, themotor learning, the motor
recruitment, the connectionbetween your brain and your

(25:20):
muscles, just to simplify it.
And these really don't requiresurplus, believe it or not.
You can get this just bystarting to lift weights.
Then recomp, when we it's it'sworth talking about
recomposition a little bit here,because it is more likely when
you're in what we call an energyflux state, a high energy flux
state.
If you know you want to thinklike you're an athlete, because

(25:42):
you are, guys, you you'relistening to wits and weights
because you want to be anathlete of aging.
I actually stole that term fromJohn Sullivan Sully, who wrote
Barbell Prescription.
Definitely buy that book if youdon't have it in your library.
Athletes with highernon-exercise activity, right?
Higher NEAT, higher daily stepcount, higher movement, and less
sedentary sitting behavior tendto recomp more effectively

(26:05):
while at maintenance.
Being more active outside thegym helps direct nutrients to
muscle, gives you insulinsensitivity.
It's kind of counterintuitivebecause you think, okay, I'm
more active, so I require morefood.
But the system becomes moreefficient and the food that you
are already getting now goesmore toward muscle.
If that makes sense.
Now, you may need more food aswell if your metabolism goes up,

(26:28):
and nobody complains aboutthat.
Okay.
Your sleep architecture, I'musing this term more, sleep
architecture, right?
The whole system of your sleepquality and quantity.
Understanding the slow wavesleep, your deep, your REM
sleep, which are correlated withgrowth hormone release, with
muscle protein synthesis.
If you have chronically shortsleep, less than six hours,

(26:49):
you're gonna have a hard timeholding muscle, even in when
you're in a slightly hypocaloriccondition, meaning even when
you're in a slight surplus.
Sleep quality actuallysubstitutes for a calorie
surplus.
It is like getting a caloriesurplus, guys, for muscle
building.
Get your sleep.
And then there's the proteinleverage hypothesis where high

(27:10):
protein diets reduce spontaneousenergy intake while maintaining
an anabolic environment, right?
And this explains why somelifters gain muscle without
bulking.
They're actually leveragingprotein to drive both satiety
and hypertrophy.
And then there are microsurpluses within macro
maintenance.
Micro meaning day to day, macromeaning overall for the week or

(27:32):
for the month or for the year.
Your daily calorie intake isgonna hover around maintenance,
but really you need to bepushing it a little bit above.
In my opinion, about 50 to 100calories above maintenance on a
constant basis.
And you may have to switch thisup between your training days
and your rest days.
Maybe.
Not everybody has to do that.
In fact, most people don't haveto do that or overthink it.

(27:53):
It's gonna flux with your weekbecause it's not just your
training that affects this, it'salso your stress and your sleep
and your work and your familyand your schedule and your
vacations and so blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
All right.
Over the week, it's gonna netout to a few hundred calories
over maintenance for the wholeweek.
But it's gonna kind of feellike a little bit of a bulk,
which is great.
It's gonna feel fueled up.

(28:14):
Okay.
It's a really great approach,in my opinion.
And again, all you're gonna getfor it on a negative, and this
is not even a negative, is maybea couple pounds of weight gain
over many, many, many months,but you're gonna net muscle
gain, which is the goal.
So the kind of the last segmenthere is who benefits the most
from skipping the bulk, whatwe're talking about today.
I would say if you areoverweight or have a much higher

(28:38):
body fat, you definitely don'tneed to bulk.
In fact, this is the onescenario where I'd say you
probably still want a slightdeficit because you have so much
stored energy and you need todrop that body fat.
That's so I'll put that there.
If you were detrained andyou're coming back to lifting,
you have all that muscle memory,so to speak, and you're gonna
respond really fast, it's agreat way to get started and see

(29:00):
what you get for your resultswithout needing to go in a
surplus.
If you're a new lifter and youget these neurological and early
hypertrophy gains, right?
Newbie gains, again, theyrequire less of a surplus.
You're trying to respond totraining without needing a ton
of extra food.
Just make sure you're notdieting.
Just make sure you're notdieting.
If you are, and then this isthe a big category for a lot of

(29:21):
you.
If you're a lifter who wants tojust look good, you want a lean
look, you care about aestheticsthroughout the year, you want
to avoid the cycle of gettingfluffy and cutting, you want to
stay lean year-round, this is agreat way to go.
Just let's face it, it's okay.
It's okay to have a vanitygoal.
This is the way to go.
And if you're, you know, you'remidlife, you're busy, you're
professional, you know, raisinga family, this aligns perfectly

(29:43):
with many of your goals.
You want efficiency, you wantsustainability, sustainability,
long term health.
You won't you don't want todeal with drastic swings, which
admittedly come with the needfor more structure and control
to do them the right way.
Or I'm gonna raise my hand,having a coach in your corner,
or A community like PhysiqueUniversity in your corner, or if

(30:03):
you want a free community, getstarted, join our Facebook
group, right?
You just don't have that timeor desire for these cycles, it's
a good way to go.
Now, there are some pitfalls,right?
The gains are gonna be slowercompared to bulking.
We talked about that.
Also, you do have to still beprecise.
You have to precisely track howmuch protein you're eating,
your recovery, your training.
Too aggressive of a deficit isgonna push you into a surplus.

(30:24):
So you've got to just kind ofwatch out what's happening.
In most people's experience, Ifind it works out no matter what
because you're pushing yourexpenditure up and it's you kind
of almost struggle to keep upwith it, but not as much as in a
surplus.
And then there's thepsychological trap.
If you expect bulking levelgains at maintenance, you are

(30:44):
gonna be disappointed.
You're gonna be disappointed,you're gonna have to bulk in
that case.
Don't have unrealisticexpectations.
Okay, but this can be a greatapproach.
So the reason aggressivemaintenance works isn't just
about the calories or theprotein or the training, it's
operating at the design limitsof your body without exceeding
them, at least from a muscleversus fat perspective, right?

(31:06):
Again, if we just want rawmuscle gain, you're gonna gain
more fat as well, and you goafter it with a surplus.
But this to what we talkedabout today is its own form of
precision that you might findappealing.
It is also quite sustainable.
It's something you could justkeep doing.
Now, maybe if you drift overtime and gain a few pounds over,
say two or three years, youeventually do a fat loss phase,

(31:29):
maybe.
Or you might find, heck, I'mjust leaner and leaner at higher
body fat, at higher bodyweight, and I'm super happy now.
I look strong, I'm jacked, I'mlean, I never had to diet.
It's possible.
So traditional bulking is thefastest way to gain muscle,
requires a fat loss phaseafterward, and that's a
throughput approach.
Aggressive maintenance is moreof an efficiency approach.

(31:51):
So if you want to stay leanyear-round while building muscle
moderately over time, this isthe way.
So before we wrap up, rememberwe do have a review giveaway.
If you love the show today, ifyou learned something, leave a
review on Apple Podcasts andtell me what you thought of
today's episode.
Do it by October 15, and onewinner will be selected for

(32:11):
three months in the masterytrack of Physique University,
and everybody who submits areview will get a surprise
bonus.
Just search for Wits andWeights in your app if you're
not already in Apple right now.
Scroll down, tap write areview, make it happen.
I appreciate it.
I'm grateful.
Until next time, keep usingyour wits, lifting those
weights, and remember, buildingmuscle does not require getting

(32:32):
fat.
It requires precision,consistency, and a systems based
approach.
This is Philip Ape.
If you've been listening toWits and Weights, talk to you
next time.
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