Commitment Required For A Building Phase

There are a select few circumstances where you’ll likely be able to gain some muscle while simultaneously losing body fat.

1) You are a newbie to strength training.

2) You are coming off of a layoff from strength training.

3) You are pharmaceutically enhanced.

If you do not fit into any particular one of those categories, then you’re going to need to go into a caloric surplus (eating more calories than you burn) to put on any appreciable amount of muscle.

If you decide that this is the course you want to take, you should understand a couple things.

As a general rule you have to understand that if you’re going to go into a building phase you have to expect to spend several months there. It takes time to build muscle and, unlike what every advertisement will tell you, there are no shortcuts.

How much time you need to spend here depends on how your body responds and how much muscle you actually want to gain. The more muscle you want, the longer it is going to take.

The other thing you need to understand is that with muscle there is likely going to be some fat storage. The goal, of course, is to minimize that by gaining very slowly over several months instead of eating everything in sight, but most of the time some fat gain is inevitable.

What this ultimately means is that, if you’re planning to do a building phase you have to be accepting of a) that fact that you’re going to gain at least some fat that you will have to diet off later and b) the fact that you’re going to have to stick to it for a long period of time.

It isn’t easy but, for the few who are willing to accept those two things and commit anyway, it is worth it.

If you want to achieve what others don’t, you have to do what others won’t.