Quote:
Originally Posted by Flabbibulin
The funny thing is you have described the last 5 years for me in a nutshell- I began with an initial loss of about 50lbs- trimming down to a very lean 175ish, followed by a few bulking/cutting cycles that were each about 1 year in length. There definitely has been a positive gain in each consecutive cycle, but never anything as dramatic as the first initial loss, and each consecutive attempt seems to be more and more just gaining and then losing the same weight. That said, bulking and cutting kind of naturally works well with the flow of the year anyway- nice to be bulking and lifting heavy in the winter while trimming down for the spring and summer. All in all, I think I am most content though at the beginning of a bulk when I am getting in a decent amount of calories, not tired or drained at the gym, but still looking decent. I definitely took this most recent cut too extreme and for too long and the lightest I have have been since I was about 18 or 19... which if you consider the point of a bulk & cut to be a net gain in overall muscle mass, then I essentially failed.
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Doing a successful cut/bulk year after year is extremely difficult. There's a reason why you don't see 5'10'' 200lbs+ lean naturals competing in bodybuilding shows. It works for me about once every 3 years. There's a lot of confusion about what's attainable naturally for most people too. That ultra full yet lean look is a product of drugs. If you look at natural bodybuilding competitions that have quality testing, the competitors are surprisingly small. It's kind of funny actually, competitors will do whatever they can to sneak by the rules, despite a competition being "natural". The laxer the testing gets, the bigger the competitors become.
Newbie gains are the bomb...or, if you've ever had to take a few months off working out, muscle memory.