If you do any amount of cursory internet research on gaining muscle and getting bigger, you’re likely to come across this saying: “If you want to gain muscle mass, eat 500 calories above maintenance!” Well, I’m putting that wisdom and advice to the test.

Before

Up to this point, I’ve been following the principle of eating more on days that I exercise, and compensating by eating less on days that I don’t. Usually, that is accomplished by intermittent fasting. I generally average about my BMR of 1800 calories in terms of intake and expenditure. This has kept my body fat at a low level, year-round.

During the soccer season, I keep leg work at a minimum. The reason for this is that I play so much soccer, doing a lot of squatting or deadlifting would be counter-productive (not to mention painful).

But soccer season is winding down, and I will be cutting back to playing only 3-4 times per week, instead of 5-6. This will allow me to do a lot more leg work, and hopefully, prove some points.

The Theory

Conventional wisdom says that one must eat 500 calories above maintenance to build muscle. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that eating this amount of calories will cause me to pack on some fat pounds along with the muscle. We will see.

It also says that in order to really build your chest and back, doing heavy squats is a must. Supposedly, it’s the release of growth hormone from leg exercises that benefits the upper body. Needless to say, I’m skeptical, and do not believe this position to be supported by science. But, in the interest of my experiment, I’m willing to be wrong. Now, I have nothing against squats. I love them. But I don’t believe them to be necessary pieces of building an upper body. Building your upper body requires lifting heavy weights with your upper body, not just your legs. I am not particularly interested in gaining a ton of muscle mass in my legs. Some strength is always nice, but I don’t want to put on a ton of mass in my legs.

The Method

I’m going to use madcow’s 5×5 Intermediate program. Now, I really love this program. It’s proven and it works. And even if I weren’t doing the caloric experimentation, I would be doing this routine, anyway. It’s that good.

That being said, it’s not strictly a hypertrophy routine. That is, it’s not designed to build the maximum amount of muscle mass possible. That’s not the point. This is a strength routine. But, you cannot get stronger without getting bigger, and 5×5 routines are also proven mass-building routines.

Tracking the Changes

The first thing I did was to record some of my vital statistics:

Chest: 38

Waist: 32

Shoulders: 46

Arms: 14

Legs: 25

Calves: 17

Starting weight: 172 lbs

I will be tracking all of the changes weekly.

I also started a public FitDay journal to track my calories, activity and macronutrient ratios. It can be viewed here:

http://www.fitday.com/fitness/PublicJournals.html?Owner=FitXcel

According to “conventional wisdom,” I need 1.5g of protein for every lbs of lean body mass I have. I have no idea what my actual body fat is, so I’ll just round it up and guess 10%. With a starting weight of 172 lbs, that means I would need a whopping 225g of protein every day, plus a significant amount of calories. Sheesh!

I will also be tracking my strength changes. At the end of the soccer season my maxes in these specific lifts began to decline, but ended at roughly:

Bench: 225×5

Bulgarian Split Squat: 225×5

Deadlift: 315×5

Incline Bench: 175×5

Rows: 245×5

Now, I know these numbers will be going up. These aren’t the highest numbers I’ve ever had, but strength always seems to be at a low point for me by the end of the season. This is due to such a large amount of activity, combined with an inability to really focus on my strength training. I expect a rather substantial increase in these numbers.

So, What Happens After?

After a few months of this, I will re-evaluate. I will see how much muscle I’ve gained (as measured by muscle measurements), and also how much fat. Whatever percentage of fat is gained around my midsection will be subtracted from possible muscle gain to negate the possibility that my arm measurements may go up because of fat increases and not actual muscle increases.

Then, I will go back to a lower-calorie routine, making sure I don’t gain any fat (and lose any that I have gained). I will then be able to measure whether my strength and muscle growth continues to increase at the same rate. I have my own hypothesis about what will happen, but we will definitely see.

I hope that if you are considering doing some experimentation with your fitness routine, don’t just guess. Be detailed. Keep a log. Track your changes. That way, you will have some hard data about what programs work for you and what programs don’t. Something that is effective for you may not actually “feel” effective at the time. It is only by really keeping track that you will know.

-Drew

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