Maintaining low body fat and how to look AWESOME Every Day

Avoid adding body fat to your frame this fall and find out how you can stay shredded year round while still increasing your gains!

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By Craven


Ah, the end of summer. 

 Every bro's favorite time of the year as they can stop doing their endless amounts of sit-ups, pretending to care about what they're eating, and can finally start their oh so longed for "winter bulk" phase.

Most people (guys and girls) do a pretty decent job when it comes down to looking their best for the summer months.  Who wouldn't want to look their best when you're going to be spending a lot of time by the pool or at the beach?  

But as the summer gives way to early fall and the pools parties are no longer raging, most people who 'diet' and workout feel this is a time where they can be more careless with what they're eating and maybe bulk up during the winter months.  

Time to load up on the pancakes and Chick-fl-A, right!?

Not so fast there, slim.  

The whole bulking phase thing is something I have mixed feelings about.  And i'll explain why. 

Its understandable to add a bit of body mass to your frame if you've been walking about absolutely shredded at 7% body fat for the last few months and you want to increase some main lifts and tack on a pound or two of REAL lean muscle,  

But most trainees don't understand that you don't need to throw on an extra 15 pounds of winter fluff in order to improve your physique.

In fact, adding that much weight in a short period of time is just asking for trouble.  

You're going to gain almost pure fat.

Maybe a pound and a half of real lean muscle, but that's it.

Sorry, but it's true.  

So let's take a look at what can be done to prevent your bulking phases from flying off the handle and you losing your coveted beach body overnight and transforming into Fudgey The Whale.

It's funny 'cuz he's fat!

I've never been a fan of the bulk and cut approach. An approach often taken to the extreme by some of my peers, with the net result being that they only look decent during the summer months.

 Simply not my style. Perhaps it's because I'm more impressed by feats of great relative strength, for which leanness is critical.

 I'm not sure. It is what it is, like the saying goes.

Most people in the gym who lift for pure strength and ego will never admit to saying it's important to stay as lean as possible, but deep down inside we all want a set of shredded washboard abs.  

But these are the dudes who spend most of their time flopping around the bench press with limited range of motion, don't deadlift, and probably squat less than the girls you see putting in work at the squat racks.  

If you've somehow managed to drop a a significant amount of body fat and have a decent set of abs, it's imperative to maintain your leanness as much as possible, even if your goal is to improve your overall strength and bring up lagging body parts.

When looking to increase muscle mass, the best approach to take is the slow and steady one.  

I know, I know, you want to go to to bed tonight and wake up jacked tomorrow.  

But that's not going to happen. 

For the sake of time, I'm just going to lay it out straight if you want to increase your body composition but still maintain a lean body fat of around 10 percent.

• TRACK YOUR MACRO-NUTRIENTS AND CALORIES.  I don't think I can say this enough.  The trick is to slowly increase your caloric intake over the next few months, incrementally increasing your carbohydrates by 25-50 grams per week at most!  This is what will make or break you, your diet.  As the old adage goes, "You can't out-train a bad diet."
• Use a Flexible Dieting approach.  If you're not all ready doing so, using a flexible diet will keep you on a relaxed regiment but still allow you to enjoy the foods you love
• Train hard.  This one's a no brainer.  You need to keep the volume and intensity high in order to add mass AND stay lean.  Use whatever program(s) that work best for you.  In my experience, high volume and heavy weight are good for building foundation on squats, deadlifts, and bench press.  Higher reps and intense sets are extremely effective for hypertrophy and increasing muscle size for exercises like curls, shoulder raises, leg extensions, and accessory moves of that sort
• Utilize your supplements.  For info on what supplements will serve you best, check out my article on supplements here!

I just want to touch on a few reasons why going all out with bulking is a bad idea.

• Fat cell accumulation.  When you add significant amounts of body fat, fat cells increase in size and in number.  They have an infinite ability to increase and don't care about your physique.  
• Every time you 'cut', it will be harder to drop body fat.  Because you've put on body fat, your body becomes accustomed to it's new state and finds balance and equilibrium there.  Because of this, your body has created a new daily set point.  Cutting down from this point, especially when done cyclically, will be more difficult every time.  

Save your abs and your time: Don't perma-bulk!

How to Look Awesome Every Day
Here's the fun part.  It's almost motivating and encouraging to see real progress in the gym, especially when you're body weight is barely moving.  If you can increase your compound movement strength without adding much body weight, you're going in the right direction.

Measure Progress:  Your progress can quantified in relative strength.  This is hands down the easiest way to know if you're going along the right path to improving your body composition.  An extra 10 pounds added to your bench isn't impressive if you've also gained 10 pounds of body weight.  That's a 1:1 ratio of weight to strength, which is strongly indicative of fat gain. 

However, assume you added 10 pounds to your bench but only 3 pounds of body weight.  That's a 1:3:3 ratio of weight to strength, which is quite good.  Odds are most of the 3 pounds came from real lean muscle, not fat!

If you're an intermediate or advanced lifter, strive to reach these weight to strength ratios:

Bench Press and Weighted pull ups* - 1:3

Squat - 1:4

Deadlift - 1:5

That's about all there is to it, guys. 

Don't be tempted to fall off the lean gains wagon and trade down for the all-out bulk-n-binge route you see so many bros take.  It may seem like you're adding quality mass at first as both the scale and your lifts go up, but your lifts will stall before the scale and you'll be left with nothing but a cookie dough physique to compliment your diet.  

Happy lifting, happy eating, and happy living!