FT Questions....

[Scott Stevenson]

Hey Scott,

Having read through some of the dieting threads I've seen that you like to maintain training day caloric intake, specifically peri-workout caloric intake and then establish caloric deficit on rest days in order to maintain performance / recovery etc

Do you take this approach when gaining too? So keeping kcals at maintenance on rest days and then establishing the surplus on training days? Perhaps this could help with controlling body fat increases and even make your training performance and recovery improve as more kcals are being shoved In when you are most receptive to them

You pretty much nailed it!!!

When dieting down, you'd remove kcal peri-WO only as a last resort and when gaining in the off-season you'd add food on non-training days after you've maxed out the peri-WO recovery period's food intake (i.e.. you can't eat more during those meals).

As a side note, what are your thoughts on max rate of muscle gain on a weekly basis? I've read some articles saying that you can probably only build 0.5lbs of pure muscle tissue per week, obviously there may be slight variations due to genetics,muscle memory etc. But would you say aiming for 0.5lb weight gain per week is a good starting point?

Thanks!

Rate of muscle gain is HIGHLY Variable, ranging from non-responders to those who are genetic freaks.

0.5lb muscle / week would amount to ~25lb / year. THIS IS A TREMENDOUS increase in muscle mass, but that's not a bad number in terms of overall weight gain (0.5 lb of scale weight) to keep in mind, but context is super important here (including one's size - are we taking a 120lb woman or a 240lb guy?).

Keep in mind that this is / would be an *average* rate of annual gain but it will change over time (e..g, post-contents vs. 6 mo. into an off-season), and the *composition* of weight gain will change too as one goes along gaining weight over the course of a year. (More fat, more extracellular water and less muscle generally is the result when one is pushing for *new* levels of size - and one can go overboard here, too, such that nothing is gained in the long run after dieting back down.)

So, again, while that's a decent number to keep in mind for some people, context rules the day.

Post contest, if one is down, say, 30lb over the course of a 10-14 week diet, one *could* expect to gain back something along those lines over the course of the next 10-14 weeks, depending on goals, with the ideal being ending up *leaner* at a given body mass.

OTOH, when one is 10lb over a previous max body mass, deep into an off-season, and still wanting to push for more size (keeping in mind that the fat loss will take longer the more fat is gained), having a scale weight goal in mind can be a nice way to "keep the blinders" on when simply pushing the food at near intolerable amounts. (This is not a one size fits all strategy, of course, but for folks who are really pushing the extremes of muscle mass or who simply can't gain weight easily, it can come down to being largely a matter of mental strategies sometimes.)

So, those kind of goals are tools - for motivation and monitoring - and their value should be weighed as such (pardon the pun). You've also got, of course, THE MIRROR, strength in the gym, aches n' pains during training, skin folds (body fat estimation / comparison with previous year's measurements), your perceived recovery, your ease of digestion and hunger levels, etc. to help monitor things as you go along and know when your progress is more optimal in terms of muscle gain vs. fat gain.

-Scott