Articles
The P-Ratio: How Body-Fat Percentage Affects Muscle Growth & Fat Gain
There’s a common rule of thumb that we should get lean before we bulk, and then stop bulking once we reach around 20% body fat. The idea is that as we get leaner, our insulin sensitivity improves, allowing us to make leaner muscle gains. And then as we bulk up, our body fat percentage gradually rises, our insulin sensitivity falls, and we begin to gain proportionally more fat.
But new evidence calls this idea into question. Two researchers, Greg Nuckols, MA, and Eric Trexler, PhD, have been conducting hypertrophy research to see which body-fat percentages tend to yield the leanest muscle growth. I spoke with them, and they shared their early results and recommendations, which are already creating waves among the top experts.
So, does having a higher body fat percentage make it harder to build muscle leanly?
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The Best Barbell Exercises for Building Muscle
The best barbell exercises, without a doubt, are the 5 big compound lifts: the squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press, and chin-up. These exercises will give you around 2/3rds of your overall muscle growth. In fact, you could build a muscular physique by getting strong at just these 5 exercises.
However, the big barbell exercises aren’t good at everything. They’re great for building muscle in our torsos but relatively poor for building muscle in our limbs. The bench press can work all the muscle fibres in your chest but only some of the muscle heads in your triceps. Chin-ups can work all the big pulling muscles in your back but only some of the muscle heads in your biceps. That’s why we need smaller barbell exercises to train our smaller muscles.
If we combine the big barbell exercises with the smaller ones, you can fully develop every muscle in your body. Here’s how to do that.
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Should You Bulk or Cut First?
You should bulk if you want to get bigger, stronger, and more muscular. You should cut if you want to focus on burning fat. But what if you want to be both bigger and leaner? Should you start by bulking or cutting?
The next question is, when should you switch from bulking to cutting or vice versa? When bulking, how fat should you get before you switch to a cut? When cutting, how lean should you get before going back to bulking?
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What’s The Difference Between Chin-Ups & Pull-Ups? Which is Better?
Chin-ups are done by hanging from a bar with an underhand grip and pulling yourself up. Pull-ups are quite similar. You hang from a bar with an overhand grip and pull yourself up. In fact, they’re so similar that they’re often used interchangeably. But that small change in grip position has quite a big effect on which muscles you work, how large your range of motion is, and how heavy you can lift.
So let’s talk about the pros and cons of pull-ups vs chin-ups and how best to use them in your workout routine.
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The Best Lifting Straps & Grips for Building Muscle
When you first start lifting weights, it’s common for your grip to be a limiting factor. After all, if you’ve never trained your grip, it’s probably weak. And since you need to grip the bar during every single exercise, it’s easy for a weak grip to plague your workout routine. Fortunately, your grip will quickly become stronger, and it will stop being a limiting factor on most lifts.
But some lifts work huge muscle grips, allowing you to lift massive amounts of weight. Think of the conventional deadlift, which works your glutes, quads, and hamstrings—three of the biggest muscles in your body. Your grip won’t be able to keep up. To get around that problem, you can learn the mixed grip, the hook grip, use chalk, or use tape. All of those methods can work. But a much simpler option is to get some lifting straps.
Lifting straps do two things. They let the bar hang from your wrist instead of from your grip, and they prevent the barbell from rolling in your hands, keeping it steady. This allows you to worry less about your grip, more about the muscles you’re actually trying to train. You can row with your upper back, deadlift with your hips, and shrug with your traps—all without needing to worry about the bar rolling out of your hands.
So, that brings us to the next question: what are the best lifting straps to buy? And the answer to that question is a bit surprising. You shouldn’t buy lifting straps at all. You should get lifting grips instead.
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How to Warm Up Before Lifting Weights
What’s the best way to warm up before lifting weights? Should we do cardio? Does that help? Is it necessary? And should you stretch? Some research shows that stretching can reduce our size and strength gains. But is that true?
And what about warm-up sets? There’s no doubt that they’re an important part of warming up before lifting heavy weights. But how much weight should we lift during those warm-up sets, and how long should we rest between them?
In this article, we’ll go over the research looking into the best way to warm before your workout. By end, you’ll know how to reduce your risk of injury, how to improve your technique and range of motion, and how to gain more muscle size and strength.
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The Barbell Front Squat Guide (for Building Muscle)
The barbell squat is the strength training lift. It’s the best lift for bulking up your quads, glutes, and calves, and it stimulates more overall muscle mass than any other lift, with the possible exception of the deadlift.
There are different ways of squatting, each with different pros and cons. This article has nothing to do with powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting. Instead, we’re using the squat to stimulate muscle growth—to get bigger, stronger, fitter, and better looking. For this, the barbell front squat is the best. That’s a controversial claim, we know. But we’ll show you why, then how.
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How to Do Supersets
Building your workout routine out of supersets is one of the best ways to build more muscle in less time. Not because there’s anything magical about them—although there might be—but because they make our workouts so much denser and more efficient. And there’s no real trade-off, either. You’ll still gain the same amount of strength, still get similar cardiovascular benefits.
Thing is, most people do supersets incorrectly. They rest too little between their sets, which is fine for general fitness, but it reduces the amount of muscle mass and strength they gain. Or they superset the wrong exercises together, limiting the amount of weight they can lift, and turning them into a less effective form of drop sets. So if you want to keep your workouts focused on building muscle, there’s a specific way to do them.
So, what are supersets? What’s the best way to do them? And how can you cut the length of your workouts in half while still gaining the same amount of muscle size and strength?
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How to Do Drop Sets
Drop sets are a traditional bodybuilding technique where you do a set, grab a lighter weight, and immediately do another set. Bodybuilders have been using them for the past 80 years as a fast way to blast a muscle with extra sets, and they’ve fared quite well in the research. If you use them cleverly, they can indeed help you build more muscle in less time.
So, what are drop sets? How do you do them? And how can you use them to build more muscle?
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Review of the X3 Bar by Dr John Jaquish: Is It Good for Building Muscle?
Dr John Jaquish is quickly becoming known for making extravagant claims about the benefits of training with his resistance band system, the X3 Bar. According to him, the product that he developed is the very best way to build muscle—three times better than traditional weight lifting. And not only that, it’s cheap, safe, and can be done from the comfort of your very own home.
But is any of that true? Are resistance bands an effective way to stimulate muscle growth? Is the X3 Bar better than the other types of resistance bands? And how does it compare to traditional weight lifting for building muscle? Can it really compete? Does it really offer any advantages?
So, is the X3 Bar good for building muscle? Let’s take a look.
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