For me bulking, maintaining, or cutting is more a function of diet than a particular training style. Personally, my bulking days are pretty much over, so I'm primarily concerned with losing fat (and maintaining that fat loss level) more than anything else. One thing I've realized over the years is that the human body has a lot more fat on it than we realize. In other words, it seems like the more I lose, the more I see that I can lose. Of course, with each drop of a few pounds, getting the next few off seems to get even harder until you get to that point where your body is fighting back with everything it has to keep you where you are at no matter what you try. I guess that's why you rarely ever see truly ripped people at the beach. The human body just does not want to be that way because it feels like starvation.
Good post. I think the idea is to be as lean as can be accomplished with reasonable effort because, as you pointed out, it gets increasingly harder the leaner you go. So I stop somewhere short of going full commando because the body doesn't like it and finds it stressful, and the more willpower you have to exercise just to take off and keep off an extra ~couple pounds or so, the more that the consequences of this kind of mental (and physical) effort will find its way into other areas of your life. And not necessarily in a good way.
I guess it is therefore probably best to stop at the point just before the body starts to fight back. This would result in a situation which you can maintain for a long period of time, without having to fight yourself all the time. And without carrying excess fat with you all the time. I haven't reached that level yet, but have the feeling that I'm getting closer to it.
Well, maybe I'll go to the point where it starts complaining a bit, but not to the point where it's screaming. I can't stand the yelling.
Agree. I dropped a bunch on the keto and looked in the mirror and thought "Holy shit...I could still lose another 20 lbs...."
Not a personal knock, more for the noobs reading that list of exercises. Not a squat, deadlift, pullup, military press or bent over row in sight. Not an effective workout. Do THOSE 5 exercises with intensity and you have yourself a workout.
Phil Heath won the Mr. Olympia 7 times in a row and rarely ever used a free weight, so he would probably disagree with you. Anyway, there are several reasons for my exercise choices: I work out from home so I don't have much room at all for big equipment like barbells, squat racks, etc. I use powerblox dumbbells and they go up to 130lbs each, which is more than enough for me. And I would argue that working out with dumbbells is way more difficult than using a barbell. I don't know a single person that can bench press as much weight with dumbbells as they can with a barbell. I also have a multi-station gym that looks identical to this one: I could do military presses with my dumbbells but my shoulders pop in a painful way when I get near the bottom of the movement. So I figured that would really be a stupid exercise for me to do over the long term, so I do front/side/rear lateral raises instead, which is superior for delt development compared to military presses because they truly work all the muscles of the shoulders. I do lat pulldowns which is functionally identical to a pullup. And I can make them harder than a pullup because there's more weight on the gym stack than my bodyweight. And most importantly, my own personal philosophy is that you don't need a gym membership and a ton of free weights to build a great body.
One of the exercise researchers with whom I have corresponded from time to time wrote the following in an email: "...What is totally unmarketable is the evidence that shows that how much muscle mass people can gain has a very strong genetic component and is not very protocol dependent assuming any one of a number of reasonable protocols. So, the idea that in changing protocols one can suddenly gain a lot of muscle mass assuming some prior training is not true. Same with strength. We have as do others some very compelling data from one of our NIH studies showing a large response variation to the same protocol..."
I can GUARANTEE you that Phil used those 5 exercises for the bulk of his career. You nor I are Phil Heath and do not ingest the amount of enhancements that he does. The reasons you state why dumbbells are more difficult is the same reason pullups are harder than pulldowns. The supporting and stabilizing muscles needed to do a pullup is far greater than a pulldown using equivalent weight. Generally speaking, sitting exercises are not the equivalent to free weight compound movements. Ell Darden was a Jones/Nautilus protege and was there for the Colorado Expirement and Sergios' visit to FL to train with Jones. Trust me, the machines were not the way Casey, Sergio, Boyer Coe or even Ell built their bodies. I agree that you have to do what works for you, my shoulders can't bench over 250 after 35 years of benching. I get it. My comment was for noob lurkers. Way too easy to fake a workout on machines. Most trainees would be best served with 3 full body workouts a week using compound movements. That is just a fact despite zillions of hypertrophy studies since the '60s.
Definitely true, seen it all the time. Some guys are hard gainers others not. Seems to break down to true mesomorphs being truly the best. Another limiting factor is steroid response, some guys become freaks others, meh. The point, IMO, is to use the protocol that gets one to their genetic limit the quickest. That is not a program built around lateral raises, flyes and leg extensions.