Video:Tips for Bulking Up Naturally

Transcript:Tips for Bulking Up Naturally

Hi! My name is Hank Uhlaender, Natural Bodybuilding competitor, owner of Hanksfitness.com. I am here to talk to you today about bulking up naturally.

Know Your Body's Needs To Bulk Up Naturally

In natural bodybuilding when we go through the bulk up process, we can typically gauge the amount of muscle that we can expect to put on, based on the amount of natural testosterone available within the body. For me, it's a pound to two pounds per year. For other people depending on their age, their physique, genetics, and so forth, their expectations can be different.

Bulking Up Naturally Requires Proper Nutrition

Some of the things that are the same though are going to be the fact that you're going to increase the amount of your overall caloric intake. You're going to keep a very close attention to the amount of protein that you're taking in per day. You wanted to stay in what's called a nitrogen state. That's a muscle building state. You want to make sure you have a gram to gram-and-a-half per pound of body weight; sometimes more, sometime less depending on the athlete.

The carbohydrates are typically going to stay the same. You can add a little bit more simple carbohydrates in pre and post workout, but generally, you want to stay the same. We don't want to go onto a low-carb diet or a no-carb diet or something like that when we are bulking up. The reason why is your body converts carbs to glycogen and that's what is used to build muscle and repair the fibers. So by all means, you don't want to do that. The third thing is you want to have enough good fats, Omega 3-6-9, to stay in an anabolic state and keep your muscles growing.

Taylor Your Exercise to Promote Lean Muscle Growth

The next thing to do is to reduce the amount of cardio and frequency of cardio that you do per week. Typically, some bodybuilders will do no cardio during the week if they're more lean or more of an active morph like myself. Some will do two days of cardio, sometimes three. It just depends on the individual.

The goal is to stay below, say, 12% threshold in your body fat percentage and that's going to be up to your own set of standards. Some people will stay a little bit lower than that to, say, around 10%; for some it's 15%. Just keep in mind the more body fat that you put on in the off season, the more you're going to have to take off for contest. So that's just something to keep in mind.

The next thing you will want to do is reduce the frequency of your workouts. I prefer a four-day split when I am trying to bulk up. Some people will go to a three day. Some people will still maintain their five day. Another factor to consider when you're trying to bulk up naturally is to focus on what's called your compound list. They're going to target the larger muscle groups and they're also going to encompass your smaller muscle groups. That's something that you really want to focus on as you're bulking up.

That was tips for bulking up naturally. Thanks for listening!