Redefining Optimal Muscle Gain Rates

Philip Pape 0:01

If you've been following the standard advice of gaining weight slowly and methodically to build muscle , including advice that I've given on this show , you might be too conservative . New research has changed our understanding of how quickly you can gain muscle while keeping fat gain minimized , and I mean quite completely changed , because what we thought was optimal might actually be cutting your gains in half . Today , I'm breaking down the latest science that's forcing us to rethink what we knew about the rate of building muscle and why . This is actually great news for anyone trying to pack on size . Whether you're a beginner who can gain faster than ever , or an experienced lifter who needs to find your sweet spot to avoid constant bulking and cutting cycles , this episode is going to help you hone in on the most efficient physique building approach . Welcome to Wits and Weights , the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart , efficient systems to achieve your dream physique .

Philip Pape 1:03

I'm your host , Philip Pape , and today we're exploring something that challenges what many of us , including myself , have been teaching for years about building muscle . You're probably tracking your calories , your macros . You're aiming to get just the right rate of gain , probably around a quarter pound per week , maybe a little more , something like two to three pounds per month , because that's what everyone says is optimal . I've even said before 0.2 to 0.3% of your body weight a week is optimal and , yes , you're going to make progress . However , you do it when you're in a surplus , but it might be slower than you want . And now you notice others making gains faster . Maybe you feel like you're shortchanging yourself because it doesn't seem like you're putting it all out there . And the new research that we've seen over the last few years suggests exactly that that we can gain muscle faster than previously thought , with less concern about fat gain than we once believed , and this changes pretty much everything we knew about building muscle and how fast and how large our surplus should be . Now , speaking of changing everything , I've revised my free muscle building nutrition blueprint to reflect the new findings , the new rates of gain , and I separate it by aggressiveness depending on how comfortable you are gaining weight and gaining some fat along for the ride as you build that muscle . And if you want your free copy of my muscle building nutrition blueprint , just use the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash free and it's updated and it's a very detailed guide with not only the rate of gain , but it walks you step by step through the process of building muscle . It gives you an example of how I applied this to a past bulk , which , of course , if I did it again , I might actually go aggressively . And just so you know , I'm recording this as I've recently started a new bulk , which I will be reporting out on , probably in a few months , only because I want to see how well my new program goes as well . I'm running a 19 week program that has a base phase and then a peaking phase to push up my main lifts , which I haven't done in a while , and I'm combining that with the bulk and I'm going at what I would call a moderately aggressive rate based on what I'm going to share today .

Philip Pape 3:14

So let me break this down into three parts . First , we're going to look at why the recommendations are changing based on new research . I've said in the past you should never be locked into a specific finding , whether it's from one study or 10 studies , because there could always be new information that enlightens us as to more precise , accurate approach , and that is exactly the case here . Then , in the second segment , I'm going to explain exactly what this means for you and your muscle building goals . And then , finally , I'm going to show you how to put this into practice based on your experience level , your level of training advancement . So let's talk about how our understanding has evolved , because this is super important .

Philip Pape 3:53

Why are my recommendations changing ? Why are the recommendations in the industry changing ? And some very well-respected individuals out there , like the guys at Stronger by Science , for example and if you've listened to me for any length of time , you've heard me tell you , as a listener and clients , to gain around 0.2 to 0.3% of your body weight per week when trying to build muscle . And this wasn't just my recommendation , it was the standard advice based on the best available evidence at the time , including some meta-analysis , one by Dr Herrick Helms et al . I've had people on the show talk about that and it was in all of my guidance , even to clients as well , because it's the best thing we knew and everyone's worried about gaining too much fat , so we don't want to push it too aggressively and do the old dreamer bulk right . Just the seafood diet , see it and eat it . But you know , science evolves and sometimes it evolves dramatically and sometimes it catches up to some of the kernels of truth that we know about from the bro science , from the guys who've truly packed on some muscle and I'll be honest , you know I have a long way to go .

Philip Pape 4:56

I've been doing this seriously now for four or five years but I want to say , like , from the nutrition side , probably about three years , and I've learned a lot personally . I've helped hundreds of clients and listeners go through this process and doing it successfully , and yet still we can learn and do it better . So we've gone from having just two key studies on this topic . This is the pitfall of relying on science too much is when we don't have quite enough information out there compared to the decades and hundreds and thousands of anecdotes which in some way count as their own evidence . So we've gone from having two studies to now having five well-designed studies .

Philip Pape 5:34

Look at how different rates of weight gain affect muscle growth and fat gain , and the results are changing what we thought we knew . And I want to give credit where it's due because this was recently detailed in an excellent article by Greg Knuckles at Macrofactor . You know how much I love those guys . He was on the show in the past and he's just a phenomenal writer , but he's really good at distilling a lot of this complex information into an article that's still detailed enough to give you all the key points and graphs and comparisons . And their team . They analyzed these five studies and it kind of opened my eyes about how we need to update our approach as well , and that's why I'm doing this episode and so I've linked to that article in the show notes and you can check that out firsthand and see where it all comes from .

Philip Pape 6:18

But to get into specifics , a recent study published in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology found something pretty remarkable because in relatively untrained lifters which is a good place to start because they can change fairly quickly gaining up to about a pound or a half percent of body weight per week led to large increases in fat-free mass , with minimal to no increase in fat mass . And if we think about how our body is composed , when we talk about body composition , there is muscle mass and there is everything else which includes fat , but not just fat . And the way they typically measure these is just creating a binary buckets , you know , fat-free mass and fat mass , which is pretty helpful in our context because a lot of us really care about are we gaining too much fat when we gain muscle ? But we also want to see that we're gaining the muscle and what the ratio is . So one pound a week is significantly faster than what we previously thought , even for newer lifters . I mean , I'll say it's on the cusp and you're going to find out . You're going to see here that the recommendations for intermediate and advanced lifters are actually a lot more aggressive than we thought as well . So where it gets interesting for those people , for experienced lifters and by experienced I mean you've been training hard for at least six to nine months Now you've moved into late novice , early intermediate and your propensity to gain muscle is just a little bit less than where it was at the beginning or anything more advanced than that .

Philip Pape 7:46

The research shows that faster rates of weight gain might help increase muscle growth even a bit more , but too much , and you're still going to primarily just increase fat gain . So that's where there's consistency with the previous literature to an extent , but the numbers have just shifted to be more aggressive . So , for example , in a very advanced lifter , when gaining about 0.4% of their body mass a week , about 60 to 65% of the weight gained was fat-free mass , so that's almost two-thirds not as fat , which is more than I thought would happen . I used to say it was around 50-50 , right , and any more than that . It just gets worse . But now we're saying it's two-thirds muscle or two-thirds fat-free mass to one-third fat .

Philip Pape 8:32

Okay , in an advanced trainee at 0.4% a week , which , just so you know , is right about the rate I'm going at right now . I used to hit it at around 0.25 , 0.3 , and now I'm going at 0.4 . I consider myself an intermediate lifter and I'm going more aggressive Pretty cool , right , and I know that that could . Then it gives me a lot of excitement because , first of all , I get to eat a lot more food , which is awesome , In fact , almost to the point where it could be uncomfortable , because I do still eat a lot of whole foods and fiber and sometimes I feel too full whole foods and fiber and sometimes I feel too full . So there's that hard gaining piece . I did a whole episode about that in the past and I'm going to link to that in the show notes as well .

Philip Pape 9:11

Anyhow , if we take that rate of gain 0.4% , let's say we slow that down to more like 0.16 , I think was the exact number . The amount of fat-free mass that these advanced lifters gained as a percentage of the total weight gained was 85% , so a vast majority of it being muscle . When they're going at 0.15% Now , 0.15% is roughly on the low end of whatI used to recommend anyway , like the lowest of the low end Kind of makes sense . So what this means is simple We've been too conservative with our recommendations , especially for beginners and intermediates and that's probably the vast majority of people listening to be honest Because once you're advanced , you kind of have things dialed in and understand how your body responds anyway , and it's going to take longer between . It's going to take longer to do everything you know to gain muscle mass , to gain strength , and so it makes sense that your rate of gain would slow down . So all of this is excellent news because it means that you might be able to build muscle faster than you thought , without packing on unnecessary fat . So now you understand why recommendations have changed . And again , go check out the article . You can check out the research study that I just mentioned specifically , but it's mentioned in the article , so I would rely on that and their citations to see all of the studies that are being drawn upon . And now I want to use this research to tell us what it means about building muscle , and this is where it gets really interesting . So this research has revealed three insights that I want to talk about , Three major insights about building muscle .

Maximizing Muscle Growth Potential

Philip Pape 10:40

First , your training experience matters potentially even more than we realized . Beginners have an incredible capacity for muscle growth . They can gain up to 0.8% body weight per week with minimal fat gain . Like those are fat loss numbers . In other words , like that's the rate of body weight loss I would be recommending for fat gain . Usually , when we talk about muscle gain , we talk about a fraction of that , like a half or a quarter of that , and what we're saying is no , you can actually crank it up to like 0.8% and even potentially 1% of your body weight per week if you're total new and you're willing to gain a little extra fat for the chance of building a lot more muscle .

Philip Pape 11:24

And then we have intermediate lifters and they're not far behind now . They have the ability to gain , say , 0.3 to 0.5% per week effectively and still gain a ton of that as muscle mass . We're talking a half a percent a week . So if you gain let's say you're an average , slightly bigger guy and you're 200 pounds , just for easy numbers that's a pound a week . Right , that's a pound a week . So that's like a little over four pounds a month , which means in six months you'd be gaining like 25 pounds .

Philip Pape 11:50

Okay , and 25 pounds amounts to what does that come out to be ? Over what 12.5% increase ? And I used to recommend anywhere from seven to 10% , and this is suggesting we can go up to like well , 12.5% over a six month period . You can bulk for less , you can bulk for longer , and that's going to change the total weight gained , but the percentage of that gained as muscle mass should still be pretty high , All right . And then we have advanced lifters who still need even more precision and they should stay in the range of anywhere from 0.15 to 0.35% body weight per week .

Philip Pape 12:23

And I realize I'm throwing a lot of numbers at you . If you go to the Macrofactor article , you'll see tables that give you ranges and I wouldn't worry too much about it . If you use Macrofactor the app itself , it's actually designed around percentage gain per week . Use my code , WITSANDWEIGHTS , try it for free for a couple of weeks and I'm sure you'll be hooked and you'll want to use it forever . Again , link in the show notes .

Philip Pape 12:45

It sounds like I'm promoting a bunch of stuff here , but it's all connected , so beginners can go up to a percent or maybe 0.8% , intermediates up to half a percent and advanced maybe 0.35% . That's the first major insight from this research . But there's more to understand about how this changes our approach , because second is that we've discovered the sweet spot , for muscle growth is also higher than we previously thought kind of that optimal number and the research shows that your body's more capable of using the extra nutrients for muscle growth , especially earlier in your training career and we used to think a little bit slower . More of a lean gain was always better and we know that's not true now , which is great . It's liberating . It means you have a lot more flex pun intended to eat more and gain more muscle without being as worried about gaining a ton of fat .

Jenny 13:35

Hi , my name is Jenny and I just wanted to say a big thank you to Philip Pape of Wits and Weights for offering his free 50-minute nutritional assessment . During that time he gave me really good tools on how I can further my health and fitness goals . He asked really great questions and stayed true to his offer of no sales pitch . I have since applied these things and gotten really close to my health goals and my weight goals , and now I'm able to flip over and work on my strength and my muscle conditioning using a lot of the things he offers in his podcasts , and I just am very grateful for his positive inspiration and encouragement , for all of our help . Thank you , philip .

Optimizing Muscle Gain Rates and Nutrition

Philip Pape 14:21

And then third , and this might be the most exciting finding that the ratio of muscle to fat gain is much better than we feared . I alluded to that earlier . If you gain at one of these moderate rates which is now , is more aggressive than we thought up to three quarters of the weight gained can be lean mass . Now , a little bit of that might be some fluid mass , glycogen going on , but still that's a huge ratio of muscle . I've seen this . You know there's a sanity check . A sniff test on this is with my clients . We track a bunch of metrics . We track body measurements . I do some Navy formula based body fat percentage measurements and I also calculate how much lean mass versus fat you've gained or lost during a muscle building phase . And for my clients who have gone at a more conservative rate , like we used to recommend , it was often well over two thirds lean mass and I always thought , wow , this must just be because they're so new at it . Because many of my clients they've been training , but they haven't maybe been training effectively . So we get them training for strength using the right type of periodization , using the right stimulus , with volume and intensity , and they just get cranky . Their lifts go up , they start building a ton of muscle . So it makes sense . But now I'm thinking , oh , is it actually because we just can go more aggressively and still gain a bunch of muscle and it not be very much fat and let's not worry as much about the scale going up ? We actually want that to happen . We want to be well over that threshold and now this liberates us to really push it and not worry . That's what I think is pretty cool . So even when we push the rate of gain higher , fat accumulation isn't nearly as dramatic as we once thought , and this completely changes the old belief that you know , if you gain too fast , it's all fat . Having said that , there is a rate of gain that some people would be going way too aggressively . You know , like one and a half , two percent a week is probably then at the point where you're just going to gain a bunch of fat , and that's like the dreamer book , right . But the evidence doesn't support the fear of too much fat gain in a fairly wide range now . So we've covered why the old recommendations were too conservative , what the new science shows Now , how do you actually apply this to your own training and nutrition ?

Philip Pape 16:33

And it's pretty simple how do we take this and turn it into your results ? I think it starts with assessing . How do we take this and turn it into your results ? I think it starts with assessing honestly , like very honestly , your training experience . All right , you're probably a beginner and I have air quotes here if you're still adding weight to your lifts almost every session so that's session to session . But honestly , if you're able to go up every week , you're probably still in a late beginner , early intermediate stage . So if you're able to go up every week , you're probably still in a late beginner , early intermediate stage . So if you're making progress , but it's less consistent and , again , progress is very fluid here because it's not just weight on the bar , it's also your volume , your periodization . If you use some sort of wave type programming , you kind of know who you are if you're not just cranking up weight on the bar super quickly .

Philip Pape 17:21

So I'm in that situation where I'm not just going to increase weight every session and not necessarily every week . Sometimes I increase sets or reps as a form of adding more work , and there's different reasons for that , outside the scope of today's podcast , different reasons for that outside the scope of today's podcast . But I consider myself intermediate , but still with a huge propensity to grow muscle , and so I'm going to go that moderately aggressive like that . 0.4% . Maybe I could even go more aggressive than that . But the amount of calories required then become actually a little bit of a sustainability issue for me , just like when you cut too quickly and it's not sustainable . I know we're going into the holiday season here . I can only put down so much food at each meal , just how I am , and to go significantly past say 3,200 or 3,500 calories a day would be not that sustainable for me . I could do it , and it's an excuse if I said I couldn't , but that's part of the equation .

Philip Pape 18:20

So 0.4% , anyway , beginner and immediate . You got to assess where you are and if you're advanced , you know who you are . I mean , I'm not going to try to define that for you . You know who you are , so let's talk about selecting your approach then based on that . If you're a beginner , I would start with something like a half a percent body weight gain per week . If you're a little bit worried about too much fat gain , okay , that's a pound a week for a 200 pound person , but you can push it up to 0.7 , 0.8% and be probably fine and you're going to get even more gains . If you're intermediate , you might aim for about 0.3 to 0.4% . So this is like on top of the optimal range that I used to talk about . By a percent or so , I mean 0.1% or so , so that you can push it there . And that's where I'm going 0.4% , and then , if you're advanced , you're going to stay more conservative 0.2 , 0.3 , which is ironically the old optimal . So everything's been shifted up and it's not just about the rate of gain . So this is important . You have to monitor more than just the scale . We're going to monitor how is your progression in the gym strength , numbers , volume , sets , recovery .

Philip Pape 19:22

Here's my premise for lifting and programming . Your program and your approach and your recovery should be set up where you are not missing reps period . Whether you're doing a very beginner program like starting strength , or a more advanced program , intermediate , you know , four or five day split , it should be set up and you should be doing things in advance so that you're not missing reps . I don't like the idea that some people have that I'm just going to push for some goal weight and I might fall short , but I stretched myself and that'll be an indicator of progress . That is not objective and if you are constantly failing reps , it tells me that you are overreaching or you are under-recovering with your program . It is not structured appropriately for you and if you're wondering about all this , reach out to me . I'll help you out . I'll help you identify either a standard template or program out there that's probably appropriate given your training age and capacity , or we can talk about how you might tweak a program in a custom way to work for you . So you shouldn't be missing reps right .

Philip Pape 20:24

Are your lifts consistently progressing the way you want them ? You should be taking measurements and progress photos right and tracking your various circumference levels in your body , fat and body composition to make sure they're on track where you want . I have a physique tracker in the Wits and Weights Physique University that everyone uses . So from day one when you go through onboarding , you get that and it shows you how to track all of these measurements . And then it does all the calculations for you and it tells you you are gaining lean mass versus fat at this rate and then you can tell okay , am I doing something that I shouldn't be ? Am I not training hard enough or appropriately , or am I eating too much ? Or maybe I'm low on protein . There could be something going on that you can tell .

Philip Pape 21:05

Track your biofeedback , like your energy , your recovery between sessions , your DOMS right , your delayed onset , muscle soreness . Sometimes it's fine , sometimes it's a good thing , sometimes it's not . It's an indicator of under recovery , right ? Your sleep , your digestion , your hunger , all of those things as well . All these factors tell you whether you're gaining in the right way , at the right rate for you . So we've talked about rates of gain , we've talked about monitoring progress .

Philip Pape 21:32

There's one more piece that's crucial to making this work besides lifting consistently . There's one more piece that's crucial to making this work besides lifting consistently , and that is your nutrition quality right . Just because you can gain faster doesn't mean you should throw nutrition out the window , and it's very common , when you have all these calories you want to hit , that you start throwing in a ton more processed foods . You kind of start eating a little more randomly . Your meal timing gets thrown off right . Training days versus off days start to look quite different . You struggle on off days to even eat enough . There's a lot of these issues and we've got to have the principles in place . There's , of course , protein . It shouldn't be that hard to get enough protein when you're eating a lot more calories . You should have already set that up before you went into a muscle building phase . Anyway , of 0.7 , one gram per pound body weight of protein shouldn't be hard when the calories are up . And then you still need quality carbs to fuel your training .

Philip Pape 22:22

Now there's always lots of debates about carbohydrates . My position is that there's no harm in adding carbs . There could be harm in being too low in carbs , especially when you're building muscle . That's the way I like to say it . I'm not going to say low carb is going to harm you or hold you back . I'm just saying that you should try it out and see how carbs help , not just with performance , energy and recovery , but one thing that doesn't get talked about enough the anti-catabolic nature of carbs , the ability of carbs to prevent the breakdown of muscle tissue and make everything else you're doing serve you better , like the protein and the lifting right . It's just . It removes a potential hindrance by increasing your carbs . And then , of course , the balance of your macro is just to make it work , the healthy fats and all that fun stuff to support everything you're doing , which , again , shouldn't be a problem with all those calories . But the key thing with quality is still have the nutrients coming in , still have the fiber , but then you have to manage your timing and you have to manage your frequency so that you don't feel stuffed or uncomfortable and it's sustainable . All of that still applies . All right , now we're about to wrap this up .

Optimizing Muscle Building Potential

Philip Pape 23:29

I do want to share something that I discovered while reviewing the research . That actually changed how I think about muscle gain . So you remember those studies that showed really high rates of lean mass gains in beginners . What they actually revealed wasn't just about the rate of gain , it was your body's nutrient partitioning abilities when the right conditions are present . And one way to think about that is simply this Remember when you didn't lift weights . Remember when you were less active .

Philip Pape 24:01

You were afraid of gaining weight . Probably you were afraid and it happens to people on the holidays every year you just gradually overconsume . You're probably consuming a lot more than you think you are and it's a lot more than your body even needs when you're not that active and you're not utilizing those nutrients in any productive way other than energy storage , meaning fat . Now you're completely flipping that on its head to say I'm doing stuff lifting weights , training hard and being active that actually use the nutrients and energy in a productive way for the first time in my life , and your body is super adaptive to that . It's adapting how it uses the food coming in , such that you're a completely different person than the version of you that wasn't active or lifting . So when you do this and I see this with clients all the time it's so incredible and it's so amazing and even my own personal journey has borne this out I don't fear gaining weight anymore . I can't possibly fear it , because every time I gain weight it's combined with the things that use those nutrients and I build muscle , even if some fat comes along for the ride .

Philip Pape 25:10

I know it's super easy to cut fat after that , and it will be for you too , if you take this approach right . Your after that and it will be for you too , if you take this approach right your strength will skyrocket . Your body composition will change . Your body composition will improve from when you were gaining weight in the past and not lifting , but even potentially when you were gaining weight too slowly . And so ladies not just men , a lot of men I talk to have no problem with the concept of like , okay , I'm going to gain weight , maybe some fat , that's fine .

Philip Pape 25:34

I sense the fear more in women and this is just a generalization but for some of you women who just need to spend time building muscle , you might have to do it even more aggressively than you thought , and it's going to result in weight gain , but for a purpose . A purpose that's going to make you leaner , stronger , more fit , more capable , and then you could just cut the fat , and you won't have to cut it as much as you think , because you're going to have all this extra muscle and you can walk around at a higher scale weight , you know , like a badass , looking great , carrying extra weight , eating more food Isn't that what we want , right ? So the increased food , combined with progressive loading , creates such a strong muscle building stimulus that your body is going to preferentially use all those extra calories , the vast majority of them for muscle growth . So keep this in mind . This is a very important episode , a very important concept that sometimes , being too conservative , would actually hold you back from creating that optimal anabolic environment for muscle growth . Right , it's like trying to build a house with just barely enough materials coming in , right ? Yeah , you're not going to have extra materials that represent fat storage , but you're making the whole process much harder and slower than it needs to be . It's just going to take forever . Now if you're the type of person who doesn't like to gain or lose weight and just wants to sit at the same weight and get some body recomp , that's a whole separate discussion you can do that . It's just going to take a lot longer time we're talking on the order of multiple years and you might get frustrated with the lack of progress in the gym because you're just not cranking up that anabolic environment .

Philip Pape 26:59

All right , I think I've gone on long enough on this and I think it's all very exciting . I'm passionate about it . It's an evolution in our understanding of some really basic things in the science of muscle growth and strength . Don't forget , strength is a huge part of this . It means that many of you can make faster progress while maintaining a smart , methodological or methodical approach . It's not about going crazy and just dumping calories in your body . It's giving you the resources that you need and cranking it right to that limit to fulfill the potential on a reasonable timeframe . Right , because your body is even more remarkable than we thought at building muscle and when you provide the right stimulus through training and adequate nutrients through food , it knows exactly what to do with those resources .

Philip Pape 27:43

And remember , if you want to implement these new recommendations and all the other things , what do you track ? How do you track them ? How do you know that it's working to maximize your muscle growth ? I've completely revised my muscle building nutrition blueprint to reflect the latest research and it breaks down exactly how to determine your ideal rate of gain , set up your nutrition and monitor your progress . To get those results , just download using the link in my show notes , or , as always , go to witsandweightscom slash free . And if you want to track your progress with the app that I mentioned earlier , which I use , my clients use . Try Macrofactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS . I link to that as well in the show notes . Until next time , keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember that sometimes being too conservative can hold you back from your true potential . This is Philip Pape . You've been listening to Wits and Weights . I'll talk to you next time .