SHOULD I BULK OR SHOULD I CUT?

Oh my god this question drives me nuts, so now is my time to rant about it.  First, if you’ve been following along, you know I hate the terms “bulk” and “cut”, as they are greatly misused by the training populace.  People tend to say “bulk” when they really mean “eat more” and by cut they mean “eat less”, not at all giving consideration to how TRAINING needs to change during periods of bulk or cut in order to actually have nutrition match training demands.  But that aside, this question is even more aggravating because it’s absolutely inane.  Should you bulk or cut?  How the hell should I know what you should do.  Here’s a quick test.  Do you want to get bigger?  Then bulk.  Do you want to get smaller?  The cut.  There!  I just solved it!  Print that out and carry it with you and that way, before annoying any strangers on the internet, you can have the answer for you right then and there.

Bring this one with you too

“But how do I know WHEN to bulk or cut?”  Are you serious?  You bulk when you want to be bigger than you currently are, and you cut when you want to be smaller than you currently are.  That’s it.  That’s all there is to it.  “But isn’t there a formula I can use?”  A formula to know when you want to do things?  Are you nuts?!  No, there’s no formula!  It’s a thing YOU choose because it’s what YOU want to do.

Jesus man, do you think Paul Anderson or Pat Casey or Doug Hepburn asked when it was time to bulk?  Hell no!  These guys decided on a goal: to get as strong as possible, and in turn, they decided on a method: to get as big as possible.  That’s how you figure it out!  You have goals, and then you take the course of action needed to get to those goals.  Paul, Pat and Doug ate herculean amounts of food and gained massive amounts of weight.  Did they get fat?  Hell yeah they got fat.  Did they care?  Hell no they didn’t care, because they had a goal: to get as strong as possible.  And they achieved those goals.  And hey, if you care about getting fat, you know what you can do?  You can cut when you get too fat.

Crazy talk, I know

“But I heard from some guy with a LOT of letters after their name that there is an IDEAL bodyfat% to be at before cutting or bulking!”  Hey guess what?  Now we’re talking about goals, because that statement is made under the understanding one wants to minimize fat gain and maximize muscle gain.  NOW we’re getting somewhere, because if THAT is your goal, THEN you have to employ a specific method compared to simply if you want to get big or small.  But DOUBLE guess what?  You’re amateurish attempts to ascertain your bodyfat would be comical if they weren’t aggravating. 

No, seriously, let me get this straight: a guy whose accreditation is having a youtube channel told you that you need to be a certain bodyfat to bulk or cut, and you decided you were going to determine your bodyfat % by posting shirtless photos of yourself online for a quorum of strangers to evaluate?  Once again, your insanity knows no bounds.  Do you think internet people have calibrated eyeballs?  Even better, do you think they have X-ray vision?  How the hell are they going to see the visceral fat that’s contained between your organs do know your actual bodyfat%?  Oh, they’re just supposed to base it off of other photos of people with bodyfat %s listed next to their photos?  Well for one, can’t you already do that yourself?  Why do you need someone else to do it?  But secondly, what the hell is the credibility of those photos?  Oh, these are people that super duper pinky swear that their numbers are accurate…right.  Sounds good to me!  Use those numbers to calculate your future!

To clarify, this is an actual accepted theory, meaning your idea is even more stupid than this

Wait wait, no, I got it: the NAVY method.  It’s accurate within 4-6%!  Hell, I made that number up, because the sheer notion of measuring your bodyfat with a tape measurer is also silly.  And let’s be real honest: pretty much every method is going to have a range of errors in it.  I got measured at 8.4% on a BODPOD once, and the internet assured me that was impossible because I didn’t LOOK like 8.4% bodyfat…once again, based off the photos of people they had seen at 8% bodyfat.  Because again, we’re all so very stupid. 

Quit letting other people determine your goals!  Everyone is in such a rush to quantify and calculate everything in a search to obviate themselves from actually having to THINK.  You’re not smart because you use a lot of numbers, especially when you consider that everything is done with a calculator and a spreadsheet and you’ve completely removed your brain from the equation.  You exercise intelligence when you engage in the action of FREE THINKING, and this means taking the time to critically think about what your goals are and how you want to get there.  Letting everyone ELSE tell you that your goal is to optimize everything and never stray too far outside the realm of acceptable bounds is how you end up exactly like everyone else: mediocre.  The true giants out there, metaphorical and otherwise, kept chasing their goals until they met them, and sometimes it meant doing things that other people didn’t like or weren’t comfortable doing.  It sometimes meant not looking their best 100% of the time.  It sometimes meant having a set of numbers that the internet would scoff at.  But it also sometimes meant being the literal best at what they did, because they set a goal and went after it irrespective of the literature and groupthink.

Hey, you know what: you go do you

Should you bulk or should you cut?  You should do whatever it takes to reach your goals.