Caloric Surplus Strategies for Muscle Gain

The end result was that there was an average 600 calorie disparity between the two groups. The dietician guided athletes were eating 600 calories more. And when you look at the strength and the body composition changes, unfortunately there was no statistical advantage of eating those additional 600 calories. The only statistically significant difference were jump height and sprint times, which got worse. Folks, I'm Dr. Mike for Renaissance Prioritization. We have a special guest here today. This is Chris Evans. You guys have seen him in Captain America and whatever else. Chris Evans is nervous. Nothing else. Nothing else. But today he's using his alter ego, which is Dr. Eric Helms. Strength, conditioning, body composition, sport researcher at large, coach, athlete, natural bodybuilder, the whole thing. This guy's list of accolades is kind of like an absurd joke that you would make up a superhero in our field. And he's real. Here he is. But he's not here because he's awesome, even though he's awesome in his own time just fine. He is here because he recently finished being the head of a study, an actual laboratory. I just sit in the basement. Well, touch myself. Mostly that's how RP makes money. I don't know. But instead of just blabbing onto YouTube all the time like me, he is heading up actual research studies in the actual scientific world. And one of these studies recently that you completed had to do with asking the question of, we want to see if... people try to gain quite a bit of weight per week or very slow gain rate, what's that going to result in as far as who gets the most jacked, who pays the most fat guy price, and how does that affect strength levels? I mean, this is exactly the kind of study that I want to fucking know about. And since I am Renaissance periodization, I'm important. It's all about me. We had you on the channel to try and talk about the study. Eric, I will now be extra quiet. Tell us what is going on. Well, first, I do have to thank you guys because we paid our dietician who managed the arm of the study that was the nutrition side of it, which we were blinded to on the training side of it. So we didn't let that influence the results of how we trained people. Explain that in normal people terms really quick. Absolutely. So we had a bunch of people we recruited, trained men and women who could at least squat a certain amount of their body weight, bench a certain amount of their body weight, at least a year of experience training at least two times per week. People who lift. People who lift. And we actually got some competitive bodybuilders, competitive pilaters in there. It's a pretty well-trained cohort. And then we randomized them to one of three conditions, being told to eat at maintenance, which we operationally defined as not seeing their weight increase or decrease more than 1% over a given time period. So, it's an eight-week study. Eight-week study, correct. Or a small surplus, which was an intended surplus of 5%. Okay. Or a larger surplus, an intended surplus of 15%. 15%. and why I'm saying intended will be important later as I discuss the findings. Okay. And then what we did is they came three times through the week at the Sprint Labs at AUT, where I work as a Senior Research Fellow in Strength and Conditioning and Sports, Nutrition, and Physiology. Cool. It's a nice thing to say on a first date. She's like, what do you do? Or you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's like, oh my God, I would get wet. Never call back. Yes. They never call back. And then we randomized to that, and we brought them into training with us three times a week. And we did not know, those of us running the training study at AUT, which one of those three groups they were in. Only the nutritionist knew. Only our registered dietitian knew. Who was paid by RP? I didn't pay anyone. Well, you paid me and I paid him. Back in the day, we kind of had two, I think, studies that are representative of some of the trends we saw. There's one by Rosnick and colleagues in the early 2000s. And there was one by, as Americans call it, Garth. But it's probably like Gartha. Ina Gartha from... I think, Norway. Does Norway have 14 nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle groups? We say American. Woo! So Garth. We're going to go with Garth for this channel. That's right. So Garth found in elite athletes, not necessarily weightlifting athletes, but they're doing strength conditioning, they're doing sport work, and they had a very applied study. Each one of these athletes was given an individualized weight gain goal. Yeah, we talked about it a lot. I used it to inform. The first edition and the second edition of my books now probably incorporate the study we did to make recommendations on weight gain. And they had them gain weight either with a registered dietitian giving them more aggressive program or a self-guided, hey, try to put on some muscle, eat a little bit more than normal, you do your own thing. And these aren't, you know, like male bodybuilders reading magazines. So they end up being in a smaller surplus doing ad libitum, which isn't what you typically think. And also they're elite athletes. They know about maintaining body composition. The end result was that there was an average 600 calorie disparity. between the two groups. The dietitian guided athletes were eating 600 calories more. And when you look at the strength and the body composition changes, unfortunately, there was no statistical advantage. of eating those additional 600 calories, the only statistically significant difference were jump height and sprint times, which got worse, of course, because they got heavier. Ballast. Yeah, exactly. Had to drag my own fat ass around. Yes. So there was, it sounds terrible, five times more fat gain in the group that was in the larger surplus, but there was minuscule fat gain in the group that was in 600 calories less surplus. Yes. So it was modest fat gain. But certainly a lot more and significantly more than the other group, but no differences in lean body mass or performance except for those negatives. So what I remember from that study is that on statistical tests, there was no significant difference. But on the raw comparison of means, the group that got the surplus gained one and a half times within the ability of our instruments to detect, which by statistics is not in that window. They did gain a lot more muscle. But it's such a tight measurement that it's like... Yes, about the same. If I'm looking from space and you launch a rocket and I launch a rocket, your rocket goes 150 feet, blows up. Mine goes 75 feet and blows up. The person looking from space is like, yep, they both suck. It's like, but mine's double. Yeah, but it could have blown up and the fuse could have fucking, it's just random chance at this point. The means were higher in the group that was consuming more. I don't remember if it's 50% higher. There were a few metrics, whether we're talking about the strength on various lifts or just the lean body mass. It's just people looking for opportunities to- justify mega bulking. That's how I felt when I was looking at it. I was like, how do we justify eating a pizza? Yes. I think the important thing to remember for this study, though, is that it was athletes doing a four-day upper lower, which is great. I think that's a more ecologically valid approach, but they were also maintaining their concurrent training for their sport. And it's also difficult to conclude. Something about like the kind of lifters who really wanted to conclude on that like it's handball athletes like some of them were great Comparisons others were not yeah, so we have that so okay We got limitations here, and then we had Rosnick and Rosnick is the the the perma Bulkers dream This was untrained males you were in their 20s, and they were brought in and three different groups One just following their habitual diet and the other two groups who are essentially given weight gainers 2,000 calorie weight gainers per day per day So it's supposed to be 2000 calories on top of their normal diet. Now, one of them, it was pure maltodextrin, just carbs. The other group was basically a maltodextrin whey blend. There was a product made in Canada, which I consumed often back in the early 2000s, mid 2000s, that was exclusively maltodextrin and dextrose polymers in the ingredients. And it was literally branded and called just carbs. No joke. I'm not mad. Because that's accurate advertising. Accurate. You got to love it. I love it. Sorry, please continue. So anyway, there was the Just Carbs group. And then there was... This is the drinking stuff. Correct. Okay. And then the other group is taking a liquid weight gainer that is a mixture of some protein and carbs. And they were seeing which one would be better. And the answer was, in untrained young men, it don't matter. It's all amazing. Because they gained three kilos over eight weeks, both of the experimental conditions of body mass. And on average, they gained three kilos of lean body mass. Meaning that on average in Rosinec, whether you're just throwing down 2,000 calories of just carbs or it's actually a mixture of say whey and some carbs and you're training hard, whoa, you can gain nearly a pound a week of pure lean mass. Now, obviously, some of that's not necessarily actual tissue. Yeah. But it paints an amazing picture for bulking, right? Now, the thing is, is that in my experience as a coach of many, many natural bodybuilders. And my own personal experience where I went to this well multiple times without much payoff after the first time. I have a few love handle fucking situations from that, stretch skin. Yeah. You can go to that well reliably once. And maybe if you get things right and you learn a lot and you didn't fully milk out your newbie gains, my experience is sometimes you can get that intermediate kind of late bump or you can get things right, you know. But it's very difficult to, like that magnitude of bulking after your newbie gains are done. is going to reliably result in fat gain. So when we see Rosnick untrained, when we see Garth trained athletes, and then we see our study, which is a reasonably trained cohort, and we see the relationship that we saw with the biceps, it kind of paints this picture of, hey, training age is very important. If you're a late stage intermediate, or if you're an advanced lifter, you probably want to be very cautious and to choose an appropriate size surplus or accept the fat gain. for what it's probably going to be if you think that maybe at least I'll gain a few pounds of muscle this way. Don't imagine that your 500 calorie surplus is all going to go to your fucking muscles. That's something I want to talk about as well, is it really comes down... Back to that Garth study. Even if there was more muscle gain, I think an important consideration is the ratio of lean to fat mass gains. For some people, it doesn't matter. Like let's say you're 8% body fat and you're happy with the way you look. And let's say you're male and you're happy with the way you look at 22% body fat. That is in most cases objectively healthy when we look at population level data. Sure. You know, like 23% is typically where you start to see issues, especially if you're carrying a lot of muscle mass and you're active, right? Yes. So if you go from, I know the internet says 15%, but... Don't trust the internet. In fact, stop listening. I think we've said that. We've caveated on a show. Please continue. Yeah. So anyway, I would guess for an active person who's doing all the things right, eating a healthy diet in terms of qualitative inclusion of micronutrients, fiber, all that good stuff, if you were to move as a male from 8% to 20%, I'd be surprised if you're active in training that you would see substantial degradation in your health markers. So if you're comfortable with the way you look and you go from 8% to 20%, And you are going to stay there? Absolutely. Well, who cares about the ratio, right? You put on some muscle. However, for a guy like me or my clients, where I ultimately have to get all of the visible subcutaneous body fat off my body. How hard is that going to be for me? Correct. Do I have to diet longer? Do I have to diet harder? And that metagression I just talked about, if a 500 calorie deficit on average is going to stop hypertrophy, at a certain point, it's going to induce atrophy, you know? At the very least, if you say, okay. how many 500 calorie surplus deficit days do I have to put together to take off 21 pounds of adipose tissue? And you're like, oh, that's a 58 week prep. Otherwise you're like, how much muscle am I willing to lose for this? And that usually doesn't pan out well in my experience. No. Ultimately, this goes back to the parable of the tortoise first to hare. And that if you can be patient and extend the gaining phase over more time, that's probably going to be better. And if I was to, if you were to put a gun to my head and say, Eric, just using empirical data, Do we know that larger surpluses are better than smaller surpluses? I have no data to support that. All I can tell you confidently is that being in a deficit is a downside. And I will say based on our data though, given that it was actually challenging to get people to follow a small surplus, you need to think about what's feasible in the real world. So prescribing very, very, very small surpluses, even if it might be technically better, if you can't actually reliably follow that, it's probably better to go, you know what, let me make sure that... I'm eating enough. So I'm not in a deficit. 250K Cal surplus. Because if you think about just a quick thought experiment, 250K Cal surplus, let's take some shortcuts mathematically and say, that's roughly half a pound of tissue gained per week. Let's say we're bulking for 16 weeks. So quick, good, consistent bulk. Let's say 100% of that is body fat. We really fucked up or like, God's like, hey, you ran out of genetics. So in the grand scheme is eight pounds of fat that much i mean fuck man that's like six weeks of dieting and most people will be able to get that off without having to lose any muscle in that shorter time frame so it's not the fucking end of the world you know what i mean uh but on the other hand if you're talking about going to super bulk mode you know okay 750 kcal yes surplus it's like you may actually i believe theoretically you purely theoretically, this is my supposition, that you will absolutely see higher real gains in muscle with an escalating surplus up until health and discomfort stop you from sleeping properly and then you actually gain less muscle as you eat more. But I think up to a thousand calories, definitely 750, you will see higher theoretical gains in muscle. But when the gain in fat is triple, but the increase in muscle gain is 5%, undetectable by modern instruments, you got to ask yourself like you did earlier, I'm not sure. Am I really going to diet 18 pounds of muscle off over the next six months so that I can consolidate my half kilo of muscle gain? If you're at that level where that's the only thing that's working and you're fucking trying to finish out your pro career, dope. If you are a reasonable person, if you compete actively in bodybuilding, you got to try to get the moderate to low surpluses. Are you comfortable saying somewhere between 200 kilocalorie surplus and 400 kilocalorie surplus? is where most people probably find their best combination of actual gains, not unreasonable body fats to take off, and a comfort with food and lifestyle that doesn't ruin it one way or the other, and also a reasonable idea about it, and at least in some kind of mini surplus. I think so. I think that's a pretty good heuristic. Super. Do you use another one you think is more particular? I normally, I actually like people to work more off of their weight change. rather than necessarily a target surplus. Like you can set that at the start, but the way you auto-regulate that is going to be your biofeedback. So if you're doing that right, you're not going to see precipitous weight gain on a week-to-week basis. So looking at something like a two-week average and seeing your body weight go up at a certain rate, I generally would recommend, say, an advanced lifter to only be gaining, say, 1% of their body weight per month. And then you can basically scale that up, say, half a percent as you come down to intermediate and novice. A novice, yeah, 2% of your body weight per month. Intermediate, somewhere between the two. I think that's a nice way to do it as well. Yes. Let me present to you another idea here, and I'd love to have your take on it. Sure. Right in the vein of this. Something that I've taken, please tell me if this is wrong, something I've learned from talking to you about this and perusing the literature myself, my butler's really the perusing, give me executive summaries. I like it when my name is in there a lot. Is your butler named Mass? I don't know their names. I teed you up to help me out there. Oh, the wonderful research review you and your colleagues publish monthly that is available through the Mass link. Yes. Unbelievable folks. That's how you do business, but on a serious note, but NASA is very serious. So on another note, yes. Um, a lot of these studies are seeming to show something that unfortunately you and I both experienced in real life, which is that getting irresponsibly fat fast is not dependable way to gain muscle underneath. Yep. And so we can take this and apply it to a new heuristic that I'd like to see what you think about this. If I'm looking in the mirror every few weeks. and my ass getting fat, what I used to be able to tell myself was like, under the hood, man, this is clear evidence of a surplus. Shit's happening. I'm gaining fucking pounds, pounds, pounds. I wasn't getting super strong. I wasn't visibly seeing my muscles change, too fat for that. But like bad news. But I was like, no, no, no, this kind of surplus has to be making big gains. Now that we know that's not the case, is it possible for folks to use a combination of their body weight and their physical appearance? to go, okay, if I'm still lean-ish, but I'm gaining weight a little bit, all is well. This is probably the best I can do without any more finite measurement. But if I'm getting real sloppy looking, there's no compelling reason for me to keep looking sloppy unless I just don't give a fuck. And if I really, most people, let's be honest, Eric, most people watching this channel, most people who know who we are, they kind of give a shit if they're super fucking fat, like, fuck, man. And so if they're getting really out of hand fat, Would you be okay in saying like, look, it's probably time to rein in it a little bit and then make another slower run? What do you think about that? No, absolutely. Ultimately, your surplus size is going to force you into a couple options. If you do take a more aggressive approach to bulking, it does mean that you're going to reach a body fat limit as described by your audience faster, which means you're going to more frequently have to do something about that. Yes. You're also more uncomfortable during. Yeah. You do get to have a lot of fun. But you can have like two really fun, unbelievable dinners where you eat buck all every week. And by adjusting your other metrics and having a high physical activity, you can gain at these rates we're talking about. You don't have to use an anorexic fucking rates to gain that. You're totally fine. Especially after a few weeks, you gain some weight. You're not really like as hungry as you used to be. And you still have to gain that weight. So it does allow you to look. Because a lot of people, why am I saying this? A lot of people look at super bulk life, like fucking just eat 5,000 K cal surplus. And they're like, that's fun, dude. But you and I both take it into nothing. to a place where it wasn't fun anymore. Like I was eating milk and cookies because that was the only way to physically jam the calories at that point. I didn't even like milk and cookies. As soon as I went on a healthy diet afterwards, I went for like four weeks without thinking about cheat food. Broccoli was delicious. That's how unhealthy I was at the time. But people think about that like, man, it's so much more fun. But you could have a lot of fun on a lower surplus just by making special times to eat special things and mostly sticking to kind of whole food, healthy options. Do you have experience with that personally with athletes? Absolutely. The slow approach? I think that typically has more to do with how well have they habituated to the bodybuilding lifestyle. And I think as you get more and more advanced in the sport, unless you really are pushing your body weight high or you're trying to get to body fat levels or you just have a really strong appetite suppression response to surpluses. Lots of people like that. Which is true. It does happen. It probably happens more in enhanced bodybuilders getting really, really bigger than... they ever otherwise could be from direct administration of androgens will feel approximate reduction in appetite interesting i know multiple people they're lucky motherfuckers by the way because it makes pre-contest easy as shit your boy gets hungry as fuck on gear it drives me nuts well in the natty world basically it has a lot more to do with where's your upper and lower intervention point or what we colloquially call your upper and lower body fat set point if you will and when you are pushing over a set point that is when you really start to find that you get a lot of appetite suppression yeah So, but you have to question how much value is there getting me over my upper set point anyway? So maybe when your body's like, hey, I'm not hungry anymore, you kind of cool it for a bit. Maybe even mini cut a few weeks, get that hunger back, get a little leaner, and then go up again. What do you think about that? Yes. So here are some of the heuristics I use. One is that... If anything, when you're higher in body fat, you're more likely and able to put on muscle, not only at maintenance, but even in a deficit. So you're not losing out on much by doing a mini cut. But two, a decent heuristic or safeguard against bulking far too quickly and being the hare and not the tortoise is that you have to earn yourself, and this is based purely on anecdote and experience, no data that says this is science-based. You have-You're saying it, so it is science-based. I am science. Thank you. I am the law. Who is that? Come on, that's Stallone, Judge Dredd. Eric, I don't mean this as an insult, but that was the worst Stallone impression I have ever heard in my life. And I knew Sylvester Stallone. Yeah? Yeah, we had a falling. Well, I was hoping you'd introduce me. Yeah, he said something like, ooh, and I was like, what? He's like, ooh. So that was a good Stallone impression. No, it was worse. Okay, all right. The heuristic I was going to recommend is a four to one ratio. So that to earn yourself, say, a month mini cut. You have to at least be in a surplus for four months. Yeah. That's a great point because I think it prevents the abesiophobic wishy-wash. One extra ab line goes away and you're like, that's it, man. Back to my pre-contest diet. Otherwise, people will see me more fat in the gym than I'm used to. Someone will say something unkind on TikTok. Yep. You know the rest. The world collapses in a flame. Yep. It also prevents people from doing too much. Because then they're forced in this, like if you gain 20 pounds, 30 pounds in four months, then you go, what are you going to do about that in one month? Not shit. Yeah. You're going to, it's going to result in this probably too much weight gain, or you're going to be doing these mini cuts that everyone would be like, what are you doing a medically supervised fast for? Yes. You're very uncomfortable. Okay. So a couple of take-homes from this whole thing. One, if you thought that dreamer bulking was going to work. It'll work the best it can work when you're a beginner and training with high volumes really hard, but it doesn't even on the numbers work so well then. It's more of a question of, can I get away with this more? Like, if you're a supervillain who police can't shoot to death, can you do bank robberies? Yes, probably. Is it a good idea? No, there's better ways to use your time. So that's the first thing. Second thing is if you're gonna go into higher surpluses. Don't expect that to reliably lead to higher muscle gain, at least in the short term. Third idea is, yeah, really low surpluses are sort of incalculable. Increase your calories by 30 over maintenance is almost like a procedurally nonsensical thing to do. And thus, you're better off shooting for something like 200 to 400 kcal surplus per week while you're bulking. And there's another method of just bulking at what you think is a slow surplus, visually inspecting your body. mini cutting when necessary protein sparing modified fast maybe if you're cool with it you don't lose a ton of strength and you can rebound easy but if you had problems with that before and i just think it's a fucking disaster just don't gain as much and then when you lose lose a little gently and that tends to be a good process for you there and lastly if you are drug free which almost all of our euros are i thank fucking god um the looking at body weight is really good in addition to that so you can guess at your calories however much you want there's people like man i'm numb I'm in a 400 calorie surplus and I'm not gaining. Like when I got news for you, you're not fucking gaining shit because where is the weight? So measuring your body weight consistently, don't worry about erratic numbers, two week average, gain roughly a percent of your body weight per month as an advanced lifter. And to be honest, man, as a beginner and intermediate, unless you're ripped and starving. I'd say that's also good because then you just fucking make lean gains for forever. You don't have to try to get your fat ass and the more fat. So just take the good gains. There's a lot of times people are like, all right, the not so great gains are this. So I can aim for this. Like just get the gains, get the gains and just get them for longer. What did I miss? Is that a decent summary of the shit? It's a very good summary. I only have a few little footnotes to add to it. Hit me. So on the first point, it was if you're training high volume and hard, that might support bulking, but not even that well. That is true at the group level, because on average, you're going to see the things that we see in meta-analyses shake out for everybody. Ultimately, on an individual basis, you need to be training effectively for you. And unfortunately, some people are going to respond better to eight sets than 20. Some people are going to respond better to 30 sets than 20. And it's difficult to know. Some people respond better to going to failure with fewer sets, and some people the opposite. And even in my circle, where we have agreed upon the same principles, we see large disparities in that. So Jeff and myself respond very differently to training and therefore we train differently. There is no one size fits all. Second point about the surplus size, generally also true for everyone. It's very difficult to follow a 30 calorie surplus and be accurate. And that goes hand in hand with, okay, therefore you should have a higher surplus and then use the mirror check. I will say that if you are like a macronator king and you're an advanced bodybuilder like myself, I am able to follow much smaller surpluses than the average person. So are my clients. So there are cases where not only you're not going to see much visual change over a short term period. And if you have the skill to use those smaller windows of surpluses and you can have that level of precision, it would on paper be better to do so. That's probably only about 1% of the people watching. Totally. And also there's a problem there where, yes, you're reliable enough, but is your accuracy off? And then you can only really confirm that with body weight change. That'll take some time. So one of my more proximate short-term cues I like to use for myself and some athletes is, do I feel fed? Do I feel energetic and recovering from training? And can I fucking sleep? Because if I don't feel fed, I don't have energy to train. I'm not sleeping. I don't give a fuck what it says on the paper. I probably need more food to get me into that better state. What do you think about that? I think not only is that true in the same experience I've had and that I use in coaching, but the ability to have awareness of those biofeedback and kind of intuitive qualitative aspects also are present in the people who should have that kind of precision and at that level where body mass gains, at least the muscle mass gains are going to come slower. So don't... If you're a relatively advanced lifter with these skills and that awareness and the ability to be a little more accurate, definitely lean on more metrics because you can use them. But I think the more generalized advice, especially for intermediates, is perfect. Awesome. Eric, you know a lot of shit, frighteningly high in the amount of literal shit. This was an insult, it wasn't there. But I want to know more of what you know. Where can I find you? Do you publish anything I can read about science? I want nerd shit. Hit me. Yo, if you want to actually read my published papers, I do the best I can to publish open access. Excellent. Now, if you are more interested in how to apply the science, I also review research. So we have what's called mass, mass research review, which is myself, Eric Trexler, another person who knows a lot of stuff, Lauren Colenso-Semple, and the other Dr. Mike, Dr. Mike Zerdos. Yes, the better doctor. I'll stop it. There's another medical Dr. Mike that has like a trillion YouTube subscribers. He's also a Russian Jew. And I think he actually like does MMA even, which is like a step up from jujitsu. He's like the guy I never became. And he's beautiful. He's like in GQ. And I'm like, look at me. He's your Dr. Trexler. Dude, it's fucked up. Dr. Trexler is like me with stats knowledge. It's frustrating. It's like just better. Yeah. So anyway, if you want to follow me, the better me, Lauren, and the better Dr. Mike. then definitely check out Mass, where every single month we go through studies like this that are directly applicable to lifters, nutrition, training, coaching, psychology, and we review them from the lens of how will this help the athlete or the trainer or the general fitness practitioner. So that's something I would highly recommend, massresearchreview.com. And if you don't want to subscribe, if you want me to be out on the streets broke, at least watch our YouTube channel because every single week we do Mass office hours where two of us... That's awesome. Eric plus someone else will take live questions and answer questions that got deposited to us live on YouTube for an hour, hour and a half every week. Yeah. Guys, on RP, we try to provide you with a ton of really good evidence-based information. Two things on that. One, we can't possibly teach you all the shit. Sure, shit not in a couple months of videos. And so there's tons of other folks like Eric and his team producing unbelievable content that if you really want to be the best trainer, the best coach, the best athlete that you can be, you're going to go find him. Secondarily. What we do here at RP is typically a dogshit meta-summary of things these people actually find out in research. So if you want that real nuance, you don't want to just repeat shit that I say and not really know, is that Dr. Mike just making shit up again or is he actually right? You want to go to the source. You will typically find that we don't lie too much on this channel, though my butlers do occasionally make me say unkind things about people. It's really strange. The butlers have a mean streak. Do your butlers ever get kind of serial killer-y? How many butlers do you have? Let's just ask the obvious question. I did not know this was going to be a butler measuring match. Eric, there's no measuring. This is just to tell people how they could be living if they organize their lives better. Do you have a recommendation for a first butler? Oh, we'll talk after this video. Other than butlers, this is the place to get a lot of amazing insight. We tell you guys about all our great folks. Men of Henselman's is fucking awesome. Strong Breast Science is fucking awesome. 3DMJ and Mass are at the top of the pile. Go check them out. Learn things. And honestly, just unsubscribe from me because I'm fucking old. I'll see you guys next time.

Folks, I'm Dr. Mike for Renaissance Prioritization. We have a special guest here today. This is Chris Evans.

You guys have seen him in Captain America and whatever else. Chris Evans is nervous. Nothing else.

Nothing else. But today he's using his alter ego, which is Dr. Eric Helms. Strength, conditioning, body composition, sport researcher at large, coach, athlete, natural bodybuilder, the whole thing.

This guy's list of accolades is kind of like an absurd joke that you would make up a superhero in our field. And he's real. Here he is. But he's not here because he's awesome, even though he's awesome in his own time just fine.

He is here because he recently finished being the head of a study, an actual laboratory. I just sit in the basement. Well, touch myself.

Mostly that's how RP makes money. I don't know. But instead of just blabbing onto YouTube all the time like me, he is heading up actual research studies in the actual scientific world.

And one of these studies recently that you completed had to do with asking the question of, we want to see if... people try to gain quite a bit of weight per week or very slow gain rate, what's that going to result in as far as who gets the most jacked, who pays the most fat guy price, and how does that affect strength levels? I mean, this is exactly the kind of study that I want to fucking know about.

And since I am Renaissance periodization, I'm important. It's all about me. We had you on the channel to try and talk about the study. Eric, I will now be extra quiet. Tell us what is going on.

Well, first, I do have to thank you guys because we paid our dietician who managed the arm of the study that was the nutrition side of it, which we were blinded to on the training side of it. So we didn't let that influence the results of how we trained people. Explain that in normal people terms really quick. Absolutely.

So we had a bunch of people we recruited, trained men and women who could at least squat a certain amount of their body weight, bench a certain amount of their body weight, at least a year of experience training at least two times per week. People who lift. People who lift. And we actually got some competitive bodybuilders, competitive pilaters in there.

It's a pretty well-trained cohort. And then we randomized them to one of three conditions, being told to eat at maintenance, which we operationally defined as not seeing their weight increase or decrease more than 1% over a given time period. So, it's an eight-week study.

Eight-week study, correct. Or a small surplus, which was an intended surplus of 5%. Okay. Or a larger surplus, an intended surplus of 15%.

15%. and why I'm saying intended will be important later as I discuss the findings. Okay.

And then what we did is they came three times through the week at the Sprint Labs at AUT, where I work as a Senior Research Fellow in Strength and Conditioning and Sports, Nutrition, and Physiology. Cool. It's a nice thing to say on a first date.

She's like, what do you do? Or you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's like, oh my God, I would get wet.

Never call back. Yes. They never call back. And then we randomized to that, and we brought them into training with us three times a week.

And we did not know, those of us running the training study at AUT, which one of those three groups they were in. Only the nutritionist knew. Only our registered dietitian knew. Who was paid by RP? I didn't pay anyone.

Well, you paid me and I paid him. Back in the day, we kind of had two, I think, studies that are representative of some of the trends we saw. There's one by Rosnick and colleagues in the early 2000s.

And there was one by, as Americans call it, Garth. But it's probably like Gartha. Ina Gartha from...

I think, Norway. Does Norway have 14 nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle groups? We say American.

Woo! So Garth. We're going to go with Garth for this channel.

That's right. So Garth found in elite athletes, not necessarily weightlifting athletes, but they're doing strength conditioning, they're doing sport work, and they had a very applied study. Each one of these athletes was given an individualized weight gain goal.

Yeah, we talked about it a lot. I used it to inform. The first edition and the second edition of my books now probably incorporate the study we did to make recommendations on weight gain. And they had them gain weight either with a registered dietitian giving them more aggressive program or a self-guided, hey, try to put on some muscle, eat a little bit more than normal, you do your own thing. And these aren't, you know, like male bodybuilders reading magazines.

So they end up being in a smaller surplus doing ad libitum, which isn't what you typically think. And also they're elite athletes. They know about maintaining body composition. The end result was that there was an average 600 calorie disparity.

between the two groups. The dietitian guided athletes were eating 600 calories more. And when you look at the strength and the body composition changes, unfortunately, there was no statistical advantage.

of eating those additional 600 calories, the only statistically significant difference were jump height and sprint times, which got worse, of course, because they got heavier. Ballast. Yeah, exactly. Had to drag my own fat ass around. Yes.

So there was, it sounds terrible, five times more fat gain in the group that was in the larger surplus, but there was minuscule fat gain in the group that was in 600 calories less surplus. Yes. So it was modest fat gain.

But certainly a lot more and significantly more than the other group, but no differences in lean body mass or performance except for those negatives. So what I remember from that study is that on statistical tests, there was no significant difference. But on the raw comparison of means, the group that got the surplus gained one and a half times within the ability of our instruments to detect, which by statistics is not in that window.

They did gain a lot more muscle. But it's such a tight measurement that it's like... Yes, about the same.

If I'm looking from space and you launch a rocket and I launch a rocket, your rocket goes 150 feet, blows up. Mine goes 75 feet and blows up. The person looking from space is like, yep, they both suck. It's like, but mine's double. Yeah, but it could have blown up and the fuse could have fucking, it's just random chance at this point.

The means were higher in the group that was consuming more. I don't remember if it's 50% higher. There were a few metrics, whether we're talking about the strength on various lifts or just the lean body mass.

It's just people looking for opportunities to- justify mega bulking. That's how I felt when I was looking at it. I was like, how do we justify eating a pizza?

Yes. I think the important thing to remember for this study, though, is that it was athletes doing a four-day upper lower, which is great. I think that's a more ecologically valid approach, but they were also maintaining their concurrent training for their sport.

And it's also difficult to conclude. Something about like the kind of lifters who really wanted to conclude on that like it's handball athletes like some of them were great Comparisons others were not yeah, so we have that so okay We got limitations here, and then we had Rosnick and Rosnick is the the the perma Bulkers dream This was untrained males you were in their 20s, and they were brought in and three different groups One just following their habitual diet and the other two groups who are essentially given weight gainers 2,000 calorie weight gainers per day per day So it's supposed to be 2000 calories on top of their normal diet. Now, one of them, it was pure maltodextrin, just carbs. The other group was basically a maltodextrin whey blend.

There was a product made in Canada, which I consumed often back in the early 2000s, mid 2000s, that was exclusively maltodextrin and dextrose polymers in the ingredients. And it was literally branded and called just carbs. No joke.

I'm not mad. Because that's accurate advertising. Accurate.

You got to love it. I love it. Sorry, please continue.

So anyway, there was the Just Carbs group. And then there was... This is the drinking stuff. Correct. Okay.

And then the other group is taking a liquid weight gainer that is a mixture of some protein and carbs. And they were seeing which one would be better. And the answer was, in untrained young men, it don't matter. It's all amazing. Because they gained three kilos over eight weeks, both of the experimental conditions of body mass.

And on average, they gained three kilos of lean body mass. Meaning that on average in Rosinec, whether you're just throwing down 2,000 calories of just carbs or it's actually a mixture of say whey and some carbs and you're training hard, whoa, you can gain nearly a pound a week of pure lean mass. Now, obviously, some of that's not necessarily actual tissue.

Yeah. But it paints an amazing picture for bulking, right? Now, the thing is, is that in my experience as a coach of many, many natural bodybuilders. And my own personal experience where I went to this well multiple times without much payoff after the first time. I have a few love handle fucking situations from that, stretch skin.

Yeah. You can go to that well reliably once. And maybe if you get things right and you learn a lot and you didn't fully milk out your newbie gains, my experience is sometimes you can get that intermediate kind of late bump or you can get things right, you know.

But it's very difficult to, like that magnitude of bulking after your newbie gains are done. is going to reliably result in fat gain. So when we see Rosnick untrained, when we see Garth trained athletes, and then we see our study, which is a reasonably trained cohort, and we see the relationship that we saw with the biceps, it kind of paints this picture of, hey, training age is very important.

If you're a late stage intermediate, or if you're an advanced lifter, you probably want to be very cautious and to choose an appropriate size surplus or accept the fat gain. for what it's probably going to be if you think that maybe at least I'll gain a few pounds of muscle this way. Don't imagine that your 500 calorie surplus is all going to go to your fucking muscles. That's something I want to talk about as well, is it really comes down... Back to that Garth study.

Even if there was more muscle gain, I think an important consideration is the ratio of lean to fat mass gains. For some people, it doesn't matter. Like let's say you're 8% body fat and you're happy with the way you look.

And let's say you're male and you're happy with the way you look at 22% body fat. That is in most cases objectively healthy when we look at population level data. Sure. You know, like 23% is typically where you start to see issues, especially if you're carrying a lot of muscle mass and you're active, right?

Yes. So if you go from, I know the internet says 15%, but... Don't trust the internet.

In fact, stop listening. I think we've said that. We've caveated on a show.

Please continue. Yeah. So anyway, I would guess for an active person who's doing all the things right, eating a healthy diet in terms of qualitative inclusion of micronutrients, fiber, all that good stuff, if you were to move as a male from 8% to 20%, I'd be surprised if you're active in training that you would see substantial degradation in your health markers. So if you're comfortable with the way you look and you go from 8% to 20%, And you are going to stay there?

Absolutely. Well, who cares about the ratio, right? You put on some muscle.

However, for a guy like me or my clients, where I ultimately have to get all of the visible subcutaneous body fat off my body. How hard is that going to be for me? Correct. Do I have to diet longer? Do I have to diet harder?

And that metagression I just talked about, if a 500 calorie deficit on average is going to stop hypertrophy, at a certain point, it's going to induce atrophy, you know? At the very least, if you say, okay. how many 500 calorie surplus deficit days do I have to put together to take off 21 pounds of adipose tissue? And you're like, oh, that's a 58 week prep. Otherwise you're like, how much muscle am I willing to lose for this?

And that usually doesn't pan out well in my experience. No. Ultimately, this goes back to the parable of the tortoise first to hare.

And that if you can be patient and extend the gaining phase over more time, that's probably going to be better. And if I was to, if you were to put a gun to my head and say, Eric, just using empirical data, Do we know that larger surpluses are better than smaller surpluses? I have no data to support that. All I can tell you confidently is that being in a deficit is a downside.

And I will say based on our data though, given that it was actually challenging to get people to follow a small surplus, you need to think about what's feasible in the real world. So prescribing very, very, very small surpluses, even if it might be technically better, if you can't actually reliably follow that, it's probably better to go, you know what, let me make sure that... I'm eating enough. So I'm not in a deficit. 250K Cal surplus.

Because if you think about just a quick thought experiment, 250K Cal surplus, let's take some shortcuts mathematically and say, that's roughly half a pound of tissue gained per week. Let's say we're bulking for 16 weeks. So quick, good, consistent bulk.

Let's say 100% of that is body fat. We really fucked up or like, God's like, hey, you ran out of genetics. So in the grand scheme is eight pounds of fat that much i mean fuck man that's like six weeks of dieting and most people will be able to get that off without having to lose any muscle in that shorter time frame so it's not the fucking end of the world you know what i mean uh but on the other hand if you're talking about going to super bulk mode you know okay 750 kcal yes surplus it's like you may actually i believe theoretically you purely theoretically, this is my supposition, that you will absolutely see higher real gains in muscle with an escalating surplus up until health and discomfort stop you from sleeping properly and then you actually gain less muscle as you eat more.

But I think up to a thousand calories, definitely 750, you will see higher theoretical gains in muscle. But when the gain in fat is triple, but the increase in muscle gain is 5%, undetectable by modern instruments, you got to ask yourself like you did earlier, I'm not sure. Am I really going to diet 18 pounds of muscle off over the next six months so that I can consolidate my half kilo of muscle gain? If you're at that level where that's the only thing that's working and you're fucking trying to finish out your pro career, dope. If you are a reasonable person, if you compete actively in bodybuilding, you got to try to get the moderate to low surpluses.

Are you comfortable saying somewhere between 200 kilocalorie surplus and 400 kilocalorie surplus? is where most people probably find their best combination of actual gains, not unreasonable body fats to take off, and a comfort with food and lifestyle that doesn't ruin it one way or the other, and also a reasonable idea about it, and at least in some kind of mini surplus. I think so.

I think that's a pretty good heuristic. Super. Do you use another one you think is more particular? I normally, I actually like people to work more off of their weight change. rather than necessarily a target surplus.

Like you can set that at the start, but the way you auto-regulate that is going to be your biofeedback. So if you're doing that right, you're not going to see precipitous weight gain on a week-to-week basis. So looking at something like a two-week average and seeing your body weight go up at a certain rate, I generally would recommend, say, an advanced lifter to only be gaining, say, 1% of their body weight per month. And then you can basically scale that up, say, half a percent as you come down to intermediate and novice. A novice, yeah, 2% of your body weight per month.

Intermediate, somewhere between the two. I think that's a nice way to do it as well. Yes.

Let me present to you another idea here, and I'd love to have your take on it. Sure. Right in the vein of this. Something that I've taken, please tell me if this is wrong, something I've learned from talking to you about this and perusing the literature myself, my butler's really the perusing, give me executive summaries. I like it when my name is in there a lot.

Is your butler named Mass? I don't know their names. I teed you up to help me out there. Oh, the wonderful research review you and your colleagues publish monthly that is available through the Mass link.

Yes. Unbelievable folks. That's how you do business, but on a serious note, but NASA is very serious. So on another note, yes. Um, a lot of these studies are seeming to show something that unfortunately you and I both experienced in real life, which is that getting irresponsibly fat fast is not dependable way to gain muscle underneath.

Yep. And so we can take this and apply it to a new heuristic that I'd like to see what you think about this. If I'm looking in the mirror every few weeks. and my ass getting fat, what I used to be able to tell myself was like, under the hood, man, this is clear evidence of a surplus. Shit's happening.

I'm gaining fucking pounds, pounds, pounds. I wasn't getting super strong. I wasn't visibly seeing my muscles change, too fat for that. But like bad news.

But I was like, no, no, no, this kind of surplus has to be making big gains. Now that we know that's not the case, is it possible for folks to use a combination of their body weight and their physical appearance? to go, okay, if I'm still lean-ish, but I'm gaining weight a little bit, all is well.

This is probably the best I can do without any more finite measurement. But if I'm getting real sloppy looking, there's no compelling reason for me to keep looking sloppy unless I just don't give a fuck. And if I really, most people, let's be honest, Eric, most people watching this channel, most people who know who we are, they kind of give a shit if they're super fucking fat, like, fuck, man. And so if they're getting really out of hand fat, Would you be okay in saying like, look, it's probably time to rein in it a little bit and then make another slower run? What do you think about that?

No, absolutely. Ultimately, your surplus size is going to force you into a couple options. If you do take a more aggressive approach to bulking, it does mean that you're going to reach a body fat limit as described by your audience faster, which means you're going to more frequently have to do something about that.

Yes. You're also more uncomfortable during. Yeah.

You do get to have a lot of fun. But you can have like two really fun, unbelievable dinners where you eat buck all every week. And by adjusting your other metrics and having a high physical activity, you can gain at these rates we're talking about. You don't have to use an anorexic fucking rates to gain that. You're totally fine.

Especially after a few weeks, you gain some weight. You're not really like as hungry as you used to be. And you still have to gain that weight.

So it does allow you to look. Because a lot of people, why am I saying this? A lot of people look at super bulk life, like fucking just eat 5,000 K cal surplus. And they're like, that's fun, dude. But you and I both take it into nothing.

to a place where it wasn't fun anymore. Like I was eating milk and cookies because that was the only way to physically jam the calories at that point. I didn't even like milk and cookies.

As soon as I went on a healthy diet afterwards, I went for like four weeks without thinking about cheat food. Broccoli was delicious. That's how unhealthy I was at the time.

But people think about that like, man, it's so much more fun. But you could have a lot of fun on a lower surplus just by making special times to eat special things and mostly sticking to kind of whole food, healthy options. Do you have experience with that personally with athletes? Absolutely. The slow approach?

I think that typically has more to do with how well have they habituated to the bodybuilding lifestyle. And I think as you get more and more advanced in the sport, unless you really are pushing your body weight high or you're trying to get to body fat levels or you just have a really strong appetite suppression response to surpluses. Lots of people like that.

Which is true. It does happen. It probably happens more in enhanced bodybuilders getting really, really bigger than...

they ever otherwise could be from direct administration of androgens will feel approximate reduction in appetite interesting i know multiple people they're lucky motherfuckers by the way because it makes pre-contest easy as shit your boy gets hungry as fuck on gear it drives me nuts well in the natty world basically it has a lot more to do with where's your upper and lower intervention point or what we colloquially call your upper and lower body fat set point if you will and when you are pushing over a set point that is when you really start to find that you get a lot of appetite suppression yeah So, but you have to question how much value is there getting me over my upper set point anyway? So maybe when your body's like, hey, I'm not hungry anymore, you kind of cool it for a bit. Maybe even mini cut a few weeks, get that hunger back, get a little leaner, and then go up again.

What do you think about that? Yes. So here are some of the heuristics I use. One is that...

If anything, when you're higher in body fat, you're more likely and able to put on muscle, not only at maintenance, but even in a deficit. So you're not losing out on much by doing a mini cut. But two, a decent heuristic or safeguard against bulking far too quickly and being the hare and not the tortoise is that you have to earn yourself, and this is based purely on anecdote and experience, no data that says this is science-based. You have-You're saying it, so it is science-based.

I am science. Thank you. I am the law.

Who is that? Come on, that's Stallone, Judge Dredd. Eric, I don't mean this as an insult, but that was the worst Stallone impression I have ever heard in my life.

And I knew Sylvester Stallone. Yeah? Yeah, we had a falling.

Well, I was hoping you'd introduce me. Yeah, he said something like, ooh, and I was like, what? He's like, ooh.

So that was a good Stallone impression. No, it was worse. Okay, all right. The heuristic I was going to recommend is a four to one ratio.

So that to earn yourself, say, a month mini cut. You have to at least be in a surplus for four months. Yeah.

That's a great point because I think it prevents the abesiophobic wishy-wash. One extra ab line goes away and you're like, that's it, man. Back to my pre-contest diet.

Otherwise, people will see me more fat in the gym than I'm used to. Someone will say something unkind on TikTok. Yep.

You know the rest. The world collapses in a flame. Yep.

It also prevents people from doing too much. Because then they're forced in this, like if you gain 20 pounds, 30 pounds in four months, then you go, what are you going to do about that in one month? Not shit.

Yeah. You're going to, it's going to result in this probably too much weight gain, or you're going to be doing these mini cuts that everyone would be like, what are you doing a medically supervised fast for? Yes. You're very uncomfortable.

Okay. So a couple of take-homes from this whole thing. One, if you thought that dreamer bulking was going to work.

It'll work the best it can work when you're a beginner and training with high volumes really hard, but it doesn't even on the numbers work so well then. It's more of a question of, can I get away with this more? Like, if you're a supervillain who police can't shoot to death, can you do bank robberies?

Yes, probably. Is it a good idea? No, there's better ways to use your time. So that's the first thing.

Second thing is if you're gonna go into higher surpluses. Don't expect that to reliably lead to higher muscle gain, at least in the short term. Third idea is, yeah, really low surpluses are sort of incalculable.

Increase your calories by 30 over maintenance is almost like a procedurally nonsensical thing to do. And thus, you're better off shooting for something like 200 to 400 kcal surplus per week while you're bulking. And there's another method of just bulking at what you think is a slow surplus, visually inspecting your body.

mini cutting when necessary protein sparing modified fast maybe if you're cool with it you don't lose a ton of strength and you can rebound easy but if you had problems with that before and i just think it's a fucking disaster just don't gain as much and then when you lose lose a little gently and that tends to be a good process for you there and lastly if you are drug free which almost all of our euros are i thank fucking god um the looking at body weight is really good in addition to that so you can guess at your calories however much you want there's people like man i'm numb I'm in a 400 calorie surplus and I'm not gaining. Like when I got news for you, you're not fucking gaining shit because where is the weight? So measuring your body weight consistently, don't worry about erratic numbers, two week average, gain roughly a percent of your body weight per month as an advanced lifter. And to be honest, man, as a beginner and intermediate, unless you're ripped and starving.

I'd say that's also good because then you just fucking make lean gains for forever. You don't have to try to get your fat ass and the more fat. So just take the good gains.

There's a lot of times people are like, all right, the not so great gains are this. So I can aim for this. Like just get the gains, get the gains and just get them for longer. What did I miss?

Is that a decent summary of the shit? It's a very good summary. I only have a few little footnotes to add to it.

Hit me. So on the first point, it was if you're training high volume and hard, that might support bulking, but not even that well. That is true at the group level, because on average, you're going to see the things that we see in meta-analyses shake out for everybody.

Ultimately, on an individual basis, you need to be training effectively for you. And unfortunately, some people are going to respond better to eight sets than 20. Some people are going to respond better to 30 sets than 20. And it's difficult to know. Some people respond better to going to failure with fewer sets, and some people the opposite.

And even in my circle, where we have agreed upon the same principles, we see large disparities in that. So Jeff and myself respond very differently to training and therefore we train differently. There is no one size fits all.

Second point about the surplus size, generally also true for everyone. It's very difficult to follow a 30 calorie surplus and be accurate. And that goes hand in hand with, okay, therefore you should have a higher surplus and then use the mirror check.

I will say that if you are like a macronator king and you're an advanced bodybuilder like myself, I am able to follow much smaller surpluses than the average person. So are my clients. So there are cases where not only you're not going to see much visual change over a short term period.

And if you have the skill to use those smaller windows of surpluses and you can have that level of precision, it would on paper be better to do so. That's probably only about 1% of the people watching. Totally.

And also there's a problem there where, yes, you're reliable enough, but is your accuracy off? And then you can only really confirm that with body weight change. That'll take some time.

So one of my more proximate short-term cues I like to use for myself and some athletes is, do I feel fed? Do I feel energetic and recovering from training? And can I fucking sleep? Because if I don't feel fed, I don't have energy to train. I'm not sleeping.

I don't give a fuck what it says on the paper. I probably need more food to get me into that better state. What do you think about that? I think not only is that true in the same experience I've had and that I use in coaching, but the ability to have awareness of those biofeedback and kind of intuitive qualitative aspects also are present in the people who should have that kind of precision and at that level where body mass gains, at least the muscle mass gains are going to come slower.

So don't... If you're a relatively advanced lifter with these skills and that awareness and the ability to be a little more accurate, definitely lean on more metrics because you can use them. But I think the more generalized advice, especially for intermediates, is perfect.

Awesome. Eric, you know a lot of shit, frighteningly high in the amount of literal shit. This was an insult, it wasn't there. But I want to know more of what you know.

Where can I find you? Do you publish anything I can read about science? I want nerd shit. Hit me. Yo, if you want to actually read my published papers, I do the best I can to publish open access.

Excellent. Now, if you are more interested in how to apply the science, I also review research. So we have what's called mass, mass research review, which is myself, Eric Trexler, another person who knows a lot of stuff, Lauren Colenso-Semple, and the other Dr. Mike, Dr. Mike Zerdos.

Yes, the better doctor. I'll stop it. There's another medical Dr. Mike that has like a trillion YouTube subscribers.

He's also a Russian Jew. And I think he actually like does MMA even, which is like a step up from jujitsu. He's like the guy I never became. And he's beautiful. He's like in GQ.

And I'm like, look at me. He's your Dr. Trexler. Dude, it's fucked up. Dr. Trexler is like me with stats knowledge. It's frustrating.

It's like just better. Yeah. So anyway, if you want to follow me, the better me, Lauren, and the better Dr. Mike.

then definitely check out Mass, where every single month we go through studies like this that are directly applicable to lifters, nutrition, training, coaching, psychology, and we review them from the lens of how will this help the athlete or the trainer or the general fitness practitioner. So that's something I would highly recommend, massresearchreview.com. And if you don't want to subscribe, if you want me to be out on the streets broke, at least watch our YouTube channel because every single week we do Mass office hours where two of us...

That's awesome. Eric plus someone else will take live questions and answer questions that got deposited to us live on YouTube for an hour, hour and a half every week. Yeah. Guys, on RP, we try to provide you with a ton of really good evidence-based information.

Two things on that. One, we can't possibly teach you all the shit. Sure, shit not in a couple months of videos. And so there's tons of other folks like Eric and his team producing unbelievable content that if you really want to be the best trainer, the best coach, the best athlete that you can be, you're going to go find him.

Secondarily. What we do here at RP is typically a dogshit meta-summary of things these people actually find out in research. So if you want that real nuance, you don't want to just repeat shit that I say and not really know, is that Dr. Mike just making shit up again or is he actually right? You want to go to the source. You will typically find that we don't lie too much on this channel, though my butlers do occasionally make me say unkind things about people.

It's really strange. The butlers have a mean streak. Do your butlers ever get kind of serial killer-y? How many butlers do you have? Let's just ask the obvious question.

I did not know this was going to be a butler measuring match. Eric, there's no measuring. This is just to tell people how they could be living if they organize their lives better. Do you have a recommendation for a first butler?

Oh, we'll talk after this video. Other than butlers, this is the place to get a lot of amazing insight. We tell you guys about all our great folks.

Men of Henselman's is fucking awesome. Strong Breast Science is fucking awesome. 3DMJ and Mass are at the top of the pile. Go check them out. Learn things.

And honestly, just unsubscribe from me because I'm fucking old. I'll see you guys next time.

Transcript for:Caloric Surplus Strategies for Muscle Gain

Transcript for:
Caloric Surplus Strategies for Muscle Gain