Boom! What's up my fellow Eroid brothers and sisters! I hope you all are going to have an amazing Valentines Day with plenty of lifting and sexiness! The subject I want to speak on today is "Bulking". The "minicut' during bulking and the post show "Refeed".

Bulking- I hate the term bulking or bulking season. In my opinion it's an excuse to get fat during the off season. So it's bullshit in my eyes. In the constant pursuit of a better physique we should not have an off season. This is a time my team and I call "Improvement Season". Thats exactly what it should be. Improving on areas that seem to be lacking on your physique weather it be from a judges point of view from your last show or in the eyes of the harshest judge....YOU! If you are eating anything and everything and not counting macros or watching what you are putting in you, especially in a "dirty bulk" you are covering up your work with a layer of unnessacary fat. Think of it as an artist painting a picture with a blindfold on. He's not going to know what the picture is going to look like until he takes the blindfold off. The unnessacary fat is the blindfold and is keeping you from seeing your work in progress. Now I'm not saying that even in the improvement season you should be walking around at 5% body fat. Thats asking a lot and would drive people fucking batty. I understand that due to different body types some people hold on to fat easier than others. We have a solution for that!

The MiniCut- So here we are in the middle of YOUR improvement season. You've put on amazing amount of size but you've hit a snag. 1. You are holding a great deal of unwanted fat. Or. 2. You are finding it hard to get down the food you need in order to grow. Your eyes are watering when prepping food. You're gagging when trying to eat. You can't chew your food because your body doesn't want it so you put water in your mouth to wash the food down. Basically force feeding yourself. That's not a good thing to do at all. What the minicut can do for you is help you shed the unwanted fat that you've obtained during this improvement. Nothing serious like doing a show prep diet or anything like that. They can last anywhere from 2 weeks - 6 weeks. Depending on you and your body type and the adjustments you've made to your diet. Lets say you're eating 750 grams of carbs a day. You'll cut that down to around 250 grams of carbs but keep your protein intake rather high to maintain muscle and your healthy fats rather high to have as fuel for in the gym. What your doing is peeling off some of this blindfold to get a sneak peak of what your are building. To see if the improvements are coming along as expected.

The other benefit to the minicut is lets say that you are having trouble meeting your macros due to force feeding and not being able to eat your food. What we do is cut your portions back. It's great for about a week because your not having to stuff your face with food and dred eating your next meal in 2 hours. But after that week you will notice that your appetite will slowly start to come back. Now those smaller portions you were eating are not enough to fill you or satisfy you anymore. We've kick started you appetite back in to gear! There is somethings watch for when adding macros back to your diet. This kinda goes hand and hand with the next section of this post.

The Refeed- Okay. So what the refeed is the nutrients that you put back into your body after a calorie deficient diet. You have to be careful and watch what you put inside you. No homo. Because since your body has been in a calorie deficient diet it's going to soak up and cling everything that it gets. Fats. Carbs and even protein. You HAVE to take full advantage of this! If you don't then you are selling yourself short! I wish somebody had told me this before I experienced it first hand. I went from 193 pounds down to 178 for show. After the show I went back to eating whatever I wanted and after a few weeks I hit 199.3 pounds! And not all of them were great pounds. I've had to actually do a minicut myself to get rid of my fat and I'm down to a leaner 195.6. As you add food back to your diet, slowly increase and dial back in certain areas. Now that you've had a look at what's underneath, you have more ammunition to fire at diet and training. Especially you P/F/C's!!!! This refeed goes for people doing the minicut and people that are just coming out of show preps.

I know some people may not agree on this and say "Well, Cheddar I feel like if I do a minicut then I'm taking 3 steps forward and 2 steps back". I can see that point but you have to ask yourself "How important is the quality of muscle that you are obtaining to you?" In my opinion i'd much rather have quality over quantity any day. Thanks for taking the time and reading this. I hope you enjoyed this and learned something. If any one has anything to contribute to this please do.