Transcription
All right, today we're going to talk about how I gained 50 pounds of muscle in six weeks. Namely, how to do a rebound.
So, rebound is the most magical period of time for a bodybuilder or someone wanting to put on serious amounts of muscle. You know, Dorian Yates even said himself that he predicts about 80% of his muscle gains came um immediately following a a contest prep. So, the 6 to 8 weeks right after a show or heavy diet, that's when he gained the most amount of muscle. That's what I experienced as well in the four years that I was um competing as a pro bodybuilder. You know, I went from being 157 pound ultrarunner at the start of, you know, my goal of becoming a pro bodybuilder to 260 lbs um pretty lean at my peak um as a pro bodybuilder. And that took only a few years time. And the the vast majority of the gains, probably 80% of the gains came right after a bodybuilding contest prep or heavy dieting period.
Um, and now when I say I gained 50 lbs of muscle in 6 weeks, you know, that's not literally 50 lbs of muscle. It was 50 lbs of weight. Um, we'll get into that in a second. Um, but the vast majority of that was, frankly, muscle. It's not these just water weight gains. Um, you know, gains that just, you know, you go ahead and get get through the period and what we're going to talk about today and it goes away. I'm talking about you create a completely different baseline of muscle, a completely different look um in 6 to 8 weeks post dieting period.
Um and this is kind of my claim to fame with coaching. You know, I've I've coached hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients, whether that be bodybuilders, hybrid athletes, um powerbuilders over the last seven or eight years now. And um many of my clients come to me because of my rebound strategies. My rebound strategies are somewhat unique. Um, but they are absolutely proven to work. You know, I've got many clients on my roster right now that are currently rebounding and completely changing their look. Meaning that um they're going from literally moving up weight classes starting in something like men's physique and within an 8week period blowing out of that men's physique look. Um or or you know, different things like that, like putting on a whole new baseline of muscle.
Um so that's what we're going to talk about today is how to do this appropriately, how I did it. So, um, the pictures right here, you know, I went pro at 182 lbs in men's physique, and this was after a long dieting period. We're going to get to to why that matters in a second, but um, the picture here is 182 lbs going pro men's physique. 6 weeks later, literally 6 weeks later, I'll I'll throw up the time stamp so you can see I was 235 lbs and still very, very, very lean, but with a completely new level of muscle mass.
Um, and now we're going to get to it in a second, but before everybody just screams, you know, blasting my socks off full of gear, the gear I used, the amount of gear I used during the rebound was actually less and for sure less toxic than what I even used in the contest prep. Um, so it's it's mainly while it still is in play, it's still absolutely a factor, um, the PD's load is not really the huge driving factor here.
So, um, let's get into how to do this. So, first off, the main thing you're going to need here to to set yourself up, right, is that dieting period is getting yourself extremely extremely shredded. Um, and particularly getting yourself incredibly incredibly insulin sensitive. So, this contest prep right here, by the way, I rebounded after each one of my um contest preps and and dieting periods, this was my best rebound by far, but all my rebounds were excellent. And the leaner I got, the more shredded I gotten, the deeper I went within the dieting, the better the rebound was. So, that's why when a a new client comes to me and they're their goal, frankly, is to gain as much muscle as possible, um, unless they're already really, really, really shredded, which does happen at times, but it's typically rare. I typically recommend we go into a dieting phase to set us up for a rebound. That's where guys that have no goal of even stepping on a bodybuilding stage. Um, a lot of times I recommend just go ahead and and have the goal of getting up on stage because just you getting up on stage, you're setting yourself up for a killer killer killer rebound. So, one, you need to go ahead and focus on dieting yourself down. Now, maintain as much muscle on the way down as you can. You don't want to be stripping muscle tissue off.
Um, but you know this rebound that I'm talking about that I did here, I was in contest prep for 9 months. I um competed in a show I believe in July and then I went to North Americans in September. Um, and that was already, you know, six or so months, maybe five, six months into a contest prep already very very lean and shredded going to North Americans. Didn't get the pro card there. So decided to stay in in contest prep until December until the next national show. Um, and so it ended up being about 9 to 10 months of literally dieting. Um, so by the time I get out of the show, my body was itching to grow. So, um, you know, it was it was a very miserable diet. Um, but getting myself that lean, I blew up right out of it. And that's why it's called also a rebound. So, first thing you need to do, get yourself shredded, get yourself completely, completely insulin sensitive. Hang out there for a bit. Um, like I said, the more you can get your body kind of itching to grow, um, the better.
So, first, let's get into, um, training. So, with training, when you're in a rebound, this is when, um, I recommend, you know, you absolutely, you know, if you've watched my videos, you know that I talk about having a log book and needing to focus on progression more so than any other time. This is important. You need to be stepping in the gym and every single time destroying your numbers from the section before. Um, and during rebound, you're going to be able to one, you're coming out of a dieting phase, so you're going to have more food. Um, you're going to be incredibly insulin sensitive. Um, and with that is going to come massive, massive, massive strength gains. So, week after week, session after session, um, with each individual set, you should be looking at back at that each individual set, the the week before, the session before, um, and trying to destroy those numbers. If you're going into the gym during the 6 to 8 weeks post diet um and you are just blowing up in strength with that is going to come massive massive muscle gains.
Um so big thing with the training um focus on high intensity. Um one thing I've mentioned with with all my videos is that kind of Yates style training. Maybe have a little bit more volume here. During my rebound periods um I typically had more volume than usual. Um but I kept the intensity very very very high. Um, but I was blasting food, which we'll get to in a second. Um, and that allows for more recovery and all that. Now, with this, you're going to be progressing at an extremely fast rate. Your body is going to be itching to grow.
Um, with this, you're probably going to need to sleep more. Um, during rebound periods, I I slept a lot more, more like 9 hours a night. Plus, I would have a nap, an hour nap. Um, after a training session in the afternoon, your body's going to be wanting to grow. So, um, you have the sleep there. Um, two, you know, your body's going to probably be feeling pretty beat up. You know, you getting under heavier and heavier weights each week. Um, this is where most people with throwing a D load. I try to avoid D loss with myself or with clients, um, you know, at least, you know, 6 to 8 weeks into I try to get through the rebound period, get us to a a phase then then where we can level off. We'll talk about that in the the end of the video, how to end the rebound. Uh, but I try to get to a point where, you know, you level off. um you know before going ahead and taking a de lo.
So now let's get to diet. This is the the thing that's going to be so important here. So most people when they come out of a diet or a postshow phase is they just start eating a bunch of food or they keep themselves really restricted. The the point here is you do want a lot of food, but you want the right food. So one, set your protein a little bit higher than you typically would. If you're typically at a gram per pound of body weight, set yourself at 1.25, even 1.5. your body's going to be itching to grow at a much faster rate than typical. Um, so go ahead and and set your protein up a little bit higher. Keep your fats low. I'm assuming with your dieting phase, your contest prep phase, your your fats got pretty low. I recommend keeping them pretty dang low. Um, you know, during my my uh my rebound phases, I, you know, even when blasting, you know, 6 to 700 gram of carbs a day, um, I still had my fats, you know, trying to be around or under 60 gram of fat. So, um, we're going to blast carbs here, but we want to keep fat really low. Your your body's insulin sensitive, so it's going to use carbs at an extremely efficient rate. So, this is where go ahead and eat eat a lot of carbs, put them around training, and then you can start tapering up from there. You don't need to come out of the gate right out of um the contest prepar, you know, blasting, you know, hundreds and hundreds of grams of carbs more than what you were doing. You know, start tapering this up, you know, week by week, depending on where progression's at. Um, you know, this should be really based off of progression, what you need. Um, you don't want to just, you know, overload your system with more than what you need. But right now, you can utilize carbs at a much more efficient rate. So, we're going to blast carbs. We're going to keep fats low and we're gonna have a little bit higher than um normal amount of protein.
Now, um this is where so many guys talk to me about PDS. So, I'm not going to get into the specifics here. You know, I I have, you know, that that is something one I reserve for my clients. Um and and two, you know, y'all know my story. You know, being now completely off TRT, all of that. I'm not going to get into that here. Um, kind of public information. What I can say is that my my PD's load for rebounds was was a lot lower than what people thought. People thought, you know, they would watch my rebounds and would think I'm blasting my socks off when usually rebound periods were was fairly conservative on a PED load. What I will give you though, what is important more than the steroids, more than the anabolic load, what's going to be very important here is growth hormone. So, and you don't need a ton of it, but a little bit of growth hormone when you're incredibly insulin insulin sensitive goes a long way. Um, and what you're going to want to do is maintain that insulin sensitivity. So, for some people it's doing more cardio in the morning. Um, some people it's using um, you know, correct supplementation. My clients have, you know, there's a supplement list I give my clients um, natural supplements, over-the-counter supplements I give my clients for when they're in a rebound. s stuff like GDAS, other things like that to keep their insulin sensitiv sensitivity in check. Um, and the timing around those is very important. But point here is is don't get so hung up on PDS. Yes, it's going to be important. you know, if you're a bodybuilder and you're trying to maximize muscle muscle gain, um, you know, that is a a factor. But I can absolutely say that my anabolic loads were was less in rebounds than, um, later on in a in a true growth phase after a rebound setting or any of that. So, you can get by with a lot less, but growth hormone is going to be is going to be your friend here. So, um, keep that in mind.
So, um, then when you're finishing up the rebound, you know, you're going to have six to eight weeks. I always had to literally put a stop on my rebounds because I was so uncomfortable with the new weight gain. Think in 6 to 8 weeks you're up, you know, 50 or so pounds. I went from um competing in my last show, you know, competing as a 212 bodybuilder um in I want to say it was September, I want to say September um at the Texas Pro and by December I was 260 lbs. I had to stop stop each one of my rebounds. my body would have kept going up. Now, all of that's not not all muscle, but um a lot of it is, but the the new weight period, whatever it is, it's very uncomfortable for your body and it can be also very unhealthy. So, this is where don't get too greedy here. You know, go ahead and squeeze out a lot of gains um and then pull yourself back to kind of a health phase where you solidify the muscle um and all that. And that's that's where don't go ahead and just all of a sudden when you cut the rebound, you know, drop off a ton of food. You know, you need to kind of do this incrementally and solidify everything you've got, but just go ahead and pull back on the momentum. And this is where, you know, you can take D loads. Um, you can get the body really refreshed. That way, you know, if you're going to then go into a true growth phase, which is typically what you would do, you know, you'd rebound, go into a health phase, solidify that that weight and that muscle. That's going to be your now new floor, your new baseline to then kick off your true um growth phase. Um this is typically how I I did it, what I do with a lot of my clients. Um but there's, you know, many ways to kind of skin the cat with this.
So, um, just food for thought, you know, I I hear so many guys, you know, are permab bulking or um don't want to get truly truly truly shredded because they don't like how their shirts fit or whatever when they're shredded. And I'm telling you guys, if you want to be truly massive, and if you've watched, if you've gone through my Instagram or you've watched me over the years, seen my transformations, most of them came through rebounds, guys. I'm telling you that if you nail a rebound, and you've got kind of one shot with it, each time you go ahead and you diet down for a long period of time, you know, most people ruin their rebound, um, you know, you've got kind of one shot with it, but if you maximize that rebound, you will transform your look completely. You will have a new baseline look. um a new baseline set of muscle and density and muscle maturity. Um, it is a beautiful period of time. It's like it's a unicorn period of time.
Um, you know, all these kind of things when you see like guys must just be blasting their socks off to be getting crazy results. Some people obviously do that. Um, but you know, one thing that's that was really popular back with '90s bodybuilders. Um, and one thing that I've I've seen within myself and so many of my clients is rebound periods are are incredible, guys. Like I said, I've got many guys on my roster right now that we are currently rebounding. Um, and they're they're crushing it. Um, so this works, dude.
So, um, let me know if you have any questions. You know, I can go into rebound talks, you know, so much. A lot of this this is kind of more than anything else I do. This is kind of somewhat you know the way I rebound is unique. So some of the stuff I keep tight lipped um you know this for my clients but um everything I talked about today I can go kind of deeper in um and and help you all out with that. Um, but let me know if you have any questions. Um, have a great day y'all. All glory to God. God bless you. Have a great day.