State of the Union, Pre-Bulk

Today I'm going to start a 6 week bulking phase patterned after high rep squat principles and Dan John's MMS. I wanted to jot down thoughts on training over the past few months, so I can resume the things that have worked and weed out things that haven't once the 6 weeks are up.

First, my training cycles have been fairly consistent and straight forward. I've maintained Monday as a DL centric day, Wednesday as a chest centric day and Friday as a squat centric day. Following each complex movement, I select a few accessory lifts and then a few secondary lifts so each major muscle group is hit directly or indirectly every workout.

Regarding diet, I have slowly dropped calories to drop bodyfat while keeping lean muscle mass. Currently, I'm around 175, and would estimate bodyfat to be somewhere around 15%. Ideally, I should drop to 10-12% before doing a bulk phase, but I'm not going to jumt to 4000 calories and blow up like a balloon. Each week I'll increase cals and monitor weight and BF via calipers. If there is too drastic a swing, I'll drop cals to a level that's just above maintenance. I'd like to be at 175 with 8% BF, so I need to put on a good 10 pounds of lean mass. It may take two or three bulking cycles to do it, but I've never really bulked seriously, so I'm curious to see what will happen.

I've tapered down from about 2100 cals on workout days and 1900 cals on rest days to about 1900 cals on workout and 1700 on rest days. My macro breakdown has been about 180 g protein, and then dividing the balance of the cals between fat and carbs, skewing a bit higher towards carbs on work days and higher towards fat on rest days. (Carbs about 200+/100 respectively. Fat about 30-35/40-50) The last few weeks, I've increased protein to over 200 and that has seemed to help actually.

I'll start this week at 2100 cals for workout days and 1800 on rest days. I'll keep macros about the same.

Regarding intermittent fasting through the bulk, I'm going to still try it, but I will differ only in that I will take a scoop of protein an hour before I train, and drink 10g BCAAs throughout the workout. If I get an upset stomach, or feel like I can't digest the extra food quickly enough, perhaps I'll add a small meal earlier, but I really want to keep maximizing fat oxidation wherever I can without expending too much energy.

The one thing I'm a little concerned about is dropping deadlifts and heavy weighted chins from my program for 6 weeks. I don't think there will be much drop in strength, but I know that with high rep squats, my body can't do both. I have to focus on the goal to get bigger and add more lean mass, then I can focus on strength gains again. Good luck, sir.