"No freakin' way" is what I've heard virtually all of my life, pre-teen years included. This is why the "Bulk up and cut down" training systems are what you hear about all the time.

It's an easy sale, too. Your body is much more adept at building muscle OR cutting fat than it is trying to do both at the same time. In fact, cutting up and building muscle at the VERY same time is impossible.

However, that is not to say that, over the course of six weeks, you cannot gain muscle and lose body fat. You can start out at 200 pounds at 15% body fat and wind up at 200 pounds at 10%.

You see, you split your training into cycles. I've talked about this before. Interestingly, you can break up the cycles into even smaller chunks than I did in that old post – we're talking intra-day stuff here, folks.

When you do your weight training during the day, your muscles break down and are ready to build back up again immediately after your workout. They are super-efficient. This is the time when you run a calorie surplus (more on surpluses and deficits in a moment, and NOT of the federal budget variety!).

Most of the rest of the day, if you want to cut up, you can run a calorie deficit.

Over the course of a 24-hour period, you may need 3,000 calories, depending on your weight, activity, metabolism, etc. However, each hour is not simply 1/24th of a day, in caloric-need terms. At rest, you may need only several hundred calories for an 8-hour period.

During your peak activities, you may need A LOT more calories.

When you're running a calorie deficit, if you do it right, you're burning fat. Conversely, when you're running a surplus, you're setting the stage for anabolism (muscle growth).

You have to know how to do this. Timing, as they say, is everything.

And Vince Gironda was right after all – successful bodybuilding is 85% nutrition!

For more info on this, check out The Holy Grail. It's free, for a limited time, but with a catch. But, in my opinion, it's worth it.

I know we're all in a hurry to get big, lose body fat, and otherwise enhance our athletic performance. In that light, I'm starting a series, a Top Ten if you will, on getting things done better and faster.

The first part of this Top Ten is all about building muscle: What are the tricks, tips, and techniques for building muscles that are bigger, faster, and stronger?

Without further ado, here they are:

1. Do compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rows, pull-ups, and overhead presses. In that order of preference. These exercises stimulate more muscle growth because they employ more muscle fibers at once, cause increased growth hormone production, and also facilitate the mind-muscle connection.
2. Do 2-4 sets of each exercise.
3. Do sets of 6-10 reps.
4. Train to concentric failure on the last "heavy" set of at least one exercise per workout. This means that if you work chest, back, and shoulders, do at least one set of Bench Presses, for example, until you cannot do another rep without help.
5. Throw in a forced rep or two every few weeks.
6. Cycle your training. Don't go stale. I suggest using mini-cycles of 3-6 weeks on, one week off. The harder you train, the fewer weeks of hard training you do before a rest.
7. Cycle your supplementation. I suggest 3 days on, 1 day off. Repeat. Make your diet coincide with your training. This means that every 3 to 6 weeks, you take some time off.
8. Work toward progress. A little progress is better than none at all. Tweak here and there to keep progress moving. There's no sense in trying to build Rome in a day. It won't work and you'll get hurt and/or disappointed.
9. Get plenty of rest and drink a ton of water. Reduce inflammation by cutting out junk food including sugar, high fructose corn syrup, caffeine, and other crap. It does you no good. Even if it tastes really yummy and gives you a killer buzz. Nothing in life comes easy.
10. Everything is subject to change. Nothing is written in stone. Including these "rules."

That's it for now. Next up: Fat-loss Top Ten.

Last month, I pushed you to visit Muscle-Build.com, hoping to get past 10,000 visitors. This month, is it too much to ask to try to get to 15,000? Is it doable?

Certainly.

Is it likely? No.

Sadly, I have to average 483 visits over the course of the entire month. However, 483, coincidentally, is the highest visitor number I’ve reached. I’ve only averaged 375 visits thus far.

So to get to 15,000 from here, I have to average a whopping 609. I’ve surpassed 600 visits in a day 2 times!

This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to beg

Seriously, getting there is my goal, but it is not the be-all, end-all. I really derive no benefit, other than more nice people like you get to experience what I have to say.

Can I ask a favor, though? Can you Stumble, Tweet, and send to Facebook these 3 links:

1. http://www.muscle-build.com/building-muscle-blog.html
2. http://www.muscle-build.com/gallon-of-milk-a-day.html
3. http://www.muscle-build.com/hardgainer.html

The first two pages get the most hits of any of my Muscle-Build.com pages (other than the home page). #3 is my attempt to show “hardgainers” how to rapidly put on weight.

Once upon a time, I was a hardgainer. Still am, really. I just used to be really skinny. It was a long, hard battle to put on weight for me; in fact, from 12 until about 28, I didn’t have much progress.

But I’m stubborn. Nearing my 30s, I decided to give reaching 200 pounds another try. I mean, I tried really hard. And you know what? I got there! Finally. The Hardgainer Manifesto is the blueprint I used to go from 140 to 205 in a little over a year.

How did I do it? You can check it out for yourself.

Getting back to my point of reaching 15,000 visits this month – when I have a goal, I reach it. But I cannot, of course, do it without you.

Visit the links above. Share them with your friends. Tweet about them. Stumble them. Get the word out that I share a lot of really good info here.

See those little buttons down there under “Share and Enjoy?” Feel free to spread the message that way. Remember, this is a self-funded site – the more visitors you bring my way, the more potential money they generate, and I can bring you even better stuff.

Thanks!

You may notice some new buttons on the Muscle-Build.com site. Yes, there are Forum and Sales buttons, and NO, they are not functional! They are future features of the site that I hope to bring to you.

However, I've not had time to set everything up.

You may remember that I sent out a reader survey a while back. That's where the Forum idea came to bear. Some readers really want a user forum. So I've started to make one. I'll let you know when it's live. The Sales button is going to be a redirect to another site I've put up where I'll be selling some fitness courses. Some you've already seen, like the Hardgainer Manifesto.

Others will be new. I'm working on a 16-week course that will take you from looking like this: 

To this:

In 4 months. Of course, your mileage may vary. Results not typical! Arnold was awesome. But you can go from fat (or skinny) to buff in 4 months with hard training, diet, and dedication. Anyway, that's the update. Two new features for Muscle-Build.com coming online. Hopefully before the end of the year. Stay tuned. Or, better yet, sign up here for all the updates to the site.

Alert, or at least long-term, readers of this site will note that I typically advocate a 2-way split, working out 3 times a week. My routine in the past has always looked something like this:

• Legs & Arms
• Chest & Back & Delts

I’d work the first on Monday and Friday, the second on Wednesday. The following week, I’d do the opposite.

I’ve been working out pretty heavy lately, using more sets and lower reps. I’ve also added really heavy partials with high reps (at least 20 per set at the end of a body part’s workout).

It’s been my experience that I’ve often not trained with enough volume because I’m trying to hit 2 or 3 body parts per workout. I’ve devised a new workout routine that allows me the rest I need to recover, the freedom to work a specific body part a second time in a week, and the space to work out more intensely per workout because I’m working fewer body parts per workout.

Here’s my new work out routine:

• Chest & Back, Monday
• Legs, Tuesday
• Delts & Arms, Wednesday
• Rest on Thursday
• Specialize on Friday (hit a lagging body part or something I want to really stress)

This routine allows me to follow my diet more closely, too. As you may remember, I suggest that people follow a nutrition plan pretty heavy on supplements and high protein, moderate carbs, and relatively high fat (for building phases); with the heavy eating, I want to give my body a rest every 4th day. So, Monday through Wednesday, I eat my “normal” heavy diet. Thursday, I pretty much fast.

Friday, I can go nuts on the supplementation while I blast the body part I want to crush.

Saturday and Sunday are pretty normal, except that I eat lighter because I’m not doing any weight training on those days.

In the next post, I’ll tell you about my back-relief supplementation plan. It’s given me the most pain relief I’ve had in years. Literally.