Mastering Lean Muscle Gain: Your Guide to Building Muscle While Minimizing Fat Gain
Building muscle without adding unwanted fat can seem like a balancing act, but with the right approach, you can achieve impressive results. Lean muscle gain is not just about lifting weights; it’s a carefully crafted blend of strategic nutrition and smart training. In this guide, we'll explore how you can optimize your diet and training to build muscle efficiently while keeping fat gains as low as possible.
What is Lean Muscle Gain?
Lean muscle gain refers to increasing muscle mass while minimizing fat accumulation. Unlike traditional bulking, which often involves gaining weight rapidly with a significant fat component, lean muscle gain focuses on steady, sustainable muscle growth. Opting for lean muscle gain allows you to achieve a more defined physique without the need for extensive cutting phases later. It promotes a healthier approach to muscle building, reducing the stress on your body and ensuring long-term results.
Why do we Want to Build Muscle?
Achieving high muscle mass not only enhances your physique but also significantly improves your overall health and quality of life. Research consistently shows that greater muscle mass is associated with numerous health benefits, including increased metabolic rate, better glucose regulation, and improved cardiovascular health. For instance, higher muscle mass contributes to greater insulin sensitivity, which helps in the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes (Kelley et al., 2000). Additionally, maintaining a robust muscle mass is linked to reduced risk of falls and fractures, particularly in older adults, thereby supporting better functional mobility and independence as you age (Bauer et al., 2013).
Furthermore, studies suggest that higher muscle mass is positively correlated with increased longevity, as it is associated with a lower risk of mortality and improved overall life expectancy (Stenholm et al., 2014). Thus, focusing on building and maintaining high muscle mass not only enhances your physical strength and appearance but also contributes to a healthier, longer, and more active life.
Key Principles for Effective Lean Muscle Gain, and finding the best approach for YOU
We use 2 Approaches for lean muscle gain depending on the individual:
we do a lean building phase at maintenance calories
we do a conservative surplus to allow for increases in muscle mass over time but with the limitation of excessive added fat mass.
With lean building at maintenance calories, we are more so looking for body recomposition. This means the scale will stay relatively steady (within 3-5 lbs typically) but we will see changes in measurements and photos as we are adding muscle we are simultaneously losing fat. This is a FANTASTIC approach if someone is new to lifting, or returning to lifting after a period of time off (such as following an injury or post-partum). We dive more into detail on this approach in our body recomposition blog, please read that HERE.
The second approach is entering a formal calorie surplus with the goal of doing a lean building phase. For individuals who are more advanced, or who have potentially added as much muscle to their frame while being at maintenance, or finding they would like to expedite their rate of muscle gain, entering a building phase with a small calorie surplus can be beneficial! This means consuming more calories than you burn, but not excessively. Aim for a modest increase in calories to support muscle growth while minimizing fat gain. By having excess calories coming in, it can promote a faster/more efficient rate of muscle gain, especially if you are more advanced in your training. We will be covering this in depth in this blog!
Body Fat Percentage Considerations prior to Entering a Building Phase with a Surplus
When we are entering a lean building phase with a calorie surplus, we may add small amounts of body fat. Because of this, we do want to be a certain level of leanness going into the build to ensure that insulin sensitivity remains high throughout the building phase- if we have too much excess body fat, insulin sensitivity can decrease, meaning the extra calories we are consuming may be more likely to be added on as fat rather than muscle. Typically we recommend females be between 20-26% before starting a building phase, and males between 10-18% body fat.
Timeline for a Building Phase
One very important thing to consider when deciding if a lean building phase in a surplus is the right approach for you is to look at your timeline. We recommend at MINIMUM spending 6 months in a lean building phase, while ideally 12+ months! It takes time to grow muscle, and the longer we can spend in a lean building phase while pushing training and keeping a controlled calorie surplus, the more likely we are to come out of it with a noticeable amount of muscle added to our frames!
Following a lean build, you may wish to do a small fat loss phase or “mini cut” to trim any additional fat gained during your build, because yes, some fat gain likely will occur, but the goal is to keep this to a minimum! Typically post-build a mini cut of 4-8 weeks is very effective at revealing the tissue you’ve built, but again, this isn’t always needed!
What can we Accomplish with a Lean Build?!
Checkout this client example of what can be accomplished with a lean building phase!
Haylee started working with YQL Nutrition with the goal of improving her performance in CrossFit and Olympic Lifting by adding muscle to her physique. Haylee needed more FUEL to support muscle building, and through slowly increasing calories over time, while sending a muscle building signal through her training, Haylee was able to add considerable muscle to her frame.
These photos are 19 months apart- again, building muscle takes TIME!
During this time her calories increased from 1700-2790 calories (again, this was done slowly) and her weight increased during this 19 month timespan from 116lbs to 125 lbs.
Her measurements show that while her weight increased, it was from MUSCLE as her measurements positively changed- her waist was down 2.25 inches, while she increased her glute strength and muscle, leading to a hip increase of 5 inches.
“Working with YQL Nutrition for the last year and a half has been one of the most significant parts in my athletic journey. Being held accountable for my nutrition has allowed me to understand the importance that nutrition has not only on competitive fitness goals, but also on overall health and longevity. Having someone assist me in reaching performance goals and aesthetic goals has been such a major part in the success I have had in CrossFit and Olympic Weightlifting. My coach has been such a solid rock in making sure I am always fuelled properly. The knowledge on health and fitness I have gained from working with YQL Nutrition are things I will be able to carry with me and use for the rest of my life.” -Haylee
How big of a Calorie Surplus do we aim for?!
We recommend starting with a 3-5% surplus above maintenance calories to start, and making adjustments from there as needed. Typically for females we start at the more conservative range (3%), but it does depend on the amount of training, intensity, and starting body fat percentage. Typically the leaner someone is to start, the more able their body is to handle a surplus as their body is typically more efficient with how it utilizes carbohydrates due to increased insulin sensitivity.
We are NOT looking for a large amount of scale gain consistently during a lean bulk, however, over time we DO want to see the scale increase! It is quite normal to see the scale jump a bit more initially (due to the addition of carbs, and therefore water retention from carbs), but over time we like to see this average out to a MONTHLY rate of gain of about 0.5-1% for females, and 0.5-1.5% for males.
Training age/experience also matters here- if someone is less advanced/has less muscle mass, they typically can tolerate a faster rate of gain because their capability of adding muscle is higher as they are genetically not at their muscle building “cap” so to speak. As we are more advanced in our training or have higher levels of muscle then average, adding muscle does become more challenging, but by no means impossible!
Nutrition Strategies when Lean Building:
To support muscle growth, we want to focus on a few key strategies to help!
Eat adequate Protein
Protein is essential for muscle repair and growth. Aim for 1-1.2grams/lbs of body weight during a building phase to ensure protein is adequate to support training/muscle growth. We recommend dividing your protein target up between 3-5 meals/day to ensure you are getting regular protein feedings throughout the day, which is beneficial for muscle protein synthesis (the process that helps create muscle tissue). We want to ensure protein is consumed pre and post workout, with an emphasis on post workout to ensure the building blocks are present for muscle protein synthesis and the addition of lean muscle tissue to your frame!
Why We Suggest Higher Carbs during a Building Phase:
During a lean bulking phase, where the goal is to build muscle while minimizing fat gain, a higher carbohydrate approach is often more beneficial than a higher fat approach. Here’s why:
1. Enhanced Muscle Protein Synthesis and Improved Exercise Performance
Carbohydrates play a crucial role in muscle protein synthesis, the process by which your body builds new muscle. When you consume carbohydrates, they are broken down into glucose, which is used to replenish muscle glycogen stores. Adequate glycogen levels are essential for optimal performance during workouts. Improved performance can lead to greater muscle growth and strength gains. Moreover, carbohydrates are the primary energy source for high-intensity exercise. When you consume sufficient carbs, your body has more readily available energy, which enhances your ability to train harder and longer. This increased performance translates to more effective muscle stimulation and growth.
2. Glycogen Storage and Recovery
Carbohydrates are stored in the muscles and liver as glycogen. During intense workouts, glycogen is depleted, and replenishing these stores post-workout is crucial for recovery. A higher carbohydrate intake ensures that glycogen stores are restored more quickly, aiding in recovery and preparing your muscles for subsequent workouts.
3. Insulin Sensitivity and Anabolic Environment
Carbohydrates stimulate the release of insulin, a hormone that helps transport nutrients into cells and supports muscle repair and growth. When consumed around workouts, carbs can enhance insulin sensitivity and create an anabolic environment that favors muscle gain. Insulin also helps to inhibit muscle breakdown, further supporting muscle growth.
4.. Fat Storage and Carbohydrate Efficiency
When you consume excess calories from fats, the body is more prone to storing these calories as body fat compared to when they come from carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are more efficiently used for energy, reducing the likelihood of fat gain when they are consumed in surplus. Additionally, carbohydrates can help manage appetite and reduce cravings by maintaining stable blood sugar levels.
5.Preserving Lean Mass
Carbohydrates help spare protein from being used as an energy source. When you consume adequate carbs, your body is less likely to break down muscle protein for energy, which means more protein can be used for muscle repair and growth. This protein-sparing effect is particularly important during a bulking phase where the focus is on building lean muscle.
Types of Carbohydrates:
There are two types of carbohydrates: starchy and non-starchy. Non starchy carbohydrates are things like fruits and vegetables, whereas starchy carbohydrates are things like oats, sweet potato, rice, pasta and bread. We want to include BOTH in our diet, while ensuring we are getting starchy carbohydrates pre/post workout as this type is most beneficial for muscle mass!
How many Carbs per Day do we Recommend?
This depends on what is needed for you to achieve a calorie surplus, but typically we recommend 40-50% of your daily calories come from carbohydrates, with half of these daily carbs being consumed pre, intra, and post workout. For example, if someone is eating 250g of carbs/day, consuming 125g total pre/intra/post would be beneficial. This can look like 50g in meal pre workout (60-120 min pre workout), 25g intra workout (squeeze pouch, rice cake, carbohydrate powder- more on this in the supplement section), and 50g post workout (ideally within 60 minutes post training.
Fat intake during a Build:
We DO need fat intake to support hormone health, which is essential for muscle building (hello testosterone!). During a lean building phase, we typically recommend keeping fats at 20-25% of calorie intake, or at minimum 40-60g for females, and 60-80g for males (larger males are on the higher end of this range). We want to aim for fat intake from whole food, anti-inflammatory sources like olive oil, salmon, whole eggs, nuts/seeds, butter, and whole fat dairy products primarily.
Eating in a calorie surplus can be stressful to our digestive track if we do not have high food quality, while also focusing on foods that are easier to digest. Leaning into carb sources like cream of rice/wheat, honey, jams, and carb powders (more on this in the supplement section) can be helpful to ensure you are getting in enough calories while not being overly taxing on your digestive system.
Why Digestion Matters during a Lean Gain Phase
Jeff started working with YQL Nutrition with the goal of improving his performance and physique- as you can see by his photos, his physique DRAMATICALLY changed through the addition of muscle mass!
One thing YQL Nutrition worked closely with Jeff on was making sure he was eating ENOUGH calories to build muscle while ensuring digestion remained optimized.
It is essential that digestion is optimized so the added calories are utilized efficiently, and stress/inflammation in the body is managed.
Between these photos, which were taken 9 months apart, Jeff gained over 3 lbs, and increased his calories by over 800 calories/day! Again, weight gain does NOT need to be super rapid by any means during a build, but we do want to see consistent increase over time, while monitoring photos and measurements as well as performance/weight lifted to assess if more food is needed.
At the end of his build, Jeff was down 1 inch in his waist, up 4 inches in his chest, and up 0.75 inches in his hips.
Training Strategies for Lean Muscle Gain
Ensuring you are training frequently enough to support your muscle building goal and intensely enough is very important! You need to send the stimulus to your body to BUILD muscle, and that stimulus is regular strength training! Make sure you are in a place where you can commit to 4-5 sessions per week.
It is also super important to TRACK your lifting progress and ensure you are focusing on progressive overload with your lifts! The goal is to be PRing your lifts regularly while you are in a building phase and in order to know if this is happening, you must know your numbers!
Focus on compound movements like squats, deadlifts, and bench presses, which work multiple muscle groups. Equally important is allowing time for recovery—muscle growth occurs during rest periods, so ensure adequate sleep, taking active rest days, and ensuring stress is managed are all key components to muscle building.
Are you Training Hard Enough?
In the context of muscle building, RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) and RIR (Reps in Reserve) are methods used to gauge the intensity of your workouts. Both metrics are useful for optimizing training effectiveness and ensuring that you’re pushing your muscles hard enough to stimulate growth while managing fatigue and reducing the risk of overtraining.
RPE is a subjective scale that measures how hard you feel you’re working during a set. It typically ranges from 1 to 10, where:
- 1/10: Very light activity (could do this for hours)
- 5/10: Moderate effort (you feel your muscles working, but can continue going for a while longer)
- 10/10: Maximum effort (e.g., lifting a weight you cannot lift more than once, if you tried again you would fail the lift)
In muscle building, an RPE of 9 or 10 signifies that you’re working very close to your maximum capacity. An RPE of 9 means you have only 1 more rep in you before failure, while an RPE of 10 means you couldn’t perform another rep even if you tried. Typically, we recommend training around 8-9/10 RPE during a muscle building phase for most lifts.
Here is an AWESOME video that dives more into detail on this Video credit Jeff Nippard.
Managing Training Intensity and Recovery To Promote Muscle Gain
Meet Amanda! She started working with YQL Nutrition because she was constantly training, doing SO much activity, and yet never reaching her body composition goals. When Amanda started working with us, she weighed 132 lbs in the first photo. We initially started off by pulling BACK on cardio, limiting to 1-2x/week of spin, and increasing formal strength training. Once this was established and her stress levels and habits were in a good place, we did a fat loss phase where she lost 11 lbs. The end of her fat loss phase results are captured in the middle photo!
Next, Amanda decided she wanted more MUSCLE! We began a building phase over the next 14 months, with 1 small mini cut (5 weeks) for a vacation. During her build phase, Amanda gained 10 lbs, bringing her close to her starting weight- at the end of her build her weight hovered between 130-133 lbs. As you can see, her physique is MASSIVELY different from her starting physique, even though she now weighs the same. This is the power of MUSCLE! She clearly added on muscle during her build and appears leaner than she did at the end of her fat loss phase, because she increased her muscle mass.
At the end of her build, Amanda’s waist was down 3 inches from the start of coaching, again speaking to how her body has recomped!
While cardio is great to do for enjoyment and physical health, if we do too much cardio it can be overly taxing on our bodies, leading to our bodies becoming stressed and retaining water. One thing we really had to do with Amanda was manage training and recovering, and at times, this meant pulling back on cardio to allow for proper recovery.
Cardio During a Lean Building Phase
We recommend keeping a high step count while in a lean gaining phase to help optimize blood sugar balance and digestion. Typically 8-12,000 steps is a good range for most individuals, but this can vary based on the person.
For formal cardio, we do like 1-2 high-intensity sessions/week. This can look like doing 30 seconds of sprinting on a treadmill followed by 60 seconds of rest for 5-10 minutes at the end of a training session. This does help promote cardiovascular health, but again, we do want to be mindful of recovery and ensure we are not over-doing cardio, but rather focusing on strength-training to send a muscle building signal!
Supplements during a Lean Building Phase
1. Caffeine
Dosage and Timing: For optimal performance benefits, a dosage of 3-6 mg per kilogram of body weight is recommended. This typically translates to about 200-400 mg for most individuals. To maximize its effects, take caffeine 30-60 minutes before your workout. This timing ensures peak caffeine levels in your bloodstream during exercise, enhancing both endurance and focus.
Effectiveness: Caffeine boosts exercise performance by increasing adrenaline levels, which can improve endurance, strength, and mental alertness. Research supports its ability to enhance workout intensity and reduce perceived effort, making it easier to push through challenging sessions (Spriet, 2014). Additionally, it can aid in fat oxidation, helping to manage body fat while lean gaining.
2. Creatine
Dosage and Timing: We recommend 5g of creatine/day, taken even on rest days. Creatine can be taken at any time of day, but many prefer to consume it post-workout with a carbohydrate source to enhance muscle uptake.
Effectiveness: Creatine is well-known for its ability to improve strength and power by increasing the availability of ATP, the primary energy source for muscle contractions. It also supports muscle growth and recovery by boosting muscle cell volume and reducing inflammation (Kreider, 2003; Cooke et al., 2009). This makes it a cornerstone supplement for building muscle efficiently.
3. Intraworkout Carbs (Highly Branched Cyclic Dextrin)
Dosage and Timing: For sustained energy during workouts, consume 25-50 grams of highly branched cyclic dextrin (HBCD) per hour of exercise. This can be mixed with water or a sports drink and consumed throughout your workout. For best results, start sipping it 15-30 minutes into your training to maintain energy levels and support endurance. This is most beneficial for individuals who have longer duration training sessions (60-90 minutes) or who engage in longer duration cardio sessions.
Effectiveness: Highly branched cyclic dextrin provides a rapid and sustained release of glucose, which helps to maintain energy and delay fatigue during prolonged or intense exercise. It also aids in quicker glycogen replenishment and better hydration due to its high osmolarity (Yoshida et al., 2006; Jentjens et al., 2004). This ensures that your muscles remain fueled and hydrated, promoting effective performance and recovery.
A Note on Stress and Sleep Management During a Muscle Building Phase
During a lean bulking phase, prioritizing quality sleep and effective stress management is crucial for maximizing muscle growth and overall progress. Sleep is integral to muscle recovery and growth, primarily because it stimulates the release of human growth hormone (HGH), which plays a key role in muscle repair and regeneration. Research indicates that HGH is released in pulses during deep sleep, particularly during the slow-wave phase, helping to promote protein synthesis and muscle growth (Van Cauter et al., 2000). Additionally, adequate sleep supports the optimal functioning of other anabolic hormones like testosterone, which further aids in muscle development.
Effective stress management also plays a significant role in muscle building. Chronic stress elevates cortisol levels, a hormone that, when consistently high, can impair muscle protein synthesis and lead to increased fat storage (Bjorntorp, 1996). By managing stress through techniques such as mindfulness and relaxation, you can keep cortisol levels in check, creating a more favorable hormonal environment for muscle growth. Thus, ensuring sufficient sleep and stress management not only supports muscle repair and growth but also enhances your body’s ability to build lean mass efficiently.
What to do AFTER the Building Phase
After a building phase, as we have mentioned you may want to do a short mini cut (4-8 weeks) to trim any added body fat if you feel this is needed, or you can return to maintenance calories. Finding maintenance may be a bit challenging post build, but you can start by reducing calories by 1-300, and seeing how your body responds- the goal is to NOT see continued scale increases over time if we are trying to return to maintenance. If you find you overshoot and reduce calories too much and see continued scale trends down over time, add back in 50-100 calories and re assess in 1-3 weeks.
Want to do a Lean Building Phase?!
We highly encourage you to book a FREE consultation call to discuss which approach to muscle building would be best for you! We would LOVE to guide you through this process! Please click the link here to book a free call!
We hope you found this blog helpful!
Authors Robyn Stewart & Megan Reger