Should You Bulk in Summer? The only time that the question of should you bulk in the summer or not is if you want to maintain a low body fat percentage for a certain occasion. This could be a holiday or an occasion that requires certain measurements like a suit for a wedding. Otherwise you can bulk anytime of the year.
If you do any sort of reading into weight training then at some point you will have likely come across phrases like bulking and cutting season. These are times when you focus your training and diet on building muscle (bulking) or burning body fat (cutting).
Usually due to social circumstances people will tend to split their physique transformation stages up in line with the geographical seasons so you bulk in the winter when you will always be covered up and have festive occasions and then cut in the summer to look good on the beach.
This also happens to tie in with the fact that professional bodybuilders have the majority of their competitions in the summer months (onseason) and the bulk in the winter in a bid to build more muscle for the following year (offseason).
Therefore if you follow any bodybuilders diet or training advice or just take inspirations from their routines then it’s likely you will adopt this dieting habit without really realizing why.
Should You Bulk in Summer
The biggest sin when it comes to a dieting phase is bulking during the summer. This is an unheard of strategy in the world of physique development, a bigger motivating driver for a lot of people is to simply have a visible 6 pack when it comes time to hit the beach and pools.
It’s also become more common in recent years to get in shape for music festivals worldwide (especially for the younger population) and people are therefore setting these dates as the end of a cutting goal.
For most the obvious answer is that you should never bulk in the summer. This is the time when you will have your body on show in one form or another and if you put the work in at the gym year round then this is the best time to demonstrate your progress and physique.
For someone to continue to bulk during the summer you must have a very strong reason for doing so. Usually this would be a natural bodybuilder of someone that is very skinny and the ultimate is therefore not to be shredded but instead gain size.
When Should You Stop Bulking in the Summer
If you are someone that is strictly going to be cut for the summer then you are going to need to plan your cutting and bulking cycles accordingly and of the factors that will play an important part is when you should stop bulking in the summer.
A typical cutting phase for someone between 12%-15% will be between 8-12 weeks on a steady, semi-aggressive fat loss plan. If you are someone over 15% body fat then you are going to need to add some more time on to that and it could take anywhere from 16-24 weeks.
Your goal for the cut is to get down to 10%-12% body fat, this is a manageable level for the majority of people and is what many will consider to be relatively lean. Anything under 10% is hard to manage, requires significant diet and training plans and is only for those looking to get peeled to the bone!
Therefore if we reverse engineer the process and assume that you need a conservative time of 12 weeks to get down to an ideal body fat percentage then that is one quarter of a year. With that in mind you want to be stopping your bulk well before summer.
For most the bulking phase will end in January after all the festive periods and New Years, this will also give you a buffer to lose the body fat at a slower rate and preserve more muscle in the process which would be the best approach in my opinion.
If you wait until summer to decide to get lean then you will have already missed the time frame required to get to a low enough body fat percentage. You can still go on a cutting phase but the results will be less impressive.
Which Season Is Best for Bulking
If you’ve come this far then you’ll know that the best season for bulking will mainly come down to individual goals and preferences. For the vast majority, autumn and winter will be the best seasons for bulking and spring and summer will be best to cut.
An alternate viewpoint however (and this will depend on your training level) is that your bulking and cutting phases should be by year and not by season.
Building muscle is a process that takes a very long time, particularly for a natural trainer and therefore you need to be prepared for slow progress.
For any sort of noticeable physical change to your physique then you will need to be bulking anywhere from 6-12 months as a minimum. Therefore if your goal is maximum muscular development then you need to forget about bulking seasons and instead get on a dedicated bulking phase.
Muscle growth for an absolute beginner can be up to 1lb/0.5kg-2lb/1kg in a month which would equate to 24lbs of lean muscle mass after one year of dedicated training in a caloric surplus. There will soon come a point when a cut is required to lose excess body fat and kick start your metabolism however your initial goal should be to max out the newbie gains.
As you get to an intermediate/advanced training level with a few years in the gym behind you then this rate of progress is much quicker to come by. It could take a year to build just a few extra pounds of muscle.
Therefore if you are bulking and cutting every few months you will never have sufficient time in a caloric surplus to stimulate new muscle growth. In the short term you need to be prepared to sacrifice being lean during the summer in order to improve your physique in the long term.
Can You Bulk on Maintenance
One approach that people consider to be a more sustainable approach is whether you can bulk on maintenance. Bulking on maintenance means that you consume enough calories to maintain your current body weight.
If you would like to know what your maintenance calorie requirements are then I’ve got an article that will run you through that here:
This approach is also what is more commonly known as lean bulking. On a lean bulk you will cut down to a body fat percentage of around 10%-12%, otherwise known as what many would consider to be ‘lean’.
From here you will consume your maintenance calories every day whilst still continuing with your weight training. I’m a big fan of lean bulking however, even on a lean bulk you will require a caloric surplus to stimulate new muscle growth.
Even if this is around training days when the surplus of calories can be utilized by the muscles you need to make sure you are finishing the week on a calorie surplus.
A typical bulk can be anywhere from 300kcal – 500kcal per day and many will even exceed this number though that is a very aggressive approach to a bulk and will result in more fat gain than muscle growth in the long run.
A lean bulk is when you consume 100kcal – 300kcal per day in order to still have a surplus of calories and nutrients available for your muscles to utilize but the surplus is so low that not much will be left over for fat storage.
This is a great approach to maintaining a physique whilst still pushing for muscle growth however the smaller the surplus the less room there will be for muscle growth. For this reason trying to bulk on maintenance calories is a non-existent term.
To bulk you will need to be consuming a calorie surplus. A maintenance approach is most likely best for the summer months so that you can maintain your physique however if you want any sort of progress and more muscle mass then you will need to consume a calorie surplus.
Summary
If you were in two minds about whether you should bulk in the summer or not then it will come down to personal preference. If you are a complete beginner then I believe you should make the most of newbie gains and spend a year or longer in a dedicated bulking phase.
This will help your physique in the long run and then later on you can start to give yourself dedicated bulking and cutting phases and yes, these can be based on the seasons!
What Next
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