I just had some boggled things I wanted to get cleared up on the differences between retaining lean muscle mass and or building it up even futher.

Current stats:
Hight:5'10
Weight:139-140
BF% is roughly 15%

My main target is to build more muscle into a figure somewhat like this:


instead of building even futher into a figure like


So my main question is, what kind of muscle building should I be looking into? Should I bulk until I reach the desired muscle size and then cut down to my desired size and then maintain a normal maintainance caloric intake with higher weightload, lower rep. workout to maintain my muscle or to take another route?

For either choice, please input details such as general guidelines to nutrition and recommendations for workout routines and exercises; and if possible estimates to the relative time range it should take.

Thanks! I'll still be looking around for articles and references, so please, if you have any articles or suggestion of books regarding my issue tell me.

Good luck.

Hit the weights hard and heavy with a nice clean diet. Stay off the diuretics and what not and you wont look like the second dude.

start with something like this..... mon- chest, wed-biceps/back, friday-shoulders and triceps, saturday - legs. Lift heavy, but not to the point where ur struggling with every rep.

whatever ur diet is right now, count how many calories u eat in a normal day and up it by 500 calories. Eat nothing but high protein , low fat foods. Such as chicken, turkey, lean meats, tuna, eggs, oatmeal, low fat penut butters, skim milk, protein bars/shakes, whole wheat bread if ur a sandwich kinda guy. ( try to get double ur body weight in protein grams a day, so if ur 150 , shoot for 300 gs but u prolly wont get that much in ur system. Even 150 gs would be sufficient ! try to eat every 2-3 hours, 5 times a day. Small meals.

You should be able to put on 2 pounds a week, anymore than 2, is too much, that suggest you should not eat so much. Any less than 2 pounds, and ur not eating enough.

Then when u put on around 30 pounds, 85% of which will be muscle, and the other 15% will prolly be some fats, then u change ur diet, cut down, til ur lean. And if ur not the size u want, u repeat the process . good luck

The guy in the first picture is about as far as you can go naturally if you have very good genetics, perfect nutrition and at least 5 years of consistant, heavy training. Assuming he is around your height, 5'10", then he is probably around 200 pounds and <6 percent body fat.

The guy in the second picture uses steroids to go beyond the natural human potential. So, you don't have to worry about looking like him unless you do steroids in combination with a consistant heavy training for many years.

The first guy is well within natural limits. There are many natural lifters that eclipse that guy imo

So basically,

heavy weight, low rep
consistent healthy nutrition



how many set/reps and intensity do you guys recommend?

10-6 reps per set.

Whats your split. What do you train when?

Upper/Lower body split.
Mon. Chest, back, shoulders, biceps, abs, 20 min. HIIT
Wed. Quads, hams, calves
Fri. Chest, back, shoulders, triceps, abs, 20 min. HIIT
Sat. 20 min. HIIT and some other form of cardio, abs
Sun. Quads, hams, calves

I alternate between different exercises for each session, as in monday's workout exercises are different than wednesdays.

Just making sure, by 10-6 do you mean 10 sets of 6 reps or 10 to 6 reps?

Does that picture on the second make ANYONE else nautious besides me? Like that makes my stomach weak seeing that. Not because of anything other than that fact I don't consider that healthy at all and its like being morbidly overweight as well. THe amount of health damage is sick.

Sorry I guess that picture was a little intense, I just wanted to stress what I did not have to do, basically the point though is that I want a more natural smooth look as opposed to a professional bodybuilder image.

These are a bit more realistic and not too much to the extreme;
My goal: This is my initial goal and then over time to get into the original picture that I posted



Impressive, but not what I'm looking for:

Don't really worry about what your exact figure will turn out to be later. And don't worry, to even get close to that second pic would happen over a long period of time - you would see if that happened wayy beforehand, rather than just overnight. Worry more about keeping your diet straight and keeping to a hypertrophy-related workout and worry about your exact muscle size and exact definition if you get that big