Bulking: A Goal and a Plan
Article 1 of The Athlete's Guide to Bulking
Welcome to the first article of The Athlete's Guide to Bulking. This is the first part of a multipart series that will focus on athletes and the process of bulking—including whether they should bulk up, the importance of weight gain for athletic performance, and how exactly you should go about your bulking phase if it is right for you.
This first part will be focused on setting goals for your weight gain and overall preparation. Let’s get into it.
Firstly, let’s look at the most common mistakes people make when it comes to weight gain, most of which come down to goals and preparation. These mistakes include:
A Lack of Goals
A Lack of a Plan and a Timing Structure
A Lack of Preparation
A Lack of Knowledge
That last one, a lack of knowledge, is what I see so commonly and why I decided to start this series in the first place. So many athletes struggle to put on weight because they simply do not know what they’re doing when it comes to food and nutrition, making it significantly harder for them to progress. That’s why I’m here—to get you as prepared as you possibly can be in order to set you up for success.
Now—let’s address the lack of goals. A common phrase that I often hear is “I’m just going to bulk as much as I can.” The problem with this is, when people say something like this, they have no particular end goal in mind. This is setting yourself up for failure. Without markers such as a start point and an end point, you really have nothing to work toward, and although you might start off strong, it will be much more difficult to stay consistent without a goal constantly pushing you forwards. This leads to my first point:
Set an end goal with a deadline.
So often people say “I need to put on 10 pounds to be better at ___, so I’m bulking”, as if just saying it out loud is going to speak it into existence. Not giving yourself a deadline to hit a certain weight gives you no motivation or cause in the moment to focus deliberately on eating more. For most, even setting an end goal will not be enough to get them to stick to it, as only having an end goal is too broad and can keep you focused on the future rather than what you need to be doing in the present, leading to my second point, addressing the problem of timing and structure:
Set micro-goals for you to hit on the way to your end goal.
Micro-goals are a great way to do two things:
Keep yourself in the moment.
Keep yourself motivated.
Micro-goals keep you in the moment by giving you something to focus on in the present. In a bulking context, if you are going to hit your weekly weight goal you HAVE to be getting meals in or you won’t hit that goal. Micro-goals keep you motivated by allowing you to continually see progress as you hit each goal each week, and that reassures you that you will hit that end goal that you have for yourself.
Let’s look at an example of a micro-goal system. Say your end goal is to put on 10 pounds in the next 20 weeks. Seems like a huge task, right? A micro-goal would be to put on 1 pound every 2 weeks. This keeps you on track, makes the goal seem much more realistic and attainable, and gives you no excuse to slack off thinking that you “still have time”.
Next, let’s talk about a lack of preparation. I won’t get too deep into preparation in this article, simply because we will cover meal prep in depth in a later chapter. However, preparation is about more than just food. Preparation is about how you approach each day, and that comes back to your micro-goals. Now, these will be much more specific micro-goals that will be tailored to you, because these goals will be daily. That goal could be to get at least 5 meals in that day or to reach a certain minimum calorie goal—we will address these and how they will work for you in later chapters as well.
What does preparation have to do with setting and achieving goals? It comes down to putting yourself into positions to succeed. Benjamin Franklin famously said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”, and my goal here to to get you as prepared as you possibly can be. The first step to being properly prepared is to set goals, otherwise you have nothing to prepare for.
That last point I’d like to address in this article is getting started.
If there is something that you know you need to do to get better, whether that be bulking, leaning out, running more, or anything in your life, even outside of your athletics, there is no time to start like the present.
The best time to start is now, the second best time to start is tomorrow, and the third best time is the next day. The most common mistake that people make is waiting for the “perfect time” to start. Maybe you’re waiting for the New Year, or the end of a season, or just setting an arbitrary time in the future for no apparent reason. The problem with this? The more you delay the start, the more you delay the results.
The fact of the matter is, there will never really be a “perfect time” to start. There will always be external factors that are working against you. However, that is no reason for you to not be able to push through and start working toward your goals.
If you are underweight and you think you need to go on a mass-gaining phase (a bulk), start today. You will make mistakes, you won’t do everything perfectly at the start… But that is OK. Experience is the best teacher. The more that you do something, the better you will get at it.
That concludes my first article of The Athlete’s Guide to Bulking. If you found this article useful and worthy of sharing, please share this article to anyone you think could find value in it.
The Athlete’s Guide to Bulking—Article 2—Coming Next Week