Less Volume=More Gains?

[savagebeast]

This is just a thought I had, and it's not based on any science at all. It's probably a stupid question, but oh well. Here goes nothing:

If your calorie intake is above maintenance during a bulking cycle, but not way above maintenance, would less volume could mean more gains, assuming that the volume is adequate? My thought is that the more volume you do, the more calories you need in order to grow. Sure, it would be optimal to do more volume and eat more food, but let's say you don't have the time to do more and/or you don't want to eat everything in sight. If you do a lot of volume but eat only a little above your normal maintenance level of calories, it seems to me that you wouldn't have enough calories needed to grow. However, if you did less volume, you would have enough excess calories to put on some muscle mass. Would this work? Also, could this be ideal for putting on muscle without putting on fat?

 

[Aaron_F]

potentially, due to the fact if your volume is high enough you could expend tooo much energy and end up in a negative energy balance

 

[micmic]

I understand your question like this:

Case A: volume X, maintenance calories Y, eat Y+500
Case B: volume X/2, maintenance calories Y-500, eat Y

Will B result in muscle growth ?

Of course it will. Will it be comparable to the growth of the case A (muscle/fat ratio) ? Perhaps, especially if you are a beginner. If you are not a beginner and assuming that volume X does not overtrain you, case A will probably lead to more growth. How much the difference will be, depends

 

[stevie]

Well if:

BMR expendature + daily activity expendature = maintainance calorie requirement

In theory, what you are asking is pretty straight forward.

By lowering volume, you will reduce your daliy activity and thus will expend fewer calories. Therefore your maintainance calorie requirement will be reduced. Meaning that, in your example, more of those calories will count as excess.

In practice however, i think its pretty hard to judge. How much volume would you have to lessen by in order to make this work? It may end up being less than the minimum volume required for an effective workout...you would have to experiment to find your answer.

 

[imported_edziu]

This is really a more complicated question.

There are additional factors coming in to play:

1. The different food intakes affect the BMR.
2. The different volumes affect nutrient partitioning.

1. Your hypothesis focuses on saving energy by reducing volume to avoid eating additional food which might become fat. The effect is marginal, however; the additional food, if it's a small amount over base, will also help reaise your BMR and put your body into a more anabolic state, both of which increase energy expenditure. With these balancing factors, a little extra food when trying to grow is a very low fat-risk.

2. If you're doing more volume, you are creating a greater growth stimulus in the muscles, which will cause a greater percentage of the food energy you get to be directed toward muscle growth. If you just eat BMR, this will cause increased growth and reduced fat just from this partitioning effect; the muscles will steal from the energy supply because of the extra demand.

The bottom line is this: with sufficient stimulus and food, you will grow muscle. Unless you go WAY overboard with the stimulus, it's hard to REDUCE growth. Reducing stimulus to the minimum in order to reduce energy needs may ensure you're getting that minimum growth without extra calories or fat gain, but it also ensures that you're limited to minimum growth.