A Guide to a Successful Offseason

It’s not a secret that you want to spend as much of your training career at maintenance or a slight surplus. Doing so is going to lead to a better environment for recovery and performance. The age old idea of “eat big to get big” is far from the truth though…let me explain.

You can only build so much muscle so quickly thus the amount of calorie surplus you need isn’t all that much. Ideally depending on your training age the weekly rate of gain of 0.25 to 1 LB. a week is very reasonable. If you’re a beginner you can get away with a faster rate of gain , but the more advanced you are the slower you might want to go. Staying disciplined with your nutrition during the offseason will allow you to make much greater gains over the long term because you will be able to stay in a surplus for longer without having to take breaks to scale the fat back.

I’ve done the “eat big to get big” approach before and it works, but I wouldn’t say its worth the amount of fat you gain in proportion to lean mass. Slow and steady wins the race.

I’ve put together this guide to help you have the most successful offseason you’ve ever had. Learn from my mistakes, so you can get the results you want without the headache. The guide will be split up into two sections, training and nutrition, as both are of equal importance.

Training

In order to build muscle we have to give our bodies a strong stimulus for growth. This is where a well structured training program will be of importance. The big thing to keep in mind when building out your program or selecting a program to follow is that you’re going to want to prioritize volume as this is the primary driver of muscle growth. Being in a slight calorie surplus will allow you to do a little bit more volume than you would be able to get away with if you were at maintenance or in a deficit. Take advantage of this and scale your volume accordingly. The exact amount will be different from person to person, but for most people you’ll get most of your gains within 10-20 hard sets a week per body part/movement pattern. I suggest you start low and build up over time while you monitor your performance and recovery.

Volume is important for muscle growth, but another important variable I like to keep tabs on is my strength on staple movements in my programming. I have certain movements that almost never leave my programming, so these make for great tools to gauge progress over time. Strength and muscle mass go hand in hand, so I can infer that if my pull up, leg press, or chest supported row is going up then more than likely I’m adding muscle mass. Keeping a training log is a great tool to track of your numbers during an off season.

Nutrition

It’s hard to add muscle mass to your frame without having additional building blocks to do so. This is why we have to be consuming more calories than what we’re burning through in most cases. If you’re untrained and/or overweight/obese you can pull from your fat stores to build muscle, but for most a small surplus will yield better results. Another box you’re going to want to check off is your protein intake as protein is the building blocks of muscle mass in the body. A good place to be at is 0.8 to 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight if you’re not overweight or obese.

Carbs and fats are also of equal importance when you’re trying to pack on the muscle mass. What I like to do here for myself and with my clients is set fat intake at 20% of your total calorie intake and then get the rest of your calories from carbs. Having as many carbs in our diet will allow us to perform better, recovery better, and who doesn’t love carbs right?

One thing to keep in mind is once you increase your food intake you’ll see a larger increase of weight on the scale from water, glycogen, and overall food volume. After about 4 weeks you can asses the overall trend and see if making an adjustment up or down is warranted in order to stay within the appropriate rate of gain you’re after.

Take Home

Building muscle takes a well thought out training plan, good nutrition, good stress management, and most importantly consistency. The biggest mistake I made and I see others make is they decide they want to do a offseason phase, but as soon as they start to get soft or can’t see their abs they go right back to dieting. Take my advice don’t do this to yourself. Trust the process because your future self will thank you.

If you need some guidance with setting up your offseason plan and want to work with me. Click here to set up your initial consultation call, so we can see if we’d be a good fit to work together.