for beginners it's more often the case that recomping actually wins that battle or at least is close and if it's close but it requires significantly less complexity cuz like beginners they got enough to worry about eating well training at the gym intentional gaining intentional cutting it's annoying it's it's difficult it makes them quit if you just say look eat well train hard you go for a gear the results for recomping are so good compared to Bulky and cunning even if bulky and beats it on the margins you could say look for very little investment of
effort very low probability if you falling off the wagon recomping Works super super well there's no compelling reason to swi hey folks Dr Mike here from RP strength I've been a professor of sport exra Science for a while I compete in bodybuilding and Brazilian jitu grappling and I happen to have a head that's shaped like this I know every day I wish I wake up different but I continue to wake up like this luckily because I have a strange head shape and thus no friends I have plenty of time to make videos like this one
specifically for you that's right viewer at home you exactly today's video is about how to recomp burn fat and build muscle at the same time but with an extra twist does it work differently for Naturals versus enhanced people the bad people people on as I imagine Ronnie Coleman says bew he doesn't really talk like that that's kind of more Mike Tyson same uh same tone of voice if you ask me all right so first what the hell is recomping recomping is changing the composition of the body without changing the total tissue Mass so you're 140
p pound and you have 12% body fat and sometime later you're 140 lbs you have 8% body fat and 4% more muscle stay well still weigh the same but you're visibly very very different to gain lots of muscle and loss lots of fat that is recomping which means in order for you to recomp in any time scale over the average of that time scale let's call it several months you would have had to have burned fat and built muscle at the same time in the same amount so if you lose 10 pounds of fat and
you're recomping true recomping in that same amount of time you'd have to gain 10 pounds of muscle that brings us to our first well stick in the spokes of the recomping idea it's a tough goal to recomp for many people because you can usually burn fat much faster than you can build muscle realistically most people can do an eight-week diet and burn a pound of pure fat off each week eight pounds in eight weeks that's not even impressive by most standards it's totally great but most people can do it how many people can legitimately put
on 8 pounds of muscle in eight weeks are you out of your mind under some circumstances it is possible and I'll talk to you about those in this video but recomping is automatically an uphill battle I don't want to say One does not simply but it's tough and even if it's routine it's tough like for a while they were doing routine space shuttle flights to fix the International Space Station routine doesn't mean very safe it doesn't mean very easy comping is plenty safe but it's just not as effective as you would want it to be
because that fundamental mismatch between fat loss rates and muscle gain rates so if you ever meet anyone that's super super into recomping and thinks intentional bulking and cutting is a stupid idea they're going to have to contend with the fact that they're they're really trying to get like uh you know a Japanese bullet train to go at the same speed as like a goat that's walking down the street is it possible for the train to do it yes is it the most efficient use of the goat and Train's time suppose the train doesn't really care
and the goat is just walking along I don't know where the that analogy went in any case you're trying to pair up two processes that occur at very different optimal rates and so it's inherently going to be a thing that doesn't work best much of the time but that does mean some time is left for it to work very well indeed it can occur robustly in some cases recomping gaining muscle losing fat at the same time is intentionally very different than what occurs in most purposeful fat loss and or muscle gain phases B and cuts
most fat loss phases that most people will do especially if they're not beginners no muscle is gained but a lot of fat is lost that's actually a really great result like if you uh showed that you lost 15 pounds of fat over four months with no muscle loss holy are you winning no one's like yeah but you didn't gain any muscle because you're like I lost 50 pounds of fat didn't lose any muscle that's unbelievable because any time you lose fat muscle loss is at least somewhat of a risk on the other hand most muscle
gains during bulking periods will result in plenty of muscle gains but uh very little very few situations have a concomitant loss in fat and as a matter of fact if you just kept the same fat on your body that would be really impressive because someone's like oh my God you gained pure muscle it's actually true that in most bulking phases we expect some fat to be gained so recomping is really far away from these approaches very very far away indeed I already mentioned that recomping is not the most likely thing that's going to happen and
recomping is not the best way to go about things on average but there are scenarios in which recomping is probably going to work better than not it's going to be more of a fit in these scenarios than otherwise and there are a few things that I can think of that take the probability that recomping is the answer for what you should be doing next up just a little bit now it beating bulking and cutting bulking cutting is up here so you got to get enough of these things put together that recomping makes sense but they
all add up here are the things one when you're young okay when you're 15 years old going on 16 you can recm like a because you are just freshed the in every way possible next if you're male males have an advantage uh genetically and Via testosterone production for getting jacked and lean at the same time if you're female this is less likely to work for you having good genetics people with amazing genetics recomp all the time and they're like yeah I don't really ever do cutting phases I just kind of try to control my food
a little bit not go out too much and stay 180 but I get crazy ABS you're like okay Bill it's nice you were born perfect the rest of us suck I got it good genetics definitely help if you don't have great genetics recomping might barely works for you at all or not at all another one is you just started training look if you're a noob and I'm going to say this later more formally you can spend your first year and I think it's probably best to spend your first year of training just recomping try not
to gain or lose any weight on purpose eat well good healthy diet have some treats here and there plenty of protein so on and so forth and you're just going to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time because training when it's new to you is like the best steroid of all time it's really unbelievable and recomping is a very viable strategy another opportunity to recm and have it work a little better than average is if you elevate your training to the next level from it being at meh to like oh now it's serious
for example you really start to improve your Technique you really start to hone in your reps and reserve your proximity to failure gets really really good you increase your frequency you up your volume within the limits of your recovery of course maybe you go and download the RP hypertrophy app which will optimize almost all these variables for you just based on your feedback when you switch to more formal much more rigorous training you can spend several months just like gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time because it's a very special condition but that
condition doesn't last once your training is already pretty damn optimized any further work along the margins just get you really really tiny differences it's not going to let you just recomp all the way into Infinity another one is you just started eating well people talk about recomping all the time and you ask them what were you eating before you started recomping man twinkies and apple juice pour the apple juice on The Twinkie I'd let it sit in my car hood for an hour and then I eat it like what that's what what JK but you
know like very little protein tons of junk very regular eating whole days of not eating much whole days of eating tons of pizza and then some of these folks get to EA in four or five meals of high protein and good veggies nice decent carbs every day they do that for a few months while training hard they recm like a but that's just they were eating like before now they're eating well it's definitely a thing another thing that can make recomping much better for you is if you elevate your eating to the next level you
go from eating okay to optimizing protein amounts incorporating mostly healthy foods structuring your meal timing that you have four or five feeding Windows throughout the day they're roughly evenly spaced so it's not like you're skipping eight or nine hours of not taking an opportunity to protein feed which will cost you potential gains maybe you download the RP diet coach app and it arranges all these variables for you and keeps you on track and you check in with the app all the time to make sure you're doing well you that sort of formality yeah you can
recom from that and see much better results recomping than typical but that's only you can only pull that card out of the out of the Hat uh once really like full near full optimization from meh is just is one trick pony and it will work but you can't just keep pulling it out after that next is if you've just started special sport supplements which was you know our little way we say on the channel you know steroids and like that to be enhanced if you just start them you can Rec compli a because it's basically
going through newbie gains all all again and another thing you can do is elevate your special sport supplement use to the next level it's usually not a good thing because it's taking years off your life but sure Works to put on the pounds and get you leaner at the same time so for example you can take more gear usually taking 500 migs a test now you're taking a gram and a half that's going to make a difference that's a hell of a recm you can do with that you can take gnarlier gear usually you do
test and Primo now you add Tren and VAR to the mix it's going to make a difference I said higher Doses and more gear at the same time typo uh higher durations so usually you run a gear for eight weeks and then take some PCT or whatever now you're running it for 16 shit's going to happen you run it for twice as long and if you get someone to coach you in how you take your gear someone like Joe Jeffrey of physique Collective for example I'd look encourage you to look him up someone like Joe
or some of his staff that work for with a phys elective start monitoring your gear use you get a doctor in the mix you optimize everything you do tons of blood work you can really optimize and then recomping becomes much more of a realistic strategy versus just like yeah man taking a grma test F see it how it goes you get with Joe he he sorts you all out even keeping the same relatively similar amounts just the substance use the way you periodize things can make uh recomping much more likely now that brings us to
the next question so know what makes it more likely and not but we're looking for this break even point of is recomping a good use of your time is it the best use of your time or second best use of your time versus bulking and cutting here's how you would do this just as an example you take how much muscle gain and fat loss you had in your last recomp phase let's say is 16 weeks you multiply the muscle gain by 085 or so 15% less because every muscle gain phase you do if you're diligent
gives you a little less muscle over time it's the ASM totic nature of growth so now you have a realistic idea of what your next phase of recom could look like over the next 15 weeks you might gain a little bit less muscle and and gain and lose a little bit less fat so for example if your last Recon PA phase you lost eight pounds of fat and and uh gained eight pounds of muscle for this next phase you could be like okay 16 weeks I think I can lose something like six pounds of fat
and gain six pounds of muscle may maybe that's something like that obviously these are insane numbers you'd have to divide everything by three let's say You're really tailored in for recomping figure out how long that phase was 16 weeks divide that time into two phases roughly even in this case eight weeks of muscle gaining and then 8 weeks of fat loss try that instead instead of doing the recomp try to divide the faces into a purposeful bulk and a purposeful cut are reasonable of course if you can gain more muscle and lose more fat in
two phases of bulkin cutting versus one phase of recomp then recm ain't it in most phases for advanced lifters this is usually the case if you tell an advanced lifter who already training hard already got good diet already got good everything like hey I want you to do a recom they're like okay so you mean maintenance like no I mean put on muscle and lose fat at the same time they're going to be like 16 weeks of that man I'm going to put on a pound of muscle and lose a pound of fat bro I
don't know what the you want me to say but if you let them split it into two eight-week phases they're like yeah I could reasonably gain around a pound maybe pound and a half of muscle and lose like five or six pounds of fat like well that really just does seem better because bulking and cutting really is superior to recomping because you're giving yourself the advantage of a hypercaloric diet when you're gaining huge and a hypocaloric Diet when you're losing fat also huge that's why bulking and cutting works so goddamn well for beginners it's more
often the case that recomping actually wins that battle or at least is close and if it's close but it requires significantly less complexity because like beginners they got enough to worry about eating well training at the gym intentional gaining intentional cutting it's annoying it's it's difficult it makes them quit if you just say look eat well and train hard you go for a gear the results for recomping are so good compared to Bulky and cunning even if bulky and cunning beats it on the margins you could say look for very little investment of effort very
low probability of you falling off the wagon recomping Works super super well there's no compelling reason to switch it's like if you already have your route plat uh plotted out and you're on this big nice freeway but there's like a car accident like 15 miles in front and and and Google Maps is like would you like me to reroute you you can save one minute and you're like the one minute is going through all kinds of weird back roads and some of them are unlabeled you're then that I'm trying to get to the concert hall
whatever 2 minutes is not a big deal but if it's like hey like this rerouting you you're going through Colorado Rockies it's like we can reroute you and save you three hours you're like yeah yeah okay three hours makes sense so a lot of times bulking and cutting is just categorically better anyway but if it's going to take you a lot of work and a lot of nuisance and look you start cutting you can't go to events anymore blah blah blah it your whole life up if your recomping yield is close to the bulking and
cutting then whatever it's like staying on the same road with Google Maps it's no big deal you don't have to go but if it's a three-hour delay so to speak then it it really uh becomes a difficult question so in general beginners will benefit from recomping significantly more than folks that are more and more advanced recomping is a thing you used to be able to do that in the future you can look forward to doing substantially less but what about nates and enhanced so let's get to that here is the recm guide for nattis if
you're natural that is to say you are perfect and morally pure and better than everyone else figure out if recomping beats bulking or cutting or a better comparison is how close does it compare in your case kind of uh how you've had Rec comps go in the past buls and cuts go in the past which one works better for you if you do want a recm make sure you're eating plenty of protein gr per pound so or so mostly healthy food aim to keep your weight relatively stable consider during the week having some days a
couple days in a row of a little bit of a surplus 250 to 300 calories and then a couple days of a little bit of a deficit that kind of gives you a mini cut and bulk internally it's that a huge deal but it can help a little bit obviously progressing your training from lower to higher volume and intensity like you normally would maybe using the RP hypertrophy app something like that and you can continue to recomp until and unless the following happens changes in your rep strength how strong you're on the gym and your
appearance become too small to notice then you got to begin to bulk and cut again what do I mean by that if you're just not getting stronger after weeks and weeks and weeks of training it's very difficult for us to to create a narrative where you're actually gaining muscle you're probably not gaining muscle so stop doing what you're doing unless you're losing Oodles of fat then keep doing it so you you come back to the appearance side do I look noticeably leaner week to week or every two weeks if the answer is like a god
honest between you God and your mirror no you trying to look the same all the goddamn time then you make the switch but if you're still getting stronger for reps and you're looking kind of different every few weeks hey keep recomping remember I said that for beginners recomping is a really good idea for like the first year maybe even longer in the first year of training beginners will be able to get stronger on every exercise a lot continually for months and months and months and months and just maintaining their weight they're getting so much muscle
that they're losing so much fat that they look very different every couple of weeks they're like whoa holy like I'm seeing new I'm seeing new stations blah blah blah if that's the case he keep going that's one of the big things I want you guys to take out of this video is if recop is working well do not start bulking and cutting godd damn it you have a very special thing just try to keep doing what you're doing it's awesome but if you're kind of running around then and you know godamn it's time to make
the switch a quick stupid analogy is if you're on a date with someone and the conversation is flowing and you guys are off on some topic you're like five topics deep you don't even know what you're talking about anymore but you're just connecting everything's awesome you just like words are coming out blah blah blah finding a ton of commonality don't think back during that talk and I got got to figure out something to talk about you talking about you got something to talk about shut up and just let it flow but if the date has
come to a place where she's just sitting there like yeah so and you're like uh uh uh well you better come up with some to talk about because the currently is isn't working so recop is good until it's not good anymore how do you tell it's not good anymore you're not getting strength for Reps for a few weeks maybe longer if you want to push the really really see if Rec comping is working or not and if your appearance isn't changing in any realistically notable thing now one quick thing to call out if you gotta
squint into the mirror and try to see stop recomping stop right you're just trying to lie to yourself appearance changes have to be pretty obvious you got to be like yep yep yep shit's working imagine how you look differently every two weeks on a real gnarly fat loss phase you don't look the same you don't look remotely the same that's for Real Results if it's not something like that if you can't tell unless you squint and then you still can't tell and you have to lie to yourself recomping is stupid go back to buan cutting
what do you get when PhD Sports scientists collaborate with prob body Builders the most effective muscle growth training app ever made get yours now now what about recomping for the enhanced generally all the same advice as for natties but with a couple of extra nuances because of the gear situation a really good time to recomp is during the introduction of gear of enhancement or on its escalation or even on a blast so for example some people will generally run trt and then I'll take a few months out of the year to run much higher doses
when you're running much higher doses you can absolutely recom because it's way more than you've ever taken another one is you start at trt and over several months you go up to higher Doses and then you taper back down that is a really really good opportunity to Recon if you've just started gear you weigh let's say you started at 230 pounds you've been training for 10 years you're 29 years old it's time to do it supervision of a doctor you live in the United Kingdom so it's decriminalized all is well for the first six months
of using gear I'd say stay weighing whatever you were 230 230 stay at 230 that's going to be really really good for you because you don't have to move anything else you're just going to gain a crap lot of muscle and lose a ton of fat just having made that introduction just aim to keep body weight the same as more gear is layered in here's what's going to happen though gear not only makes your muscles grow but it fills your muscles up with much more water than they used to and the rest of your body
also with water so if you try to keep your weight roughly the same after starting gear for the first time you're actually in a in a deficit it's a hypocaloric condition because uh muscle uh for every calorie you put into it ends up actually you can build the same amount of muscle tissue as fat but muscle has fewer calories required to store in it so it turns out that to replace fat and muscle if you're adding a bunch of fat and losing a ton of muscle at the good good God adding a bunch of muscle
and losing a bunch of fat at the same time you're technically in a bit of a hypocaloric condition because fat has more calories in it than muscle does so you might feel like you're hypocaloric and you might actually be I'm a little hungry man this recop sucks the but if you keep your weight the same and you just get on gear you are going to gain tons of muscle no problem but also lose a fuckload of fat at the same time if you let your appetite dictate you're probably going to gain like 15 or 20
pounds you're probably going to gain very little fat in a ton of muscle but that look is going to be different and because you've gained all that weight is going to make you feel like I would recommend for most people when they're jumping on gear try that recomp thing whatever body weight you jump down gear on for the first 6 months don't let it change if it's going up remove some food remove some cheat meals you're going to get shredded and jacked at the same time once you are jacked and shredded and the recom has
come to an end then you can start to bulk and cut but now you're way leaner than normal and more jacked than normal and it's actually healthier for you to be leaner than average when you're on gear because the gear is independently bad for you extra body fat makes that way way worse if you do this recom situation and at the end of it let's say did 12 weeks you're really lean and much bigger if you want super super ultra lean you might have to intentionally dip into a purposeful fat loss phase for like 4
to eight weeks at the end 48 four to eight weeks at the end some right 48 weeks got it 48 week fat loss phase later then once you drop into a true deficit how do you know you're going to feel a lot hungry and you're going to feel kind of an energy reduction like oh man training's hard walking around as hard then you're going to get that Final Touch super crispy lean and that's going to be awesome that probably won't happen with just recomping for you so if you do that give that some thought that
might work out super well that's how to do it for enhanced people lastly main points to take out of this thing take away from this YouTube video for beginners intermediates and advanced beginners stay Natty you know need drugs and they're super bad for you and they up everything and they're illegal and it's all dumb we have a lot of other videos on why you should probably stay drug free you can search for them in the YouTube for beginners recomping and probably should last at least a year from putting another way for beginners the two things
we're looking for in a Rec comp working we're getting stronger for reps and we're getting visibly changed in our how we look in the mirror and pictures that's going to be happening for a year for most people just Recon for a year it'll be the easiest work you've ever put in to get the most results you'll ever get don't that up it's awesome just do it and if you clean up your diet at some point during that time more and increase your training amount and seriousness over time maybe getting the RP diet coach app maybe
in the RP hypertrophy app which isn't designed for beginners it's really designed for intermediates on both ends if you start to make those changes you may be able to recom for two or even three years and get great great results intermediates folks that have usually been Lifting for three years or longer also stay naty steroids are for advanced people and not even for most advanced people they're not for intermediates you're getting great gains still you don't have to up your health and your Psychiatry and all this other so stay Natty recomp almost always after active
rest phases in an active rest phase you take two weeks of super easy training you generally uh drop a little bit of muscle and put on a little bit of fat when you restart training your body is so fresh to training it's like a mini noob phase again and because in an active rest you have a good diet but not a great diet soon as you start training again and eating really well your body is going to recomp like crazy so I'd say the first two to six weeks returning from an active rest phase you
can just recomp and get amazing results and then start dieing down or or massing up or whatever you want to do and in general as an intermediate you can still do some recomping if you've done that assessment we talked about earlier in the video and you legitimately think it's worth your time because it could just not be worth your time and then you're doing something that you like but isn't working super well at the end of the day you probably watching this channel for uh getting tips on how to get your best results if you
don't want best results my jokes aren't that funny my voice isn't that ASMR Scott when are we gonna stop doing this Fitness and get into pure ASMR channel on the next ah is is that how is that how they do it you gotta like slurp on Bon me or something oh God yeah Scott and I tried we were in Vegas for work a while ago we tried to watch like an AS R Video like one of the top searches and it's some like girl who you know is a person that looks like they can have
sex and uh she's doing L like this like lip popping I was like I I don't get it when is the hand job video it never occurred so we stopped watching five seconds into it we really did diligence on that one Jesus Christ all right main points for Advance this is where it gets a little bit different you can recom after active rest phases I recommend at least a twoe recom after active rest and then go do your bul or cut or whatever you're going to do in general enal if you're Advanced bulking cutting is
probably going to be best if you want more insight on how and why that works meno henselman who has an amazing YouTube channel talks incessantly I would say I'm kidding uh at Great length about why recomping is actually quite effective and also why most people shouldn't be doing it especially Advanced people because he's really good about explaining why when you're Advanced bulky and cutting are just so strategically awesome because they are so favored in their own conditions they make the overall process so much better that recomping is like it can work and it does even
in advanced people Rec can put on a little bit of muscle and lose a little bit of fat but whatever recom can do in the advanced in most cases bulking and cutting can just do better straight up unless you're enhanced when you're enhanced you become enhanced recop is great until some of the following things occur you want to get bigger than ever you can't recomp your weight to 250 PBS from weighing 230 it's literally Impossible by definition if you want to get stage lean you're not going to recm into Stage lean nine times out of
10 so you're going to have to do an actual deficit and then if you want any of those two things or you've been using drugs for a while and you want over all best results it's time to start bulking and cutting again we have a lot of other videos about steroids and how to not do them and how to do them the risks the dangers the possible upsides so give those a search uh RP strength has tons of videos on that uh be smart don't do anything stupid um and just remember that recomping is a
thing that you can and should take advantage of when the getting is good but when the getting is no longer good which is to say your rep strength isn't improving in any knowable way after some weeks of trying and your appearance looks damn near the same then it's probably bucking cutting is going to win that one come back to recm when you're ready for it but generally speaking the more advanced you are the more it's going to be time to bulk and cut the less it's going to be time to recomp folks I've been Dr
Mike and uh I don't know man um do you guys like the sweatshirt I got it at Walmart it's cool it's got dog hair on it I'm glad I'm not like a video dating site see you guys next time [Music] m