How To Get Bulky in Just 6 Weeks

One of the big concerns for many people engaging in strength training is that they are going to look different. Which is ironic because for a lot of other people that is why they are starting in the first place. They want to look different. The subtleties here are abundant and profound. What becomes important to understand is that no one starts training and in a very short period of time becomes a version of She-Hulk/Hulk. Biological adaptation on the muscular level does not move that swiftly neither does any kind of morphological change occur at such a rapid pace.

However, if you want to speed that process up there is always drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. Drugs to make you leaner, drugs to make you meaner, drugs to make you bigger, drugs to help your endurance, etc. In short if you want to pursue a quicker path with greater risk/reward distributions on the negative side of the fence then you are going to pursue this process with drugs as part of it.

The challenges of training naturally are simply that you don't get to train as hard, as fast or recover as quickly in comparison to someone who is on drugs. This slows down the process considerably. It is commonly understood that the ratio of progression of training and adaptations to training with and without drugs is 3 weeks to 3 months. I am going to hit that note again for those of you who may have drifted off.

"3 Weeks to 3 Months"

Here is what that means.

When people train and take specific drugs they recover 3X faster than people who train naturally or "natty" as the kids say it. Let me be really clear on this point. Training is stressful. The reason why you take drugs is to assist the restoration/recovery process. The harder you train the more recovery options you need to have in order not run into injuries. Now there are natural recovery aides like sleeping, eating, soft tissue work, sauna, cold plunges and many, many, many other natural therapies to assist with recovery.

Once you start training very demandingly and you have already opened all those natural recovery doors you have few options left for recovering from training. One, would be to become as smart about your training as possible. This would minimize the need for increased recovery measures. The second would be taking drugs to assist the recovery/restoration process. The reality of this dynamic is that recovery must happen for progression to take place. Training naturally by default takes longer because restoration can not happen as quickly. So there is no actual need to fear becoming a HULKASAURUS REX in short time frames.

It doesn't happen!!

What does it look like over long time frames then? A lot of this depends on individual genetic makeup and distribution of fiber types as well as how they handle the actual demands of training and recovery. To be clear there are some people that were born bigger and stronger than others. Which automatically means that there are some of us that are born to be weaker and smaller as well. Let's be clear though that training makes everyone bigger and stronger over time.

EVERYONE!

How much bigger depends on how you train and how you recover over significantly long periods of time. In other words you aren't going to bump into a dumbbell on New Year's Day and magically transform yourself into an elite level bodybuilder that has been training 4-6 days per week as well as taking many various kinds of drugs for at least a decade or more. That amount of muscular size and muscular mass usually takes somewhat of a monastic lifestyle that is completely dedicated to achieving it. It certainly doesn't happen by accident any more than getting your learners permit to drive a car will make you a Nascar driver in 3 months. Or to use another maybe more accessible analogy, stumbling upon learning how to site read music is not going to turn you into a classical pianist over the next 3 months. In either case the only way you make it to the bodybuilding stage, Carnegie Hall or making super fast left hand turns on the big Nascar racetrack is to practice, practice, practice!

If we want to look at the physique of a natural lifter who has adapted well to the stresses of training over long periods of time it's hard for me to think of a better example than that of Jen Thompson.

Jen Thompson is probably about one of the best ambassadors for the female side of the sport of powerlifting as you could find. She has been competing in powerlifting for over 20 years and has been a world record holder in the sport 11 times. She has held over 100 WR's and is the current world record holder in the bench press at 323lbs at a bodyweight of 132. So if we are going to try to make the case for lifting big weights makes women look like......well not women......it seems to be not the case.

Iris Kyle is the most successful male or female bodybuilder of all time having won 10 Ms. Olympia Titles. It's hard to imagine a greater ambassador for the sport of bodybuilding than her! She has competed for over 20 years and is no stranger to all of the demands of the sport.

We have a lot of differences here between these two women that are hopefully pretty evident. One obviously has taken many drugs over the course of her life in order to be competitive in her sport. The other has not. Since bodybuilding pretty much requires drug use in order to gain the necessary amount of size in order to be competitive in the sport what becomes really obvious is that there are two different paths to walk here.

Regardless of whatever training path you personally choose to take know that both paths are difficult to walk over a long period of time. Recovery is critical and how you train really matters. If you want to be as big as possible then you need to train and take drugs in order to do so. If you want to be as strong and healthy as possible naturally and muscular size is not the only goal then there are many different ways to accomplish that feat. Ultimately, it's your life and your choice about how to pursue whatever your goals may be. One thing is for certain though nothing really great happens in just 6 weeks.