Energy Availability: The Key to Maximum Strength and Muscle Growth

Gainz.

That’s the reason we took our first step into the gym. It’s also the reason why we discipline ourselves to be consistent with how we train and eat, something people who aren’t pursuing the same goal would not understand.

For the most part, we started this journey by messing around with the latest training program we found online.  After a few modifications that made, it turned out to be chest and arms every other day, while hitting legs maybe once a week.

That is a big maybe.

As we stayed on course, we improved, we got smarter , we started squatting more. Then we found out that progressively getting stronger would allow us to progressively pack on more muscle as well.

We also found out that we need protein to help the muscle building process. And for the most part, that’s all you actually need to do to see gainz.

Lift more weights over time and eat your protein.

If you aren’t already doing that or if you haven’t got that figured out, start working on those aspects, then come back and read this article.

However, I’ll touch upon a factor that isn’t usually mentioned when we talk putting on muscle mass or strength.

This is what I feel needs to be done to in order to set ourselves up for maximum muscle gain. Or to make it sound like a cheesy supplement tagline, to exploit your potential for strength and muscle mass.

Let’s jump right into it.

This factor is energy availability

Starting out as a younger lifter, I thought that as long as I focused my nutrition around protein, I’ll build muscle. So if some is good, more is definitely better right?

Not so fast.

While protein is important for muscle gain and strength, most people already consume enough or pretty close to what they need to gain strength or muscle. Research have shown that approximately 1.8g-2g/kg of bodyweight is a good number to hit if muscle gain is your goal. This isn’t to say that you can’t have more, but more isn’t likely to bring multiple folds of benefits either.

But to simplify this, because not only do I love my protein but my math is horrible, let’s round protein requirement to 2g/kg bodyweight. Which means that an 80kg lifter would need approximately 160g of protein a day.

Doesn’t seem like much right? Because it isn’t, and I’ve definitely consume more than that amount in one sitting on a few occasions.

The fact of the matter is, protein requirement tobuild muscle isn’t that high for most people especially if we’re in a caloric surplus. This brings me to my point that being in a caloric surplus where energy availability is high is important to maximize muscle hypertrophy and strength.

This isn’t to say that you can’t be in a deficit, lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. In fact, this is a highly possibly phenomenon and I’ve seen it happen a ton of times and research has shown this to be true as well.

Not to mention that a recent paper showed that being in a calorie deficit while bumping up the protein intake helped the participants in this study lose fat and gain muscle. The only caveat was that their training was done pretty damn well.

So to answer the age old question, yes, you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time if your training and nutrition is on point but I digress.

I still believe that being in a state of high energy availability is the best environment for gainz simply because from a physiological standpoint it just make sense. If you have more energy to expend, you can channel the energy into better training session which would create a stronger stimulus for growth. Not to mention that extra energy could be used to help recover and rebuild your muscles as well.

Besides that, the molecular signaling cascades that take place also supports this notion but I’ll spare the science lesson here.

Physiology and science aside, conversations with top powerlifters and coaches like Bryce Lewis and Chad Wesley Smith on the topic of cutting weight has also brought me to the state the importance of energy availability.

Both of them mentioned that younger lifters in their early 20’s who constantly try to cut weight to make a lower weight class will only hamper their growth and long term potential as a powerlifter. This is because at the peak age for growth, constantly putting yourself in a deficit will interfere with the growth process. So instead of cutting weight, younger lifters should think of slowly filling up a higher weight class. And filling up a higher weight class usually means that you need to have higher energy availability.

Think of it from this point of view, when a baby is growing you feed all sort of nutritious food to that baby to ensure the baby’s growth is maximized. Being in your early 20’s is probably the same stage where it can be classified as “baby growth”. Just like how you wouldn’t limit food intake when a baby is growing, you shouldn’t keep cutting down to a lower weight class when you are at the peak age for growth.

Jumping back to the point on losing fat and gaining muscle, it happens because fat is a form of stored energy. Since the first law of thermodynamics state that energy can only be transformed and not created or destroyed, the fat you lose can be used as energy to build muscle. However when you are at a lower body fat percentage, you’ll still be able to lose fat, but not at the rate where it can provide enough energy to build muscle. So the next logical step is to bump up your calories to set yourself up for more muscle growth.

Besides, extra muscle mass can translate to better strength gains as well. Studies have shown that the bigger the cross-sectional area of a muscle, the more potential it has to generate force. Not to mention that a bigger muscle or a larger mass will set you up with better leverages to move bigger weights.

While fat may not actually play a role in force production, most of the top drug-free powerlifters do carry some body fat when they compete. As a matter of the fact, an observation I made while watching the recent USAPL meet at the Arnolds is that none of the lifters are ripped, and most are carrying more than 15% body fat. This is probably due to the fact that the extra weight they carry help them stabilize better and create better leverages when they lift. This isn’t a reason for you to put on unnecessary fat it’s simply to reiterate the point that extra mass do have some carry over to strength gains.

Let’s take Ray Williams who is the current world champion in the superheavy weight class and clocked in the highest wilks in 2015 in the USAPL. That guy is monstrously huge but not all the mass he carries is muscle. Let’s say we were to strip away all that fat but not any of that muscle, would he still be able to lift the same amount of weight like he used to?

Despite the fact that fat does not produce force, the weight could be lifted would be very much less despite having the same amount of muscle which is the factor that produces contractile force. So while putting fat might not always be a good thing, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.

From a molecular perspective to anecdotal evidence and even the practices of current champions seem to agree that for maximum muscle and strength gains, you need to be in some form of high energy availability state. There is a right time to cut weight or getting shredded but when your goal during training is to maximize your strength or muscle gain, being in a state of energy surplus is highly likely to give you the most optimal result.

That being said, it makes lifting and training a tad more enjoyable too. So let’s not constantly restrict calories and think of going down to lower weight classes but strategically think how you can maximize your potential especially if maximum strength or hypertrophy is your goal.

Do you agree with my point on being in a calorie surplus to maximize growth? What are some strategies you have to maximize muscle growth? Leave them in the comments section and let’s get some conversation going!

Related Posts