Okay, welcome everyone to a new episode of the Jeff Nippard podcast. In this episode, I'm speaking

with Mike Isretel, Meno Hensselman's, Eric Trexler, and Greg Knuckles about bulking. Now, up front,

this is a very specific discussion. We're ultimately focusing this debate on one question around

bulking, which is whether or not you should start your bulk at a lower body fat percentage.

So if you've been following the evidence-based

fitness community for the last few years, you've most likely heard that it's a good idea to cut

and get lean first before entering a bulking phase because when you're leaner, you're able to

build lean mass more efficiently. The logic goes that leaner individuals have better partitioning

ratios, also known as P ratios,

meaning you're more likely to store nutrients in muscle rather than fat if you start your bulk at a lower body fat percentage.

Conversely, if you begin your bulk at a higher body fat, you're more likely to partition nutrients into fat rather than muscle.

And the reasoning goes that this has something to do with leaner individuals

having a better hormonal milieu, whether that's better insulin sensitivity or higher testosterone,

or lower systemic inflammation. And I'd say this has been the prevailing thought until a little

earlier this year when Eric Trexler and Greg Nuckles published an in-house meta-analysis,

which found that lean gains

don't seem to be impacted by body fat percentage like we previously thought. And if you take a look

at their data, which I'll link in the show notes, it seems that you can gain muscle at least

just as well at a higher body fat percentage as you can at a lower body fat percentage. In fact,

Trexler notes in the piece that higher baseline body

fat percentage either doesn't impact one's ability to make lean gains or actually improves

one's ability to make lean gains. Then in response to this article, another science-based

...