The Rebound and the Path to 'Second Bodybuilding'

Why the Scale Stops While the Muscle Keeps Coming

Opener

Here's the thing nobody tells you about a good offseason. The scale shoots up after the show, then it flattens out, and most people panic and think they've stopped growing.

"Offseason growth rates are almost like a logarithmic graph, you know, it shoots up at first, and then it's asymptotic to zero progress. But it's not zero progress, that's the scale... but something is solidifying."

This lecture is about what's solidifying.

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1. Two kinds of size inside one muscle

There's more to muscle than just contractile tissue. If you look at beef jerky, that's the contractile tissue that's left when you dehydrate a steak. The rest is everything else: the blood vessel and capillary density, the glycogen storage, and the water.

Those two parts don't change at the same speed. Sarcoplasmic volume can change rapidly. The contractile tissue takes longer. The whole offseason model in this lecture comes from that difference.

2. Why the leanest, most depleted athlete rebounds best

The leaner you get and the more depleted you get, the better your rebound is going to be. That's counterintuitive, but it follows from what the rebound needs.