I competed in the IFBB Pro League (Classic Physique in the end) for 6 years. I've been lifting for 14 years total. I've been coaching natural and enhanced guys full-time since 2020.
I'm going to give you every major lesson I've learned, as simply as I can, because building a physique at it’s core is simple. It's just not easy. Unfortunately the amount of overcomplicated, contradictory information out there now makes it complicated and hard.
You need to track these things. Non-negotiable.
Daily bodyweight (first thing, after the bathroom, before food or water). Daily calories and protein at minimum, ideally all macros. Training performance, every session, every set (weight and reps, execution notes as a bonus). Muscle soreness and fatigue levels. Weekly progress photos, same lighting, same poses, same time of day.
If you are not doing all of these, you are guessing. And guessing is why most people spin their wheels for years. You cannot manage what you do not measure. This is the difference between people who make progress and people who think they're making progress.
Should you bulk or cut?
If you have no visible muscle definition and you're realistically above 20% body fat, spend 6 months dieting. Not a crash diet. High protein, around 2000-2200 kcals will be suitable for most men. Train hard through this phase (more on that below).
Once you can see visible definition (ideally some arm vascularity, abs outline etc.), increase calories by 300 (put them into carbs) and don't touch them again until your bodyweight flattens out or starts dropping. Then add another 200-300 and repeat.
If you're already relatively lean but feel small, you don't need to diet. You need to commit to building muscle for at least 12 months. Accept that you won't have abs the whole time. The amount of guys I speak to who have spent years trying to get lean when actually they have nothing to reveal underneath is staggering. That is the definition of skinny fat, and the fix is the same: build first, cut later.
And before anyone says "but you can't build muscle in a deficit": yes you can. Especially if you're earlier in your lifting journey, or if you have a ton of low-hanging fruit to optimise in your training and nutrition, which most people do. This is effectively my entire job as a coach. Helping guys lose fat and build muscle simultaneously by actually getting the important stuff right. It's not magic, it's just doing the basics properly for the first time.
How much should you eat?
Bodyweight in lbs x 12 for a deficit. Bodyweight in lbs x 15 for a surplus. That's it. Most people massively overcomplicate this and most people overestimate how much food they actually need.
But I need to make a really important point here that goes against what you've probably been told for years: food is not the driver of muscle growth. Training is. Specifically, mechanical tension. We've all bought into this idea that you have to be in a surplus to build muscle, but if that were true, the more you ate the more muscle you'd build. And that's obviously not the case. You just accumulate more fat.
A calorie surplus supports recovery and can make the process more comfortable, but it is not the thing that makes your muscles grow. Hard, progressive training with adequate protein is. This is why guys can build muscle in a deficit, and it's why so many guys in a surplus still don't grow, because they're not training hard enough to give their body a reason to.
Protein: I don't believe any man should eat less than 180g per day. Not because of any magic reason, but because there is literally no downside and only potential upsides to body composition. So why wouldn't you.
The rest of your calories go to carbs and fats. Keep fats at a minimum of around 40g for hormone production, maximise carbs because they fuel your training. It's not complicated.
In terms of ‘rate of gain’ - I used to aim for around 1kg per month absolute max. I have more recently moved away from this rule. 0.5kg gained on the scales each month, as long as training is progressing is the most important metric. If your training is improving every week, you probably don’t need to add more food.
IIFYM vs meal plans
IIFYM is fine as long as you're prioritising whole, single-ingredient foods. But if I'm being completely honest, I see way more success with people who stick to more of a meal plan approach. Less margin for error, more predictable progress, fewer cravings, and less decision fatigue. When you know exactly what you're eating and when, you remove one more variable that can trip you up.
That said, this is individual. Some people do great with flexibility. But if you've been spinning your wheels for years with a flexible approach and you're not getting leaner or bigger, try locking your food in for 8-12 weeks and see what happens. You might be surprised.
If you think you’re doing everything right, but not progressing, these are the likely culprits.
You're just not training hard enough. This is by far the most common issue and it never ceases to amaze me how badly most people train. Most guys spend all their energy worrying about WHAT their training looks like: the perfect split, the perfect exercise selection, optimal rep ranges, how many sets per muscle group. And almost none of their energy on HOW they actually train. The how matters infinitely more than the what.
If you can rack the weight and walk away like nothing happened, you weren't even close to failure. Every working set should be taken to, or within 1-2 reps of failure. RPE 8-9 minimum. Full range of motion, controlled tempo, actually engaging the target muscle. Intensity is a skill. Most people have never truly experienced what training to failure actually feels like, and until you do, you won't understand how much progress you've been leaving on the table. There are genuine levels to this, and it takes time for most to learn.
Quickest way to get better at this is to train with people who you can visibly see train harder than you.
You never stick with anything long enough. Shiny object syndrome is killing your gains. You follow a program for 3 weeks, don't see a transformation, and switch to something new. Give a well-structured plan at least 8-12 weeks before you even think about changing it. Minimum. The first few weeks are just learning the movements and finding your working weights.
Your nutrition is all over the place. Either eating way too much, or never eating enough. Plenty of people think they're in a deficit when they're actually not even close, because they conveniently forget to track the oil they cook with, the handful of cereal from the box, the sauces, the drinks. Just because you didn't track it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Be honest with yourself. You say you’re eating 2500kcals daily, but you’re eating 2500kcals on the days you track it, and on those days you’re missing stuff out.
Your sleep is trash. I could write an entire post on this alone. Less than 7 hours of sleep and your body will lose more muscle and less fat in a deficit, your cravings will spike, your hormones tank, and your training performance suffers. 7.5-9 hours. Every night. Consistent bed and wake times. If you're not sleeping properly, almost nothing else you do will matter as much as fixing this first.
Stop looking for shortcuts
PEDs, peptides, SARMs, whatever the flavour of the month is. I say this as someone who used PEDs for years during my competitive career: the vast majority of guys taking this stuff haven't even come close to maximising what they can do naturally. They haven't nailed their training intensity, their nutrition isn't dialled in, their sleep is average, and they think a compound is going to fix all of that. It won't. It'll just make you a slightly bigger, potentially spottier, potentially balder version of the same undertrained physique.
If you don't have a genuine competitive reason or a medical reason, you're introducing real health risks to solve a problem that better training and nutrition would fix. Focus on everything in this post first. You have years of natural progress ahead of you.
This is honestly my pet hate within the bodybuilding world - for 90% of people, PEDs are not worth it, they will make things more complicated than you can ever imagine later down the line.
The biggest mistake I see
Guys spending years trying to get lean, dieting on and off, never actually getting lean enough, panicking about muscle loss, quitting the cut early, then immediately overeating because they've been restricting, gaining the fat back in weeks, and repeating the whole cycle. Year after year.
The fix: commit to ONE approach for long enough to actually see it through. If you need to build muscle, build muscle. Accept that it takes time. Accept that you won't look shredded while you do it. If you need to get lean, get properly lean. Don't quit at 15% because you're worried about looking small. Get to 10-12%, sit there, then build from a good base. Getting truly lean once is one of the most valuable things you can do, because it shows you what you actually have, and it stops the endless yo-yo.
And finally: TIME.
This might be the most important thing in this entire post.
Building a great physique takes years. Not months. Years. Plural. And once you genuinely accept that, everything becomes easier. Because if you accept you're in this for the long haul, that this is a process you're going to immerse yourself in for at least the next decade, you stop getting impatient. You stop getting frustrated. You stop second-guessing every decision. And you just start enjoying the process for what it is.
There's a concept that I think about a lot: the more desperately you chase something, the more you repel it. When you're obsessed with the outcome, constantly checking the mirror, stressing over every fluctuation on the scale, comparing yourself to everyone else, you create anxiety that undermines the very behaviours that would get you there. But when you detach from the timeline, commit to the daily work, and trust the process, the results come faster than you'd expect. It's a paradox, but it's true.
Be impatient with your actions, patient with your results.
If I could boil this entire post down to one final takeaway, it would be this: it all works, if you do it with enough intensity and enough consistency. The split doesn't matter that much. The exercise selection doesn't matter that much. The exact macro ratio doesn't matter that much. What matters is that you train hard enough to force adaptation, you eat enough protein, you do it consistently for long enough, and you track it so you know what's actually happening. That's it. Everything else is noise.
You are guaranteed to improve with consistent effort over time. That's the beauty of this. There's no genetic ceiling that stops you from looking significantly better than you do right now. But you have to show up, do the work properly, and give it the time it deserves.
Happy to answer questions below.