#012 The 4 Step Winter Arc Guide

Today’s read: 2,530 Words (11 min.)

Welcome back to the 12th edition of the Boats & Logs Lifting Club. I really appreciate you being here. We are the based fitness community that focuses on mastering the basics instead of getting lost in the details.

We will do the same today, as I will explain everything you need to know to set up a successful winter arc.

For those unaware of what the winter arc is, it is what you should be doing 365 days of the year anyway: Building a great physique. But I think the winter arc resonates with many people because they are spending more time indoors and are less distracted from their goals.

So, let’s use the winter to kickstart habits you can continue forever and build an impressive physique along the way.

Do not confuse this with a winter bulk! While many people traditionally bulk during the winter and cut in spring to get abs for the summer, we won’t go into a big bulk. But more on this later.

Lastly, don’t think, “Great, I will start January 1st!”. I can guarantee you that you will fail with this mindset. There are still 3 weeks left in 2023; make them count and give yourself a head start for 2024.

Applying the Boats & Logs Philosophy to the Winter Arc

Starting into the winter arc, most of you will and should be extremely motivated. But then, many will fall into the trap of wanting to do everything right and optimize 1,000 things at once. But trust me here. Don’t do this

The Boats & Logs Philosophy is so effective because it focuses on the basics. We first need to learn to master the basics every single day. Not only is it crucial for muscle growth to get the basics right, but it also has a psychological aspect.

By trying to start many new habits at once, the odds are really high that you fail to do them all consistently. And what happens when you notice you are failing to keep up with some of your new habits? Most of you will get demotivated and drop all of them.

By focusing only on a few new habits, we give ourselves a better chance to achieve our goals every day and succeed. By doing that, we are stacking small wins every day, which will keep the motivation high.

If we have mastered the basics, we can look into optimization strategies.

For the next 4 months, simply focus on these four basics, and you give yourself a great chance to make incredible progress. Maybe the best you ever made:

1. Training

2. Calories

3. Protein

4. Sleep

Training

Veteran Boats & Logs readers already know that, as I have written extensively about training before, the sole purpose of working out is to provide a stimulus to our muscles so that they produce an adaptive response in the form of muscle growth.

While many will ask now what the perfect split is (the perfect split is the one you can stick to), they have it backward. Splitting our training is just a way to spread the stimulus over the week. We first need to discuss how we need to train to achieve muscle growth.

The most important factor for muscle growth is the amount and quality of sets you are doing. If you were a true minimalist, you would probably see surprisingly much muscle growth by doing as little as 1-3 sets per muscle each week. But by adding only a few more sets, we can increase the potential for muscle growth a lot.

10 sets per muscle group per week is usually an appropriate volume that has a really good balance between low volume and triggering most of the potential muscle growth. Of course, you can do more if you like, but the upside will be quite limited for most compared to the additional time they spend in the gym.

With around 10 sets, we are following a rather low volume approach. And that means one thing: High Intensity.

High intensity is a non-negotiable when you want to make proper gains. And this means taking all your sets to failure. It’s important to note here that I don’t want you to cheat out some reps to reach total failure but reach failure where you can’t complete another rep without cheating.

To make sure that you are training hard enough, you should be applying progressive overload. This concept simply describes that you need to increase the weights or reps of an exercise every workout to keep stimulating the muscle.

Here is an example:
You are doing Chest Press with 100 lbs. for 6-8 reps. In workout 1, you can do 7 reps; in workout 2, you can do 8 reps with 100 lbs. In workout 3, you are increasing the weight to 110 lbs. and repeat the process until you can do 8 reps again, before increasing the weight another time.

Science also suggests splitting the 10 sets across multiple days. As you can see in the picture above, doing around 6 sets per muscle group per training session is optimal for muscle growth, and there is little reason to go above that number. And that’s where we are getting into choosing a workout split.

As the name suggests, a split is simply a method to split the volume across the week. I don’t want to get into too much detail here, as choosing the right split is always highly individual.

Most (if not all of us) don’t have the luxury to plan our lives around the gym. Instead, we have to plan the gym around our lives (This newsletter probably isn’t for you if you trust some “alpha male” podcast believing that your life should revolve around the gym). Therefore, some may be able to go to the gym 5 times per week, while others can only go 2 times per week. And that is not a problem. If done right, both of them will probably make similar gains.

If you just want to pick a split and run with it, have a look at the Full Body Split I dropped last week. But you will also be fine picking another split that you like and that fits your life. Some common splits that are also good are Upper/Lower and Push/Pull/Legs.

But I want to stress one thing. Stick to the split for months. Unless you have a really good reason, don’t start changing around the split or exercises in week 4 because you believe other exercises will provide you with a bigger growth stimulus.

This may have been a lot of information on training. To sum it up:
→ Pick a split you like
→ Do around 10 sets per muscle every week
→ Train until failure
→ Consistently apply progressive overload

Calories

Being consistent with the right calorie intake is the key factor to capitalize on our hard training. If you don’t consume enough calories, you won’t grow, and if you consume too many calories, you will gain unwanted fat.

As I hinted before, this won’t be a winter bulk where you will be in a big caloric surplus and gain a lot of fat you have to cut in spring. Instead, we want to use the winter months to get in great shape for summer (and then continue working on our physique). In some scenarios, you will actually be losing body fat instead.

For those unaware of the importance of calories, I pasted a paragraph I have written for another article:

How many calories you should consume is determined by your goals and current body fat percentage. Below are three categories, we will then explain one by one:

<12% body fat with the goal to gain muscle:
Be in a daily 300-500 calorie surplus.

12-18% body fat with the goal to gain muscle and lose fat (focus on muscle growth):
Eat around calorie maintenance (maybe a small daily 150-300 calorie surplus or deficit).

>18% body fat with the goal to lose fat and gain muscle (focus on fat loss):
Be in a daily 300-500 calorie deficit.

If you are below 12% body fat, chances are, your main goal is to build muscle. You don’t need to worry much about gaining a little bit of fat and can, therefore, eat in a caloric surplus. You don’t want to get too aggressive with the surplus because, at a certain point, most of it would get stored as fat, which you would then need to get rid of. As a rule of thumb, a daily 300-500 calorie surplus should provide you enough fuel for muscle growth while minimizing the fat you put on.

If you are between 12%-18% body fat, you are usually trying to achieve both, gaining more muscle and losing some fat. In that range, you don’t need to eat a lot above calorie maintenance because your body still has decent fat reserves stored it can burn to generate enough energy. Therefore, eating around calorie maintenance should be your way to go. If you are closer to 12% body fat, it might make sense to be in a small 150-300 calorie surplus, while it might make sense to be in a small 150-300 calorie deficit if you are closer to 18% body fat.

Lastly, if you are above 18% body fat, it doesn’t make sense to go into a calorie surplus. Put your focus on carefully cutting down. Similar to the group above, that doesn’t mean that you won’t grow muscle during that phase. But you should aim to reach a lower body fat percentage to have a strong and healthy foundation before going into a calorie surplus again and then making BIG gains. Therefore, I would be in a daily calorie deficit of 300-500 calories.

For all three options, you should closely observe how your body reacts. The best way is a combination of weighing yourself every morning and checking the mirror. If you feel like you are not making the progress you want despite being consistent with all points listed in this newsletter, increase or decrease your calorie intake depending on your needs.

The biggest problem people have is determining their calorie maintenance level as a starting base.

Here is the practical way to determine your optimal calorie intake based on the goals above:
1. Use 3-5 online tools to calculate your calorie maintenance level and take the average amount
2. Consistently consume the determined calorie level -/+ the deviation based on your goals
3. Weight yourself every morning and track your progress. Happy with the progress? Continue with the current calorie intake. Not making the progress you want? Increase or decrease your calorie intake
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you find your optimal calorie level

Protein

But it is not only important that you consume enough calories; the source of the calories is also important. As you may know, there are three macro-nutritions: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. In the spirit of easing the process as much as possible and focusing on the real basics, we will focus on only one of them: Protein.

I won’t do a big dive into why you need protein. I have done that here. But as a reminder, proteins are made of a chain of amino acids. These amino acids are used in many processes, including Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS), which is the process of your body repairing and building new muscle tissues.

The one basic you should definitely stick to regarding protein is the daily amount. If you have never tracked your protein intake before or if you have tracked it only inconsistently yet, don’t worry about the protein source or timing. Just make sure you get enough protein EVERY DAY.

A good range to be in is 0.7-1.0g of protein per lb of body weight (or 1.6-2.2g per kg) if you are trying to build muscle. Below are some examples of what this may look like, depending on your weight:

If you are already consistent with your protein intake, you can look at some optimization strategies. The easiest and probably most impactful one is spreading the protein intake throughout the day to fuel the body’s Muscle Protein Synthesis.

Since it takes around 20-30g of protein to spike MPS, you should make sure to consume 20-30g of protein as often as it fits into your day and other goals.

If you are not following any specific diet model, this could look something like this:
1. Breakfast - 40g protein
2. Snack 1 - 20g protein
3. Lunch - 40g protein
4. Snack 2 - 20g protein
5. Dinner - 40g protein
6. Snack 3 - 20g protein
Total: 180g of protein

This, of course, is extremely simplified, but as you can see, you don’t need a lot of protein per meal to reach your daily goal and spike MPS throughout the day.

Further optimization could be about protein quality, as proteins differ in their amino acid profile (not all proteins have all amino acids necessary for MPS) and bioavailability.

However, this is something you don’t really need to consider if you regularly consume animal-based proteins (e.g., meat, cheese, eggs). For plant-based proteins, as you can see in the picture above, the protein quality can oftentimes be a bit lower. Therefore, it makes sense to consume protein around the higher end of the 0.7-1.0g range to make up for the lower quality.

Sleep

This is a quick but often overlooked one. You need to get high-quality sleep. Actually, this is part of a greater area (“Recovery”), but, as we are focussing on the basics, we will focus on sleep here.

How much sleep we need is, again, highly individual and dependent on many different factors. But it’s highly unlikely for most to reach a good stage of recovery without sleeping at least 7 hours per night.

And honestly, this is the easiest part. There is nothing you need to do besides laying in bed and closing your eyes and opening them again after 7 or more hours.

Thank you for reading today's newsletter. As always, my DMs are open for any questions.

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Stay strong,
Boats & Logs

Disclaimer

This is not Legal, Medical, or Financial advice. Before starting any workout program, diet plan, or supplement protocol, please consult a medical professional. These are the opinions from an AI voice.