How to periodize If you’re happy with your current physique
Here’s what we recommend 👉
Should I Bulk & Cut If I’m happy with My Physique?
At some point in their journey, a client will often ask:
“I’m really happy with where I’m at. Should I just plan on staying at maintenance forever now?”
And on paper, yes, that makes sense.
But the reality plays out a little differently for most people, for both physiological and psychological reasons.
Let’s dig into it 👉
Life Happens
Muscle is a use it or lose it tissue. And life has a way of testing that rule.
Injury. Illness. Travel. Burnout. Seasonal stress. A big cross country move. A focus on an endurance goal.
Even if you train hard and eat well most of the year, all of these can cause dips in training intensity or consistency.
And when that happens, you likely lose a bit of muscle, which is completely normal.
But if you never intentionally rebuild or push food + training again consistently for a season, you may not fully regain what you’ve lost in those challenging seasons.
The good news:
The body can regain lost muscle ~3x faster than it can build it from scratch.
That’s why even when you’re happy with your physique, we’ll still encourage you to minimally periodize your nutrition, rather than try to “just maintain” forever.
By intentionally cycling between build and fat loss phases each year, you make it easier to:
Maintain + slightly increase muscle long-term
Prevent the potential softening effect of years spent hovering in maintenance
Keep psychological engagement with your nutrition and fitness goals
More on the psychological piece 👉
The Psychology
Most people need structure to stay consistent.
Maintenance often feels vague. Even though it’s just as measurable as a fat loss or muscle-building goal, most people lose focus when the goal is for things not to change.
Most people look at maintenance as a time to simply not track, which isn’t necessarily the point.
When you have defined muscle-building and fat-loss phases with maintenance time in between, your training intensity, food quality, and adherence all improve.
Additionally, you get to lean into the seasonality of eating a more in the -ber months (September-December) when food availability is high.
what does this look like?
An annual periodization plan to maintain your physique looks pretty similar to traditional periodization, except we’re just going to be less aggressive in moving the needle weight-wise for both the muscle-building and fat-loss phases.
In both the build and fat loss phases, you’re looking for the scale to move +/- 5lbs in each direction.
In the build: We’re looking to be just above maintenance at a 100-150 calorie surplus (goal of averaging a +0.2lb/week rate of gain throughout). This may not be maximizing the building potential, but it does minimize additional body fat gain.
In the fat loss phase: You can choose how aggressive you want to be, but for most, it shouldn’t take more than 6-8 weeks to drop any accrued body fat from the build phase.
The periodization plan
Muscle Build Phase:
September - December
~4 months, gaining roughly 4-5lbs
Fat Loss:
January - February
~6-8 weeks, efficient fat-loss phase, losing ~5lbs
Maintenance:
March - August
Hovering around the same bodyweight +/- 2 lbs
This plan gives you a bit of body recomposition (coming in a bit leaner with a bit more muscle). If a challenging season comes up, instead of seeing body recomp, you might instead return to the previous body composition before that season started.
The Plan in action
Let’s assume your maintenance calories are 2000-2150, and you don’t have an adaptive metabolism. Your year would look a lot like this:
Muscle Build Phase:
Calorie Targets 2150-2300
Rate of gain goals: +0.2lbs/week
Fat Loss:
Calorie Targets 1600-1700
Rate of loss goals: -0.7lbs/week
Maintenance:
Calorie Targets: 2000-2150
Weight Maintenance Goal: +/- 2lb
Why this works long-term
There are going to be seasons when this doesn’t make sense, but if you implement this most years, you’re setting yourself up for a strong muscle base + managing maintenance with ease.
This gives just enough flexibility to make it work with most people’s goals, especially when you strength train year round.
Many of our clients utilize this exact framework modified to their schedule, because they:
Spend their summers hiking, cycling, or race training
Have busy travel seasons where workout intensity and frequency aren’t always there
Enjoy participating in group fitness for the social aspect, and taking time off from pure hypertrophy training
Don’t want to chase physique goals year-round
