Building a workout to meet your goals
August 03, 2005 by Renee @ 08:40 AMCategory: Articles, Tips, Workouts
Tailor strength and cardiovascular workouts to your goals.TO BUILD MUSCLE
1. Work to fatigue. Weight should be heavy enough so muscle is fatigued after 6 to 15 repetitions.
2. Add weight progressively. Start with one set, one to three times a week, with a weight that tires the muscle after 8 to 15 reps. Once that gets easier — usually in two to four weeks — work up to three sets. Then increase weight slightly and go back to one set, working up to three.
3. Include heavier weights. Once a week, hoist a weight heavy enough to fatigue you after three to five reps. Do two sets.
4. Fuel workouts. Before a strenuous session, Karen Reznik Dolins, an adjunct professor of sports nutrition at Columbia, suggested eating carbohydrates, and within an hour after, carbohydrates and protein.
TO LOSE WEIGHT
1. Focus on cardiovascular exercise. Do workouts like running or aerobics five or more days a week, for at least 45 minutes, but also include weight lifting one to three times a week, said Joseph Donnelly, the director of the Energy Balance Laboratory at the University of Kansas.
2. Be active throughout day. If you sit at a desk, get up and walk around for five minutes every hour.
3. Eat regularly. Pace meals and snacks every three to four hours for the right amount of calories when the body needs them, Dolins said. [source]
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Pretty much confirms an idea I flirted w/earlier this year. I also heard a naturopath say something similiar last week and also read this on a forum. Methinks it now sticks.
It'll be hard, if not impossible, for me to build muscle AND lose weight. My best bet is to work on maintaining the muscle I have or just try not to lose too much.
The naturopath said it takes quite a bit of protein in addition to some heavy resistance to add muscle and it doesn't just happen overnight. The forum said it's to be expected that some muscle loss will happen when eating restricted calories. It's only when bulking starts and calories are ramped up does one actually add muscle.
I dig that.
Comments: 6
08.03.05 | Diet Cheat commented: Muscle loss is GUARANTEED on a low-calorie diet.
When you're working with weights, especially the way that you suggest, you may end up being a little heavier, but that's because muscle weighs more than fat.
The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism and the more fat you burn.
If you work on building muslce all over, you will end up losing inches... fast. At first you might lose fat at a slower pace than you're building muscle, but who cares? Getting slim and staying slim is what it's all about.
I love your blog, by the way!
Diet Cheat xxx
P.S. Unless you work really hard and eat supplements you won't bulk up.
08.03.05 | Jen commented: Well, trying to build muscle and lose fat might be tough to accomplish together, but on a low-calorie diet with a lot of cardio, the only way to keep from losing muscle is resistance training. So you're not trying to add muscle, you're just trying to keep what you've got, which is really important because you'll burn calories more efficiently, thereby losing fat faster.
08.03.05 | jj commented: I'm with Jen here. Doing strength training while cutting calories can help you hold onto the muscle you've got, and minimize losses.
Although... when you start out strength training you *can* gain muscle and lose weight at the same time... but only in the beginning. For maybe a month or two. Sure would be nice if you could keep it up always!
08.03.05 | Renee commented: Nikki, I think most popular plans and quick solutions promote, lose weight/gain muscle as if they are one n the same.
It may be wise to view weight loss in two phases and plan your workouts accordingly. In one phase, you work to burn fat so it's cardio heavy, and you do weight to maintain as much muscle as possible.
In the next phase you build musle but laying off the excess cardio and using heavy weights, lifting to failure blah blah blah.
Then you repeat the first phase and on and on till you get to your desired goal.
I'm in my cardio heavy phase which is why I said My best bet is to work on maintaining the muscle I have or just try not to lose too much.
From all I read and believe for me, it's not a good idea to try to do both and almost physically impossible. And earlier this year I hinted that I'd adopt bulking/cutting approach to my workouts.
08.03.05 | rach commented: the 2 things are in complete opposition.
to diet, the cals= 10-11xbodyweight will fix most people. add in calorie-deficit cardio and weight-training to spare muscle loss, and you'll lose.
to build muscle you must eat a LOT MORE food: cals@ 15-20xbw, and lift heavy -heavy-heavy. o yeah, and did I mention: heavy? 
.
people who bitch about never getting any 'results' fail to realise that there is no compromise on this one. do one or do the other, and get results.
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Interesting. So it's kinda counterproductive to try to lose weight by cutting calories and weight lift thinking that you are gaining muscle. No wonder BFL (book) insists on getting more calories.