Choose the right workout for weight loss without losing muscle!

Building your dream figure will probably one day require weight loss. However, too many people lose muscle at this stage.
How to avoid this and show off your muscles in their full glory? That's what the following lines and paragraphs will be about.

Training mistakes in weight loss

Without exception, people start exercising more when losing weight. Usually, they significantly increase either the volume of training or its frequency. Others turn their workouts into a lactic acid factory.

I get it. It's a sensible instinct.

They want to burn more calories. But since they're also eating less, their muscles lose fullness. So people increase their workout volume for the sake of ephemeral pump-up, to psychologically make sure they don't shrink.

Others are concerned that they are even losing muscle, not just fullness. Ironically, the biggest culprit of muscle loss during weight loss is just excess volume.

Why is this approach a problem?

A caloric deficit reduces anabolism. This leads to a reduction in the production of mTOR (which plays a key role in proteosynthesis), IGF-1 (especially in carbohydrate tightening), and insulin (which is both anabolic and anti-catabolic).

And that's not all. In a caloric deficit, other harmful processes occur, especially if you have tight carbohydrates.:

1. You potentially lose more muscle because more of it breaks down when damaged by training, it repairs slower, and you have higher cortisol levels.
2. You start to feel burnout. Cortisol increases adrenaline levels, which decreases the sensitivity of beta androgen receptors, leading to decreased motivation, muscle tension, strength, power, speed, coordination, and endurance.
3. Sleep problems arise. With elevated adrenaline levels, it is difficult to sleep, which is detrimental to both muscle maintenance and weight loss.
4. Too much work in the short term will lead to weight loss, but in the long term the body will adapt to it, and weight loss will be harder. Chronically elevated levels of cortisol will reduce the conversion of T4 hormone to T3 (which regulates metabolism). When this happens, you will find it harder to lose weight.

Excess work is tempting and will work for about 2-3 weeks. It might convince you that you're doing things right, but in those 3 weeks the whole process will become a downward spiral.

How should I exercise while losing weight?

Your program during weight loss should mostly be the same as your volume training. Don't try to sculpt with high repetitions or sculpt every muscle with a million exercises. The volume of work could easily be lower during weight loss. Muscles don't recover as well from training.

However, you should work harder in series. Try to squeeze the required stimulation out of your workout in as few sets and exercises as possible. When you lose weight, you exercise to maintain muscle, not to gain it.

I'm not saying it's not possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. It's quite possible with less heavy work, but you can't overdo it.

Let's look at the details.

Training split and exercises

Another mistake people make in dieting is too many training units. You need to rest, especially if recovery is not going full blast.

I like to do 4 days of training a week where every muscle is somehow exercised at least twice. The three best splits are these.:

1. Full body 3 times a week and supplement training

Such a workout should use only 4 exercises, all compound: squat, push exercise, pull exercise and hip flexion.

Supplement training will be lighter and will only include isolated exercises for muscles that may neglect the basic exercises.

2. Full body/legs/push/pulls

I recommend working out Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday so that the workouts don't interfere with each other. The full body workouts will include compound exercises (squat, press, deadlift, and hip flexion) and the remaining workouts should include two compound exercises and 2-3 isolation exercises.

3. Push-ups + quadriceps, pull-ups + hamstrings

Again, I recommend practicing Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Alternate between quadriceps/chest/arm/triceps training and hamstrings/lats/mid/upper back/biceps/trapezius training.

Practice 4-5 exercises in each workout (one for each part). The first two days more complex exercises, then more isolation and less difficult exercises (use pulleys and machines too).

Split top/bottom is also good, but I find that most people need to feel the upper body working more often, otherwise they go crazy losing muscle.

Load Schemes

The priority is to practice complex exercises heavily. The goal should be to at least maintain strength, ideally add some.

In a diet, you will struggle to maintain strength on some exercises. Push-ups are the biggest problem (bench, military press). It's not that you lose muscle, it's that the dwindling fat, water and glycogen in and around the joints leads to a loss of passive stability.

When the body feels unstable, it defends itself by not allowing you to use your maximum strength potential. That's why I like to use slow starts and isometric holds in the middle of performing an exercise. This improves active stability, which can compensate for the loss of passive one.

Keep reps between 5 and 8, working sets of 3-4.

The goal should be to gradually add weight. For smaller exercises, focus on adding reps. For example, for pull-ups, start at 10 reps per set and work your way up to 20 reps with the same weight. Once you get there, add weight. On isolation exercises, I recommend 3 working sets.

On less demanding exercises (machines and pulleys), train 10-20 reps per set. This won't stretch out the muscles, of course, but it will flush out growth hormone which will help with muscle growth. Plus, these exercises with less weight won't do as much damage to your diet-starved muscles.

Pauses

The natural tendency is to take shorter breaks in your diet. This is easily defensible. You'll keep your heart rate high and burn more calories (but not as many as you think).

I'm not banning it completely, but most of you shouldn't shorten your breaks in your diet. It flushes out more adrenaline, which leads to increased cortisol levels when carbs are tightened.

Adrenaline decreases the sensitivity of beta androgen receptors, leading to decreased motivation, muscle tension, strength, power, speed, coordination, and endurance. At a minimum, you will have trouble sleeping.

It is best to rest 2-3 minutes for minor exercises and 3-4 minutes for complex exercises. This will also allow you to load more weight, thus maintaining or even adding more muscle.

How can you get leaner with such a workout?

In short, it can't. Such training is used to maintain or increase muscle volume while dieting. Instead of training, I recommend losing weight with diet/cardio.

Of course, I understand you've been listening to something else your whole career. I've tried it too. You don't like the image you see in the mirror and want change immediately. Then you make everything into a workout designed to lose weight.

And it's not gonna work. It's not sustainable and you'll probably lose a bunch of muscle (unless you're doping).

Once again. Go to the gym to maintain or build muscle. Lose fat by diet and energy expenditure. Period.

What weight loss methods should I use?

Here's a list of my favorite.:

1. Walking

Wow, how soft! Ok, but it works. Walking is the best way to mobilize fat and increase calorie expenditure without increasing cortisol levels. It might even lower it, because it's an activity that actively suppresses stress.

I prepared for my last shoot by walking and walking the dogs. Walking isn't something that will burn fat at the speed of a flamethrower, but it can definitely help.

2. Carrying a load for a long time

My favorite method. I have several weight bags at home ranging from 10 to 25 pounds. They're great because they have handles, and you can even exercise with them. But they are best for exercises like Zercher holds, front shoulder holds, bear hugs, carrying with one shoulder or both.

Walking for 30-40 minutes holding the bags in different ways is a great way to lose weight and build your traps, back and arms.

If you don't have any bags, use a filled backpack or walk with two one-armed arms. You can also use a sled (about 25% of your body weight). The key is not to make this a strength training exercise. The weight should not be such that you will be wiped out after the workout.

Here are some videos of my carries. I usually walk for about 30-40 minutes at a time, alternating the bag hold depending on which part of my body is getting too tired.

3. Research

I won't try to tell you that jumping burns a lot of calories or fat. This kind of training burns mostly phosphagen and glucose, and it's not dramatic either.

The reason for their inclusion is to increase insulin sensitivity, for which there is basically no better exercise. The lunges make it easier to burn fat and direct nutrients to your muscles instead of fat.

I've also found that lunges help maintain muscle and strength by increasing the nervous system's ability to engage muscle fibers, especially the fast ones.

A side effect of jumping jacks is that just a few reps will kick your nervous system into gear and energize you even when you're already running on fumes. Whether you're on a diet or not, jumping before a workout will always improve it.

I use jumping jacks during my diet to prepare for my workout. We usually do sets of 5 reps with a focus on maximal power. Remember, this is not Crossfit: Don't make jumping jacks an endurance exercise. Practice them for quality. Each repetition will be strength and technically perfect. Focus on the impact as much as the rebound.

I like to use two types of jumps in one workout, sometimes three. I usually warm up with 1-2 sets where I only jump at 50-70% capacity.

The workout looks like this:

1) 3 sets of variations on vertical jumps

2) 3 Series ofvariations on horizontal lunges

3) 3setsofone-legged lunges (if you already have the ability)

Practice 3-5 repetitions in each series.

Don't let your emotions get the better of you

These are the biggest enemy of productive weight loss. They can lead to excesses that, although they seem logical, are counterproductive. The key is to make objective decisions, leave emotions at the gym door and trust the process.

Source: www.t-nation-com - The Right Way to Train for Fat Loss
By Christian Thibaudeau