Not only are you a sports enthusiast, or you are just training, losing fat and gaining muscle is something everyone craves; people usually lose fat first and then gain muscle.
But the question is, can we gain muscle while we lose fat?
To answer this question, we need to have the full knowledge and scientific evidence that scientists research based on reality and the mechanism of action of the body from which it applies to the body yourself.
Increasing fat loss at the same time is certainly the desire of many people because it will shorten the training time to have the most toned and perfect body quickly.
However, the brothers and sisters in the fitness community will often advise that only one thing to do only.
Today, we will help you find out if this is unreasonable and whether there is a way to reduce muscle fat at the same time.
Currently, the gym and bodybuilding movements are increasingly spreading across the regions.
However, one problem not everyone knows how to solve is how to build muscle and reduce the amount of fat but not lose muscle.
That is why Bellyfatzone offers an article of nearly 2,000 words in detail below.
Guide to gain muscle – lose fat at the same time
This article is entirely based on training and research experience for many years by Dr. Jacob Wilson, a leading musculoskeletal researcher in the world of bodybuilding.
According to Dr. Jacob, there are 3-4 different mechanisms for building muscle during exercise.
Read more: How To Gain Muscle While Losing Fat? Principles You Need To Master
Part 1 – Muscle building mechanisms
You may have heard many people say, “You have to practice like this to be good” or “Don't practice that way is not good.
However, we can only optimize one of the muscle-building mechanisms. Luckily, Jacob has researched and devised a method to help you exercise and take advantage of all these mechanisms to help muscles grow at maximum.
Mechanism 1: Muscles develop thanks to muscle swelling
After training, the muscles look ‘bigger,' but they collapse as usual after they go home.
This is the phenomenon of Cell Swelling (because blood and water are pumped into muscle cells). During exercise, muscle cells feel that this abnormal swelling can harm them.
Therefore, they will turn on the self-defense mode, rearrange their structure; This makes your muscles look bigger.
For muscles to be constantly stimulated, the sets should be short enough to pump more blood into the muscle cells.
The best way is about 8-12 reps (reps), and Superset practice is the best way.
Mechanism 2: Apply the muscle fibers twitch quickly and slowly
While practicing, you need to be able to use both of the following muscle groups:
- Fast Twitch Fiber: Usually activates during heavy exercise and is only used for short periods of time (about 6-8 reps/half with heavy to weighty weights).
- Slow Twitch Fiber: Mainly activated during endurance exercise or Cardio, cardio exercise.
If it is possible to combine both of these muscle fibers, protein synthesis (Protein Synthesis) is promoted, helping the muscle grow larger.
Mechanism 3: Creating mechanical wounds
Mechanical Trauma is a muscle injury. This happens when performing heavyweights.
Mechanism 4: Create metabolic pressure
Metabolic Stress (Metabolic Stress) is how you take advantage of lactic acid when exercising to strengthen muscles. When you exercise, you will feel tired and have a burning sensation.
This is because lactic acid is being produced in muscle fibers. According to a study by Dr. Guntherman, he put lactic acid into a muscle cell, and under the microscope, the muscle cells expanded.
The sensation of muscle soreness is caused by the accumulation of lactic acid and promotes muscle growth.
For example, after a round of lifting weights, resting for 5 minutes, almost all lactic acid has been completely removed; This makes your muscles no longer stimulated, so not grow much.
That is why bodybuilders usually only take a maximum of 1-minute rest if doing 8-12 repetitions/half. They often perform Superset (2 consecutive exercises) or Triset (3 consecutive posts) to accelerate Metabolic and Cell Swelling.
Thus, how to optimize the process of putting pressure on muscle fibers?
It's simple; It is arduous training. However, if the exercise is too heavy and too little rest cannot recover in time, resulting in insufficient muscle stimulation.
Therefore, on days of heavy exercise, take a break of 3-5 minutes and increase the weight as much as possible (of course, it should be maintained at 6-8 reps/half is fine).
Part 2: Overcoming your limits
The biggest mistake people make in the gym is not believing in themselves or thinking they are weak, so they cannot push weights.
For example, you might think you're pushing yourself too hard today; you have to rest until next week to practice again. However, the higher the frequency of exercise, the stronger the muscle development.
You can do heavy exercise from day to day, performance may decrease, but in return, the muscles will be stimulated to develop continuously.
However, if you are a beginner, you should not do heavy weights every day; This method is only for long-term, experienced practitioners. It requires you to have a strict bodybuilding diet, perfect technique to ensure muscle recovery in time.
What you need to remember in this section 2 is, “gradually overcome your limit.”
Our bodies are very resistant and adaptive, as long as you make sure you have a nutritious, scientific diet and get enough sleep.
View: How to gain weight and muscle in the gym
Part 3: Build the shape
To help your muscles grow comprehensively, you should combine Isolation Exercise and compound Exercise exercises.
If you take care of Isolation exercises and forget Compound or vice versa, you will not achieve it.
Part 4: Stimulate muscles
To stimulate muscles constantly, changing exercises is the best thing to do.
Part 5: How to increase muscle fat loss at the same time now?
Losing muscle at the same time is tough. However, you can still do it if you know how to choose Cardio correctly.
To gain muscle, you need to work out hard; you should train Cardio to lose fat.
You will often find Marathon runners have deficient body fat, which is the dream of most bodybuilders. Hearing that, many people often practice Cardio crazy for up to 2 hours a day.
But you know, the more Cardio you practice, the more muscle you lose.
Instead of spending hours in a weight room building up your muscles, Cardio training hours will make every effort to build your muscles into smoke.
It sounds so difficult, don't be discouraged because there is a solution to help reduce muscle fat simultaneously; It's an intense Cardio HIIT episode.
HIIT will help you push your limits to the maximum; At this point, you will use all your strength to do it for 10-30 seconds, even to the point where you feel nauseous and slightly dizzy.
If you practice correctly, the first 10 seconds should be enough to make you breathe pink; after 30 seconds, the mind will turn slightly.
When burning a lot of energy in a short period of time, you will force your body to use FORCE amount to burn to compensate for the lack of energy.
The strength of HIIT is that this fat-burning process can last up to many hours after the end of a training session.
Running fast from 10-30 seconds and repeating many times will burn a lot more fat than the usual Cardio training in 1 hour, especially HIIT will NOT LOSE LOSS MUSCLE.
Running fast also helps bigger front thigh muscles, so you can say that HIIT also helps increase muscle mass.
Part 6: Avoid injuries
The best way to limit injuries during exercise is to work out in stages. Some professional athletes often work hard continuously; This puts a lot of pressure on the ligaments and joints.
Over time, they become inflamed, causing serious injuries. For the gym, bodybuilding, injury is one of the terrible things because you have to spend a lot of time waiting for it to recover, maybe weeks, months, or years.
If you take a month off to wait to recover, your muscles will lose a lot. How much effort also put a lot of it. Therefore, breaking down into periods of exercise is the best way for you to stimulate muscle growth:
For example, in a week as follows:
- On day 1, do a muscle gain (Hypertrophy) as usual 8-12 reps/set and rest for 30-60 seconds.
- On day 2, heavy exercise 6-8 reps / set with Superset technique.
- 3rd day, do the usual heavy exercises.
- On the fourth day, practice with BFRT (If the joint is still painful, you should not do heavy exercises instead of using the Blood Flow Restriction technique. This will help reduce blood flow to the hands/feet less, and you can reduce the weight down to 30-40% but still help muscle growth as usual.
- Then repeat this cycle. The ligaments and muscles now have enough time to recover completely, both developing well and limiting the injury.
Part 7: Improve the training method
Before going to the gym, you need to know what the gym is and how to be effective.
If practicing 12 times/inning, make sure 12 exercises are true and most effective. This is called muscle sensation during exercise.
The more you feel good muscles, the better the muscles grow. Besides, you also need to take care of quality meals, try the menu to help increase muscle fat loss, focus on each sleep, and exercise every moment.
You must have a clear plan for yourself; It's best to write down your feelings when practicing, your goals and watch them see if you're on the right track.
View more: Skinny Girl Workout Schedule to Gain Weight
How To Build Muscle And Lose Fat At The Same Time: Step By Step Explained
9 Ways to lose fat without losing muscle:
Close monitoring of Caloric Deficit intake
I haven't heard what Caloric Deficit is; please review it. Translated means caloric decline. When you go into muscle tightening stages, you will have to follow a strict diet and restrict many calories.
“To be safest, you should only lose 0.5-1% of your body weight per week,” – Paul Salter, dietitian of Bodybuilding, said.
“This equates to 1 person 90kg and about 0.4kg a week. Losing weight quickly means muscle loss is also proportional ”.
When you are on a diet, you need to calculate how many calories you eat per day and the Macro you need for this (See how to calculate BMR, TDEE, and Macro)
After calculating the number of calories you need to use a day, the amount of protein, carbs, and fat, you follow that and apply it to your food.
Keeping track of your weight regularly is an effective way to squeeze the muscle for fat loss, you should note.
Because if you find that the deficit is slow or does not decrease or lose too quickly than the regulations, you must adjust immediately.
“However, with the first 7-10 days, you will usually lose a lot of weight (about 0.5-1.5kg) due to the loss of water, please rest assured because you are still on the right track, then you have to adjust. It's about the original route.
Continue like that until your weight doesn't lose any more. At this point, you will reduce your calories by 10-20%.
Provide an adequate amount of protein during muscle tightening
During the muscle tightening phase, we reduce fat and carbs but increase protein intake.
Protein supplementation is essential for squeezers and for those who want bigger and sharper muscular bodies.
Protein will help you eat less by stimulating the production of an appetite suppressant hormone. Consuming too little protein will deplete your muscles of the energy they need to grow.
Studies show that every 0.5kg of body weight should add 0.8-1.25g of protein to optimize muscle growth and not be lost when entering the muscle contraction phase. [1,2]
Of course, you still have to calculate to add more protein but not exceed the number of calories you calculated in step 1.
Carb supplement when exercising
Although normal meals, we have to cut many carbs; however, during meals around exercise, you should add ample carbohydrates to have energy when exercising.
Pre-workout and post-workout, you should eat a relatively high amount of carbs to boost your training energy and boost muscle glycogen (See What ATP and What is Glutamine)
Good carbs should contain more fiber, and good sources of these 2 are Brown Rice, Quinoa, whole grain bread, pasta, legumes, vegetables. You should choose Carb with more fiber because it will also provide longer-term energy during your exercise.
If you were taking pre-workout meals 1 hour ago, you should choose low GI foods (See what GI is) and a good time to use them after exercise to help accelerate Glycogen into muscle. than. And of course, it also makes you hungry faster and can make you eat more.
Use compound exercises to practice
The way to tighten fat without losing muscle and eating must also involve exercise, and it will help increase muscle more and reduce maximum muscle loss.
Compound exercises can be mentioned as Squat, Bench Press, Pulling exercises (row type like Dumbbell Row, Barbell Row, Cable Row …) Overhead Press, Pull Down ……
Isolation exercises include Lateral Raise (Dumbbell Fly, Cable Fly ..) Lateral Raise, Curl, Leg Extension, Leg Curl, Push Down, and similar movements.
When doing multi-joint exercises, you will train more muscle groups and increase your metabolism more, which means you will burn more calories against the metabolic loss caused by eating. Abstinence induced.
Besides, you can also push heavier weights when exercising with multi-joint exercises because it helps stimulate metabolic hormones that affect the muscles to burn fat.
Use a heavyweight
There is a misconception that the more exercise, the bigger the muscle.
In fact, to get bigger, you have to work harder. Muscle gain works best when you apply a weight that can't be repeated 8-12 reps; even if you play a weight that only repeats 1-6 repetitions, the better.
Using a lightweight and repeating as many as 25 only helps stimulate strong muscle fibers and does not affect building muscle size.
When tightening that muscle, our goal is that the muscle must be big, must be “sharp like sony,” so when starting the training session, when it is at its best, then “whip” the medium to heavyweight.
Studies show that using a heavier weight than 6RM (See what 1RM is) helps you burn many times more calories than using lightweight.
Avoid practicing for too long; instead, do it in the fastest time.
Here's how to squeeze the muscle for fat loss important to remember: Do not exercise for long as it will cause more cortisol to produce muscle catabolism, instead of Testosterone helps build muscle.
The optimal level is within 1 hour, although it has not been proven, the more you practice, the higher the amount of Coritol will be sure, and the more time you have to wait for recovery. [4]
The key to reducing training time is to complete multiple exercises at the same time.
Take a look at these training techniques.
- Dorset: With these exercises, you will work out with heavy weights, then each set will lose 25% of your weight and the final set of your best training (See What Drop set is).
- Superset: Do 2 consecutive exercises without rest (See What is a Superset).
If you do normal exercise, then during your rest time, do another muscle group exercise. For example: If you are doing arm exercises in the middle of the set, you should do abdominal exercises, the purpose of keeping your heart rate. Always high.
This practice will save you a lot of time, but it will do a lot more, and you can finish the workout early.
Do Cardio for muscle maintenance.
During your days off, you can keep up with Cardio exercises to help improve your cardiovascular performance. There are 2 types of LISS and HIIT; choose the right one you need to practice.
LISS is favorite pre-competition cardio by Bodybuilders, and they usually practice for 1 hour a day.
With HIIT, it's the higher intensity, and you can train at a 1: 4 ratio, meaning you can train with 15 seconds of maximum intensity and 60 seconds of lower intensity.
Practicing HIIT will help burn calories for a long time, about 36-48 hours after training, and of course, will reduce many calories without training much.
HIIT has shown several benefits in the laboratory, such as increased lean muscle mass, reduced fat mass [5], and is particularly beneficial for people with type 2 diabetes.
Use dietary supplements to nourish muscles and fight catabolism.
Muscle tightening requires a lot of strict rules to minimize catabolism and build more lean muscle mass. Few people can adhere to the rules well, so we need to rely on supplements.
Starting with protein supplements, choosing a good whey protein will help you build perfect muscle. Whey Protein will help you gain lean muscle, reduce catabolism and burn more fat [6]
You can also take some caffeine pre-workout supplements (Called Pre-workout) that contain caffeine to help you train more pulses [7,8].
Alternatively, you can use green tea because it contains more EGCG and more caffeine than coffee to boost metabolism [9]. This combination is effective in reducing fat and increasing exercise energy [10].
You can think of some good fats, like fish oil, that will help you burn more fat [11,12]. They even contain omega-3s, which further increase muscle protein synthesis [13].
Next is not to forget Beta-alanine supplements (See what Beta-alanine is); they contribute to the fight against fatigue. During exercise, you will reduce the amount of carnosine; using Beta-Alanine will help improve the efficiency of Carnosine. More and more intense training [14].
Get adequate rest after exercise.
Finally, the 9 effective ways to squeeze muscle fat loss today are that you have to rest after training.
Resting will help reduce the amount of cortisol that causes catabolism. Get a good night's sleep and get enough sleep (about 8 hours is standard). It repairs damage during exercise and helps ease your mind to get ready for the next day.
Above are all 9 effective fat tightening muscles for you. Whether you find yourself lacking anywhere or want to add something else. Then the comment box is right below.
View more:
- How Can I Lose Belly Fat in a Month?
- How To Lose Belly Fat By Running?
- How Many Km Should I Walk a Day to Lose Weight and Belly Fat?
References
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