What are your goals… increase muscle, to lose body fat, are you training for a marathon? I’ve been watching the crossfit games and I’ve got to say they look the most well rounded athletes. In an ideal world right now, I’d like to have awesome endurance, see my abs pop, increase muscle mass and lose body fat at the same time.

While it is possible to aim for all those things, in my experience focusing on one goal at a time is much more doable. It’s much easier to focus on putting on muscle when you are not in a calorie deficit because you are trying to lose body fat.

When I’m at the gym I’m watching all the guys training, for purely professional reasons of course ; )

It looks like most guys will go to the gym to get big and buff. fair enough too, if I had that much testosterone thats exactly what I’d be doing!

Some are training 5-6 days a week and training heavy and to a high intensity every session.

Contrary to what most believe, harder is not always smarter, even in the gym.

To gain maximum size typically requires high reps and heavy weights, training that muscle group to hypertrophy or failure. You’ll notice the pump that you get with this kind of training.

Whenever training to this kind of intensity your body must have enough glycogen in the muscle (stored carbohydrates is a good way to understand it) to push out to maximum effort.

After 60-90 minutes, glycogen stores from the muscle can be depleted just from this 1 session and it can take roughly 2 days to be fully replenished, 1 if your super, super efficient with your diet.

Not enough glycogen means not enough energy to push out heavy. Kind of defeating the purpose don’t you think?

Drop down the frequency, focus on quality rather than quantity. A strength session in between heavy, high rep hypertrophy days, and training a different muscle group on those in-between days would be more beneficial to your goals when trying to gain size.

Goodness do I dare recommend a rest day mid week?!?! But what if it meant you could truly maximise chest day or leg day following that rest because of the amount of glycogen you have now replenished ; )

The most important meals of your day when putting on size, is the ½ hour window after training and again 2 hours after training. At no other time are your muscle cells more receptive to receiving glucose.

The most beneficial foods at these times are high glycemic, white and refined. Yes these foods do actually have a purpose!

Of course there are always variables which determines the best for you as an individuals. Always.

It depending on your lean mass, your daily calorie needs, what kind and how much exercise you are doing etc, everybody is different.

If you are coming to the workshop this weekend you’ll find out exactly what’s required, just for you.

Make sure you eat enough calories. Even being 200 calories short a day can inhibit muscle growth.

This is why trying to cut body fat and increase muscle at the same time can be tricky.

Over the next 3 workshops one of the things we’ll be going through is how to cycle your calories and carbohydrates to bust out of plateaus and maximise training days.

References:

http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/glycogen-replenishment-after-exhaustive-exercise