1. #1
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    Post Fat Loss: Weight Loss rep range

    There is no rep range for cutting. The same training that builds muscle in the presence of calories will preserve muscle in the absence of calories. There are pros and cons to high vs low reps for cutting, but I know from experience that I've built muscle with anything from 1RMs to 50-rep sets, and that same stimulus that tells the body that it's important to get more muscle if possible will also tell the body not to get rid of that same muscle if it can avoid it.



    Higher reps burn more calories in the moment. If (pulling hypothetic numbers out of my posterior) a 1RM squat burns 5kcal, then a single squat at 50% 1RM should theoretically burn 2.5kcal, but can be repeated 20+ times, for a total of 50kcal or more.



    Lower reps are a better insurance policy for getting all muscle fibres recruited. On a high rep set, the mind will likely fail before the body does. There are guys out there whom I can only assume are one half crazy and the other half insane, who use rest-pause methods to do 20 rep squats with their 10RMs. I think it's safe to say that they're getting a good dose of muscle fibre recruitment going on. Most people cannot push themselves to do that, however, so to rack up enough reps per set to really plough through their energy stores means the intensity may be so low that they don't actually push their muscles -- it's their heart and lungs and determination that burns out first.



    *GA Notes* Lower reps get the HR to increase mines about 135-140BPM I lift heavy a lot as I powerlift mainly.



    This program is very simple. You will be performing strength training 3 non-consecutive days per week. Every training day you will perform a big compound lift for the legs, a big compound push for the upper body, and a big compound pull for the upper body. In just 3 movements you will train most of the muscles of the body. This program is suitable for both males and females -- it will look more intimidating to most females, but it will be just as effective at promoting fat loss for them as it will for the guys.



    The loading parameters are based on programs by Bill Starr and Glenn Pendlay. For each exercise you will perform 5 sets of 5 reps, adding weight on each set to a top set of 5. Ideally, the 5 sets should be loaded with the following percentages of the target weight for the top set:



    Set 1: 50% Set 2: 62.5% Set 3: 75% Set 4: 87.5% Set 5: 100%



    After the 5th set, on every exercise (except for deadlifts, which will be completed with the top set of 5), you will return back to the weight used on the 3rd set and attempt a set of 8+ reps.



    The reason for ramping up 5 sets of 5 like this is because it promotes strength, which promotes retention of lean body mass when you're losing weight, which means that the weight lost will be coming from where you want to lose it (ie fat), rather than allowing you to end up "skinnyfat" after all your hard work. Adding weight to each set gives ample warm up for the top set, and having but 1 set at a heavy weight means that there is a fairly low amount of volume in this routine, which means minimal fatigue. You'll already be eating at a calorie deficit, and a calorie deficit is a recovery deficit, so maximising work while minimising recovery needs is the aim of the game.



    The extra set of 8+ allows for some extra technique work, burns some extra calories, and reinforces strength development. It also provides a different kind of stimulus to just the 5 sets of 5.



    You will start with a top weight that's reasonably challenging, but not exhaustive. You should not be starting with your 5RM, and really the best weight to start with is likely to be 10-20% below your 5RM so that you've got room to progress the weight forwards.



    Each week, if you get all 5 reps with good form on the 5th set, and 8 or more reps with good form on the 6th set, you will increase the weight on the top set by 2.5kg/5lb next time.



    (Note: If your equipment does not allow you to make 2.5kg/5lb jumps in weight, then add 1 extra rep to the top set each week until you have added 1 rep/2.5kg increments in the next jump. eg If your equipment goes up in 10kg jumps, then divide 10 by 2.5 and you have 4x2.5kg increments, therefore you will add 1 rep per week to your top set until all 4 additional reps have been completed, for a total of 9 reps in the last week of the cycle. Then move up to the next weight progression and return to 5 reps on the top set.)



    If several weeks go by and you haven't been able to increase the load on a lift, reduce the top set weight by 10% and start working back up. If you get stuck at the same weight once you've worked back up, it's time to look into a substitute exercise that targets the same muscle groups but in a different way.



    Your training days, and the exercises within each, are as follows: Day 1

    Back Squats 5x5, 1x8+

    Overhead Press 5x5, 1x8+

    T-Bar Row 5x5, 1x8+

    Day 2

    Deadlift 5x5

    Incline Bench Press 5x5, 1x8+

    Cable Row 5x5, 1x8+

    Day 3 Front Squats 5x5, 1x8+

    Bench Press 5x5, 1x8+

    Lat Pull Down (or Pull Ups) 5x5, 1x8+





    Cardio/Conditioning/Abs You do not need to do any sort of cardio to lose weight or burn fat. I know you've been taught all your life that you do, but you don't. Can it be helpful? Yes. Is it required? No. Cardio burns calories, but at no greater rate (per time spent training) than the exercises in this program. It does not promote the preservation of lean body mass, so 1kg lost through diet and cardio will not be as beneficial as 1kg lost through diet and strength training. Cardio adds a lot of volume to your training, and activities like running, boxing and step-aerobics in particular are high impact, which means lots of recovery is required. We're trying to keep recovery needs to a minimum.



    If you're going to do cardio in spite of the above paragraph (be it for personal enjoyment, health benefits, or just refusal to abstain from it while trying to lose weight), you may do it immediately after strength training or on non-training days. Make sure you have at least 1 day per week in which you don't do any training, as recovery is important. Do not do any cardio, other than a light warm up, before strength training, as it will deplete your performance during your strength training sessions. Strength training is important for fat loss, cardio is optional. Don't sacrifice that which is a priority for that which is an option.



    You may do some light ab work immediately after strength, but not before-hand, and not on the days between training sessions. Every exercise in the main program will strengthen your abs -- and will be hindered if they are fatigued from being worked within the 24 hours prior to training. Again, priorities. Strengthening the whole body including the abs will protect a lot of lean body mass from being lost instead of fat. Strengthening the core at the expense of the rest of the body will do very little to protect peripheral lean body mass from being lost instead of fat, and will contribute to becoming "skinnyfat."



    Diet Exactly how much you should be eating is very individualistic. As a ballpark figure, I'd say most people should be starting out at about 2,000kcal/day for weight loss. Some petite people will need to go lower, some large-framed athletic people will need to go higher. There are calculators out there for figuring out how many calories per day your should be consuming based on age, gender, height, weight and daily activity, but ultimately experience will give the answer on what's best for you. You should be targeting 0.5-1lb (or 0.25-0.5kg) weight loss per week. More is not normally better, except for early on in a morbidly obese person's weight loss journey. This will add up to being in a calorie deficit of about 200-500kcal/day. In other words, if you expend 2,400kcal/day through living and training, you'll need to be eating 200-500kcal/day less than that, so 1,900-2,200kcal total intake.



    You should be consuming approximately 1g protein per lb bodyweight per day, or 2g protein per kg bodyweight per day. So a 75kg person should be consuming roughly 150g protein per day while on this program. Protein consumption is the other side of the coin (the first side being strength training) that will contribute greatly to the maintenance of lean body mass. The best sources of protein come from animals. Vegetable protein isn't very good by comparison. If you are a vegetarian, then this may cause your strength training progress to be slower, and your percentage of lean body mass lost from weight loss to be higher. Unfortunately, that's just something that comes with the territory. Likewise, this means for those of you who have been told to abstain from meat in order to lose weight, that you've been given some sub-par advice. Protein supplements are not necessary to accumulate the required protein to get the most out of this program, but they may be beneficial. Just remember that they are supplements, and should be treated as such.



    You should consume about half as much fat as you do protein. So, for a 75kg person, they'd be targeting about 75g of fat each day.



    Protein and carbohydrates each contain about 4-4.5kcal/g, and fat contains about 9kcal/g. Once you've factored in your protein and fat needs within your total calories for the day, the remainder of calories can come from carbohydrates or more fat and protein.



    When it comes to carbohydrates, in general the closer they are to their natural state, the better. So fruit and vegetables are a good source of carbs; milk is a good source of carbs; wholemeal/multigrain bread is an okay source of carbs; cakes and cookies are a less than ideal source of carbs, but can be consumed in moderation from time to time.



    If you want to be healthy, which I recommend, get plenty of vegetables in you, and stay hydrated. I don't know of any evidence to support that drinking plenty of water and eating plenty of vegetables = fat loss (although these habits do reduce room for high-calorie alternatives), but ultimately what's the point in looking good if your blood vessels are about to close over or your kidneys are about to shut down?



    Make sure you're properly fed before training. Training like this on an empty stomach will lead to sub-par performance and crummy results...and you'll just plain hate it. Making sure you've had your breakfast, you're energised and are satiated, will lead to good performance and more enjoyment (at least less misery) in the gym, so you'll get more out of the program.
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    High volume versus High Intensity Weight Training To Lose Fat



    On Tuesday, in Weight Training for Fat Loss Part 1, I looked at a few basic concepts in terms of the role of weight training while dieting for fat loss. First I looked at the basic goal of dieting which, with one possible exception, is generally aimed at losing fat while maintaining muscle mass (or at least minimizing its loss).

    Then I took a quick look at the two major ‘types’ of resistance training that are often recommended during dieting: metabolic type weight training (higher rep/short rest interval) and heavy weight training (lower repetition/longer rest interval). While both have their pros and cons in terms of how they can impact on the overall goal of dieting, my basic conclusion was that if you had to pick one type of training to perform on a diet, it should be heavy training. I won’t repeat the reasons here, go read Part 1.
    I finished that article by asking why it had to be one type of training or another. As I noted, clearly there is no reason why weight training while dieting must be solely one type of training or the other. More accurately, there’s no reason that metabolic type work can’t be added in some fashion to properly performed heavy weight training. This can give the pros of each while eliminating the cons of each at the same time.
    The question then becomes how to go about combining them which is what I’m going to look at today.

    What Not to Do
    First I want to talk about how folks should absolutely not try to combine the two types of training. As I mentioned in Part 1, a common idea during fat loss dieting is that training volume and/or frequency should go UP (compared to where it was when more food was being eaten).
    This is, simply, idiotic. Recovery will always be impaired when calories are restricted and trying to add more and more training to an already heavy load may explain why so many people end up so severely overtrained at the end of extended diets: the combination of too much training and too few calories is a bad, bad thing.
    So what’s the implication of this: something has to be cut back. And in this case, again assuming that someone wants to add some type of metabolic weight training to their heavy weight training, what has to be cut back is the volume and possibly frequency of heavy training.
    By doing this, there will be more ‘room’ in the weekly training schedule for the performance of the metabolic type work without destrying the dieter. Which makes a nice transition into a discussion of maintenance training.

    Maintaining Training Adaptations
    Both research and practical experience over the years has pointed out one very important thing with regards to training: the amount of training that it takes to maintain a given adaptation is much much less than it took to develop it in the first place. That is to say, while it may take a significant amount of work to develop something (strength, size, aerobic capacity), you can generally maintain that level of adaptation with much less work.
    This is actually a tenet of some types of periodization schemes: acknowledging that it becomes progressively more difficult to develop everything at once as folks get more advanced, many approaches to periodiziation of training will alternate periods where something is being focused (being trained at full volume) with periods of it simply being maintained (while something else is developed).
    I’ve actually written about this on the site in the article series Periodization for Bodybuilders and I’ll be repeating some of those ideas here. When I use specialization routines with folks (something I’ll write about eventually), I will move non-specialized bodyparts to maintenance using the recommendations that I outlined in that article series and will repeat below.
    The basic conclusion, again from both research and practical experience is that both volume and frequency of training can usually be cut by up to 2/3rds (that is, to 1/3rd of what you did to improve it) but with one massively important caveat: the intensity of that training must be maintained.
    Put another way, you could maintain volume and frequency at the same level but if you cut intensity, you will lose the adaptation. Basically any combination that’s ever been looked at only works if intensity is maintained.
    That last one is the key and goes to a lot of what I mentioned in Weight Training for Fat Loss Part 1, if you reduce the intensity of your weight training (and here I’m using intensity to indicate weight on the bar), you will lose the adaptations that you worked so hard to develop (strength or size).
    Let me put this into more practical terms. Let’s say you’ve just finished a hypertrophy phase where you were training to gain muscle. On average let’s say that you were performing 6 heavy sets of 6-8 repetitions per muscle group twice per week (say an upper/lower split as discussed in my article on Training Frequency for Mass Gains).
    Based on the 2/3rds rule, you could conceivably cut back to 2 heavy sets of 6-8 reps (maintaining the same weights you finished the cycle with to the best of your ability) once per week and maintain your strength and size. That is, both volume (6 sets becomes 2 sets) and frequency (2 workouts becomes 1 workout) can be reduce by 2/3rds but ONLY if intensity (weight on the bar) is maintained.
    Yes, 2 heavy sets.
    I should mention that there is clearly a limit to this. If someone is only doing 2 work sets for an exercise, clearly they can’t cut back to zero sets. I’m hoping that nobody reading this would make that kind of silly assumption in the first place.
    I’d note in this context that many athletes use a similar approach when they move from more general preparation to their competition periods. As the volume of specific event work goes up, something has to give and that something is usually general weight training.
    Athletes found years ago (and research backed it up later), that strength training volume and/or frequency could be cut back significantly while maintaining strength for extended periods but only if the intensity of training was maintained. The same thing applies here, just looking at muscle size as much as strength.
    Now, I still tend to keep training frequency a bit higher even while dieting but, at the very least, this is one place where I wouldn’t get quite as worried about only having someone training a bodypart one time per week.
    But as you might imagine, this ends up being a pretty major cut back in overall training volume. A lower body workout with 20-24 work sets that took 1-1.5 hours to complete at full volume is going to be finished in a fraction of that time. Six to eight total work sets might be hammered out in 30-40 minutes depending on how many warmups you do and how much you dawdle between sets. Leaving time and energy to do other things.
    As one final comment, this is actually my approach to lifting during a diet even if metabolic work isn’t being added to the training. On a diet, usually folks find that while their top end may not suffer much, their endurance and work capacity often goes down. They can get through a couple of heavy sets but then everything drops off in a big way. I’d rather them just get the couple of quality heavy sets done and move on.
    Trying to maintain the same heavy volume they were doing prior to the diet is usually a mistake so heavy training volume goes down. Again, most of the fat loss will come from the diet and/or cardio anyhow, heavy weight training should be performed to maintain muscle mass and the same maintenance rules apply regardless of what else is being done.
    But the point of this article was the assumption that a trainee wants to combine metabolic type weight training with their heavy weight training so let’s look at that.

    Metabolic Weight Training Parameters
    As I noted in Weight Training for Fat Loss Part 1, metabolic weight training is generally described by the performance of higher repetitions with shorter rest periods. Frequently large muscle group exercises are often advocated for an increased calorie burn or what have you. Various types of barbell complexes, often using a mixture of strength and Olympic lifting movements are often advocated as are kettlebell movements.
    I’d note that it’s usually better to avoid high skill exercises since form often breaks down badly with fatigue and even with light weights this can cause injury. Only folks with extremely well developed technique can do high skill movements in this fashion without killing themselves.
    I often actually advocate machine training (yes, I know, blasphemy) for this reason, I think it tends to be safer while accomplishing essentially the same goals; it also makes moving quickly through the gym to keep rest intervals short a bit easier. You can still pick compound movements (e.g. leg press, chest press, row) with the dreaded machines.
    Rather than focus on the specific modality or exercise, I just want to take a quick look at some loading parameters. Again, they tend to vary depending on the underlying philosophy of the coach in question but generally speaking anywhere from 2-4 sets of 15-20 repetitions of anywhere from 5-7 exercises done with short rest intervals (60 seconds or less) would be fairly common for this type of training. As you might imagine, this doesn’t make for terribly long workouts (20-40 minutes or so) but they can be exceedingly fatiguing. Which is part of the point.
    Frequency for metabolic weight training can vary from perhaps 2-4 workouts per week. Of course, this will always depend on the volume of training being done and what else is being done workout wise. You’ll see this reflected in the sequencing examples below.

    Sequencing
    So now we have the parameters to set up a week of training for fat loss for both heavy (low volume/high intensity) and metabolic (higher volume/lower intensity) work. How do we combine them in a weekly schedule?
    Fundamentally, of course, there are two basic approaches that can be taken: you can do the workouts on the same day or on different days. Yeah, duh.
    Some of that choice will have to be decided on individually although I’d note that in my experience most people try to train too damn much on a diet in the first place. When in doubt, please err on the side of a little less training than too much. In the long-run, it will pay off.
    Some of it will also depend on how you divide up the heavy weight training. Some like to move to simply 3 short heavy workouts per week. Or even two, training full body at each. With only a couple of work sets per bodypart, this is eminently doable and might take an hour start to finish. You probably wouldn’t want to put metabolic work after that, they could go on two other days of training.
    Another option would be a more traditional split routine, if someone wanted to stick with a 4 day/week upper/lower workout, they would probably be best off combining the two types of workouts together. So go to the gym, warm up, perform your heavy work (30-40 minutes or possibly less) and then follow it up with metabolic work (done at the lower end of the volume recommendations to keep the workout length manageable).
    Someone with less recovery ability might do better with the 3 day/week upper/lower I described in the Training Frequency for Mass Gains article again combining the heavy and metabolic work but only being in the weight room three times per week.
    Of course, as I noted above, dieting is one place where I don’t have as much of an issue with a once/week bodypart training frequency and this can also be done by combining the heavy and metabolic work together since each individual heavy workout is likely to be pretty short since only a couple of bodyparts are being worked.
    I’ve tried to show some of these options below. H is heavy weight training, Met is metabolic weight training. For no particular reason, I’m going to assume no weekend training sessions although folks who can train weekends can separate things out a bit more.

    Day Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 4 Option 5: UD2
    Monday Full Body H Upper H + Met Upper H + Met Chest/Delts/Tris H + Met Depletion
    Tuesday Met Lower H + Met Depletion
    Wednesday Lower H + Met Legs/Abs + Met
    Thursday Full Body H Upper H + Met Full Body Tension
    Friday Met Lower H + Met Upper H + Met Back/Bis + Met
    Saturday Full Body Power
    Sunday
    Monday Full Body H Upper H + Met Lower H + Met Chest/Delts/Tris H + Met Depletion
    Tuesday Met Lower H + Met Depletion
    Wednesday Upper H + Met Legs/Abs + Met
    Thursday Full Body H Upper H + Met Full Body Tension
    Friday Met Lower H + Met Lower H + Met Back/Bis + Met
    Saturday Full Body Power
    Sunday

    Options 1 and 2 are folks who can recover from 4 days/week in the weight room, which they do depends on how much they like or dislike full body workouts. Option 3 is for folks who can’t and need more total days of recovery. Option 4 would be just one of a zillion different ways to use a traditional bodybuilding split routine.
    One problem that does arise with this type of thing is that metabolic weight training tends to be full body in nature and this doesn’t always synch well with split routines. If metabolic work on Monday for legs leaves you too exhausted to go heavy on Wednesday on the heavy leg day, this won’t be a good option.
    Finally, since no Internet article is complete without an appropriate product plug, Option 5 is the weekly schedule for my Ultimate Diet 2.0. In that book, rather than referring to it as metabolic work, I called the high rep/short rest period work depletion work since the primary goal was glycogen depletion to set up the cycle. That diet also used two different types of heavy training noted as Tension (heavy sets of 6-8) and Power (sets of 3-6). I’d note that it also incorporates a massive carb-load on Friday and eating at maintenance or slightly above on Saturday and Sunday. But it’s a very specific diet (for advanced dieters looking to get extremely lean while maintaining or even gaining muscle mass) and that schedule wouldn’t be an appropriate training schedule outside of the specifics of the diet set up.
    I’d note that the above chart doesn’t even begin to exhaust the possibilities. I’m sure some reading this are wondering about doing heavy work three days/week and metabolic work on the alternate three days per week. Well…can it be done? Maybe. Should it be done? For most I would tend to say not.
    What about two heavy days and three metabolic days per week with two days off? That would be at least more workable. Three heavy days and two metabolic days on the in-between days? Again more workable. Just watch out for feelings of malaise, fatigue, inflammation, and the rest that tends to signal that you’re overtraining.
    And of course the above doesn’t deal with other aspects of training. What about cardio? What about intervals? What about skills work for athletes who do more than just lift weights to get jacked? Well, that would have to be the topic for another article.
    I’d only note that there is simply a limit to how much high intensity work can be performed under any circumstances, and that amount tends to go down when folks are dieting. I find that too many people, in their quest for EXTREME results have a tendency to try and throw together every different type of high-intensity training without paying attention to the overall loading or the interaction of the different components. And they pay the price.
    Simply, if you want to bring in one high intensity modality, something else has to be dropped out to compensate. But that’s another topic for another day to cover in any kind of detail.

    Summing Up
    So that’s that, a look at weight training for fat loss. As I noted in Weight Training for Fat Loss Part 1, there are both pros and cons to the different types of weight training while dieting for fat loss. Assuming that maintenance of muscle mass is the goal, some form of heavy weight training must be kept in the program. In fact, if only one kind of weight training were to be performed, that’s what I’d pick (with the possible exception of complete beginners).
    However, the volume and frequency can (and generally, should) be brought down when maintenance is the goal. Recovery always goes down on a diet (unless you’re taking drugs) and that means that training must be reduced to avoid killing the dieter.
    So long as intensity (in this case, weight on the bar) is maintained, volume and frequency can be reduced by up to 2/3rds each without significant loss of strength or muscle mass. Basically, from the standpoint of strength and muscle maintenance, it’s far better to get 2 high quality sets than 6 half-assed ones.
    If desired, that will allow other types of training, in this specific case metabolic work, to be added to the training program. Sequencing will depend on the individual, how well or poorly they recover and the specifics of the diet but hopefully I’ve given enough information for folks to set things up for themselves.
    Fat Loss: Weight Loss rep range

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