F A Q

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Q. Can you really add muscle and lose fat at the same time?

A. Yes, despite what many people claim, you can.

Here is how:

~ Consume less calories each day than you expend - a 400 to 1000 calorie deficit each day will probably work depending on your weight and stature.
~ Stimulate muscle building using hypertrophy resistance training protocols, - ie lift weights.
~ Alternate strength days with high intensity cardio days - use the "every other day" standard.
~ Increase your daily protein intake to at least .75 grams of protein for every pound you weigh.
~ Simple carbs are your enemy! Decrease or eliminate your daily simple carb intake - nix the refined flours and processed sugars etc..
~ Moderately increase your intake of good fats (unsaturated, like fish oil and olive oil) and fiber.
~ Drink lots of water - and no sports/sugar drinks on cardio days. Among other benefits, water helps your organs work properly so you can burn the fat off faster.

Basically your task is to stimulate and feed muscle growth while simultaneously using a calorie deficit to allow as much fat loss to happen as possible without hurting the muscle growth. In other words and to borrow a phrase, you're going to "burn the fat and feed the muscle".

It's not easy to do but if you are determined and monitor things closely you can do it.

Ideally you should lose no more then about 1 to 2 lbs per week max. If you lose weight faster than that you will probably be catabolizing (consuming) muscle protein as well which would inhibit your goal of muscle growth.

Many people think exercise alone can do it all including weight/fat loss but for the majority of people over the age of 25 exercise alone will not significantly decrease weight or body fat - it takes a nutritionally balanced diet ALONG WITH exercise to lose and keep weight/fat off.

Bulking up first to gain muscle by eating tons of calories each day and lifting, and then starving the fat off to gain definition is "old school" - it's an outdated way of doing things. There have been studies now that have definitively proven that yes, it's true, you can lose the fat and gain muscle at the same time. How long (and to what end) is this possible is another question.



Q. Why do muscles get bigger from weight lifting?

A. Muscle "hypertrophy" begins with a stimulus. The stimulus is resistance (aka "load") which provides a counter force to the muscle's motion (aka "contraction"). This stimulus then causes (you guessed it) a response or adaptation. Bigger muscles are just one of many responses or adaptations to the stimulus of resistance training.

It might help to think of this in terms of the stimulus being catabolic (muscle break down) and the reponse being anabolic (muscle building).

The key points are this: When you lift (or pull) a heavy load you are causing micro trauma to your muscles on the cellular level. This stimulates a repair process that rebuilds the muscle tissue to be better able to handle the new and heavier loads. Through a complex process, chemicals and hormones signal the muscle cells to produce (synthesize) more protein (which is what muscle is mostly made of) thus increasing the cross sectional size of the muscle cells. Also certain inactive cells (called satellite cells) are hormonally signaled to bind to the damaged muscle fiber and contribute to the tissue repair. Some physiologists suspect that the number of individual muscle cells themselves might even increase in number although this has not been verified in humans.

Some equally important components of the catabolic-anabolic cycle are nutrition (protein, carbohydrates and fats) and rest (aka "recovery"), without these vital aspects growth is greatly limited or even non-existent.



Q. Is it ok to do cardio on the same day as strength training?

A. Generally no.

Well, let me restate that. "Ideally" no. Depending on your fitness goals, if you have no other choice then doing both is certainly better than doing neither and probably marginally better than only doing one type all the time.

There are a number of training protocols (training systems and levels) that blur the line between cardio and strength training like "Cross Fit" for instance. But in general, if Im training myself at a gym like 24, Im gonna alternate my cardio days with strength days for the fastest results.

Before your workout, remind yourself what exactly it is you are intending to train this session. Is it strength? Is it AT/LT (ANaerobic Threshold) training? Is it long aerobic endurance? How does todays session fit into your plan? If its just to "burn some calories" then any kind of session will do that. But your body responds to the cardio and strength training stimulus in different ways.

Strength training induces a hormonal and metabolic response in the body that results in stronger and bigger muscles. Cardio/aerobic endurance training does NOT induce such a response except in the cardiovascular/respiratory system (in fact, cardio training uses up the very energy you would otherwise need for anabolic processes to begin following strength training).

These differences begin at the hormonal level of physiological response to exercise and you can see the end results in for example the differing body types found in sports like marathon running vs Olympic sprinting.

Cardio/endurance training actually changes the muscles on a cellular and sub-cellular level by increasing the size of mitochondria in the "aerobic" (type 1 and type 2A) muscle cells and even converting some "ANaerobic" (type 2B) muscle cells to "aerobic" type 2A or possibly type 1's.

The "ANaerobic" type 2B muscle cells are mainly what get bigger from strength training so to get that well defined "cut" look of a body builder or sprinter you would want a lot more of them, not less.

Doing a lot of cardio right after strength training negates the anabolic (muscle building) response you are trying to get from the strength training. This is one reason I prefer to strength train AFTER my cardio workout if I have to combine them.

If you can, separate the two routines by a day (or do a morning and evening split) so that your body will not be "conflicted" hormonally speaking and to maximize the benefits of training - thus improving both your performance and physique.



Q. Is being strong the same as having big muscles?

A. Not necessarily. Although strength and muscle size are related, functional strength is also a matter of neuromuscular coordination and not merely muscle size in and of itself.

Strength still comes from repetitive resistance training, but training specifically for it involves using heavier weights and lower repetitions than what produces the larger muscle gains (aka size) that you often see in say for instance, body builders.

Don't think that body builders arn't strong though as they get quite a bit of strength training done in their routines. But with "high intensity low rep" resistance training (aka, "strength protocols") you stimulate certain muscle structures (namely, more "type 2 fast twitch fibers" and what are called "high threshold motor units") that otherwise do not get stimulated by lesser weights and higher reps. This "heavy weight low reps" protocol produces more strength but not quite as much muscle volume increase as "hypertrophy" (bigger muscle) training can.

In a sense, you're sort of "spreading out" the load response because it's so heavy and thus not stimulating the muscle to get bigger in the same way as slightly lighter loads would do.



will add more FAQ as time permits...

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