If you're reading this, you're probably wondering: "Should my training style be different when changing from muscle building to fat loss?" Lots of people in the fitness industry say to go to a light-weight, high-rep training style when changing into fat loss. The focus is entirely on how much you can sweat, how much you can move your body, and how many calories you can burn.
Light-weight high-rep training is best for building up your endurance, not for building muscle. In fact, this style of endurance training will cause your body to lose fat and the muscle at the same time. All training causes your body to adapt to that style of training. Light-weight high-rep training tells your body to prioritize building up its stamina to prioritize, building up its endurance. In order to become better at this style of training, your body wants to conserve energy. So in order to conserve that energy, to become better at the endurance training that you're doing, your body then starts to lose muscle. As a result, sure, your body weight will start coming down on the scales, but because you're losing both fat and muscle, it'll be exactly the same physique at a lower body weight. In fact, now you're even worse off because your body is better at conserving energy, which means it's going to be using up less calories.
When going into a fat loss phase, your goal is to maintain as much muscle as possible while losing fat. This is done by doing a training style that makes the body want to build muscle whilst also consuming even more protein than normal. In general, when you change from a muscle building phase into a fat loss phase, there should be no major changes. Both of these phases should be using the Big Six as their foundation. That's the squat, the bench press, the deadlift, the overhead press, the barbell row, and the pull up. These six exercises train multiple muscle groups at the same time and will achieve the biggest results in the shortest amount of time.
The training should also be more focused on free weights than it should be on machines. Again, free weights use more muscles in the exercises, so it's going to have more of an effect. That's not to say don't use machines at all. Machines are great for isolation exercises. These are the exercises that'll address any weaknesses you have, while also further enhancing your muscle growth.
However, the one change I would recommend when switching over from a muscle building to a fat loss phase is using a rep range that you don't usually use. For the majority of people watching this video, you probably train in a rep range that's more designed for hypertrophy than strength. This hypertrophy or muscle building rep range can be anywhere between 6 and 20 reps, but in general it's usually between 8 and 15.For these people, when you change to a fat loss phase, you could actually benefit a lot by training in a strength rep range. This is a rep range somewhere between three and six reps. However, if you train more like a powerlifter and your focus is primarily on strength, when you change into a fat loss phase, you would benefit most by changing into a hypertrophy range, particularly in the higher end from 12 to 15 reps.
Because you're in a fat loss phase, you should be in a caloric deficit. So by changing to a strength rep range or a hypertrophy rep range when you change to your fat loss phase, you won't actually get stronger and you won't actually put on muscle. But because this is a novel stimulus or in other words, a stimulus your muscles are not used to receiving, it will still send a very strong muscle building signal to your body. Without enough resources to build muscle, it won't actually build muscle, but it will prioritize maintaining that muscle while you lose fat.
This style of cycling between strength and hypertrophy is something you should already be doing in your training. So from that perspective, your training style doesn't actually change when you go into a fat loss phase. But by timing your change in cycle with when you go into a fat loss phase, you can set yourself up for even more success in losing fat.
But there are some important things to remember. Because this is a fat loss phase, you're on lower calories, which means less energy. As a result, you might find you have less stamina towards the ends of your workouts. You also might need longer rest between sets. You also might find with less calories that your strength is also going down, that the number of reps you can do in a specific exercise decreases by one or two reps. This is just a temporary change as a result of the lower caloric intake. When you come off that fat loss cycle and increase your calories back up to maintenance, your strength will return. And not only will you be just as strong as before, but also you'll look even more shredded.
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