Let's talk strength.......

[naughtoj]

Hi everybody. Wanted to come here to clear up a little confusion I have on some topics...

First off.....do you have to "gain" muscle in order to gain strength?? To acheive an increase in one, do you need to increase the other??

I am lifting weights in the hope of gaining muscle, which I guess I really don't need, being 19% bodyfat at 5'0 134 pounds, which is pretty solid, but I assumed that to gain strength I would want to put on muscle mass, right?? So, I guess I would like to lose more bodyfat, but is it not impossible to gain muscle weight and lose bodyfat at the same time?? You can try, but if you are eating to gain muscle, which means you CANNOT be in a calorie deficit, you will gain some fat with it because you are in an anabolic state. OR you can lift to PRESERVE what you have, to a certain extent, but if you are losing weight in the form of fat it is inevitable that atleast a small percentage of the total weight loss will be muscle loss. This is a catabolic state, right??

I am confused because right now I have started the Firms Upper Body and Standing Legs and am trying to do them with the heaviest weight I can handle twice a week each. I also am running/steep hiking around 3 or 4 mornings a week BEFORE the weight workouts for around 1 hour-1 hour 30 min. Sometimes I go on an additional bike ride at night and always do something on the weekends, usually of even longer duration, as that is my "fun" time. But, something always aches on me and I don't always feel powerful. I am watching what I eat to lose fat, but the scale really isn't moving up or down. My thing is, don't I need to decide what I want...either lose fat or put on muscle and eat accordingly. I cannot cut calories and expect to perform at a peak level and gain good muscle mass. Should I be lifting relatively light weight, to preserve muscle??

I just notice that on all these forums, everyone realizes the importance of lifting "heavy", but is always on some kind of diet or calorie restricition. Isn't this counter productive to muscle gain?? If I reduce my weight to give my tired legs a break and leave my calories semi-restriced (1500-1800 a day) won't I experience the same results as I would if I eat the same semi-restricted diet and lift heavy?? I feel like maybe I need to reanalyze my goals, as I may be working against myself..
Also, regarding pushups..my sister recently started working out about 3 months ago and can already do full body pushups. I have been working out with weights with my upper body for 2 months and cannot get off my knees and sometimes cannot finish all the pushups in Upper Body. But I have more lean mass than her, definitly more muscular with shorter arms...so what gives?? Why does it seem so easy for her now and seem like it is not getting that much easier to me??

I am sorry this is so long, but sometimes i have these ideas in my mind that don't come out so quick in words!!! Any help is appreciated, if you know what i am saying here....thanks...Janice

 

[twink20164]

Here's my two cents. If you don't want to put on bulk or extra muscle and you are trying to lose bodyfat, I would think you should do a circuit workout. By doing a circuit workout you are lifting and doing cardio and keeping your heart rate up the whole time. I am pretty muscular and when I do lifting heavy I put on some bulk and I prefer the lean toned look so I do circuits. If your goal is to stay toned and lose fat try circuits. For example: ( i did this workout for 2 months)
Monday's
Warmup
Dumbell Flyes (10 reps)
Overhead Shoulder Press (10 reps)
1.5 min. of cardio
(Do this three times)

Bench Press (10 reps)
Lateral Raise (10 reps)
1.5 min of cardio
(do this three times)

Pushups (10)
Front raise (10)
1.5 min of cardio
(3x)

Get my drift. 3 days a week one day, biceps and triceps next chest and shoulder, next legs and back

It's a really good workout. Hope this helps

 

[Bobbi]

Hi, Janice, to gain strength you need to increase the weights you lift. That may mean more muscle mass but maybe not. It depends on your body. I am quite strong but not particularly muscular-looking. I looked toned. Some women (like Cathe) are muscular and add muscle mass but doesn't it look great! Just slowly increase your weight until you reach the desired strength level. I lift more moderate than heavy these days and I am very strong so you don't need to worry about going extremely heavy. Good luck!

Bobbi http://www.plaudersmilies.de/chicken.gif Chick's Rule!

 

[cyberfit]

Janice, I have a book titled "More Muscle" by Ken Sprague (Human Kinetics) which answers all of your questions. Here are some excerpts (this is a great book, by the way):

When dieters fight fat, their bodies fight back! In other words, your intellectualized goals might be contrary to your body's subliminal needs. Frustrated weight trainers have always suspected that such resistance is at work as pounds become increasingly harder to shed as the diet stretches into weeks and months. Those frustrated weight trainers are right.

When the body runs short on food energy, it raids the biological pantry for stored fat and glycogen. Fat from fat cells and glycogen stored in the liver and muscle are easily converted into energy. The process has been refined through millions of years of evolutionary trials and errors. Modern weight-loss diet plans rely for success on this timeworn process of larger raids to drop body weight.

But the conditioned weight trainer is not your typical dieter. He or she may be at or near ideal body weight, so he or she doesn't want to follow the typical dieter's pattern. The weight trainer's emphasis is muscle. His or her goal is to retain muscle while losing a few pounds of fat. Meeting that goal requires careful attention to detail.

It is not uncommon to find a finely tuned weight trainer with as little as 2% body fat. What happens if that 2% of fat is entirely consumed by the body because the athlete hasn't been eating enough? After gobbling the available fat, the body satisfies its energy appetite with protein. Metaphorically, it feast on protein that is part of that hard-earned muscle tissue. That's a serious problem for the weight trainer. The least that will happen is loss of muscle efficiency as he or she veers toward malnourishment.

The general recommendation from doctors and sports trainers is that the athlete and nonathlete alike keep a little body fat (about 10% of body weight) "hanging around" for food emergencies. The rationale is that it's safer to carry around a few excess, consumable pounds than to take the chance of burning muscle that has taken months or years to build. The average weight trainer, however, abhors excess fat, and if you fall into that category, play it healthy by meniculously monitoring your calorie intake, making sure to protect your gains with enough calories to meet your daily energy expenditures.

Gaining Muscle While Losing Weight? It Won't Happen

In the previous section, we expolred the possibility of the weight trainer's body consuming its own muscle tissue as a last resource for energy. A corollary is: The weight trainer won't gain muscle tissue while on a weight-loss diet.

Intuition and advertising--the before and after pictures--tell us that we can gain muscle while losing weight, but that's not true. A negative energy balance, burning more calories that the food eaten provides, inhibits muscle growth. Why?

The body's genetic agenda is prioritized to maintain health and life at all cost. Consistent with this agenda, energy expenditures are prioritized when abailable energy is in short supply. Topping the list of energy dependent priorities is the basic metabolism that keeps the body alive, such as heartbeat and temperature control.

Next in line for an energy handout is tissue maintenance, keeping the status quo of physical structures. In other words, the body opts to protect the muscle tissue, carbohydrate storehouses, and fat cells present when the weight-loss, lower energy diet began. New tissue--this includes building more muscle tissue--us the last on the list of priorities when allocating scarce energy. The body uses energy to replenish those ugly fat cells and carbohydrate stores before adding any new muscle tissue.

What about those before-and-after pictures? Are they retouched? Not necessarily. Just dieting away the layer of subcutaneous fat that covers the muscle in the before picture creates a bigger, more impressive after picture.

There's another factor to consider: Muscle tissue previously built through weight training and lost when left dormant through a layoff or reduction in workout intensity will increase in volume, even during a diet. The renewed intensity merely triggers a "maintenance response," as if the tissue had never been lost. In fact, the basic strength-size structures (myofibrils) hadn't been lost.

Reinvigorating the size and strength of old muscle tissue is possible during a weight-loss diet; but don't count on new muscle tissue. It won't happen. Gaining new muscle tissue requires the stress of weight training and a positive energy balalnce.

Bulk Up, Cut Down

Bulking up is bodybuilding vernacular for adding both fat and muscle. The bodybuilder bulks up in the off-season, adding muscle to his frame. Conversely, he "cuts" the fat from his body before competition by dieting to remove the excess fat that covers the combination of newly developed and old muscle tissue. Can he stop this biological yo-yo effect, eating just enough to add muscle but not fat?

Pratically speaking, no. Adding new muscle tissue requires a positive energy balance; that is, more energy consumption than need to maintain existing tissue and energy consuming activities. Here's the rub: The extra energy consumed is stored as fat. Hence, in practice, muscle growth leads to more fat. Why "in practice?" Because it's impractical to regulate caloric intake to precisely match expenditures (including new muscle tissue). A few calories too few will prevent muscle growth; a few too many will add fat. That doesn't mean that a gram of fat is stored with every gram of new muscle. As noted above, existing muscle can be retained while losing fat. It simply means, in practice, that new muscle tissue cannot be added without adding just a tiny globule of fat.

The bottom line: Extra food, supplying extra energy, is a requirement of muscle building. Some of that food will add muscle, if heavy training goes hand in hand with heavy eating.
Some of that food piles on as fat, but that's no big deal--after adding 50 pounds of muscle and a few pounds of fat, the fat can be burned away to reveal remarkable changes lying below.

In the interest of not making this any longer, I've have left out some interesting anecdotes that Mr. Sprague uses for illustrative purposes. There is more on this subject in his book as well. I highly recommend "More Muscle" as it's full of information that's written in a very easy to understand manner.

 

[naughtoj]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I did not think anyone would on account of my post being so darn long. Sometimes, I cannot even follow my own thoughts!!

Cyberfit...your suggestion about that book is SO helpful!! I think your post is one of the most all informative I have ever read, and you answered nearly all of my questions. I plan to get the book this weekend!!

I think I get the picture now with it all and have decided that I will keep my calories restricted and try to lose some bodyfat while preserving my muscle. Looking leaner I think is really what is important to me. Sometimes I think it is more muscle, but I really do believe I have enough, if I could just see it all!!! Really interesting about how people "diet" down and think they have built all this muscle, but in fact they really just shed the fat around those muscles so they are just appearing larger. This is what has happened to my sis..but really is you take the amount of weight she has lost compared to the body fat she has lost, you will find that even though she looks great and more buff, she actually had to have lost a small amount of muscle mass. Cutting calories just DOES NOT produce a desireable environment physiologically for muscle growth. What I thought from the get-go.

Thanks again Cyberfit, and if you don't mind, I would love to know your real name. Janice

 

[cyberfit]

Hi Janice. Thanks for your kind words! I'm so glad that I could be of some help to you. You will really get alot of useful information out of Ken Sprague's book. I've had it for several years and I refer to it constantly for information and inspiration...it's packed with interesting tidbits.

Now, as for my real identity...I could tell you but then I would have to kill you (and you can't maintain or build lean muscle when you're dead)...JUST KIDDING!!! My name is Noel Anne Costello.

I shall now return to anonymity.

 

[naughtoj]

Thanks, Noel....Hey, that is my sister's name. Pretty cool. I just like knowing people's first names, especially when they help me out. Seems more personal..Janice