fatlossandmusclebuilding Blog

Gaining fat when trying to put on muscle is a big concern for many people. If you have worked hard to get yourself a nice little six pack, but then decided that you want to put on some more muscle, forcing yourself to over eat can be hard. The thought of losing that six pack, that you worked so hard for can be unbareable!

I came across this excellent post on Tom Venutos Burn the Fat Blog, which may interest you. He gives some great advice to do with the subject of gaining muscle without gaining too much fat. He mentions the importance of controlling your calorie intake, which is a vital factor in muscle growth. There is some great advice here, definately worth a look…

Who should train with weights…? In my opinion everyone should!

Weight training used to be shyed away from by everyone except bodybuilders and strongmen. It was thought that anyone else should keep away from lifting around heavy weights, as people associated weight lift with becoming muscle bound. Even professional trainers would keep their athletes clear of weight lifting in there training routines.

As advances in training techniques and more importantly research into weight training was made, the true benefits of training with weights was realised. It was discovered that training your muscles with weights can improve muscle tone, increase muscle size, increase strength, increase body weight and improve endurance. With these benefits being discovered, weight training soon became massively popular outside of  the bodybuilding world and into the main stream, from pro athletes and even the public. 

Now days almost every single athlete in any physical sport will have some sort weight training in their training schedules, in fact it is vital for them to complete at their highest possible levels.

The advanges of weight training should not only be used by athletes/sportsman. As mentioned the advantages of weight training include improved muscle tone, increase in muscle size, increase in strength, increase in body weight and improvement in endurance. If you are trying to improve your body, whether that is by building muscle or losing fat, weight training is essential. When trying to lose weight, or fat to be more specific, weight training will help prevent muscle loss that often occurs when people diet. The advantages of keeping muscle when you are losing weight are numerous. Maintaining and toning muscle whilst you are losing weight will prevent you from getting that scrawny, tired, unhealthy look to you. You often see people who have lost weight fast and look like a bag of bones! Also muscle actually burns calories! Even when you are resting your muscles burn calories, this will help in your fat loss.

Even if you are happy with the way you look and are not interested in altering the look of your body, weight training can still be an important part of your bodies well being. Having a strong musclular system can help reduce the likeliness of problems when you are older, including back problems. Through weight training you can build a strong core, which includes your lower back and abdominal muscles, which supports your whole upper body. This can reduce the chance of injury in every tasks, including mowing the lawn and even getting out of bed, you’d be suprised how many people injure themselves doing simple tasks.

So i’ll ask you again… ”who should train with weights?”…that’s right EVERYONE! Everyone can benefit from weight training, whether you are a professional athlete, a recreational athlete or even a none sporting person who wants to just stay healthy.  

Hi Everyone!

Well I’ve returned from my two week caravan holiday in the South of France, had a lovely time could have stayed a lot longer! The only things i missed was the comfort of my own bed and my gym!

Having a week off the training and dieting doesn’t hurt every now and again, but any longer may start to eat away at your hard earned results. As I had a two week holiday this year I decided that I was going to still try to eat fairly well and get as much exercise as I could fit in without cutting into my relaxing holiday too much.

I decided to put together a whole body resistance routine which I could complete first thing in the morning without cutting into the days activities, and also without the use of gym equipment. My routine was as follows:-

Bodyweight Full Squat (performed very slowly and controlled) - 3 sets 12-20 reps
Calve Raises (performed on the caravan step!) - 3 sets 12-20 reps
Press ups - 3 sets of 12-20 reps
Pull ups (performed hanging from a branch by our caravan!) - 3 sets 12-20 reps
Tricep dips (performed on the side of my bed!) - 3 sets 0f 12-20 reps
Shoulder side raises (performed with 2 shopping bags) - 3 sets of 12-20 reps
Ab crunches - 3 sets of 12-20 reps

I performed this routine 3 mornings a week. It was designed to keep my muscles active and to prevent muscle loss, not to build any new muscle.

Along with this resistance routine I tried to keep myself as active as possible. I decided to give myself a rest from my usual cardio which involves mainly running, and include alot of swimming, walking, tennis and a few other holiday activaties that me and the family could enjoy together.

I have to say that doing this allowed me to enjoy my holiday to it’s maximum, and I am very pleased to say after taking some measurements now i’m back to normality, that I have had no muscle loss or fat gain during my holiday!

If you are coming up to your holidays, and you want to keep in shape while you are away, I would highly recommend that you throw in as many fun exercise activities that you enjoy as possible. Also why not try my holiday routine above, it will prevent muscle loss on long holidays and only takes 30 mins to complete.

If you are having a short break, a week or less, then having a rest from weight training especially will do you no harm at all. In fact it will give your body chance to recover from your training.

If you are off on your hols, have fun! I’ve got no more planned for a while so the posts will be coming thick and fast again!

So many people try and fail to build muscle, the most common reason why is so simple to correct. More often than not if someone isn’t putting any muscle, or in fact any weight of any kind, it is simply because they aren’t eating enough.

If you are not consuming enough calories (or energy to put it another way), you will not build any new muscle. You need to be in a state of overfeeding for your body to produce new muscle growth. The amount you need to overfeed by varies from person to person, and can vary anywhere from just over your maintenance level (this is the amount of calories you consume to stay at the same weight) to over 500 calories. It really is something that you need to experiment with to find out where you threshold lies.

If you are failing to gain muscle, this is the first thing you need to look at, are you eating enough calories?! No?! then eat more!After that if you are still struggling, then you should start to look at your nutrition, workout and if you are giving you muscles enough rest (this is when they grow, not in the gym!).

I try and vary my blogs and cover as much information as I can on fat loss, muscle building and exercise and fitness in general. I have decided to add a chance for you to get some Q & A on my blog from now on. Hopefully this will allow me to help individuals with any questions or problems they may have with fat loss, muscle building and any exercise and fitness related questions. Anything from diet and supplementation to training advice, just send me your questions and I will try and get as many answered as possible. I post the replies on my blog pages so keep watching!

Send your questions to me at jallmark@fatlossandmusclebuilding.com I’ll do my best to answer as many questions as possible.

All the best,

Jon Allmark.

If you are trying to pack on some serious muscle you need to concentrate on compound or multi-joint lifts. These are exercises that unlike isolation exercises, involve a number of muscle groups to perform. Exercises include the squat, bench press and deadlift, are examples of some of the best.

These compound movements put a lot of stress on the body and shocks the nervous system into releasing the largest amount of muscle building hormones. Also stimulating growth all over the body, so you will pack on size everywhere!

Compound exercises also allow you to shift a lot of weight which is what you need to develop new muscle. I must however stress the importance of proper technique with all of these exercises, as there is a high risk of injury if you try to shift a heavy weight with the wrong technique. I know I always go on about this in my posts, but it really is ever so important and i’ll continue to nag you with it in the future…sorry!

So base your workouts around compound exercises, but don’t completely dismiss isolation exercises. Exercises such as bicep curls are still great to throw in there, just perform them after your compound exercises.

It is a much debated question, should you do cardio when you are trying to build muscle?

Some people claim that you should stay completely away from cardio if you are trying to gain muscle, some say that doing cardio whilst trying to gain muscle, but who is right?!

I think that firstly the following points must be considered:-

1. Are your cardio sessions planned around your resistance training, so as to still allow adequate rest for your muscle groups. For example if you train your legs on a Monday, you shouldn’t be running on a Tuesday. Your legs won’t be getting enough rest, and this may lead to over training.
2. To build muscle you must be overfeed, in other words consuming more calories than you are using up. You will have to allow for the fact that cardio burns up calories (energy), so allowance must be made in your diet to make up the burnt off calories.
3. Do you struggle to put on muscle? If you are someone who finds it hard to put on muscle, then it may pay to leave out the cardio and concentrate on the resistance training aspect of training. Cardio will not build up muscle, it is the resistance training that will do that.

So in short my answer would be if you can fit in cardio without overtraining, and you are able to consume the amount of calories that you need to build muscle then it is fine to carry on with cardio training. If you are finding it hard to gain weight, then it is a good idea to reduce or even eliminate your cardio training while in a muscle building phase. When you have reached your target weight, or have reached the end of your muscle building phase, you can add back in your cardio as normal.  

It is great to have a training partner motivate you and to give you a spot while you are training. The thing that isn’t so good is having a training partner, is when you have one who is a bit to keen to help you with your reps. By over keen, I mean that they try and support you with virtually ever rep that you do. Although they are obviously trying to help you, you need to be completing as many reps as you can on your own to truly monitor your progress. Even just the sightest support can make a huge difference to how hard you are working to lift the weight.

The main reason I have brought this up today is because of a training session I had last week and then an observation I made in the gym today. I usually train on my own, mainly due to the fact that I like to keep my training time short and to focus on my own workout (sounds a bit selfish I know, but if I train with a partner I’m the worlds worst for chatting away!) Anyway I was working my chest in this particular training session, and at the time I was doing the raised dumbell press. A kind passer by had offered to pass the weight to me, and then proceeded to spot me during my set. Although this was very generous of him, he was a bit keen with his spotting and was pushing my elbows in on every rep. Not wanting to seem ungrateful I didn’t say anything and just carried on and ended up doing alot heavier weight for alot more reps than I would do on my own to try and compensate. Now you may think that I’m just an ungrateful whiner, but the reason for my moaning is that I couldn’t tell if I had done more than in my last session, as I was being helped a bit too much. For muscle gain you need to continually progress with the weights you lift and the repitions you complete, and if you have someone doing some of the work for you it becomes really hard to monitor your progress.

My other story was from being in the gym again today. I noticed a couple of lads shoulder pressing some huge weights, but the were hardly moving the weight at all and the other friend was taking most of the weight. For the best results you should be performing every exercise with proper form, which means completing the whole movement. So combining bad technique with someone else doing all the work for you, really isn’t very good at all. 

The job of someone who is spotting you is mainly a safety role, they are their to make sure that you don’t end up crushed under a heavy weight! They can help you by lifting you the weight and supporting you while you steady yourself, but for maximum results you should be doing all of the work yourself. Only when you come to failure and you can’t move the weight any more should they come in to assist, and maybe even for one more rep out with you.

So don’tlet your friend do all the work for you, the harder you work the better the results you will see.

Those of you out there who are relatively new to the whole muscle building thing, or who have trained for years but never really achieved any great results, the best piece of advice that I will give you is this… DON’T TRY TO COPY BODYBUILDERS!

People who want to put on some serious muscle often look to the people who seemingly have already achieved what you are aiming for, copying their routines and their diets, hoping to get the same results. What you need to know is that  these huge bodybuilders are genetically gifted and the the majority of them are drug enhanced.

High volume workouts are popular with some bodybuilders, where they perform set after set of each exercise on each muscle group, causing large amounts of damage to your muscle fibres. The more damage you do, the longer it takes for your muscles to repair and recover. Bodybuilders who do this type of training do tend to train each muscle group only once a week, but even so without amazing genetics or help from drugs, this will more than likely be too much for a normal persons body. It will lead to over training, which will have negative results including possible muscle loss. Stay away from these high volume training routines, leave them to the drug enhanced bodybuilders!

Another technique that is used by bodybuilders for building muscle, is to split their year into a bulking phase and a cutting phase. During a bulking phase some bodybuilders will over eat massively, far more than they need to and keep it up for months at a time. They will put on muscle, but also by the end they will have ALOT of fat as well. Then during their cutting phase, because they have alot of fat to get rid of they have to restrict their calories massively for a long period. Now if me, you or any other person with an average physique and no help from drugs tried to do this, it would go as follows. We would first bulk up gaining a fair amount of muscle and also alot of fat over several months, then we would come to the cutting phase. Now we would restrict our calories and end up losing the fat that we had gained (if we were lucky!), but also the muscle that we had gained, bringing us back to where we started or worse! A good way to tackle this is to set yourself limits on your bodyfat. For example if you were currently 10% bodyfat, you would go on a bulking or muscle building phase until we reached our 12% bodyfat limit, then we would start a cutting or fat loss phase until we hit our lower limit, which could be your original 10% or even less. As we would have added much fat in the muscle building phase, we wouldn’t have to restrict our calories as much and therefore would be able to avoid eating away at our new muscle. You can keep running through this cycle until you have reached your goals. Try and limit each phase two twelve weeks, even if you don’t hit your limits. This will keep your body guessing, and prevent you from hitting a plateau.

So remember to ignore what the huge drug enhanced bodybuilders are doing, because it seems to work for them doesn’t mean it will work for you.

Resistance machines or free weights, which is better? Firstly let’s have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of both…

Resistance machines are a lot safer than free weights to workout with. There is a high risk of injury when working out with free weights, you have to control the weights path without the assistance with machines. You have to really concentrate on proper technique, otherwise you can cause yourself muscle strains, tears and numerous other possible injuries.   

Machines work on a pre-determined path which makes them good for isolating the muscle group that you are working, when lifting free weights it is a lot more difficult to isolate muscle groups. That said resistance machines don’t strengthen your stabiliser muscles, as there is only one path that the weight can go. When training with free weights, you have to control the movement of the weight yourself. This balancing of the weights movement develops your stabiliser muscles.

Free weights give you alot more flexibility than resistance machines, there are countless different movements that you can perform with free weights to suit your needs. Resistance machines have the one or maybe two set exercises that you can perform.

Resistance Machines have the advantage that they are quick and easier to set up for a workout, a quick adjustment to a seat and a the movement of a pin to set or adjust the weight is all that is usually required. When using free weights you have to swop over plates and mess around with putting them back in the racks.  

You can see that resistance machines both have there advantages and disadvantages, which you prefer to train with is down to personal preference. My personal opinion is that resistance machines are great for beginners to start to develop their muscle strength. For more advanced trainers i think that for the majority of your workout you should use free weights, with proper technique great results can be achieved. The fact that you also develop your stabiliser muscles, makes them great for an all round strength. I do also believe that adding in the odd exercise performed on a resistance machine can give great results giving variety to your workouts.