Can You Turn Fat Into Muscle?

Can You Turn Fat Into Muscle?

Fast Tracking Muscle Building by Training Smarter

Fast Tracking Muscle Building by Training Smarter

Everything you NEED to know about muscle building

I can pretty much summarise the main factors of muscle building in 3 simple rules...

Rule 1 - Track calories & macros

 

First thing is always nutrition, you need to be in a calorie surplus in order to develop some serious muscle tissue. If you don’t eat enough it will be extremely difficult to gain muscle, you might get some good results initially, AKA newbie gains, but eventually you’ll need to address your calories.

Food is the most anabolic substance you can utilise. Think about its, the bigger you get the more calories you need, your body will not justify expending all that valuable energy building and maintaining muscles tissue unless there is already a sufficient amount to work with.

Let’s take that one step further and break food down into the three macronutrients, or macros, these are carbs, fats and proteins. You’ll need a respectable amount of all three for the following reasons…

• Carbohydrates for energy and to replenish glycogen

• Healthy amount of fat to support cell growth and produce important hormones, most important one in this topic is testosterone.

• Obviously plenty of protein to help build and recover muscle tissue.

Rule 2 - Incorporate all three mechanisms of hypertrophy 

The three mechanisms are - mechanical tension, metabolic stress and muscle damage.

1. Mechanical tension - Focus on lifting heavy weights! Mechanical tension is providing a maximum amount of tension through a full range of motion, basically providing a lot of resistance in relation to your one rep max, you don’t develop big muscles by lifting small weights. This mechanism is the quickest way to optimise strength gains and is the most important mechanism.

2. Metabolic stress ("the pump") - You know when you’re training and your muscles start pumping up and your feel insanely pumped, well that pump will actually help you build more muscle.  To optimise metabolic stress you need to maintain constant tension on the muscles. Focus on the pain building up in that muscle, stay with it and embrace it. This way, as blood gets pumped into the muscles by the arteries, the steady muscular contractions will prevent the veins from letting blood escape, resulting in high levels of metabolic stress and cell swelling AKA pump.

3. Muscle damage - When you lift weights you create a certain amount of damage to the muscle, when the muscle is damaged it will repair, to help prevent this damage from happening over and over again it will compensate by increase muscle tissue and strength. The best way to influence this damage is by focusing on slow negatives, extended range of motion and high tension in the stretched position of the muscle. This obviously reinforces the importance of strict form.

The best lifts are those that can be manipulated to target each of the three mechanisms. The basic big lifts do the trick - squat, deadlift, hip thrust, bench press, military press, pull-up/pull down and rows. These exercises should feature highly in everyone's programming and tweaked accordingly to hit the three mechanisms.

You can use these three mechanisms in a single disgusting workout, or cycle through them over the course of a week

Rule 3 - Track Progressive overload

The main thing you need to look at when it comes to building muscle and strength is progressive overload, basically progressively lifting more. 

The simplest way to think of progressive overload is the story of the guy on the film “Holes” carrying a pig up the mountain, each day he carries this pig up a mountain, each day the pig got bigger, which meant each day he got stronger. 

Progressive overload requires a gradual increase in volume, intensity, frequency or time in order to achieve the targeted goal of the user. 

- Volume -  how many reps and sets you do

- Intensity - in the context is how much weight you’re lifting 

- Frequency - How often you train 

- Time - How long you train 

Obviously you don’t want to constantly increase how often you train and how long you train for, so a more realistic thing to focus on is the amount of weight you’re lifting. This doesn’t necessarily mean doing your one reps max or three reps and focusing on increasing that. You can work in a more optimal body building range between 6 to 15 reps and  increase the weight you’re doing on those exercises. For example, if you do 3 sets of 10 reps back squat using 100kg, try and do the same amount of reps with 105kg next time you do it, alternatively you can increase the volume and do the same amount of weight but increase the reps to 12, instead if 10, or potentially do an extra set, this is progressive overload, there is more than one way to skin a cat and there is more than one way to progressively overload muscles. You should change up the rep ranges as you go, but try and work in a rep range between 6 to 15 reps. This can change for specific sports such as powerlifting and strong man competitors, but for muscle building this will be a glorious rep range to work with.

When exercising, your body will adapt to a point, but if you want to make further development then you need to exert greater demand on the body by TRAINING HARD and TRAINING SMART.  If you don't progressively overload the muscles by forcing them to do more than they're accustomed to, they have no reason to make further adaptations. Simply put, your body will not develop unless it needs to!

What is the perfect rep range for fat loss?

How do I calculate my rep range for fat loss?

This is a very common question, and it’s not the first time I’ve touched on this subject.

Let’s get straight into it.

High Reps (12-15):

Burn more calories 

Medium Reps (8-12):

Optimise muscle building 

Low Reps (4-8):

Strength

Okay, so if my goal is fat loss, then it makes sense for me to perform a higher amount of reps to burn more calories, correct? Well, not really!

If you want to lose fat, you should be trying to develop a decent amount of muscle tissue (in the gym), the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolic rate. 8-12 reps are gold when it comes to hypertrophy (muscle development). You can very effectively hit all three mechanisms of hypertrophy (three mechanisms of developing muscle):

- Mechanical tension (high resistance)

- Metabolic stress (pump/cell swelling) 

- Muscle damage (stretch)

Okay, so if my goal is fat loss, then it makes sense for me to perform between 8-12 reps, correct? Well, not really!

Possibly the biggest factor when it comes to muscle building is mechanical tension, putting enough resistance through your muscles to force them to develop. You will need to use heavyweight; therefore, you’ll need to perform fewer reps (4-8 reps) to optimise this mechanism.

Okay, so if my goal is fat loss, then it makes sense for me to between 4-8 reps and lifts heavier, correct? Well, not really!

You’ll need to have plenty of rest between sets when lifting very heavy, so you won’t be burning a high amount of calories.

I can hear the shouts....”Andy……I’m confused…..How many reps will help me to lose fat??’

 

Well, you need an element of all three. You can include each element in each of your gym sessions e.g heavier at the start, or a more effective plan would be to incorporate this through phases /cycles. 

Example: 

- Month one mainly higher reps with the odd strength session

- Month two mostly medium reps with the odd bit of strength work

- Month three should be strength-focused, I don’t mean spending the full session training between 4-8 reps, instead start the session with heavy compound exercises like squats or deadlifts (after your warm-up of course), then increase the reps through the session. Once you come to the end of this phase you should have increased strength, that would be the goal of this phase.

Here is an example of how you could structure these sessions:

Month one full body example session:

A1 - Leg press - 12 reps x 3

B1 - Cable row - 12 reps x 3

C1 - 45 degree hip extension - 12 reps x 3

D1 - Seated shoulder press - 15 reps x 3

E1 - Lateral raises - 15 reps x 3

Month two full body example session:

A1 - Front squat - 10 reps x 3

B1 - Bent over row - 10 reps x 3

C1 - Lying leg curls - 10 reps x 3

D1 - Military press - 10 reps x 3

E1- Horizontal cable pull - 12 reps x 3

F1 - Dead bugs - 15 (each side) x 3

Month three full body example session:

A1 - Barbell back squat - 6 reps x 5

B1 - Cable pull down - 8 reps x 4

C1 - RDL’s - 8 reps x 4

D1 - Barbell bench press - 10 reps x 4

E1 - Cable tricep push down 12 reps x 3

F1 - Rowing machine 200m x 5

Now, a big thing you need to consider when putting your training plan together is how likely you are to stick with that plan, if you do the same session every single day then this will be completely soul destroying. You need to consistently mix it up (month by month) allow every workout to take you one step closer to where you want to be.

Fat Loss Tip - Lift Weights

Fat Loss Tip #3 - Lift Weights

Yes, that's right, let’s pump some iron!

Gone are the days where the main purpose of the session is to just get a sweat on. 

When you lift weights you obviously develop muscle tissue, the more muscle tissue you have the more your body needs to fuel that new founder muscle tissue. Therefore, you can eat more food. Wait!! I can eat more food and lose fat? Yes! If you develop enough muscle tissue by providing your muscles with enough mechanical tension to force them to develop, yes you can then eat more food. 

I’m sure you will all agree that sticking to a fat loss plan is always easier when you can eat plenty of food.

I’m not talking about looking juiced up to the gills, I’m talking about looking strong, athletic and sexy!

Here is a Resistance (weights) session you can try:

Make sure you warm up first by doing some mobility work.

————

START

A1 | Goblet squats - 10 reps x 4 sets

https://expertpt.co.uk/quads/2016/12/30/goblet-squat

B1 | Bent over row - 12 reps x 3 sets

https://expertpt.co.uk/back/2017/1/11/bent-over-row

C1 | Swiss ball leg curl - 12 reps x 3 sets

https://expertpt.co.uk/body-weight-lower-body/2016/12/30/swiss-ball-leg-curl

D1 | Kneeling single-arm should press - 12 reps (each arm) x 3 sets

https://expertpt.co.uk/shoulders/kneeling-dumbbell-shoulder-press

E1 | Dumbbell skull crushers - 12 reps x 3 sets

https://expertpt.co.uk/triceps/2017/1/6/dumbbell-skull-crushers

F1 | Steading alt dumbbell curl - 12 reps (each arm) x 3 sets

https://expertpt.co.uk/biceps/2017/1/6/standing-alt-dumbbell-curl

G1 | Weighted Dead bugs - 30 seconds x 4 sets

https://expertpt.co.uk/abs/2016/12/15/weighted-dead-bugs

H1 | Rowing 200m x 4

https://expertpt.co.uk/cardio-machines/2016/12/30/rowing-machine

(30 - 40 seconds rest after each set)

FINISH

Are you exercising or training?

Are you exercising or training?

Are you TRAINING or just exercising?

If you want to reduce fat, build muscle and develop an athletic physic, YOU MUST TRAIN🏋!

Now this sounds obvious, the problem we have is people just don’t train, THEY JUST EXERCISE(🦄).

🦄EXERCISING looks like this - You arrive at the gym, you have a quick recce, you spot some equipment you think would be nice to use and would give you a good workout. That is about as advanced as most people go. This can work, especially in the short term, but eventually, you’ll need to get a bit more specific.

🏋TRAINING looks like this - You have a set goal and a set plan to get you to that goal. You know exactly what you need to do for each and every session, you know the exact reps and sets you need to do, you know how much weight you need to lift and how much you lifted last time. You have a nutrition programme that is going to fuel your workouts to optimise your performance. 

📈👨‍🔬The main thing you need to look at when it comes to TRAINING is progressive overload👨‍🔬. This is necessary with both muscle building and fat loss, the more muscle you have the faster your metabolic rate because your body will need to fuel that newly founded muscle.

What Is Progressive Overload?

“Progressive overload requires a gradual increase in volume, intensity, frequency or time in order to achieve the targeted goal of the user. In this context, volume and intensity are defined as follows: Volume is the total number of repetitions multiplied by the resistance used as performed in specific periods of time.” 

That, my friends, is straight out of Wikipedia.

When exercising, your body will adapt to a point, but if you want to make further development then you need to exert greater demand on the body by TRAINING and TRAINING SMART.  If you don't progressively overload the muscles by forcing them to do more than they're accustomed to, they have no reason to make further adaptations. Simply put, your body will not develop unless it needs to!

📝If you want to start TRAINING and not just EXERCISING, you need to be tracking absolutely everything.

Implement these simple changes to your training if you’re not currently following a set and structure regime:

🔵 Increase and track the resistance (weight lifted)

🔵 Increase the volume -  sets multiplied by reps and then multiplied by resistance.

🔵 Increase training frequency - i.e. the number of times you’re training. Remember, there is no such thing as overtraining, just under recovering, so make sure your nutrition supports the increase in frequency.

📢THE HUMAN BODY WILL NOT CHANGE UNLESS IT IS FORCED TO!! 

Banded Push-Ups

Banded Push-Ups

Banded Push-Ups, for when you want to look technical AF.

The biggest restriction with Push-Up is the inability to progress in loading (adding weight to the movement as you get stronger).

The benefit of banded Push-Ups is deloading at the bottom of the movement, where resistance is at a minimum due to less stretch through a band. The bottom position is often the most stressful portion of the exercise, which is why deloading it is great for shoulder health. The strongest portion of the movement is at the top, accommodating the most resistance, therefor keeping great resistance through the full range of motion.

Correctly utilising bands like this can help keep constant tension through the full range of motion, help increase metabolic stress (PUMP) and of course let everyone else in the gym know that you have an amazing imagination.