Weight Training for Fat Loss

You should adjust your weight training for fat loss if you are serious about getting six pack abs. This should be common sense, and yet most dieters keep the same training plan regardless of their goals.

Now, I'm not advocating for some toning routine or other similar nonsense. Anybody with a minimal knowledge about fitness stuff should be well aware that this is just another absurd myth that refuses to die.

It's well known that increasing the body's muscle mass requires a progressive stimulus, and without progression there is no need for an adaptation.

By the same token, when dieting, you need to at least maintain the same weight on the bar. Failing to do so means that your strength diminished, which translates into a deterioration of your body composition.

It important to mention that calorie intake should be increased to maintenance (or slightly above) on your workout days. Even if you are close to your genetic potential, take advantage of the post workout anabolic state, and give your body what it needs.

Optimizing weight training for fat loss means that you should cut on volume because your recovery ability is not the same.

As a related note, it's well documented that if training intensity is kept constant, both volume and frequency can be reduced by 2/3rds without losing muscle strength and mass.

So the outdated analogy that stimulating a muscle is like throwing the switch to turn on a light (and once you did that there is no need to flip it up and down) may be useful in this particular case.

However, even if your goal is not necessarily to increase muscle mass, weight training for fat loss should not be seen as a liberty to get lazy.

Always focus on progression, and strive to add small poundage increments to the bar. (Provided that your form is not compromised, of course.)

For this reason, you may want to use fixed-rep target training, rather than using a rep range. Adding one extra rep to an already demanding set may be impossible while dieting. So get yourself a few small disks in order to be able to increase the resistance by 1lb/0.5kg.

Your energy is limited, so this is not the right time to get lost in trivial details. Therefore, your emphasis should be on the big basic exercises and their variations.

The rep number isn't of vital importance as long as you strive for better performance, and you put a great deal of effort into your workout. Some coaches feel that a few heavy sets of low reps are best suited for keeping muscle mass.

I believe that rep range is not set in stone. It's really a matter of individual characteristics and preference, so I don't see any problem if you can keep the same figures that you normally use for your growing cycles. Make sure that your form is perfect.

With regards to frequency, training twice a week should suffice for most people as, once again, your recovery ability is diminished. Contrary to popular opinion, the untrained muscles don't atrophy within 96 hours, so be assured that they won't fall off if you resist the urge to train less.

My personal choice is to alternate two different full body workouts every 3-4 days. In any case, once you set up your weight training for fat loss, stick with that routine for the entire dieting cycle.

This is an important aspect because changing the exercises excessively wouldn't allow you to measure your progress (or the lack of it).

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