Welcome to the training expert Q&A section for November 2007. Each month we take a training question from the forum or one recieved via email and answer it in detail here. Would you like to get your question answered in next months issue? Simply register for free at the forum and post it up! All good questions will get answered here. This month's training question is below:
November Training Question:
Will using high repetitions and low weight when dieting cost me muscle size?
Answer:
The answer to that question is a big fat “YES”. When your body is in a calorific deficit your body doesn’t have a reason to keep the muscle mass that you have just spent months achieving. Muscle needs heavy weights to grow or maintain size, but now with using lighter weights there is no reason the body to preserve that muscle.
High intensity training (in the 70-100% range) is better than low intensity training for maintaining muscle mass whilst on a hypo-calorific diet. Also whilst in this hypo-calorific state you will suffer a lowered anabolic drive, which means that the body can’t synthesise as much protein into muscle as it can when eating too build muscle.
A high volume of training leads to a lot of microtrauma to the muscle structures which requires a larger increase of protein synthesis, which certainly will not happen whilst cutting calories or severe dieting. So high volume, low intensity training whilst dieting will breakdown more muscle tissue and build up less.
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About Doug Lawrenson:
Doug Lawrenson is our resident diet guru & fitness over on the Muscle&Strength Forum. Doug has had experience as a bodybuilder, coach and judge at national competition level. If you have questions for Doug or need some advice you can chat to Doug on the forum. Doug is on the forum almost every day!
Doug has written some in-depth and informative articles that have been featured on Muscle&Strength.com. To read some of his articles, check out the diet & nutrition articles section of this this website.
