Is it fair to say that training during a lean period is different from training during a bulking period?
Basically, when you're bulking, you want to gain as much muscle as possible and put on as little fat as possible. During a dry period, you're also looking to gain, or rather not lose, muscle. So the objective, muscularly speaking, is fairly similar. On the other hand, the effects will be different in the dry phase:
- You have less energy because you're supplying your body with less, so you'll generally be able to lift less.
- You have less strength too, because you're more tired and you have less drive.
So, when you're dry and doing training similar to what you do when you're bulking, you're unlikely to break your records. You therefore need to divide your training up according to your energy level:
At the start of your lean period, do a slightly heavier workout to keep your muscle mass at its maximum. Then, when the calories start to fall more sharply and you have no more energy, reduce your weights and lengthen your number of repetitions. Adding isolation exercises can also help to define an area a little more. But always try not to stop with heavier exercises at the beginning of the session.
You have two types of muscle fibre:
- White fibres, white because they work without oxygen and therefore for shorter efforts.
- red fibres, which work for longer periods with oxygen.
If we want to remain logical, we need to keep muscle in these 2 categories of fibres. So you need to vary the short and longer efforts.
At the start of the diet, it's not too difficult to do heavier training, but at the end of the diet, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible.
You can start your lean period with a training session of 10 to 12 repetitions, which is a training session that focuses more on volume. This will allow the muscles to lose as little as possible, even with the loss of calories.
When the weights start to drop because of the lack of sugar, you can increase the number of repetitions if you need to, but always train until you fail.
Be careful, when you increase the number of repetitions a little, your muscle may give you a burning sensation. You need to keep going until you can hardly lift the weight any more.
You can also vary your dry training with programmes like the combined serieswhere you link up several exercises for the same muscle, one after the other with no downtime. You can also work in supersets. Here, you link 2 exercises for 2 antagonistic muscles, one after the other, with no rest time.
This type of training can also be done in several different ways. The triset, quadriset, giant set, ... The aim is to increase the "cardio" side of your workout by stimulating the "volume" side as much as possible.
Too often we see that to dry out, you only need to include isolation exercises. Is this true?
Let's ask ourselves the following questions:
- Which exercise will require the most energy and therefore calories? Is it an isolation exercise or a multi-joint exercise?
- How does a single-joint or multi-joint muscle contraction work?
Obviously, a multi-joint exercise will require more input and energy than a simple isolation exercise. So it will also consume more calories. But will you still be able to do it properly at the end of your diet? Isn't performing a very good multi-joint exercise 6 times in an approximate manner less effective in terms of calorie expenditure than performing an isolation exercise correctly?
So is there a point at which isolation exercise is more effective for drying out than multi-joint exercise?
Nothing has been proven, but keeping multi-joint exercises in your training for as long as possible is a good way of stimulating muscle volume.
A single-joint exercise, as its name suggests, will only involve one joint, whereas a multi-joint exercise will involve several joints.
A muscle contraction depends on the nerve impulse you send to your muscles. The greater the impulse, the greater the number of fibres recruited. Muscles are made up of muscle bundles, so it may be that when your body is more cut up, the visible fibres are simply the different bundles which take turns during the contraction of the muscle concerned. At that point, it will be very interesting to allow them to take turns to accentuate the 'skinned' aspect of the muscle visual. It will therefore be more interesting to do longer series, to accentuate the relief of the muscle region concerned.
No-one would deny the importance of cardio for drawing on fat reserves.
However, there are also many preconceived ideas about it. Some people think that cardio is the best way to lose fat. It's not entirely wrong to say that cardio burns fat, but doing nothing but cardio will give you the physique of a marathon runner. In other words, very little muscle but not as lean as a bodybuilding or fitness athlete. The reason is simple. The more cardio you do, the more your body will wonder why it has to carry around so much muscle. So it's going to make sure it eliminates those useless muscles. That's what happens with marathon runners, cyclists and long-distance athletes. Of course, nutritional intake will also have an effect, but long training sessions with moderate effort will stimulate general weight loss more than lean muscle.
On the other hand, don't forget that it's muscle that uses fat as fuel. So the more muscle you have, the more fat you're going to consume.
So you need a balance between training in the gym and cardio if you want to lose weight effectively. This is THE best solution: Muscle + Cardio
Many specialists have struggled to express their vision of cardio: some think it's best before training, others after; some think that cardio should remain at 60% of heart rate, others that you can go up in heart rate.
Which is it? Let's ask ourselves the right questions.
What kind of muscle fuel do you want to eliminate when you do cardio? Fat, of course.
When does fat start to be used by the muscle? In general, around twenty minutes after the start of the muscular effort. We know that the muscle starts by using intramuscular ATP (adenosine triphosphate) during the first few seconds of muscular contraction. When ATP reserves are exhausted, intramuscular creatine takes over. Next, carbohydrates present in the muscle will be used as fuel until 15 or 20 minutes after the start of exercise, and finally fats.
For any muscular contraction, any exercise, it will always be this way. Which also means that if you start your session with cardio, you're going to use up the ATP, creatine and sugars in your muscle. Same thing if you start your session with weight training.
So, logically, if you start your session with cardio, by the time you get to the gym, your ATP, creatine and intramuscular sugar reserves will be empty! And yet that's the type of energy you need for a good bodybuilding session.
On the other hand, if you start your training with strength training, you'll quickly empty your cells of their ATP, creatine and carbohydrates. It would therefore be logical for fat to be burned more quickly during cardio.
Another preconceived idea about cardio training is the intensity of the training.
Very often you'll hear that effective cardio needs to be moderate to target fat reserves. It's true that given that fat is used by muscle after 20 minutes of effort, as we saw above, it would make sense to do longer and necessarily less intense cardio training sessions.
On the other hand, to bring ATP, creatine and intramuscular carbohydrate levels back to normal before exercise, the body also needs energy, and the more its reserves are depleted, the more it will need. This need for energy will also mobilise fat.
It would therefore be normal to say that the more intensive the cardio effort, the more calories you will consume. And so the higher intensity effort (sometimes also called HIIT) will consume less fat directly but more in the post-exercise recovery phase.
Cardio and warm-up should not be confused either. The warm-up is important whether you're leaning or gaining weight. It doesn't have to be intense, just mobilising the joints and tendons to avoid certain injuries.
In practical terms, the correct intensity for doing cardio is not counted in pulses, but in breathing: if you can talk to your neighbour without being out of breath, your cardio isn't intense enough. And if you've got a heart rate monitor, you'll see that your heart rate is probably lower than expected... Increase the difficulty until you can't talk normally any more, until your heart (cardio) is beating fast enough for you to feel the slightest bit out of breath.
A good dry training session could be defined as follows:
- Cardio warm-up
- Joint, tendon (flexibility) and abdominal warm-up (4 sets)
- Localised warm-up (exercise for the muscle you're going to work on) 2 sets
- 4x 10-12 reps, multi-joint exercise
- 4x 10-12 reps multi-joint exercise
- 4x 12-15 reps isolation exercise
Of course, muscles like the biceps are difficult to work with multi-joint exercises and this is just one example. At the start of your dry period, make the most of the fact that you still have plenty of energy to do harder sessions.
It's always a question of calories burned. The best sport is the one that allows you to burn more calories. But let's ask ourselves a question: do you burn more calories running than cycling?
According to many sports magazines, yes. However, none of these magazines talk about the intensity you put into each of these activities. There's no doubt that a professional cyclist will burn more calories in 30 minutes than a Sunday jogger over the same period of time.
So what counts is not so much the sport you do as the intensity you put into it. The best sport for you is the one you can put the most effort into!
Don't spare yourself, give it your all. Push yourself to the point of failure with each set, without ever thinking of saving yourself for the next set. You'll feel your limits yourself, don't impose them on your body.
Sometimes you'll feel dizzy. It's your body that doesn't agree and is making you feel it. Sit down, wait for it to pass and the more you progress in your dryness, the less you'll have such sensations. These are nothing more than minor hypoglycaemia due to a lack of sugars in your system. It's also your body's way of reminding you that it doesn't like to change its habits. Once these habits have become its own, it won't grumble any more.
There's no special training "recipe" for drying out, apart from "Give it your all!
Losing weight: basic concepts.
Nutritional Programme Guide.
Necessary food supplements and vitamins.
Ideas for dishes.
Common mistakes to avoid.
