A question of strength training only with straps?

Training with bands only?

Q: What do you think about resistance bands as a sole tool? I see more and more of this equipment being marketed as better than weights. Is there any truth to that?

Resistance bands certainly work. And in certain cases, I prefer them to free weights or machines. But in general, exercises with free weights and machines are still the gold standard for resistance training.

Let's look at some of the benefits of resistance bands first.

Benefits of resistance bands

1. Bands are portable. Whenever I travel for seminars, I take resistance bands with me. If I don't have access to a gym, I can still get a pump.
2. Bands are versatile and versatile. You can do many exercises with them. (These first two benefits have little - or nothing - to do with the effectiveness of resistance bands, but they are benefits nonetheless).
3. Because of the strength curve (low resistance at the beginning, maximum resistance at the end), bands seem to provide a better mind-muscle connection and maximum contraction than free weights. This is not true for all exercises, but for a lot - such as side and front raises, curls and tricep presses.
4. Bands don't cause as much muscle damage as free weights and most machines. This is because the resistance decreases when the muscle is stretched. And when the muscle is at its most stretched (when you have the highest potential for muscle damage), there is essentially no resistance. No muscle damage means you can recover faster after this type of training, which allows you to train at a higher frequency.
5. The psychological stress is much lower. Stretching a resistance band is far less intimidating than putting a heavy bar on your back (at least for beginners).
6. Bands can cause more muscle activation. This goes hand in hand with point 3. One study found that resistance training with a band resulted in higher muscle activity than a similar exercise performed on a machine (1). Why? The constantly varying load during the repetition.
7. The load on the joints seems to be lower than with free weights or machines. As you can see, bands can certainly work. However, there are also some disadvantages.

Disadvantages of bands

1. Progression is difficult to quantify. With free weights or machines, you can add any amount of resistance you want and you know exactly how much you've added. This makes progression easier. To increase resistance with bands, you can either add more bands or use a stronger band. Both options represent a large increase in load and this means that the new resistance may represent too much of an increase in load, which in turn may mean that the resistance is too great and the previous one too light. You can also stretch the band further by attaching it further away from you. However, this makes it very difficult to quantify how much resistance you are adding.
2. If you're a serious exerciser, bands can be less motivating. "I went from 120 to 140 kilos on bench press!" versus "I went from red to blue band on curls!" It just doesn't have the same ring to it. You shouldn't underestimate the importance of motivation when it comes to how effective a program is. For most of us who love the iron, getting stronger and seeing more weight on the bar is one of the main motivations.
3. There is a lot less muscle damage. I have also listed this as an advantage because it allows you to train more often. The downside, however, is that it can also make the exercise a little less effective as muscle damage is also a stimulus for muscle growth.
4. Some exercises are simply not well suited to bands. Doing squats with bands is impractical and uncomfortable. You would have to stretch the bands to the max to place them on your trapezius or you would have to place the bands on your trapezius while in the deepest position of the squat. Good luck getting into a biomechanically sound squat position afterwards! Effective lower body training with bands is extremely inefficient if you have a useful strength level. At best, it can be used for training with very high repetitions.
5. It may well be that the strength gained is difficult to transfer to training with dumbbells. With bands, you have no resistance at the start of the exercise. With a barbell, you have to move the entire weight at the start of the exercise. Resistance bands are cool. I like to use them when I want to train a muscle group that is lagging behind in its development more often without impairing recovery too much.

I've found that bands work better than free weights for side raises, curls and tricep presses. I do most of my side raises with elastic bands and I get a better mind-muscle connection and a better pump. I also like to do frequent band pull-aparts and leg curls with bands.

However, I wouldn't make training with bands alone the cornerstone of a training program.

References:

1. Rainoldi et al, Muscle fatigue induced by two different resistances: Elastic tubing versus weight machines Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, 21 (2011) 954-959

Getting defined without losing muscle

Q: I am trying to get defined and struggling to achieve this without losing muscle. By tracking calories and macronutrients, I lose half a pound every week. My protein intake makes up 45% of my calorie intake.

However, I seem to be losing muscle and fat in equal measure. I have reduced my volume and work out 5 days a week. My workouts focus on basic heavy exercise with a few assistance exercises. I still maintain my maximum weights. What can I do to stop the muscle loss?

A: First, let's talk about the fear of losing muscle while dieting. This is a common phenomenon, but I seriously doubt that you are actually losing muscle for the following reasons:

• Your protein intake is more than adequate for your muscle mass.
• You are only losing a conservative amount of weight, which indicates that the calorie restriction is not excessive
• You seem to be able to maintain your strength.

As long as your body fat percentage is not below 10%, it is very unlikely that you will lose muscle if you continue to exercise and consume enough protein, which should be in the range of 2.2 to 2.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. (Yes, even in a calorie deficit).

You may feel like you are losing muscle. You may look leaner and flatter, but this is because you are storing less glycogen and water in your muscles. Glycogen is the storage form in which your body stores carbohydrates in your muscles. It is a combination of glucose (broken down carbohydrates) and water. If you reduce your calorie intake (and probably also your carbohydrate intake), you will store less glycogen.

Why? Because you won't have the extra energy to store as you use up all your energy.

If you store less glycogen and less water, your muscles will look flatter and smaller. A muscle with less glycogen and water is like a balloon with less air. This may confuse your mind, but it is not muscle loss.

To build or maintain muscle you need a growth stimulus, protein to repair it and energy to fuel the building process. If you continue to train hard and consume enough protein, you should at least maintain your muscle mass.

What about energy

If you're in a calorie deficit, won't you lack the energy to build muscle?

Not if your body fat percentage is above 8 to 9 percent. Above this body fat percentage, your body has sufficient amounts of energy to keep the process going without risking running out of fuel.

If you reach a low body fat percentage, you may not be able to provide the repair process with enough energy, as your body may want to reserve the little energy it has left in storage for simple things - like surviving. But until you're really lean, and unless you're eating an idiotically low amount of calories, you shouldn't be losing muscle.

Does a loss of strength indicate a loss of muscle?

Not necessarily. It's true that a lot of people lose some strength during their diet. But this rarely has anything to do with muscle loss. There are other reasons. The first thing you should notice is that strength loss primarily occurs with multi-joint exercises. Bench presses, barbell shoulder presses and squats are the most affected. This loss of strength does not occur with isolation exercises or machine exercises and often does not affect pulling exercises.

It is typical to maintain or even increase strength in tricep presses, butterflies and dumbbell side raises, while at the same time losing strength in bench presses, which involve the same muscles.

This certainly has nothing to do with muscle loss, as otherwise the strength in the isolation exercises would also decrease. In fact, strength will often decrease with free bench presses, whereas you can maintain or even increase your strength with bench presses on a machine.

The reason? A decrease in passive stability. This is when non-contractile elements stabilize a joint by increasing pressure. For example, when you "inflate" a muscle with stored water, glycogen and fat, that muscle "packs" the joint better. This generates pressure, which makes the joint more stable. Even body fat and water retention can contribute to passive stability.

Why is this important? When a joint is less stable, the body will protect itself by inhibiting force production (not allowing you to use all your strength potential to prevent injury). The more stable the body feels, the more strength it will allow you to use.

This is also the reason why powerlifters gain weight before a competition. They will eat a truckload of salt and carbohydrate-rich foods and drink tons of water to increase glycogen and water retention. This increases passive stability and allows them to move more weight.

Compression exercises are more affected by this because they are more dangerous to the shoulder joint, which is the most unstable joint in the body.

Another factor: beta-adrenergic desensitization

Another reason you may lose strength while dieting is beta-adrenergic desensitization.

The beta-adrenergic receptors are the receptors that interact with adrenaline. At the muscle level, beta-adrenergic receptors, when activated by adrenaline, increase muscle contraction speed and strength. At the brain and nervous system level, they will increase coordination, drive, willpower, self-confidence, etc.

In other words, this means that if your beta-adrenergic receptors respond well to adrenaline, your chances of optimal physical performance will be better. However, if they do not respond well to adrenaline (if they are desensitized or downregulated), then strength and speed will decrease. You will also be in a worse mental state.

Why is this relevant to dieting? You desensitize your beta-adrenergic receptors by overproducing adrenaline - either by intermittent excessive adrenaline release or by adrenaline levels that stay too high for too long. Adrenaline is largely increased by cortisol. Cortisol increases the conversion of noradrenaline into adrenaline.

One of the functions of cortisol is to mobilize stored energy. When you are dieting and need to mobilize more energy, your cortisol production increases and so do your adrenaline levels. This is also the reason why many people have trouble sleeping while dieting.

In this regard, dieting can lead to a reduction in physical and mental performance by making you less responsive to adrenaline. When this happens, your strength will decrease. However, it usually takes longer for this to happen than for strength loss due to reduced passive stability.

Another reason for a loss of strength is your mental stress. If you feel flat and narrow and don't sleep well, then you will find it much harder to push yourself up for heavy weights. It's like you're programming yourself to believe that you're losing muscle and getting weaker - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And your strength isn't even diminishing! That's another clear sign that you're not losing muscle.

It may be that you had expectations of a certain weight when you reached the level of leanness you wanted to achieve. This is common. But when you were at that weight and still didn't look lean, you assumed that this must be related to losing muscle as well as fat.

The reality, however, is that you simply had more fat to lose than you thought and less muscle than you thought. It's not fun to hear, but it happens to a lot of people.

Here are reasons why muscle loss can occur

Of course you can lose muscle while dieting:

• It can happen when your body fat percentage is below 9 to 10%, and even then it's not automatic - it's just more likely to happen.
• It can happen if you diet over a very long period of time.
• It can happen if the degree of calorie restriction is excessive. This is the case, for example, if you lose more than three pounds per week after the first week.

There are factors that can make it harder to build muscle or maintain existing muscle mass when you are in a calorie deficit. The primary ones are higher cholesterol levels and lower mTOR and IGF-1 levels.

The former (high cortisol levels) occurs when you reduce calories. That is simply a fact. But cortisol can also be released due to stress - exercise stress and general stress. A lot of people who lose muscle while dieting only do so because they're afraid of losing muscle.

Yes, if you are afraid of losing muscle, then you might lose muscle because of this. You may dramatically increase your training volume and push yourself to the limit in the gym in the hope of preventing muscle loss. When exercisers feel flatter and leaner because of their diet, they often do an insane volume of training just to achieve that pumped up feeling.

This excessive volume will lead to excessive cortisol production, which in turn can lead to muscle loss. In addition, this can lead to too much muscle damage from which your body cannot recover sufficiently. Your recovery and repair capacity will be much lower if you cause too much muscle damage in this state...and then you can lose valuable muscle mass.

My best advice for the definition phase

1. Make sure you eat enough calories. Aim to lose about two pounds a week after the first week. (You will probably lose more in the first week). At least until you have reached a body fat percentage of around 10 to 11. From that point on, if you want to get even leaner, you should aim for about one pound of weight loss per week.
2. Keep your protein intake high. Aim for just over 2 grams per kilogram of your starting weight. Don't reduce the amount as your body weight drops.
3. Place carbohydrates around your training. This will help you reduce the cortisol response, keep carbohydrate stores full and improve your performance. I would also consume some sodium around training.
4. Don't overdo it with volume. Volume will not be as helpful as intensity. Do fewer sets, but push them to your limits - or close to your limits.
5. It's all about your attitude. You will feel flatter and smaller in your clothes. And for a good number of weeks, you may not look any better because you look smaller, but you're not yet lean enough to look defined. Mentally, this phase can be hard. You should be aware that you are not losing muscle and if you persevere, you will look better.
6. Keep your sodium intake high. This will help you look fuller and get a pump.

How muscular are you now?

There is one thing I want to mention and this could influence your decision whether to continue or not. Depending on how lean you are right now, you may need to get a lot thinner to really get defined.

Let's say you've lost 10 pounds and still don't look anywhere near slim. Your first reaction might be to think that you're losing muscle instead of fat. However, it could be that you actually just need to lose more fat than you thought in order to achieve the level of definition you desire.

Here's a real-life example. When I was still working with bodybuilders, a guy asked me to train him. He wanted to take part in a competition. He was about 180 cm tall and weighed about 100 kilos. He told me that he could compete in the lower end of the heavyweight division or the upper end of the middleweight division - that is, in the 89 to 92 kilo range. I told him that he would weigh 80 kilos on the day of the competition.

He looked at me as if he'd seen a ghost. The guy wasn't fat - just an average body fat percentage. Muscular but not defined.

Fast forward to race day. He ended up at exactly 80 kilos. He won in his weight class and the competition across all classes.

The bottom line is that he had to lose 20 kilos to look as defined as he wanted, even though he initially thought he only needed to lose 10 kilos.

Based on the information available, you are doing everything right. You just had a wrong perception of how much muscle mass you have and how much fat you need to lose.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-60,

https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-61

By Christian Thibaudeau