4 Workout Mistakes to Avoid So You Can Build Muscle
Any aesthetic goal typically comes down to doing one of two things: burning fat or building muscle. If you're really dedicated, the path to achieve both simultaneously is called body recomposition.
It's a feat many have considered to be near impossible, since the two goals require different demands. To lose fat, you need to burn more calories then you consume. To build muscle, you need to train hard and eat enough protein for your body to build muscle fibres. Our science-backed Fat Loss Guide is filled with fitness and diet tips to help you pull off your fat loss goals.
Still, there are too many myths that can leave you confused about how exactly you should attack a body recomposition journey. Here, MH US fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., reveals what to do (and what not to do) in order to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.
Don't Go Crazy with HIIT
HIIT or High intensity interval training, might sound like the ideal workout to blast calories while still building muscle. Doing too much of this high-octane protocol, however, can eat into your strength training plan. Doing HIIT properly means putting maximum energy into short bursts of work—and maximum effort workouts require sufficient rest time to recuperate.
'HIIT sessions can fry your central nervous system, and that will limit how often you can train, period,' Samuel says. A solid HIIT session will take two to three days to recover from, which means you'll miss out on essential training days to get the proper rest you need. If you return too quickly after a HIIT session, you're putting yourself at risk of injury. If you don't need the recovery, you didn't go hard enough during your HIIT workout.
Plus, HIIT is simply less effective than you would want from a muscle building standpoint. You lose out on the amount of time under tension you need to truly drive muscle growth.
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Build in Small Doses of HIIT into the End of Your Strength Workouts
HIIT is still a good workout to challenge your other energy systems, Samuel says. You just need to make sure you're incorporating it in a smart way.
To get the benefits of HIIT, you don't need to be doing hours of it. A shorter period, say seven to 10 minutes, will be enough to get you what you need from it. Limit these workouts to twice per week. 'This will allow you to ramp up your heart rate without crushing your body, so it won't prevent you from truly building muscle which is half of your body recomp goal,' Samuel says.
Don't Neglect Serious Weight Training
Since you'll be focused mostly on muscle and how you look flexing in the mirror, lots of people often don't take their training as seriously when it comes to building strength. They'll swap the heavy weights for more reps to focus on a pump—and that won't help you get the body you want.
'We tend to think of reps as the key to building muscle, and those tend to come best when we train with lighter weights,' Samuel says. 'The thing is, those lighter weights don't truly build strength, and that's going to curtail your ability to build muscle long term.'
To build muscle, you're going to need to progressively overload. Counter to more traditional thinking, Samuel says that recent research has shown that the rep range to build muscle can be as low as three reps per set—as long as you are being challenged by the load.
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Start Every Workout with a Heavy Load Exercise
Begin every one of your strength workouts with a multi-joint exercise, like a squat, deadlift, or bench press. Think about doing three sets of three to five reps with a heavy load.
Don't Over-Focus on Ab Training
One sadly common misconception in fitness is that ab exercises will help you shed weight in your midsection. That's known as spot training, and it doesn't exist. You can build muscle in your core, but you don't get to chose exactly where you'll lose fat on your body.
To actually shed fat, you need to burn more calories than you consume. While you should focus on your diet to create a calorie deficit first and foremost, big calorie burn will come from exercises that incorporate several muscles groups at once, not just training your abs. Compound movements like squats and deadlifts will give a bigger return in calorie burn than isolated ab exercises.
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Pick One Smart Ab Exercise
You only really need to be dedicating three to four sets of your workout to an ab exercise. And, when selecting one, make sure its something that you can progressively overload. Think hanging leg raises, cable crunches, or split stance chops. These movements can be challenged more over time, and incorporate more of your body than just your abs. If you can do 50 to 100 reps of an ab exercise, pass on it. Focus on moves (and loads) that limit you to eight to 10 reps.
Don't Fear the Total Body Workout
You might associate muscle building with the bodybuilder's workout split, which dictates that you should train a different muscle group every single day of the week. This can be effective over a longer period of time, but only if you program correctly and train incredibly hard every day.
The strategy of the split lies in the idea that you attack one muscle group so hard that it needs the full week's worth of rest before you train that body part again. But that truth is, most people just aren't going that hard.
The other downfall of the bodybuilder split is that 'it prevents you from getting the muscle building and calorie burning responses that come with total body sessions,' Samuel says. That happens when you're moving 'more weight, and simply doing more work, because you're using more joints.'
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Incorporate Full-Body Workouts
If you're only working out three times per week, consider doing full-body workouts. You'll hit all your major muscle groups while still burning calories. This structure will also provide you opportunity to progressively overload, which is what sparks muscle growth.
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