Question:
I want to be leaner but I also want to gain more muscle mass. Is it possible to do both at the same time? If not, which one should I focus on first?
Answer:
Gaining muscle while losing fat is not impossible but it is extremely difficult for genetically-average drug-free trainees because when you eat for one the energy balance and resulting hormonal environment is not conducive to the other.
The most common exceptions to this appear to be people who have a lot of body fat and are either beginners or regaining lost muscle (the Colorado Experiment is a good example of this). The further you are from your maximum muscular potential and the less accustomed your muscles are to intense work the faster your body will tend to respond to training and the less it takes to effectively stimulate muscular strength and size increases. The fatter you are the easier it is for you to lose fat and the more muscle you will be able to maintain while doing so.
For everyone else, whether you should focus on losing fat or building muscle first depends on your current body composition. If your goal is to have a lean, well-defined, physique this means having a around ten percent bodyfat or below if you are male, and a bodyfat percentage in the low to mid teens if you are female. If you are a male with a bodyfat percentage around or above the mid teens or a female with a bodyfat percentage around or above the low twenties reducing your bodyfat will improve your physical appearance more than gaining muscle, and leaning down first helps because the leaner you are the less fat you will tend to gain as you start building muscle and the easier it is to distinguish between fat and muscle gains.
Once you’ve leaned down do not immediately increase your calories to over maintenance levels, though. Your body will have adapted to the lower calorie intake and if you rush to increase your calories you’ll gain fat more easily. Instead, bring your calories back up to maintenance over a period of a few weeks then stay at maintenance calories for a few more before gradually increasing your intake.
If your bodyfat is already below this level and you don’t want or need to get even leaner for a competition, photoshoot, or to make weight for athletic competition or some other event you should focus on gaining muscle, but keep an eye on your bodyfat percentage and if it gets back up to the mid teens if you’re male or the low twenties if you’re female stop and take a few weeks to diet back down before focusing on gaining again.
Leaning down first and then alternating between short periods of calorie surplus for gaining muscle and calorie restriction to bring your bodyfat back down whenever it goes up more than a few percent is more effective for genetically average, drug-free trainees than the traditional approach of using long “bulking” and “cutting” phases. You will look better most of the time if you don’t let your bodyfat get too high, and by avoiding the need for an extended period of calorie restriction to get lean again you’ll hold on to more of the muscle you’ve gained.
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Great post Drew and as always great insight. Very simple explanation and very effective.
Would doing these short phases of building muscle and leaning out hinder strength gain at first, but in the long run allow you to make the same end result of strength gain? Hope that made sense.
Zidan,
This is more effective for long term improvement in body composition than the traditional approach of doing a long bulking phase and gaining a lot of fat then having to spend months restricting calories to lean down again.
Thanks, I’ll try it. I assume using the 3×3 metabolic conditioning workout will me “cut”?
Also, occlusion training seems to be gaining popularity. What are your thoughts on it. To me it seems a little…weird. It seems like something good for an injured person to do or something like that (like isometrics). Just my opinion though.
Zidan,
Proper nutrition is what gets you cut.
I’m not aware of anybody using external occlusion during training outside of research settings. Occlusion naturally occurs to varying degrees during exercise depending on the intensity of effort.
Sorry about that, I meant to type “will help me cut”. So wait a minute, if getting cut is all down to proper nutrition, then I wouldn’t need to worry about emphasizing more on cardiovascular and metabolic conditioning, rather than strength, right?
The reason I ask this is because many people have told me that one cannot gain strength on a cut, so it doesn’t make sense to me to perform a “strength routine” that you recommend when I’m in a position where I can’t gain any strength. Unless of course these people are wrong.
Zidan,
Reducing bodyfat is primarily a matter of nutrition, but strength training is necessary to maintain lean body mass and also helps by increasing metabolic rate and improving insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism.
Simple, no nonsense answer. Thanks Drew. What do you think about fasted training, first thing in morning after some coffee and 10-15 BCAA as a means of muscle preservation?
Alessandro,
I recommend having something to eat between a half hour and two hours before a workout, otherwise you will not be able to train has hard and won’t get as much out of it.
Good day Drew, thanks for sharing your blog, feedback and great experience. I’m doing HIT two times a week split in up upper and lower body. Trust me as a military it is very hard to not over train. I very improve my energy level with HIT through out the day. I still need to run my 1.5 miles sometimes under 9:55 min. I use to do Tabata 3/week for my run time and now stop running. What do you recommended? I was thinking sprint until failure once a week. Planning to get one of your books, which one do you recommended for military personnel? Love the coffee and Eggs.
Merci Beaucoup!
Jeff,
If you are training to improve your 1.5 mile run time I recommend running that distance once weekly in addition to your HIT workouts. If you have access to weights most of the time I recommend High Intensity Workouts. If not I recommend the Project: Kratos bodyweight HIT book.
Hi Drew ,
Do you recommend training to failure during cutting phase ??
If yes , doesn’t the reduced calorie intake affect the recovery of muscles ??
Bhanu,
You should train to momentary muscular failure even when restricting calorie intake. Moderate calorie restriction will affect recovery somewhat, but reducing exercise intensity will make it harder for your body to maintain muscle while fat is lost.
Hi Drew!
I’ve read many forums, articles etc. and watched many videos about weight training, and whatI’ve found is this major anti-HIT bias going on – everywhere. “Everybody” tells the same thing:
1. “HIT will f@ck up your nervous systems!” CNS burnout I guess.
2. “HIT will only work for 4-8 weeks, then you need volume.”
3. “HIT works only if you are using steroids.”
4. “High volume training is better.”
5. “HIT isn’t good for gaining muscle. It just makes you stronger.”
6. “You don’t have to train to failure.”
And it goes on and on…
All of this makes me wonder the level of information people have, and the mistakes they make.
Some of my thoughts:
1. CNS Burnout: I think you can mess your physical system pretty badly, and thus having chronic overtraining-state, IF YOU ARE TRAINING TOO OFTEN AND DOING TO MUCH IN WORKOUTS. Basicly no one ever writes or talks about their training programs, and I can’t tell how often or how long they did HIT. Even if you are doing Mike Mentzer type split routines (which he himself did not use at all?) from Heavy Duty, you will be overtraining pretty soon if you don’t consider the muscle growth –> Building muscle = bigger muscles = more time for recovery is needed. Of course we can’t leave out how much sleep trainee gets, and how he/she eats, but if we think that those are taken care of, we have to consider the growth factor. Mike wrote something about limited recovery capacity or something like that?
2. HIT works only for few weeks: I think that this relative to the first point.
3. You need steroids to do HIT: Well… I’ve used a 12-week cycle with ‘juice’ in the past, and now I’m training naturally. I can tell you, that I’m still making progress. Great progress. I’m off steroids for good. And I think that this kind of judgement could be made about any kind of training. Nonsense. You need to adjust the volume/frequency, eat properly and sleep well.
4. High volume is better: Basicly this claim is made from the point of view that many top athletes are using this kind of approach and because you can get good results from higher volume training. You have talked about. Getting results from some kind of training doesn’t mean that you couldn’t get same or better results with any other kind of training. Not a direct quote, but anyways… You make a good point about TUT when this is considered. Using 4/4 cadence, and doing 10 reps, the TUT is 80 seconds. Basicly the same than doing 4×10 with 1/1 cadence.
5. HIT= good for gaining strength, bad for building muscle: Building muscle and gaining strength are relative in my knowledge, but I need some clarification. This gets passed around with the point that you can gain strength with little or without any muscle gain. This is highly genetic?
6. No need to train to failure: You can get great results this way, but if I think about it, how can I be sure that I’m doing enough to get optimal results and not doing too much? It seems that doing 1 set to failure, is like making sure that you are doing enough and not too much.
I’ve read some scientific research about HIT, and it seems superior. For me it is, at least for now. I’ve made great progress with my training, but I’ve seen research material which contradicts with HIT. Some guy pointed out, that pro-HIT research is done with too narrow timelines, and thus cannot be used as valid source. From my philosophical point of view, I really don’t know what to believe. Everything seems to be corrupted. Money is power. Same goes with fitness industry.
Any thoughts Drew?
Hey Chief,
I’ve addressed all of these elsewhere on this web site. Check out the following:
Q&A: Training To Momentary Muscular Failure
Q&A: Criticisms of Training to Failure
2. “HIT will only work for 4-8 weeks, then you need volume.”
3. “HIT works only if you are using steroids.”
4. “High volume training is better.”
5. “HIT isn’t good for gaining muscle. It just makes you stronger.”
6. “You don’t have to train to failure.”
Hello Drew,
Skyler Tanner once said that at 12-13% bodyfat you are likely to support all the gains possible. I was wondering that maybe just eating real food could mean getting to this “ideal” range naturally and then simply training consistently would probably lead to the same results as the 10-15% calculated “culking” approach.
Hey Ondrej,
If a person is strict enough with their food intake they could gain muscle while maintaining close to that level of bodyfat, but if you want to gain as much muscle as possible as quickly as possible you need to eat more, and you’re going to gain some fat in the process, thus the need for alternating gaining and cutting phases.
Hi Drew,
After reading through the site, comments, Project Kratos and the High Intensity Workouts book, I still have a question about fat loss.
Im trying your approach of cutting the fat first, and then worrying about putting on muscle later. I understand the calorie cutting approach and reasoning of 1200+ calories a day. But does the principle of “cutting the fat now, then worry about muscle when you reach the target BMI%” have anything to do with working out? What I mean is, do I change up my current HIT routine of twice a week (I like the “Full body workout Routine” on pg25 of the older version of High Intensity Workouts) to do something else, or just simply adjust the caloric restrictions on diet?
Thanks, and I’m digging this Project Kratos book.
Hey Matt,
You would not need to perform different workouts when focusing on building muscle versus losing fat, because the primary purpose of exercise when working out for fat loss is still increases in, or at least maintenance of, muscle mass (not burning calories, as most believe).
I tend to not count/monitor my calorie intake, I just go by my hunger. Never been a fan of calorie counting on the whole. Would you think this would hinder me if/when I want to add a little more muscle or do you think my body would naturly want to eat more frequently?
Cheers drew
Jay
Jay,
A lot of factors can influence hunger, and depending on your diet it may be a reliable indicator of need, or not. Counting and tracking calories and macros can be a huge pain in the ass if you don’t eat the same thing every day, but if you want to optimize improvements in fat loss or muscle gain it is more effective than guessing how much you need and trying to make adjustments without knowing what the numbers are.
Drew,
I’m interested in gaining muscle weight and have a question:
If the body’s systems behave as department heads in a corporation (as I’ve read in a Body by Science blog post somewhere), why does it matter how many calories one eats in order to gain muscle? Provided the right stimulus, time, and genetic potential, won’t the body add muscle weight and catabolize fat for the resources to do so, even in the absence of a calorie surplus?
And if a subject does maintain a calorie surplus within reason (500 cals/day over RMR+activity to gain 1 lb / week, say), why wouldn’t all that weight be muscle under a proper BBS regimen?
Thanks,
Rob
Hey Rob,
The body can do this, but only if the calorie deficit isn’t excessive since although the cost in protein and energy for building muscle is low the body can only get so much energy from the fat stores per day. I explain this in detail in Getting Ripped.
Even a drug-free trainee with good genetics for building muscle following a perfect program wouldn’t build muscle quickly enough to require that many additional calories per week (also explained in Getting Ripped). You don’t need anywhere near that much protein or energy to allow for a realistic rate of muscle gain. If you’re already very lean a protein and calorie surplus is necessary to build muscle, but not a massive amount.
Hello Drew!
In pursuit of experimenting and greed of accelerating gains, I lost my way and tried everything from Starting Strength to Visual Impact, only to be severely drained. I did of course reach some good numbers on my big lifts albeit these were performed at a much higher speed that what I would have usually done. After grinding through about a couple of years with HVT and taking a much deserved break coupled with extensive learning of your books and blog, today I did my first HIT workout in some time only to be shocked. My threshold of going to failure was much less than anytime in my past, as was my overall conditioning. My experiments of HVT coupled with some bad eating habits have led to a significant loss of definition but not much. Thanks to IF that was practiced with some consistency. I am going to lean down first and slowly progress as before. I have planned on 2 full body workouts every week with some smaller body parts thrown into the mix as indicated in “Getting Ripped”. Your inputs would be of great help.
Hey Karthik,
If you’ve been performing a high enough volume and frequency of exercise that you’re overtrained I suggest taking a full two weeks off to rest before starting back with HIT. Two full-body workouts per week is a good starting point, and I include examples in Getting Ripped.
Hi Drew,
Do you recommend the same strategy to someone in my situation? I am 164 lbs , 6’3″tall and 15% bodyfat. I am a bit confused if I should diet down first , as I feel a bit underweight already. I just started training.
Also, do you ever recommend maintenance calories to beginners?
Thanks!
Hey Jay,
At your height, weight, and body composition I would recommend focusing on muscle gain. As long as you closely monitor your calorie intake you should be able to increase muscle mass without gaining any fat and may even lose some in the process.
Hey Nik,
First, whether muscular strength and size gains or fat loss should be prioritized depends on the current condition and goals of the individual. The person asking the question didn’t mention any injury, they were just asking about appearance. As a general rule health should be a higher priority than physical appearance so if an individual does have an injury rehab would be the priority. Second, a proper fat loss program will not result in loss of lean body mass and in some cases may even allow for increases in muscle.
The problem is “proper fat loss program” at he same time as a safe training program a tricky thing for a person who is new to weight training and overweight. Most people do not get the right information as there is so much wrong information to wade through.
Many of my clients arrive having injured themselves while believing they were doing the right thing with diet and exercise. Injuries that could have been avoided if functional strength had been there initial focus before fat loss and appearance.
Hey Nik,
This is true, but if they’re here reading my articles they are getting the right information and will be able to get stronger and improve overall functional ability while also losing fat.