I have an unusual problem in that I don't like the fact that I'm so built and so muscular. People often compliment me on it and ask about my routine but I am one of those people who would rather be skinny and cut than big. Kind of like a basketball player's body, I suppose.
So, my goal is to lose some of the muscle mass and get skinny. But, the catch is that I still want to maintain my strength. I want to be able to lift heavy weights. I'm not expecting to lift 900 lbs or anything but I don't want a max bench of 120.
Currently my routine is:
Lifting heavy 3x a week. 3 sets of 8 per exercise.
Running for 45 mins 4x a week at varrying speeds.
I'm on a low carb-like diet. I wouldn't call it "Atkins" but it's high protein, lower carbs.
Anyway, is this possible? What should I be doing that I'm not? Am I wrong to assume this is possible? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Re: Maintaining strength while reducing muscle mass?
But to actually lose mass, you need to diet/increase cardio. In order to allow your body to cannibalize existing muscle mass, you have to deprive it of calories from elsewhere. Adding an hour or so of cardio several times a week might be enough to do the job if you don't increase calories. In the beginning you will almost certainly lose some strength, but by lifting heavy weight/low reps (4-6 rep range), you can keep strength up and mass minimal. However, working high rep for endurance will also get you the look you want (as well as helping to keep you cut), but you will lose some strength - maybe not even enough to be concerned about, and you can always go back to bulking if you don't like the results.
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Keep your body lean, your blood clean and your mind sharp. -Rollins
Re: Maintaining strength while reducing muscle mass?
I agree with Naxis. Just to add if you are doing 8 reps then your routine is geared for building muscle size, exactly what you don't want to do. As Naxis said keep the rep range really low for strength or high for endurance. I would suggest if you are going for strength to not go over 4 reps. If going for endurance I would go around 16 reps. That may sound high but at 12 reps you could still be gaining some size. Even at 4 reps for strength you could be gaining size and might want to keep it at 2 or 3. In my opinion your best shot at slimming down and being cut would be doing high reps and doing cardio but you will lose strength but I really doubt you have to give that much worry, it's not like you'll be weak or anything, just not quite as strong as before.
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Keep Pumping...see what happens
Re: Maintaining strength while reducing muscle mass?
Actually, since muscle strength and muscle mass are dependent upon the same thing, i.e., the cross sectional area of the type II muscle fiber, you can't reduce muscle mass and maintain strength. Let us now distinguish between muscle size and muscle mass. A healthy muscle is dense with protein, the protein of the type II fiber. It is not necessarily large. A dense muscle will grow large and puffy as type Ii cross sectional area is lost, and the strength and endurance will be diminished accordingly. What you want to do is increase mass, and this will result in decreased muscle size and cuts. You will tend to sink in water, be very heavy, and solid. To do this you must overload the muscle, and that means power training, few reps at high loads. All muscle building turns on the increased cross-sectional area of the type II fiber, the sine qua non of voluntary muscle use. Whey protein has been found to promote thie increase of cross-sectional area, when accompanied by workouts involving overloading of the muscle. This overloading can be the result of vigorous weight training emphasizing bursts of strength and exertion, or the introduction of an electrical field to the motor endplate region of the muscle using a pulsed, monophasic voltage wave (DC), with the charge being delivered by the anode, not the cathode. The amplification of the power of the nerve impulse that arrives at the neuromuscular junction is accomplished by the reduced resistance to the action potential offered by the type II fiber of larger size than the nerve's microtubule. This resistance is subject to the laws of electrical circuitry, in particular, the inverse square law, which states that the greater the cross-sectional area of the conductor, the greater the reduction in resistance to the movement of the charge traveling to the individual muscle cells. If you double the size of your type II cross-sectional area, you quadruple the amplification of the power of that nerve impulse. It is not uncommon to increase the cross-sectional area of this fiber by a factor of 12, which amplifies the power of the nerve impulse by 144 times. But the increased weight of such muscles becomes an impediment to movement.
Re: Maintaining strength while reducing muscle mass?
while that MAY be true, and those technicalities maybe true with the general functions of the body, that will not help you with learning how your body works, trial and error is best for that. All brains fire generally in the same way, but the way those people think and process information is not the same. Your body will stimulate muscle growth, loss, etc differently from anyones elses. Everyone takes different amount of reps, nutrition, exercises etc to produce desired results. Of course always general rules of thumb.
You cannot really lose muscle mass without losing strength, do not think medically, physiologically, just use common sense.
try to keep weight some what heavy, your max weight will lower over time, keep reps somewhat kinda high 8-12...but lower caloric intake, its all DIET
