Lifting frequency

[Rachel421]

I've been doing light resistance training on my upper body, just for fat loss. I like the way I feel after. Is it ok to train one muscle group, lightly, everyday if your not interested in gaining size? just strength?

[Rachel421]

I've been doing light resistance training on my upper body, just for fat loss. I like the way I feel after. Is it ok to train one muscle group, lightly, everyday if your not interested in gaining size? just strength?

My recommendation is not to isolate your body and separate it into muscles.  That is not how you use it in life or sports.  It is used as a unit and in synergy so imitate that when you exercise.  I train myself, as well as my clients, 5-6 days a week full- body.  Not every day can be all out 100% or you would break down and not want to do it as well as potentially overtrain.  Have a couple days be and 8 or 9, even 10 on a 1-10 scale and the other days a 5-7 intensity.  That way you can train everything equally and always be able to function. 

This training method burns the most calories, works the core in synergy with the limbs, and increases both testosterone and growth hormone which will make you stronger and lose fat--- all good things.

Kettlebells is the way!


   I'm doing my homework  "systemic fatigue" ....I'm big and out of shape, what size kettleball should I start to train with? Are the workouts you find on you-tube alright? This seems a lot more synergistic and efficient than traditional training. I've been out of the loop.    Thanx!!

[TheUsurper]

Some great ideas, as always, by alwaysbelieve1, but I feel it is only fair to shed some light on a few principles so you can understand whats wrong with your current mentality about training and why another method, such as the one alwaysbelieve suggested, could be much more effective.

First off, fat loss/definition which you are probably most concerned with can be as much as 85% nutrition, depending on your genetics and assuming your training is perfect.  So the statement "light resistance training for fat-loss" simply doesn't make sense.

Next, it sounds like you are training every day, lightly.  Think of the phrase Ori always talks about how people want to diet with "moderation," it simply doesn't work.  Either you break down and tire of it, or you become a smaller version of your old self with little to no noticeable change in definition/muscularity.  The body does not thrive on moderation.  Fluctating changes and forcing the body to ADAPT is crucial to improving your current state.  If you like the way you feel after a workout, imagine how it would feel if you did it fewer times, with greater intensity?  Just like how much better food tastes when you are actually hungry.

Finally, it seems to me that you need to maintain a certain volume of training to maximize fat-burning hormones.  Too little, and they aren't maximized. Too much, and your cortisol and stress-related hormones are raised too high, blunting the effects of the fat-burning hormones and muscle improvement as well.  Conversely, you also need a certain amount of high-intensity training (1-3 days per week) to guarantee that testosterone and GH are maximized as well so that the stimulus for muscle improvement can occur.

A lot of your homer-simpson trainer will prescribe higher reps for definition and they would be wrong.  If you got more definition from more reps, why not do sets of 100 or 1000?  Too much high volume training (lifting) will raise the your cortisol levels to the degree that maximum muscle growth is blunted, but working slow-twitch muscle will burn fat and you will probably notice a degree of strength improvement, but most likely you will experience more fatigue resistance than actual strength improvement.  Diet will ultimately determine whether or not there is an improvement in definition.

As far as isolation, i'm a bit more lenient than Alwaysbelieve, being that im more on the bodybuilding side of the spectrum of weight training.  You are going to get much greater benefits from compound lifts on your high-intensity training days, hormonally, but i would not be entirely opposed to using them occasionally on high-intensity days, as well as more-often on high-volume days.  The pump feels great and it can help to develop a more thorough mind-muscle connection.

[Rachel421]

Some great ideas, as always, by alwaysbelieve1, but I feel it is only fair to shed some light on a few principles so you can understand whats wrong with your current mentality about training and why another method, such as the one alwaysbelieve suggested, could be much more effective.

First off, fat loss/definition which you are probably most concerned with can be as much as 85% nutrition, depending on your genetics and assuming your training is perfect.  So the statement "light resistance training for fat-loss" simply doesn't make sense.

Next, it sounds like you are training every day, lightly.  Think of the phrase Ori always talks about how people want to diet with "moderation," it simply doesn't work.  Either you break down and tire of it, or you become a smaller version of your old self with little to no noticeable change in definition/muscularity.  The body does not thrive on moderation.  Fluctating changes and forcing the body to ADAPT is crucial to improving your current state.  If you like the way you feel after a workout, imagine how it would feel if you did it fewer times, with greater intensity?  Just like how much better food tastes when you are actually hungry.

Finally, it seems to me that you need to maintain a certain volume of training to maximize fat-burning hormones.  Too little, and they aren't maximized. Too much, and your cortisol and stress-related hormones are raised too high, blunting the effects of the fat-burning hormones and muscle improvement as well.  Conversely, you also need a certain amount of high-intensity training (1-3 days per week) to guarantee that testosterone and GH are maximized as well so that the stimulus for muscle improvement can occur.

A lot of your homer-simpson trainer will prescribe higher reps for definition and they would be wrong.  If you got more definition from more reps, why not do sets of 100 or 1000?  Too much high volume training (lifting) will raise the your cortisol levels to the degree that maximum muscle growth is blunted, but working slow-twitch muscle will burn fat and you will probably notice a degree of strength improvement, but most likely you will experience more fatigue resistance than actual strength improvement.  Diet will ultimately determine whether or not there is an improvement in definition.

As far as isolation, i'm a bit more lenient than Alwaysbelieve, being that im more on the bodybuilding side of the spectrum of weight training.  You are going to get much greater benefits from compound lifts on your high-intensity training days, hormonally, but i would not be entirely opposed to using them occasionally on high-intensity days, as well as more-often on high-volume days.  The pump feels great and it can help to develop a more thorough mind-muscle connection.

no more baby-stepping, time to dive right in. No Kettlebell yet, but just doing the motions with a barbell is fantastic. MOre like the hard labor dear old gramps had me doing on his farm when I was a child. Come to think of it, I never ate during the day then when we worked all day either. The end of a day like that was as close to Zen as Ive ever felt since. Thanks so much guys!