TRAINING ADVICE
PERSONALLY SPEAKING
LEAN, MUSCULAR BODIES HAVE BECOME HIGHLY FASHIONABLE IN RECENT YEARS, MAINLY DUE TO THE INFLUENCE OF FILMS AND TELEVISION.
BY ERIK SOLÄNG, ONE OF THE UK’S LEADING PERSONAL TRAINERS
INTERVIEWED BY JOHN PLUMMER PHOTOS BY TAUSEEF ASRI
MYTH 1 —PERFORM HIGH REPS WITH LIGHT WEIGHTS
I
t is awesome to see celebrities with very lean, yet muscular bodies and streamlined waists. So many people want this kind of physique now that I thought
I would look at some of the myths and misconceptions and give some advice on how to achieve it. Let’s start with some basics: the
quest to gain lean muscle mass starts with losing fat. It’s not about reshaping the muscle; it’s about maintaining or increasing muscle mass while losing enough fat to make the muscle appear more defined. Regular resistance training is the best way to go about this because not only will it preserve and increase muscle mass, it will also make your metabolism more efficient and improve your mobility. There is a lot of misinformation out
there about building lean body mass. If you base your knowledge on what you read in magazines and on the internet you must be careful about what you choose to follow. One of the biggest reasons people do not achieve their goals is because they get confused about what to do.
220 MUSCLE&FITNESS
The majority of people I talk to in the gym, including many personal trainers, think that if you perform high reps with light weights you are guaranteed to get muscle definition. This is partly true: performing high reps and sets with a lighter weight might burn off more calories if done for long periods of time. However, doing this while dieting with the hope of adding more definition to your physique could simply leave you looking smaller and stringier than you desire. The only way to lose weight is to use
more energy than you consume. But when dieting for fat loss the body can shift into a catabolic state whereby it loses fat tissue, which is great, but also muscle size, which is not so great. That is why you can look stringy. To achieve the fashionable lean and muscular body you must continue stimulating muscle growth whilst restricting calorie intake and as you probably know, lifting light weights for high reps is not the best way to do this. So dieting and high reps aren’t the best combination. Muscular bodies burn up more calories and potentially more fat so it’s good to maintain as much muscle as you can while dieting. This isn’t always possible if you combine light weights with high reps because your muscles aren’t getting enough stimulus to grow.
An effective way to hold onto your muscle mass is to lift as heavy as you can safely manage while performing a moderate range of reps. You will keep, and possibly increase, the muscle you worked so hard for and also burn more calories and fat. It is easy to fall for the myth that lighter weight and higher reps are better for definition. But less weight lifted equals less muscle growth. My advice is to lift heavy and focus on achieving defini- tion by watching your diet and by doing cardio.
MYTH 2—YOU NEED TO TRAIN FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR Another common mistake is spending too long in the gym. Training for too long, too often, can be counterproductive to your muscle-building aims. When the body is placed under stressful conditions, such as through prolonged weight training, it breaks down proteins from muscle and uses them as energy. If at the same time you are on a low or zero carbohydrate diet the effects could be even worse. The longer the workout, the more protein gets broken down to fuel the workout. Overtraining may also impair the efficiency of the immune system, which creates a greater risk of colds and viral infections. My advice is to limit your intense training sessions to less than an hour and to lift on no more than five days each week.
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