Most people that work themselves hard in the gym are doing it with a purpose. That reason is usually either to bulk themselves up and increase their muscle mass or to reduce their body fat percentage.
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It’s well known that if you’re trying to increase the muscle mass on your body then you need to ensure you’re continuously pushing yourself to progress every week and making sure that you’re using heavy weights, low reps, and high intensity work outs to really pack it on.
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Defining Your Muscles
The idea is that, if you want to burn fat, then you must do the opposite and use low weights with a high number of reps. This is a myth and completely incorrect.
Not only is the information misguided but it’s also damaging to the current progress made. People who switch over to try and define their bodies more will reduce their weights again, undoing all the hard work that they’ve already put in. They do this with the aim of making their muscles more pronounced, thinking that they’ll be more cut.
Muscles are only capable of two changes through work outs:
• They become bigger
• They become smaller
No exercise out there is able to harden your muscles or shape them how you want them. The appearance of your muscles all depends on the percentage of body fat you’re holding on to. The less body fat you have, the more sculpted your muscles will look.
Controlling The Loss
People also think that they’re able to target a specific area of their body and burn the fat off from there. This isn’t possible. Not only will no amount of weight training reduce the percentage of body fat that you’re carrying if you’re not in calorie deficit, it also won’t only reduce one area. The loss of fat happens across the entire body, the percentage reducing across your whole mass. You might not see instant results, but as long as you’re working out, you’re in a calorie deficit and you’re pushing yourself to burn more calories through cardio, the results will happen.
The Correct Approach
Keep doing what you’re doing. Continue to lift heavy and keep a low rep count in order to get cut. If you’re looking to lose your body fat, while you’re in calorie deficit you won’t be able to add to your muscle mass anyway so you’re still able to stay entirely in control on your personal growth. You need to make sure that you stick to your schedule and that you stay structured. Keeping your body working and stimulated is a big part of weight training. Failure to do so will just mean that instead of burning through body fat to make up for the lost calories, your body will start eating away at your new found muscle mass.
