The Don't List | Recomp | Men's Health Muscle - video Dailymotion

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The Don't List | Recomp | Men's Health Muscle

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00:00So you want to burn fat, you want to build muscle, and you want to do both of those things

00:04at the same time without the fat gain that comes with some of our classic muscle building

00:08strategies and without the muscle loss, or lack of muscle gain at least, that can come

00:13with weight loss workouts.

00:14That is body recomposition, and point blank, it is one of the toughest goals in the gym.

00:19It is also the holy grail for almost every guy who's ever set foot in the gym, and it's

00:25incredibly hard to accomplish.

00:27But it can be done as long as your training is properly focused, and as long as you avoid

00:31these four training mistakes.

00:34So if we're training for body recomposition, the one thing we don't want to do, don't go

00:37crazy with HIIT.

00:38I know what you're thinking, high intensity interval training seems like a great way to

00:42build muscle, and it seems like it'll blast calories too, right?

00:45So why not do circuits and intervals when you're trying to hit your body recomp goal,

00:49and you're getting a dose of cardio while doing muscle building that way too.

00:53Your why not is twofold.

00:55First off, those HIIT workouts are going to seriously eat into your real training volume.

01:00HIIT sessions can fry your central nervous system, and that'll limit how often you can

01:04train, period, because your body is really going to need to recover.

01:07Just as badly, too much HIIT is going to force you into less effective workouts from a muscle

01:11building standpoint, and it's going to make it harder to create the mechanical tension

01:15in every single exercise and every single rep that truly drives muscle growth.

01:20This doesn't mean you can't do some HIIT though.

01:22In fact, I like it in small doses to challenge other energy systems that can feed you to

01:27have better workouts.

01:28So for some quick calorie burn, and also this is a really good way to sneak in a couple

01:32explosive moves too, think of doing super quick seven to 10 minute HIIT workouts after

01:38your strength training, but limit this to twice a week.

01:41This will give you a nice dose of ramping up your heart rate without crushing your body,

01:45and so it won't prevent you from truly building the muscle that is, remember, half of our

01:49body recomp workout.

01:50If you're thinking body recomp, don't forget about serious strength training.

01:54And by serious strength training, I don't just mean lifting weights.

01:58I mean, don't stop training to build serious strength and don't ditch the heavy weights.

02:03One of the biggest mistakes when you're thinking body recomp workout is that you drop your

02:08weights so that you can load up on reps upon reps upon reps.

02:12That has you doing three sets of 15, three sets of 20, and that's partly because we tend

02:16to think of reps and pump as the keys to building muscle.

02:20And those tend to come best when we train with lighter weights.

02:23The thing is, those light weights don't truly build strength, and that's going to curtail

02:28your ability to build muscle long term.

02:31At some point to build muscle, you're going to need to progressively overload, and you're

02:35limiting how effectively and frequently you can do that if you don't let yourself train

02:40heavy.

02:41On top of that, research has shown that the rep range to build muscle in general, so our

02:46rep range to be in hypertrophy, is much larger than people think, and can be as low as three

02:51reps per set.

02:53Let's take advantage of that.

02:54It makes sense to spend at least a portion of every workout moving heavier loads via

02:58compound lifts, and that's going to help you continue to build the strength you'll need

03:02to develop the muscle you want, and you're still going to burn calories too.

03:06So don't fall into the trap of doing three sets of 12 reps for every single exercise

03:11during body recomp workouts.

03:13Instead, start every workout with at least one multi-joint exercise.

03:18Think of a squat, or a deadlift, or a bench press, and do that exercise for three sets

03:23of three to five reps.

03:25One of the most common mistakes I see in body recomp workouts is that you overthink that

03:29you need to train abs, and you wind up spending too much time and too much of your workout

03:33training your abs.

03:34You might think that you need to do abs every single day so that you can shed weight around

03:38your midsection, and that that's the secret to getting the superhero body of your dreams.

03:42But all that time spent doing quick ab exercises won't do any of the things you really need

03:48to do.

03:49To truly body recomp, we need to spend more time with calorie-burning concepts that are

03:54going to help us shed unwanted fat throughout our entire bodies by just burning calories.

03:59And that's going to come with bigger, more compound movements than those isolated ab

04:03exercises and seven-minute ab workouts.

04:06That doesn't mean you don't have to train your abs, but you want to make your core motions

04:10count.

04:11Much like the rest of our exercises, focus on ab motions that will truly build muscle.

04:15And that means not doing crunches and sit-ups and simply stimulating our abs.

04:20Instead, we want to limit our core work to three to four sets per workout, if that, and

04:25we want to aim to do challenging moves that we can eventually progressively overload.

04:29Think of hanging leg lifts and cable crunches and one of my favorite ab exercises, the split

04:35stance chop.

04:36The truth is, all you need to do on these exercises is do them for three sets of eight

04:40to 10 reps.

04:41If you can do more than eight to 10 reps and you're doing 50 and 60 and 70 reps, or you're

04:45doing time sets, pass on them because they're just not the ab exercises that you need to

04:49be doing.

04:50If body recomp is your goal, don't fear the total body workout.

04:54One of the most misguided things anyone can do in their training is overly embrace the

04:58bodybuilder split, which has us training exactly one muscle group on every single day.

05:04And yes, you might think that'll help you build muscles, and it does work for bodybuilders,

05:08but it has two serious flaws that prevent it from being ideal when your goal is body

05:12recomp.

05:14First off, if you're training on a bodybuilder split, you have to train incredibly hard in

05:19every single session to get the most out of it.

05:21The strength of a bodybuilder split is that you're attacking each muscle group and pushing

05:25it to its ultimate limit, which then requires the near full week of recovery before you

05:30attack that body part again the next week.

05:33Here's the reality, most people simply aren't attacking their workouts quite that hard.

05:38You may think you're going hard, but even most intermediate gym goers aren't putting

05:42in that kind of work.

05:43They're stopping well short of failure.

05:45And especially if you're building light cardio sessions into your training, as you might

05:49during your recomp phase, you're simply not always attacking every single workout like

05:54a bodybuilder.

05:55The other issue with the bodybuilder split is it prevents you from getting the muscle

05:59building and calorie burning responses that come with total body sessions where you're

06:03moving more sheer weight and you're doing simply more work because we're using more

06:08joints.

06:09Especially if you're only training three days a week, consider doing full body workouts,

06:13which will ensure that you're attacking all major muscles in every single session and

06:18give you plenty of opportunities to continue to progressively overload, which is going

06:22to help us build muscle and blast calories.

06:24And in the end, that's what we're playing for when we're in our body recomp workouts.

The Don't List | Recomp | Men's Health Muscle

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