Make Sure You Know This Before This Weekend
A Quick guide to the most common fitness questions answered *quick and dirty* before Thursday's Q&A
Ahead of this week’s Q&A, I thought I would throw out some of the most common general questions I receive in person and through social media on fitness and answer them with clear, to the point, information/advice for all of you. This will keep the weekend’s questions more focused on specific questions about yourself or the curriculum material.
We will be covering tons of specific info for you to start using next week with the upcoming ‘Foundation Setting’ post. (Read this week’s article to understand basic concepts on how to approach a training program)
Common Fitness FAQ:
“Can I lose fat and gain muscle at the same time?”
Yes, you can. However, context matters. It can be done generally speaking without being too complicated in about 3 scenarios:
You are a newb to training with weights and have a low level of muscle mass gained from training (this is anyone with less than 5 months of training OR anyone who has not gained at least 15+lbs of muscle from training in their life - less than that for girls).
You have high body fat percentage. If you are over 20% bodyfat as a man - especially if you are not strong (if you aren’t sure if you are strong yet, you are not). In this scenario you can diet down while building muscle tissue until you reach the upper teens in bodyfat % and it will slow down to a negligible increase in mass.
You are on drugs (Not recommended). Extraneous hormones are allowing you to break the rules of normal physiology. Not worth it at all if you are thinking about it. There are costs to drug use and many “jacked” dudes on drugs die in their 40s. Avoid.
With each of these situations you would just resistance train for hypertrophy while also being on a diet to lose weight. Done right, and if you are one of those 3 people, then you will build muscle while losing fat without much difficulty.
Formula —> Lift for muscle mass in the 6-12 rep range + calorie deficit = MASS GAIN while getting LEANER. Hurray.
“How long do I need to rest between sets?”
I’ll make this super clear and simple. 3 minutes. If you still feel tired and you can’t lift with the same intensity that you did last set, rest longer. It has been shown, however, that 3 minutes is superior for muscle and strength gain to 1 minute rest and 1 minute rest doesn’t allow you to lift with strength being recovered. Unless you are doing a very particular special protocol, choose to rest for about 3 minutes.
“Should I cut or bulk?”
Another quick and dirty heuristic → if you are a male above 15-18% bodyfat, I generally recommend losing fat to get down to about 13% or lower before bulking. What this does is give you a buffer zone to gain weight without entering the metabolically unhealthy zone. This will keep you in the “fit” range of body fat for a man while still gaining weight (because some fat gain is inevitable).
If you bulk when above this area you tend to end up fat and ,aesthetics aside, it is reaching a zone of metabolic health where actual measurable health issues/risks begin to arise. These risks and issues compound over time spent there. Which means that reducing time spent there to zero is ideal. 18% being the bulking limit (with 15% being an even more conservative one) will keep you in the ideal range.
Anyone lower than 15% bodyfat should generally bulk (Without exceeding 18%bf).
To calculate bodyfat estimate use this: http://www.chaosreigns.com/gym/waistfromfat.html
“How do I build/what exercise is best for….?”
It will always depend on more context. Ask in the Q&A. I will give recommendations that *will work for you* for whatever you ask.
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“How much protein do I need?”
If you are a newb and not overweight (>20% bodyfat), just eat 1g / lb bodyweight in protein. If you are overweight use a body fat calculator and eat 0.8-1 g/lb of LEAN body mass. Calculate this by multiplying your bodyweight x (1 - bodyfat %). [For example, 200lb male @15%bf → 200 x (1 - 15%) = 170lbs lean mass. Don’t overcomplicate this.
Easy sources to add to your diet besides beef/chicken & protein shakes:
Canned tuna
Greek yogurt (low fat)
Super lean turkey
“Should I drink protein shakes?”
I rarely use them. I get all my protein from whole foods. However, they are convenient for those who struggle getting enough protein in their regular diet. If this is you, then it is perfectly fine to use. *HOWEVER*, do not rely on protein shakes for the majority of your protein sources because it will deny you many anabolic benefits of the nutrients that come from actual meat products. They can also begin to wreak havoc on some people’s digestive system.
If you can get your protein from whole sources you will get much better micro nutrition which is much healthier for you overall. (Red meat is extremely nutrient rich and is not “bad” for you.)
“Should I do cardio?”
Yes. You should in some form. Cardio is hugely beneficial to your health and supports systems that you will benefit from in any fitness quest. To keep it short, you are constantly breathing & using oxygen and your heart is pumping blood to where you need it, it is obvious this is imperative for all bodily functions that the heart works well. If you are sedentary, or only lifting weights, regardless of what you *think* your cardiovascular health is like, it is bad if you are not regularly pushing it in some degree.
At the *very least*, you should be getting 1.5 hours of zone 2 cardio a week, minimum. Zone 2 will be achieved for most people by taking a brisk walk, or a walk on an incline, or a slow easy jog.
Muscle recovery, aging, disease prevention, fat loss, and brain health if you consistently get this done.
“Why aren’t I gaining muscle?”
Assuming you are lifting weights (if you aren’t then your training won’t reliably build muscle) this answer will cover 95% of you:
I like to address this in 3 sequential questions → Are you eating enough food and protein? If you aren’t gaining muscle but are not gaining weight than that is most likely your issue. If that is being measured and you know that for sure your diet is in order… are you sleeping enough or staying up late at night? 7.5 hours is the minimum here. Naps can help but are very suboptimal. Turn lights and phone off at 11pm or whatever and sleep as much as you can if you aren’t getting around 8 hours, consecutively, per night. If you are doing this, are you training with good exercises and taking the weights close to failure in the 6-15 rep range? There can be many things stopping this.
A few examples: bad exercise choice can prevent you from hitting muscular failure because you stop the set when it gets cardiovascular intense - switch to another exercise or push harder/get in shape (common with squats). The exercise might not target a muscle as well as you think - another muscle might be hitting failure before the target muscle does and thus stops the set early (if it’s a compound lift). Or you might be being much “softer” than you think and you need to push yourself harder. You must be trying to increase the reps on an exercise and once the reps go up a bit, increase the weight (safe and good form always - be sensible).
If you are attempting to gain muscle through weight training and you are confident you have been fulfilling these questions, comment below or ask us for help on Thursday’s Q&A.