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Anonymous
Question, mis/fit/s!

In a reduced calorie diet, should one's weight training be increasing strength or maintaining it? Basically, does lean body mass correlate to body strength, or can you gain strength without gaining LBM?

Probably a stupid question (I'm thinking the answer is "yes"), but I figured I'd ask since this spiffy new board is here.
>> Anonymous
eat, so that you don't hunger.
work out 3x10 so that you can barely do it.
>> Anonymous
Remember, muscle cells are what use the most calories. You can lose weight without building muscle mass, but it'll take a lot longer, and that's IF you learn how to manage the pace.

Of course, now, your strength is going to increase as you make your existing muscle cells function properly, but to gain more strength, you'll build more muscle cells.
>> Anonymous
>>7272
Just workout. Don't care how you do it, just do it.

30 mins a day or more. 20 to get rid of the body's initial Glucose store, then after that it's probably burning fat.
>> Anonymous
do you just want to lose fat? work out a bit.
want to gain muscle (which increases your weight) train hard.
>> Scrubbo !!ViIoMv7gzOJ
You can most definitely gain strength while cutting. What you do is low reps / low sets with more weight than before. For instance, 3 sets of 5 reps is usually good. Also, do only the more complex lifts. Do NOT do any isolation at all. No biceps curls, triceps extensions etc.

Strength and hypertrophy are completely different things. Also, make sure to NEVER go to failure when training for strength. That might work well for hypertrophy but it's a killer in strength training.
>> Anonymous
Let me clarify:

I've been on a reduced calorie diet and a weight training(40min,4x a week)/cardio(45min,5x a week) program for a few months now, and I'm trying to lose a good deal of weight, which the reduced calorie diet can do a great deal faster than adding lean body mass.

I'm going to lift weights no matter what. My question is whether I should push to progressively increase the amount I lift. Is it possible without adding lean body mass (which is difficult/impossible on my reduced calorie diet) or should I not even bother increasing the load until I can increase my diet.
>> Anonymous
>>7290

Oops, you snuck your post in while I was typin' my reply.
>> Anonymous
>>7310

Neat; my current routine is very similar to your suggestions. All I really need to do is purge the isolation exercises I've got goin' on.

Which brings me to another question. I mainly isolate my arms/legs because they are much weaker than they have any right to be. Will they get anywhere near as much benefit without any isolation exercises on them?
>> Scrubbo !!ViIoMv7gzOJ
>>7328
To tell you the truth I don't know, though I assume they will. My training is centered around strength and conditioning for kickboxing, so I almost never would do isolation anyway.

The reason you don't do isolation when cutting though is because you want to keep the overall total stress your muscles have to endure less.

The reason is that when you do very many sets on the same muscle groups, the muscle fibers break down and the body will rebuild them bigger than before. That is the reason why you see people doing like 12 sets on their biceps. But it's much harder for the body to rebuild muscle on a negative calorie diet.

You want to do less sets with less reps, though each individual rep will put more stress on the muscles, the total will be lower. That way you train your CNS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_unit ) without breaking down your muscle fibers too much.

I hope that all makes sense, I didn't proof read it at all.