Not Just a Man's World

As a follow up from my last article about the best diet for losing weight, I thought I would also talk about exercise.  After all, while nutrition makes up most of the body composition equation, if you get exercise wrong you can really hinder your efforts.

Originally this was going to be a single article, but there was so much to write about with the different exercise elements that I thought it would be easier broken down into two parts.

What have I tried before?

Exercise comes in two main forms, weight training and cardio, and getting both of these right is crucial for me.  I got this wrong last time and accidentally, but very successfully, stripped muscle.  This slowed my metabolism and meant that there wasn’t much figure left once the fat went.  To make matters worse, I ended up much weaker to boot.

Weight training

For weights, I mostly used a variant on Poliquin’s glute tri-set using rack pulls, lumberjack squats and suitcase squats.  The idea was that I could use this to really hit my posterior chain, maintain my weights and possibly even get some glute and hamstring development in.

I had just finished a total body workout plan, with 3 workouts a week, so I kept this structure.  I did 2 full workouts a week and an Olympic lifts workout (because it’s fun, and you’ve got to keep the fun when you’re cutting hard to keep your sanity in check).

The 2 main workouts were structured as:

• 3 sets x 10 reps: swings/good mornings
• 3 sets:  tri-set
• 3 sets x 8 reps: rope upright row/T-bar row; superset with
• 3 sets x 8 reps: dumbbell military press/press up.
• 3 sets x 5 reps: ab roll outs/hanging knee raises.

The Olympic lifts day involved working on elements of the Olympic lifts, as follows:

• 5 sets x 3 reps:  power cleans
• 5 sets x 3 reps:  push Press

Does the tri-set work?

It didn’t work for me.  It’s most likely it didn’t work because, as I’ve learnt since then, Poliquin’s workouts are often designed for advanced athletes, which isn’t me (yet).

With my poor work capacity and lactic threshold (remember, by choice I’m an endurance cyclist, not a sprinter) my limiting factor was my lungs, not the weight.  This meant I wasn’t able to lift heavily enough to maintain muscle.  So I lost most of the glute muscle and core strength I had worked so hard to gain just before the dieting phase.

Within 4 weeks I’d seen the issue and swapped to doing 5 sets of 3 rack pulls and 5 sets of 5 lumberjack squats, with plenty of rest between each set.  But by then the damage was done and I was down to a 60kg rack pull from a 70kg deadlift.

Interestingly, my arms didn’t suffer since I continued lifting heavy weights for that part of my workout.  If anything, I added arm muscle during my cutting phase.  Meanwhile, my traps grew to enormous proportions from the Olympic workouts, but even those exercises weren’t heavy enough to maintain my glutes.

Cardio

I was doing bike intervals twice a week but my heart wasn’t in it.  Not after the lung-busting tri-set.  So I doubt I got the intensity where it needed to be.  As for steady state cardio and Non-Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA), I was doing a 40 minute walk 4 days a week and a 2 hour bike ride three times a week.

Between the poor workout choices and all this cardio it’s amazing I burnt as much fat and kept as much muscle as I did.

Look out for part two where I’ll let you know what I’ve decided to try this time.

Related posts:

1. What exercise is best for losing weight? – Part 2
2. Fat strip January 2010: the exercise
3. What diet is best for losing weight?
4. Resistance training for weight loss