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.