28/03/2020
With gyms having closed this week, an increasingly important focus for people now is nutrition, in relation to body composition and general health. Particularly a main focal point for many right now is that of preserving lean muscle mass 💪🏼
Now that the vast majority of people don’t have access to traditional resistance training equipment, plenty of us are worried about maintaining our muscle mass. While others who are dieting are questioning whether to continue on this path 🤔
⭐️ Here are some helpful ways to decrease lean muscle mass loss and maintain your current body composition
✅ Making sure that you’re eating at maintenance calories - One thing that can make you more vulnerable to lean muscle loss is eating in a calorie deficit. This combined with a decrease in, or no resistance training at all, can further escalate this. By eating at maintenance calories, we can slow this process, and support maintaining the current body composition. Another downside to being in a calorie deficit, especially when it has been for an extended period of time, or is a large deficit, is that it can supress the immune system. Which is of great importance to everyone currently.
✅ Staying active throughout the day - With many of us now working from home, or not working at all, ensure that you are still hitting a minimum of 10,000 steps a day.
✅ When gyms are closed, this calls for us to get more creative with workouts and available resources in terms of equipment. Some of us are fortunate and have access to dumbbells, kettlebells, or barbells and weight plates. Failing this, resistance bands, any other objects you can utilise around the home (Backpacks, buckets etc), and even bodyweight exercises are still great when there aren’t any other options. Instead of focusing so much on the weight/load, focus on other variables such as time under tension, tempo, intensity and maximising tension during the set. When heavy weights aren’t at your disposal, workouts can also be made harder through techniques such as pre-fatiguing with isometric holds, and doing holds mid set while under load, especially in the concentric (lifting) phase, or even partials once you’ve neared failure.
