Losing muscle

[98ninja]

well now i have a job with a steady income and waaaay better conditons than before. i can start focusing on some of the other things in life i want to pursue.
from the age of 10-21 i was a road cyclist.i rode in state titles and races all over NSW. made it to NSW A grade when i was 19 then slowly lost interest in it. At the age of 21 i enlisted in the navy as a clearance diver and started upper body weights.
i went from 82kgs to 98kgs!. and due to recent jobs and not having time to do silly amounts of cardio i have been running and doing weights. im currently 102kgs and at around 15% fat.
my aim is to lose muscle and get back around 90kgs again.
does anyone have any experience with this kindof thing? ive googled it and the only articles i can find are treating muscle loss as a negative.
any hints? tips?
im currently doing 2ish hours of cardio per day whilst i get used to being on the bike again.
any diet tips?
its shitting me being so fast on the flat but so slow up hills!

[King Nicholas]

Back in the day I used to be a gym junkie.
I started on low weights, medium reps, then I progressed to medium weights, medium reps and eventually high weights and low reps.
If you want to reduce size, decrease your weights and increase your reps.
I don't know your current training routine but about 3 sets of 20 reps per excercise should do it.
This will gradually change your muscle fibres from fast twitch (big, powerful) to slow twitch (smaller, more stamina).
Don't expect to do it straight away, it will take time and you'll probably find you run out of gas after the 2nd set so if that happens, drop the weight until you can do all 3 sets at the same weight.
Think of the difference between a sprinter and a 5000m runner.
You want the other side of the spectrum.
Good luck!

[Smitty]

Back in the day I used to be a gym junkie.
I started on low weights, medium reps, then I progressed to medium weights, medium reps and eventually high weights and low reps.
If you want to reduce size, decrease your weights and increase your reps.
I don't know your current training routine but about 3 sets of 20 reps per excercise should do it.
This will gradually change your muscle fibres from fast twitch (big, powerful) to slow twitch (smaller, more stamina).
Don't expect to do it straight away, it will take time and you'll probably find you run out of gas after the 2nd set so if that happens, drop the weight until you can do all 3 sets at the same weight.
Think of the difference between a sprinter and a 5000m runner.
You want the other side of the spectrum.
Good luck!

yep...wot he said

[Nelso]

This will gradually change your muscle fibres from fast twitch (big, powerful) to slow twitch (smaller, more stamina).

I take it you are saying you will increase the workload of his slow twitch and decrease the size of his fast twitch fibres? You can't actually change muscle fibres from one to the other but training to increase the workload of one or the other you will change the ratio of muscle fibre volume by increasing the size of those fibres that are trained.



In short: Eat less, decrease intensity and increase volume in training and you will lose muscle. If you want to improve your Hill riding get out of the gym and ride the hills more.

[98ninja]

yeah been heading out to west head every day
as for the gym im only doing squats and abs/stabilizer exercises.
ive also been told 30-60 minutes of exercise before breakfast ,5-6 litres of water per day and no more than 250 grams of carbs per day.
does anyone have any bulk losing stories?
im staying away from the pyramid powercleans from now on.
this is also so i can fit into my leathers with a back protector on.

[kevindinho]

oh shit ive been cutting down the carbs to get more cut didnt know you loose size as well....do you? sorry im no help, never had trouble loosing weight, just gaining weight!

I think cardio is the best bet, mix it up do some endurance and sprints try some plyometrics that always gets the heart pumping and i guess eat less??

[Nelso]

im staying away from the pyramid powercleans from now on.

Why? Cleans and Snatches can be one of the best cardio workouts you will ever have. Pick a weight that you can snatch for reps and do combos. Eg: Do a romanian deadlift, hang power clean, split jerk then hang snatch. That's one rep, now do sets of six, eight, ten whatever your fitness will allow. Do some active rest like core work or bike/erg/elliptical trainer for two minutes and then do your second set. I guarantee you will be knackered after doing just a few sets of these. Then move on to another combo or superset a few higher rep multi joint exercises like bench, seated row and squats. Keep the weight lower, the reps higher and the rest shorter (much like a circuit) and you won't be building any muscle but you will increase your cardiorespiratory and muscular endurance.

[photomike666]

Generally agree with above, more cardio and reduce intake - but you still need some strenght for hill climbs. For this you need a fast strength. Most strenght work requires extreme wieghts and low reps, and are often done slowly. Try reducing from your max weight by 30% and aim for 10 reps with speed. With squats, I stand with my bench behind me I slowly squat down until my backside just touches the bench, then I spring up as fast as I can aiming to make the weights rattle on the bar. I also do squat jumps with weights, but that is more aimed at jumping BMXs.

Also try hill climb sprints. Find a short hill that you would struggle to ride up, ride into the bottom so both wheels are on the incline, stop on the brakes and then powerstart and try and attain spin by the top.

On longer rides, use a lower gear than usual so as to increase your cadence - we do 10km on BMXs with an average of 27kph. Concentrate on spinning, ensuring you are driving the full rotation with each foot (assuming you're using cleats), try and continue this technique on hill climbs. Concentrate on up and over, as you natrually drive down and back anyway. Don't just sit at one speed for the ride, use up and down hills as sprint sections then settle back to maintain speed.

[98ninja]

In the navy you had to pass a 10 day test to get on the dive course. For preparation we where given the SAS 13 week program and they told us to follow it as closely as possible or do the workouts on it.
the weights programs where the only thing i did off it as my cardio was already up there.
The weights programs where similar to what you mention earlier. they where aimed at increasing strength but not size.
for example upper body weights: 15,12,10,8,6 reps of lateral pulll down with a superset of 20 pushups after each set.
15,12,10,8 reps of dumb bell bench press with a superset of 4 overhand chinups after each set.
anyway my point being i got freakin huge!.
and the powercleans im doing now are low weights. usually 15-20 reps and start off on 30kgs and go up in 2.5 or 5kg incremenets each set ( depending on the gym). Im 12kgs heavier than what i was (when i wasnt doing any weights)and have a similar body fat percentage. i just cant seem to drop muscle whilst still doing weights of any kind.
ive talked to a body builder friend ( who was NSW cycling roadman of the year when he was 17) his advice was these 3 things.
1. 250 grams or less of clean count carbohydrates per day
2. 5-6 litres of water per day
3. 30-60 minutes of exercise before breakfast.

[mick_dundee]

All too techo for me, want to lose muscle, follow me, eat more pizza and drink more beer, dead f'n easy!

[HYPE]

Increase activity, physical requirements & metabolism and decrease dietary intake. You'll lose further BFP and eventually body mass in effect. Your body will be forced to feed from the muscle stores. Make sure you take a multi-v everyday and maintain hydration, salt & glucose levels.

as primitive as a walk through the desert...

[Ticketyman]

I was a stoker i.e. diesel fitter in the Navy around the early nineties stationed at Penguin, Kuttabul, Jervis Bay, I knew a few of the clearance divers there. What years were you around ? If I remember Greg Pritchard was a stoker that use to work with you guys operating the hyperbaric chamber or decompression cell. Anyway I to was a muscle head that lost 20 kilo's of body weight in 3 months....I utilised the Ultra lite diet which is a healthier type of the atkins diet or zone diet and hit the swimming pool four times a week.

[seiko1]

More Beer, more Beer, more Beer, more Beer!

[Ticketyman]

More Beer More Beer More Beer,

Stoker Bastards, Stoker bastards..........................

[Nelso]

Most strenght work requires extreme wieghts and low reps, and are often done slowly.

Sorry Mike. The idea of doing weights slowly for strength and size went out in the 90's. The only people you teach to do weights slowly are children and beginners. Strength work is done as fast as possible to recruit the maximum number of motor units possible and increase neural potentiation for explosive power.

Try reducing from your max weight by 30% and aim for 10 reps with speed.

If you want to improve strength you should be dropping your reps too. Rather than 3 sets of 10, try 6 to 10 sets (depending on conditioning, age and supplement use) of 3 reps with a weight 60-85% of your 1 RM done as explosively as possible. You will probably have to build up the sets over time though as 3 or 4 will most likely wipe you out (noted as a decrease in performance rather than a build up of lactic acid which won't happen so much with lower reps) the first time you try lifting heavier weights as fast as possible.

For other relatively untrained people out there reading this please be advised. It takes a while do develop the joints and connective tissue to take larger loads so don't jump straight into 3 rep sets when you are a beginner. You need to gradually decrease the reps and increase the load over time so your body can adapt.