So, as you should know by now, during the period of time, when we focus on building muscle (Off-season), our training is oriented towards higher intensity.
This higher intensity, combined with powerful bodybuilding methods like cheating and forced repetitions is the perfect stimulus for hypertrophy and development of our musculature.
However, when it’s time for you to get “Shredded”, it’s a different ball game.
Once we step into the grounds of fat-shredding, our approach to training inevitably changes. We are now striving to retain and shape up what we’ve gained during the off-season, as much as possible.
Avoiding Muscle Loss
If you’ve read our previous article on “Physiology of weight loss”, you probably know that during this so called “on-season” or “Weight loss period”, our body burns muscle and fat.
We also know how hard it is (especially for non-enhanced athletes) to gain muscle. Year after year, it gets harder and harder to gain that precious muscle.
Step Number One
So, one logical step towards retaining your gains for the most part, is to not gain excess fat during the off-season. Don’t go off the rails with your caloric surplus!
That is simply because- The more fat you gain, the longer your fat shredding period will be, the more muscle you will lose.
If you’re someone who has no competitive goals, but rather prefers to be shredded for the sole purpose of feeling good in your own skin, then our advice would be: Do not get yourself to the point where it would take you months and months to get to your desired shape.
Being just a couple of weeks away from your top shape is always a bliss, and it can be easily achieved if you know what you’re doing.
Step Number Two
The second thing you can do to keep your gains, is switch your training from intensity oriented training to density oriented training.
If you forgot what density is, it’s simply the volume of the workload referred to the time needed for its completion.
So, for example, if you do 5 sets of 10 reps using 70 kg on the exercise “Flat barbell bench press” that’s a volume of 3500 kilograms (5x10x70). If you complete that in 8 minutes, the density would be 437 kg/min (3500:8=437.5)
As we already mentioned, we’re looking for higher levels of density during the fat loss phase. These higher levels of density, achieved through certain bodybuilding principles and methods, will help us retain and shape up our musculature.
Higher density has a positive effect upon the vascularization and dense, detailed look of the musculature.
How Can You Achieve A Higher Workload Density?
Beginners
For beginners, or people who do not have any serious fitness goals, there are just a couple of things to keep in mind:
- Lower the weights
- Increase repetitions (From 8-10 and 12-15 for the upper and lower body respectively, to 12-15 and 15-20)
- Decrease rest times between sets
Intermediate And Advanced Athletes
An intermediate/advanced athlete is characterized by his/her goals of achieving higher levels of aesthetics.
Training for intermediate and advanced athletes, during the shredding phase is mainly focused on applying certain principles and methods, that imply the higher levels of density we talked about.
- Decreased rest times (quality principle)
- Split Principle
- Supersets
- Priority Principle
- Combined Approaches
- Iso-Tension (posing)
Rationally combining and applying these principles will help you maintain and shape up the muscle you’ve already gained. You will notice higher levels of vascularity, greater detail and a rounder shape of the musculature.
Elite Athletes
For elite athletes, whose goal is to achieve the BEST shape they possibly could, so it can be shown on a competitive stage, the training methods applied are very different and specialized to the individual.
Methods and principles used by elite athletes during the shredding period.
- Quality Principle
- Split Principle
- Isolation
- Priority Principle
- Cyclicality
- Instinctive Principle
- Combined Approaches
- Iso-Tension
- Triple Sets, Giant Sets
- Pre-Exhaustion
- Aerobics
- Alternating Sets
If you’re having trouble building a workout regimen, based off of these principles, you can check out our Workouts category.
In there, you will find fat loss and muscle building workouts for both men and women, that are built, using the principles and methods, that we talked about in the first section of our website.
However, those workouts are generic, meaning, you might not get the best for YOURSELF out of them. If you want to achieve OPTIMAL results, we highly recommend you to contact us for INDIVIDUAL coaching, that will focus around your individual characteristics- strong points, weak points, preferences and daily routine.
