Metabolic mania: lose fat, not muscle or strength, with this hardcore cutting plan

Men's Fitness, Sept, 2006 by Joel Marion

If you only wanted to lose weight, you wouldn't need Men's Fitness. You could simply go on a crash diet or run for several hours a day--and if you didn't go mad first, you would probably drop a good number of pounds in a short period of time. But if you think that approach will leave you with the body of your dreams, be prepared for an unpleasant surprise.

The fact is, weight loss and fat loss are different phenomena. While the former looks good on a scale, it makes for a sad revelation when you take off your shirt and see you're still soft and doughy, with hardly a trace of definition. It's a condition we like to call "skinny fat," wherein you don't weigh much, but what you have is still mostly lard (picture Richard Simmons sweatin' to the oldies in his trademark singlet--on second thought, don't).

Fat loss, on the other hand, may not result in such a dramatic change in body weight. However, the difference in your body composition will be clear--you'll look leaner and more muscular, as you'll have replaced the fat on your frame with much more impressive muscle tissue.

Ideally, a fat-loss program should allow you to gain (or at least maintain) muscle mass and strength while simultaneously shedding tab. Unfortunately, most plans you come across can only cover one or two of those points. One popular method is to circuit train with high reps. This bums a load of calories, but, because the workout lacks heavy lifting, it does little or nothing to maintain your overall strength. Another option is to train very heavy for a low volume of sets. While that succeeds in keeping strength levels up, it doesn't bum enough calories to optimize fat loss or provide enough stimulation to your muscles to maintain their size.

Fortunately, we've found a solid middle ground--an uncompromising fat-loss program that can make you bigger and stronger while you get leaner.

TAKE IT DAY-TO-DAY

This month's Metabolic Mania program is set up as a four-workout-per-week routine. Two sessions are labeled "Strength" and two are called "Metabolic" On Strength days, your lifting will (of course) be heavy, promoting maintenance of, or even gains in, strength--no small feat when you're cutting energy-dense calories from your diet. Heavy lifting will also help improve muscle tone, both while flexing (by increasing the sensitivity of the neurons that control your muscles) and when at rest (by increasing the density of your muscle tissue).

On Metabolic days, the focus will be on raising your metabolism to that of a juggernaut. The weights will be lighter and the sets longer in duration so that you burn a considerable number of calories. The volume of reps you'll perform will ensure that you keep muscle size and maybe even pack on a little extra if you haven't reduced your calories too drastically. The Metabolic sessions will be so intense, in fact, that you probably won't need to do much cardio at all. Nevertheless, two interval sessions per week will help you achieve maximum results.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL LLEWELLYN

DON'T BURNOUT

When your pace slacks, so does your metabolism

The key to this month's workout is keeping your reps high in order to really fire up your metabolism. That's why picking the right weight to use for your exercises is crucial. Go too light, and the reps feel easy, but go too heavy, and you'll never complete them all from set to set--and this slows down your metabolism, cooling your fat burn. Since the emphasis for these sessions is on raising your metabolism with higher reps, we want you to be conservative and hit every last one.

HERE'S WHAT YOU DO: Choose a weight you're certain you can lift for 12 perfect reps on your first set, but every set thereafter, decrease the load by 10%. (For ease in changing weights, you can round down to the nearest round number.) So, for example, if you used 100 pounds for your first set of the bentover row in Workout B, you would need to use 90 pounds for your second set, and 80 pounds for your third.

WHY IT WORKS: The program is designed so that you can lift as heavy as possible while taking into account your growing fatigue. As your muscles tire (and believe us, they will), they simply aren't capable of producing the same force in later sets as they did in your first one--especially when you're working them in circuit fashion with very little rest--and that means missed reps.

By reducing the weight slightly as you go, you can continue getting 12 reps per set, despite fatigue. This way, you'll tax your muscles just hard enough so that they grow, but not so hard that they can't go on.

DIRECTIONS

FREQUENCY: You'll work out four times per week, performing Workouts A and B on back-to-back days and then resting a day before doing Work out C. On the following pay, do Workout D. Rest another day, and then repeal me cycle. On two days per week, perform cardio (either after one of your weight-training sessions or on a different day entirely).

HOW TO DO IT: On STRENGTH DAYS, perform the exercise pairs (marked A and B) as alternating sets. Complete three total sets of five reps for each exercise in the pair, resting one minute between sets. (So you'll do one set of exercise 1A, rest, then, one set of 1B, rest again, and so on. When you've completed three sets of five reps for each, follow the same procedure for the second pair.)