So what’s in the news lately? Aside from death, financial hardship, political struggles, and wiping our asses with romance novels due to toilet paper shortage; our main concern should be maintaining our hard earned muscle. While none of us are in an ideal situation at the moment, it doesn’t mean you have to emerge from this pandemic months from now looking like Andy Reid.
The most important factor in building and maintaining muscle is the stimulus itself. While diet is important, you can’t simply consume a bunch of protein and expect to build muscle without resistance training. You need to stimulate your muscle and give it a reason to grow. Muscle grows as an adaptation to resistance, whether it’s body weight resistance, bands, barbells, dumbbells, etc.
Ever wonder why you or someone you know made terrific gains in the first couple years of training but stagnated after? It’s because the muscle had no reason to adapt. As a beginner you started from zero, thus anything you did yielded results. Eventually your body adapted to your usual routine and total training volume (reps x sets x weight). But if you don’t push yourself beyond the usual, you won’t make progress.
There is an old, and stupid, adage that you have to “trick” your muscles every time you work out. This is a silly bodybuilding myth that some people still believe. As mentioned, you have to push yourself to make changes to your physique, but this doesn’t have to mean outrageous changes to your routine. There are certain exercises that everybody likes, and probably for good reason. Maybe you have a good mind muscle connection or you get a nice pump when you do them. You don’t have to stray from these exercises, but you have to change your rep range every once in awhile.
Most people are stuck on three sets of ten reps for the rest of their life. Anything above ten is unheard of in their world. Well, since we’re at home, get ready to do more than ten.
We need to keep this muscle stimulation going, even if we can’t get to the gym, so we don’t lose any lean body mass. It’s important that you do something during this time period. Body weight exercises like squats, pushups, and pull-ups will hit each muscle group even if it isn’t the primary muscle in the movement. But let’s be honest, if you’re serious about working out then odds are you have at least a few dumbbells in the house.
You could easily put together a good circuit routine even if you only have 10 or 15lb dumbbells. Everyone and their mother is putting out exercise videos during this time period so ideas should not be an issue. This is the perfect time to add a much needed endurance block to your training program. You’ve probably been doing about ten reps per set for each exercise at the gym. Well now we’re doing 25-30. Think it’s easy? Do 5 sets of 25 rep shoulder presses or bicep curls and tell me how you feel the next day.
In terms of your diet, it is crucial to get adequate protein each day. I like to have clients shoot for one gram per pound of lean body mass (total weight in lbs – fat mass in lbs) at minimum. During a time like this when your training may not be ideal, it is even more important. You can shoot for over one gram per pound of lean body mass without any worry of deleterious effect. In fact, many protein overfeeding studies show great benefits to body composition, with some people even losing fat mass despite being in a caloric surplus. Jose Antonio should be your go to guy for any protein study, and I’m not just saying that because he followed me on twitter.
I’d be remissed if I didn’t mention that your protein should come from high quality, complete sources. Anyone who tells you peanut butter or lentils are a great protein source is kidding themselves. Protein should come mainly from chicken, turkey, beef, eggs, dairy, or supplements.
Now to address the elephant in the room, sleep. You have to sleep. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation can lead to a greater proportion of weight lost as lean body mass compared to fat. In other words, people who were dieting and sleep deprived lost significantly more weight from muscle than fat. In addition, lack of sleep can alter hunger hormones which lead to enhanced cravings throughout the day. So get off your phone at night and get to bed.
It’s important to note that muscle is a dense, strong tissue. It doesn’t just disappear. Even if it did, we have evidence that muscle memory is a real thing. If you lost muscle for whatever reason your body would be apt to put it right back on once you started lifting and dieting again. In this unusual time, we should remember that this situation is not permanent. We do what we can with what we have. This is not an excuse to give up on your workout routine. Adaptability is one of the best traits a person could have, and there is no better time than now to demonstrate it.
Review of how to maintain muscle mass while quarantined:
- Resistance train in some manner, ideally with any weights you have but body weight is fine.
- Training intensity should be high even if equipment isn’t ideal.
- Protein intake of one gram per pound of lean body mass or higher.
- Seven hours of quality sleep per night minimum.