strength loss question?

tex43

I am a 43 yr. old male 5'8 212 lbs. I've lifted weights over 20 years.
Two months ago I began this weight loss journey with MFP,great results,not complaining.I entered a boot camp at my Gym the first month,consisted of mostly calesthenics push ups ,squats ,jumping jacks ,very little dumbell curls etc;.I had great results so I did another month,also added some cardio into the routine on the second month.Anyway,obviously I haven't lifted much iron during that period.

Here's my question,We'll use bench as an example,I was maxing 270 for a couple of reps two months ago,last week when I got under my bench,I struggled with 225,I gave it a week,this week I again struggled with 225,one rep.I realize you are going to loose some strength,and I understand the concept of muscle memorybut WTF,do you think I lost that much muscle during this weight loss journey?

rybo

I'd give it a couple more weeks getting back into your normal lifting & see if the strength returns. When I took layoffs, I'd lose a lot, but it would return after a few weeks of getting back into things.

Added:
Maybe the layoff coupled with lost weight hit you harder than normal? I don't know how much truth this held, but I knew a lot of guys who said gaining (or NOT losing) even just a little weight made huge differences in thier strength.

tex43

I'd give it a couple more weeks getting back into your normal lifting & see if the strength returns. When I took layoffs, I'd lose a lot, but it would return after a few weeks of getting back into things.

Added:
Maybe the layoff coupled with lost weight hit you harder than normal? I don't know how much truth this held, but I knew a lot of guys who said gaining (or NOT losing) even just a little weight made huge differences in thier strength.

I appreciate it,were the able to gain the strength they lost back?

Azdak

Training effects are specific. By your own admission, you haven't lifted weights the way you did before for at least two months. So, yes, your performance for a specific lift--in this case, bench press--will decline significantly.

And you have have lost some muscle along with the weight. But, your experience seems pretty typical to me.

Iceprincessk25

I was at an American Orthopedic Sports Medicine Conference over spring break and a Dr presented a lecture on HIIT and cardio and she said that in just a 5 day break from cardio you can lose up to 50% of the physiological adaptations your body has made.

So I can definitely believe that in 2 months you have lost that much. Will you gain it back faster than someone who's never done that before.....yes. That's the good news!

Azdak

I was at an American Orthopedic Sports Medicine Conference over spring break and a Dr presented a lecture on HIIT and cardio and she said that in just a 5 day break from cardio you can lose up to 50% of the physiological adaptations your body has made.

So I can definitely believe that in 2 months you have lost that much. Will you gain it back faster than someone who's never done that before.....yes. That's the good news!

I'd like to see the details of that study.

I certainly know about short-term losses. A big justification for the push for "active" cardiac rehabilitation came from early studies by NASA to study the effects of prolonged weightlessness. In this case, they used 21 days of bed rest to simulate being in a weightless environment. The subjects were trained distance runners and they were quite surprised at the decline that occurred in just those 21 days--but it wasn't close to 50%.

Neural activation and plasma volume are two very short-term adaptations to exercise training that can also reverse quite quickly. Again, I have never seen anything approaching a 50% number. Curious as to how that was defined.

tex43

Thank you kind sir and Ice Princess,

Very helpful! I've experienced strength issues before,but not so much from the loss of a significant amount of body weight.I'm thinking in order to get back to a happy medium I will go heavy for a month or so including my cardio,then maybe go high rep low weight for a month or so,any thoughts?


and again thanks!

Azdak

Thank you kind sir and Ice Princess,

Very helpful! I've experienced strength issues before,but not so much from the loss of a significant amount of body weight.I'm thinking in order to get back to a happy medium I will go heavy for a month or so including my cardio,then maybe go high rep low weight for a month or so,any thoughts?


and again thanks!

It can be a challenge to sort our your goals. Do we want max strength? Max weight loss? Functional conditioning?

You can ask the legitimate question: what is the practical significance of doing a big bench press? Some people might prefer a more dynamic functional core strength--like what you might get with something like TRX. Some are looking for a combination of high-intensity conditioning like one would get with Crossfit, for example. Others want hypertrophy.

I think you have to define your short and long-term goals and draw up a plan around them. I am kind of going through the same process myself. I have made some pretty good strength gains in the past year--at 56 I am lifting heavier weights than ever before in my life. I have gained about 5 lbs of muscle in the past year or so--but I am not really trying to get any bigger.

At where I am in my program (at an OK weight right now, but at some point would like to refocus and go for that last 10-15 pounds) I probably need to be doing more "metabolic" workouts--and I actually enjoy them (although I am hampered by this lingering hip injury that prevents me from doing squats or lunges).

Trying to fit all that in has been a challenge--along with maintaining my cardio goals. I find that it's best to keep going through different cycles--a couple of weeks of lifting heavy, then light, then medium, with the ligher-weight, higher intensity circuits thrown in.

I don't know that I would go a whole month on each cycle--maybe a month of "macro", but still do some variations within that cycle each week. In other words, even during your "light" month, do a fairly heavy day once every week or 10 days. That will help maintain that "muscle memory".

tex43

Again very helpful,I was hoping you would respond on this.I really only used bench press as an example,while overall strength is important to me,weight loss currently is more important. It would be nice to know that once I've lost the weight I want to loose that it won't be too hard to get back to my then strength level.I think my biggest fear was that I had lost so much muscle that I was going to have to rebuild it.

My goals consist of functional conditioning for the most part but again I do value strength to a certain extent.You mentioned your gaining muscle and strength,what do you attribute your success to?

Azdak

Again very helpful,I was hoping you would respond on this.I really only used bench press as an example,while overall strength is important to me,weight loss currently is more important. It would be nice to know that once I've lost the weight I want to loose that it won't be too hard to get back to my then strength level.I think my biggest fear was that I had lost so much muscle that I was going to have to rebuild it.

My goals consist of functional conditioning for the most part but again I do value strength to a certain extent.You mentioned your gaining muscle and strength,what do you attribute your success to?

Basically just focused workouts and a good overall plan. I don't keep detailed charts and training logs, but I have an good intuitive sense of where I am in my "cycle" and what to do next. Sometimes I have a week planned out, sometimes I decide the day's workout when I get on the first machine, but I always have a purpose to every workout and they all fit together to provide a good training challenge. I never put in "junk minutes" in a workout--if I am feeling bad, I just stop and go home.

I do a blend of endurance cardio, medium tempo cardio, and interval cardio. I tend to lean more towards to "challenging" workouts than "cruising" ones--the hardest part of my schedule is not pushing it on the "hard" days, it's holding back on the "easy" ones. The same with strength.

My strength workouts are pretty basic--leg press, deadlift, bench, pulldown, row, shoulder press, upright row. 2-3 sets of each, 5-8RM, work to failure. During the weeks when I go lighter, I do more exercises and fewer sets per exercise. I rarely do arms or abs--those are mostly worked during the other exercises. I have been trying to do a couple of sets of biceps/triceps exercises twice a week when I open up the fitness center. I can squeeze that in before we open for the members and I don't get all sweaty.

I really enjoyed adding in some metabolic-type workouts (gradually) where I would do a combination of some "Tabata-light" cardio and then some circuits of a variety of compound, body-weight, "crossfit" type exercises. Unfortunately, I have had to cut those out for now due to an ongoing hip injury I have been fighting since August. I find the systematic variety really helps prevent overtraining and the different routines complement each other.

tex43

Again very helpful,I was hoping you would respond on this.I really only used bench press as an example,while overall strength is important to me,weight loss currently is more important. It would be nice to know that once I've lost the weight I want to loose that it won't be too hard to get back to my then strength level.I think my biggest fear was that I had lost so much muscle that I was going to have to rebuild it.

My goals consist of functional conditioning for the most part but again I do value strength to a certain extent.You mentioned your gaining muscle and strength,what do you attribute your success to?

Basically just focused workouts and a good overall plan. I don't keep detailed charts and training logs, but I have an good intuitive sense of where I am in my "cycle" and what to do next. Sometimes I have a week planned out, sometimes I decide the day's workout when I get on the first machine, but I always have a purpose to every workout and they all fit together to provide a good training challenge. I never put in "junk minutes" in a workout--if I am feeling bad, I just stop and go home.

I do a blend of endurance cardio, medium tempo cardio, and interval cardio. I tend to lean more towards to "challenging" workouts than "cruising" ones--the hardest part of my schedule is not pushing it on the "hard" days, it's holding back on the "easy" ones. The same with strength.

My strength workouts are pretty basic--leg press, deadlift, bench, pulldown, row, shoulder press, upright row. 2-3 sets of each, 5-8RM, work to failure. During the weeks when I go lighter, I do more exercises and fewer sets per exercise. I rarely do arms or abs--those are mostly worked during the other exercises. I have been trying to do a couple of sets of biceps/triceps exercises twice a week when I open up the fitness center. I can squeeze that in before we open for the members and I don't get all sweaty.

I really enjoyed adding in some metabolic-type workouts (gradually) where I would do a combination of some "Tabata-light" cardio and then some circuits of a variety of compound, body-weight, "crossfit" type exercises. Unfortunately, I have had to cut those out for now due to an ongoing hip injury I have been fighting since August. I find the systematic variety really helps prevent overtraining and the different routines complement each other.

Thanks again,sounds like you would encourage muscle confusion as well as training fast and slow twitch during same session,also sounds like you may change the routine as much as weekly.This is very interesting,I'm going to play with it a bit next couple of weeks,I'll let you know how it goes,and again thank you so much,I hope you know you really are providing a service on here,I imagine you are just one of those people that enjoy helping others,props to you for that,I am one that believes in appreciation and credit given when do,cheers!:drinker:

Azdak

Again very helpful,I was hoping you would respond on this.I really only used bench press as an example,while overall strength is important to me,weight loss currently is more important. It would be nice to know that once I've lost the weight I want to loose that it won't be too hard to get back to my then strength level.I think my biggest fear was that I had lost so much muscle that I was going to have to rebuild it.

My goals consist of functional conditioning for the most part but again I do value strength to a certain extent.You mentioned your gaining muscle and strength,what do you attribute your success to?

Basically just focused workouts and a good overall plan. I don't keep detailed charts and training logs, but I have an good intuitive sense of where I am in my "cycle" and what to do next. Sometimes I have a week planned out, sometimes I decide the day's workout when I get on the first machine, but I always have a purpose to every workout and they all fit together to provide a good training challenge. I never put in "junk minutes" in a workout--if I am feeling bad, I just stop and go home.

I do a blend of endurance cardio, medium tempo cardio, and interval cardio. I tend to lean more towards to "challenging" workouts than "cruising" ones--the hardest part of my schedule is not pushing it on the "hard" days, it's holding back on the "easy" ones. The same with strength.

My strength workouts are pretty basic--leg press, deadlift, bench, pulldown, row, shoulder press, upright row. 2-3 sets of each, 5-8RM, work to failure. During the weeks when I go lighter, I do more exercises and fewer sets per exercise. I rarely do arms or abs--those are mostly worked during the other exercises. I have been trying to do a couple of sets of biceps/triceps exercises twice a week when I open up the fitness center. I can squeeze that in before we open for the members and I don't get all sweaty.

I really enjoyed adding in some metabolic-type workouts (gradually) where I would do a combination of some "Tabata-light" cardio and then some circuits of a variety of compound, body-weight, "crossfit" type exercises. Unfortunately, I have had to cut those out for now due to an ongoing hip injury I have been fighting since August. I find the systematic variety really helps prevent overtraining and the different routines complement each other.

Thanks again,sounds like you would encourage muscle confusion as well as training fast and slow twitch during same session,also sounds like you may change the routine as much as weekly.This is very interesting,I'm going to play with it a bit next couple of weeks,I'll let you know how it goes,and again thank you so much,I hope you know you really are providing a service on here,I imagine you are just one of those people that enjoy helping others,props to you for that,I am one that believes in appreciation and credit given when do,cheers!:drinker:

Yes and no. I believe in the fundamental training principles of varying your stimulus and periodization. I think the concept of "muscle confusion", as defined by P90X et al, is a bunch of nonsense.

Iceprincessk25

I was at an American Orthopedic Sports Medicine Conference over spring break and a Dr presented a lecture on HIIT and cardio and she said that in just a 5 day break from cardio you can lose up to 50% of the physiological adaptations your body has made.

So I can definitely believe that in 2 months you have lost that much. Will you gain it back faster than someone who's never done that before.....yes. That's the good news!

I'd like to see the details of that study.

I certainly know about short-term losses. A big justification for the push for "active" cardiac rehabilitation came from early studies by NASA to study the effects of prolonged weightlessness. In this case, they used 21 days of bed rest to simulate being in a weightless environment. The subjects were trained distance runners and they were quite surprised at the decline that occurred in just those 21 days--but it wasn't close to 50%.

Neural activation and plasma volume are two very short-term adaptations to exercise training that can also reverse quite quickly. Again, I have never seen anything approaching a 50% number. Curious as to how that was defined.

I have to find the CD that came with all the power points from the AOASM conference. It had their references at the end. I'll get back to you with that.