Muscle condition vs muscle size

tdawg · 12-13-2007, 11:35 AM

I should probably start out saying I'm 6'3 and about 175 lbs. Before I started weight lifting I was about 165 lbs.

I used to do alot of weight training until about June 2007, when I started Muay Thai. Once I started Muay Thai, I stopped weight lifting, and my muscle conditioning and cardio made huge gains, but I noticed that over the course of about 6 months I lost about 10 pounds. I'm fairly certain my body fat % remained the same, so I'm concluding the majority of this loss has been muscle.

However, I feel that I hadn't significantly changed my diet between the transition - I still aim to eat clean and eat more calories than are required for maintanence (about 4k a day). Although, one problem that I didn't really think of was that my maintenence calories went up (because of the intense MT workouts 3-6 days a week, depending) and I never really increased my calorie intake to adjust to this; I based it off my days of lifting.

What I am wondering is if my body naturally decreased my muscle mass as a way to deal with the increased oxygen demands required during my Muay Thai workouts. Also, is there anyway to continue to build muscle, without lifting, when the bulk of my training centers around cardio / conditioning? I would say that I am not genetically predisposed to a muscular body type.

vonanaka · 12-13-2007, 12:59 PM

I think the body adapts to the things you demand it to do, and if you do not put any demands on it that will increase the muscular size/strength then why should it grow any bigger muscles?

mobeck · 12-13-2007, 01:04 PM

Genetic predisposition is a big part of muscle hypertrophy (enlargement).

We all have variable distributions of type 1 and type 2 muscle fibers. Type 1 fibers don't really hypertrophy, and are used mainly in long duration, aerobic exercise. Type 2 have the higher potential for hypertrophy, and are used in more explosive, shorter duration anaerobic exercise.

You may have more type 1 fibers than other people, genetically speaking. This could prevent you from gaining muscle mass, however, there really is no way to tell if this is true until you really attempt to undergo a lot of hypertrophy.

Doing a lot of aerobic work at long durations can actually prevent hypertrophy of your type 2 fibers, even if you lift weights...try to cut down on long duration cardio, and due short duration sprinting style exercise, more along the lines of the duration of a Muay Thai round. This will stress your anaerobic energy systems more.

Second, diet diet diet. The only way to build lean body mass is to eat complete. That is, make sure you take in plenty of carbs before AND after working out. You should also be eating complete proteins (meat, dairy), and don't leave fat completely out of your diet either, you need all of those things to build muscle.

Finally, hypertrophy is best gained by lifting moderate volume (about 6-12 reps per set), at moderate to high weight, high enough that you get contraction failure towards the end of the set....keep rest periods semi-short so your muscle doesn't have full recovery. If you aren't doing any weight lifting, then no, you won't gain any muscle.

hope this helps.

Technomad · 12-13-2007, 02:37 PM

You said you've been working out more (your maintenance calorie requirement went up) but you havnt been eating more. I think thats a huge part of the equation right there. If you eat more, and continue to train MT, I would bet that you see that you gain back some of the lost muscle mass

1mmort4l · 12-13-2007, 05:02 PM

EAT!!!!!!!

When training MT, EAT!!! And drink Glycogen replenishing fluids!

tdawg · 12-13-2007, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1mmort4l

EAT!!!!!!!

When training MT, EAT!!! And drink Glycogen replenishing fluids!

I always have, I have a 2:1 carb / protein PWO shake after every training session

I think I'm going to start gradually increasing my caloric intake, and then we'll see what happens.

BayAreaGuy · 12-14-2007, 02:50 AM

Just wondering, when you lost mass and increased conditioning, did you feel weaker at all or was your strength still there?

VicDienekes · 12-14-2007, 07:27 AM

Have a gander @ Ian Coe's log in the S+P training logs. He's an pro mt guy that lifts on the regular so you'll probably find his log informative and helpful. Also the s+p faq's nice. Increased strength, explosiveness AND hypertrophy? Sounds too good to be true? It's not. Well, at least not if you put the work in.

good luck.

tdawg · 12-14-2007, 11:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BayAreaGuy

Just wondering, when you lost mass and increased conditioning, did you feel weaker at all or was your strength still there?

Not in MT, or rolling in BJJ. I still feel like I have the same functional strength as I did when I lifted weights. However, I feel that if I was to go to the weight room, and try and dead lift / squat / bench what I used to be able to do in June, I wouldn't be able to do so.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll look into them.

BayAreaGuy · 12-15-2007, 03:24 AM

Suggestion:

Do your heavy weight lifting in the off season and during training, do what Fedor does (many others of coruse) and do push ups/dips/pull ups before or after or during training. But of course you'd have to know your limit and make sure you aren't sore for the training training.

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?t...nnel=370573720

And if there is no off season and you just train MT and BJJ all year round, then just do lifts on Friday or something so you'd have the weekend to recover.

just a suggestion