I was strength training my armss cause i am wanting to get in to mixed martial arts.
I didn't know any better is my answear to 2.... o_o
You I started out lifting 10 reps, then moved to 15, then to 20, then 50. I tohught you were supossed to either increase the weight you lift or reps as the previous got too easy.
But I dunno wtf i'm doing. Help? (more I should say, your reply was very very helpfull)
Can you suggest a rep amount?
Alright Cody, let's get down to some business. OK?
Focusing on one specific body part is not an ideal form of resistance training AT ALL. It seems to me that your primary goal is to lose weight, no?
If this is the case, the main driver of the success of this goal will be energy balance. In order to lose weight, you must be in an energy defecit. The easiest and most optimal way to create this deficit is to control your eating. By control, I mean monitor calories.
Your caloric intake should be reduced from an estimated maintenance caloric intake. Maintenance being the level of caloric intake where energy in = energy out. When this happens, you weight holds steady. Make sense?
To determine your maintenance level, I like to suggest multiplying your weight by 15 calories per pound. This is your estimated maintenance, assuming you have not been chronically undereating in the past.
From this number, you reduce your actual caloric intake by 10-20%. I am not sure how much weight you have to lose. The larger the number, the closer to 20% I would go.
Do you understand this so far?
Weight lifting only builds muscle when you are in a caloric surplus. I just told you that you need to be in a deficit to shed some lbs. So why weight train?
The idea is to ward off catabolism. You want to send all of the good signals while dieting, which will keep your "tissue" loss on the fat side instead of the muscle side. Let's face it, you want to hold on to the good stuff, and shed the bad.
Since you are not going to be adding any muscle while dieting, I suggest doing no isolation work. There is really no point to it at this stage in the game. By isolation work, I mean single joint/muscle work.... such as all this arm work you have been doing.
Instead, I would focus on 2-3 total body workouts per week that are short and sweet, consisting of big compound exercises such as full squats, a form of deadlifts, bench press, row, vertical press, and pullups/cable pulldowns.
And no more of this high rep garbage. The idea while dieting is to do just enough in the gym to maintain muscle. You don't want to stress the system more than you have to. It doesn't take much to ward off catabolism. However, you start bursting through thresholds doing 50 rep exercises, you are going to be getting more catabolism had you done nothing at all!
So, stick with low rep training while dieting. I would go as far as to say stick to the 4-6 rep range, as long as you know how to execute the exercises I listed above properly. If not, I would stick to the 12-15 rep range until you learn proper form.
Wow, I really feel like I am rambling. Hopefully you can take something from this. Feel free to ask anything. There are plenty of great minds floating around here that will be able to help you!
