Squats, lunges, and deadlifts...explain please!

Ok I see these 3 exercises thrown around this forum ALL the time. What are they? How do I execute them in proper form? What muscles am I targeting and what will it help do for my body. I'm trying to lose fat in my lower stomach. I know cardio is the only way to lose fat and I do a TON of it, but then I see everyone saying that you lose more fat if you do weight training and cardio and that lunges, squats, and dead lifts are the best for it. Help me please! I just want to get my body bathing suit ready!

Original Post by cookk:

Original Post by alevin:

yes, but that's ratio, but not total.   cardio burns calories, and that will results in more weight loss if the person's at a deficit.  if someone doesn't lift weights, they'll lose more muscle.

 The study is looking at fat loss only since that is the most relevant part of weight loss. 

Overweight subjects were assigned to three groups: diet-only, diet plus aerobics, diet plus aerobics plus weights. The diet group lost 14.6 pounds of fat in 12 weeks. The aerobic group lost only one more pound (15.6 pounds) than the diet group (training was three times a week starting at 30 minutes and progressing to 50 minutes over the 12 weeks).

The weight training group lost 21.1 pounds of fat (44% and 35% more than diet and aerobic only groups respectively). Basically, the addition of aerobic training didn't result in any real world significant fat loss over dieting alone.

The summary is that by adding cardio to the diet it was 1 pound more lost but by adding the weight training it was 7 lbs.  Also think that it takes 3500 calories for a pound of fat so your typical 300 calorie burn from cardio would take 12 days to reach that pound.  But if you add weight training your 300 burn is coupled with another 100 calories for repair now your burn for the exercie for the day is 700 or 1 pound every five days.

 ...question or statement/however you want to take the following: 

that lifting weights is beneficial for burning calories after the workout because your body has to "repair" the muscle it ripped, thus expending more energy  -- even though you can't build muscle in a caloric deficit?

So what exactly is the muscle DOING if its not increasing, but yet has been ripped and is being repaired?  i mean, if its not adding mass -- wtf is the muscle repairing for?  elongation?  wouldn't that require some additional muscle building, more fiber for the rope, so to speak?  this whole "repair" business has to result in something more efficient for the muscle, otherwise the body is kinda stupid -- and we all know the body is efficient.  i mean if you rip up your muscle while eating at a deficit, yet the body has to repair the muscle into something more efficient for what you just ripped it doing...how is it that not building/filling in the gaps of muscle -- thus resulting in some gain?

and exactly where does strength come from, if you are not building muscle?  i can see the body getting use to doing an activity over and over and over, shedding off muscle it doesn't use, or reducing to what is required.  but what if you engage in all over muscle conditioning for going on three months, while in a significant calore deficit?  aka ME.  what the hell have my muscles been doing if they have not been gaining "mass"?

i can lift double what i use too.  (which isn't a hellva lot, but hey, it does mean something...).  i can now squat fully and with more weights.  runner longer, faster and have sprinting abilites.  etc...

es'plain?

 

 

Are you asking why they say you "can't" build muscle in a calorie deficit?

My guess is this: building suggests adding to current volume (mass, whatever). Damaging a muscle through lifting while in a caloric deficit may force you to use your calories to get back to your starting point, but may not be able to add to your existing level. Thus no building.

I would guess that over time you add a little here and there, but it's slow growth.

The reason this may aid fat loss is that you don't get to put your calories into fat. Even with large amounts of cardio, at rest you still will store reserve calories.

 

Original Post by vanessa_from_slc:

 

Are you asking why they say you "can't" build muscle in a calorie deficit?

My guess is this: building suggests adding to current volume (mass, whatever). Damaging a muscle through lifting while in a caloric deficit may force you to use your calories to get back to your starting point, but may not be able to add to your existing level. Thus no building.

I would guess that over time you add a little here and there, but it's slow growth.

The reason this may aid fat loss is that you don't get to put your calories into fat. Even with large amounts of cardio, at rest you still will store reserve calories.

 

thanks, though: that still doesn't really help me understand what my muscles are really doing, because if i get back to my starting point, how do i end up so much: stronger with more endurance -- as evidenced by being able to lift more, and engage in the same activites with quicker, faster, while my heart rate is slower.  

my muscles 'have' changed -- they've gotten alot stronger, and if they've gotten stronger because they had to "repair' themselves, then how have i not built them up to withstand what i'm doing to them?  i've increased my loads continually....so it wouldn't makes any sense at all that they repaired themselves back to the starting point. 

if beginner muscle gains give SUCH an advancement -- then its a viable way to gain muscle, and this whole "caloric deficit" and not gaining any muscle (strength) nonsense is just bodybuilders envy.  another way to stress to everyone that to get REAL muscles you have to do like they do.  i mean, if i can buy a luxury sedan for the same price as a compact...

i still don't get it.  and its not for lack of dullness of mind.  though it might be blamed on that.

wth have my muscles been repairing for 11 weeks?!  :)    ....i'm just waiting for melkor to see this.  *ahem*

 Heh, it's because strength training is such an unfamiliar adaptive stress to your body, and you're so far from the peak of your genetic potential, that it doesn't take much of either stimulus or energy to build up a bit more muscle mass.

 As you get closer to fulfilling your genetic potential it takes more training to disrupt your muscle's homeostasis, and it takes more energy to repair them - and even more energy to build them up beyond current levels.

 It's why training regimes for a beginner tends to concentrate on 3 whole-body sessions a week, because disrupting your muscles and forcing them to adapt doesn't take much, and you don't need to tap deeply into your recovery capacity.

 Once you're past the immediate newbie gains period and have accumulated some training age - between 3-6 months(12 in extreme cases) depending on how deconditioned you were to start with and how good your muscle building genes are - you need more training stimulus to have continued muscle growth. This is when you benefit from splitting up your workout into push/pull/legs or upper/lower split - you need to hit your muscles hard enough to disrupt them, but now it takes longer to recover from the training you need to see progress, if muscle mass is your goal. So you work each muscle twice a week instead of 3xweekly, because it takes you 4 days to recover instead of two.

 Eventually, you're so close to your genetic potential and you need to train so hard it takes your muscles up to a week to recover fully. This is what most 'advanced' programs center around - though there are different training philosophies there as well. Anyway - for a beginner to do an 'advanced' program tends to do nothing but limit your progress, as you could have trained your muscles 3xweekly, but only hit them once a week.

 'Course, strength is also a trainable skill. You can become considerably stronger in a calorie deficit without adding significant muscle mass, since strength is only about 2/3 correlated with muscle fibre size. The rest of it is a function of motor unit recruitment and neural efficiency - if you can recruit more of your High-threshold Motor Units at once, you will exert more force at once because your muscles are firing on more cylinders. So you haven't neccesarily made the individual muscle fibres stronger, but you've trained your nervous system to use more of them at once.

 And there's also another effect at play - adaptive stress. Personally, I radically change around my training program, altering both loads, set/reps, and which exercises I use every 8-12 weeks - you see the greatest gains when you give your body a new and unfamiliar adaptive stress to deal with ;)

you'd make it seem like i was so far from being fit, that lifting a 5lb dumbell would result in a considerable gain. ;)   and you'd have no way of knowing different of course and there is really no point to suggesting different or not, though in 20 some years, if i wanted to move furniture in my house, i did it myself. :)

back to thought process that started my diatribe:  so the real answer to the age old fitness forum question:  is "yes, you can and do build muscle while strength training in a caloric deficit, but after a while you will stop seeing [measly little begginner] gains, unless you force your muscles to disrupt/adapt and take longer recovery periods, etc."

strength as a trainable skill?  HOW?  it doesn't make sense and pardon me for being dull -- but i can't possibly fire more cylinders, if i only have 4 cylinders to begin with -- unless somwhere along the lines, my body grew an extra two cylindars, so now i run like a v6?

 

need help with this whole motor unit..etc.  explain!  pretty please. 

 

 Easiest way is to send you to a real expert on the subject, Chad Waterbury: From Brain to Biceps and  The Secret to Motor Unit Recruitment - it's what he did his Master's thesis on ;)

 I started from the complete couch potato level myself back in the day - two years ago I got DOMS from simply walking. Granted, it was up a mountain, but still. It took me about 9 months of training to even get into shape enough to start lifting any appreciable weight, and to follow a proper strength training program. My gains through this whole process totals about 10lbs of muscle over 2 years, most of that in the first 3 months of training and I squat 231lbs, deadlift 341lbs and bench 206lbs as my training weights now, up from barely being able to do a few bodyweight squats and failing to do more than half a pushup.

 So you tell me - I can now do handstand pushups and deadlift 1.7 times my bodyweight, when I could barely do 5 pushups from my knees and carry the groceries before, while going from 250 to 198lbs bodyweight. If it was possible for the average trainee without exceptional genetics to gain significant muscle in a calorie deficit, don't you think I would have done so by now?  

Original Post by melkor:

Easiest way is to send you to a real expert on the subject, Chad Waterbury: From Brain to Biceps and The Secret to Motor Unit Recruitment - it's what he did his Master's thesis on ;)

I started from the complete couch potato level myself back in the day - two years ago I got DOMS from simply walking. Granted, it was up a mountain, but still. It took me about 9 months of training to even get into shape enough to start lifting any appreciable weight, and to follow a proper strength training program. My gains through this whole process totals about 10lbs of muscle over 2 years, most of that in the first 3 months of training and I squat 231lbs, deadlift 341lbs and bench 206lbs as my training weights now, up from barely being able to do a few bodyweight squats and failing to do more than half a pushup.

So you tell me - I can now do handstand pushups and deadlift 1.7 times my bodyweight, when I could barely do 5 pushups from my knees and carry the groceries before, while going from 250 to 198lbs bodyweight. If it was possible for the average trainee without exceptional genetics to gain significant muscle in a calorie deficit, don't you think I would have done so by now?

My gains through this whole process totals about 10lbs of muscle over 2 years, most of that in the first 3 months of training

well now i can understand that -- and correlate that to building strength but here i was assuming that any significant muscle gain at all you get from weight training, somehow magically appears after you become this elite master lifting guru that eats protein till they explode -- but it makes more sense that in the first three months of training you get most gains and tweak the process from there, to gain more and more, or as much as you put it, your genetic potential will give you.  disrupt/adapt/recover. though, its a misnomer for the regulars in this forum to continue telling people that they don't gain muscle in a caloric deficit, they have too, esp if they are lifting weights.  i'm not talking cardio and they upped the resistance by three notch's either.

and i get what you are saying about strength, using yourself as an example, but i just don't understand how the fraking muscles work without gaining more mass on them.  the physics of it makes little sense to me.  and i aced physics. [just not spelling...] i mean i understand biological chemical reactions, say like adrenaline and it can cause the body to respond with super powers...etc. maybe its some similar biochemical reaction that gives our muscles the "power" to do more, without adding significant mass to them in the long run.  so i'll read some dudes "masters thesis" and see what i can figure out.

thank you for the links, and thank you for sharing your own story of fitness.

 

PS if this was your sneaky way to get me to read testosterone nation, GOOD JOB.  :P

I keep thinking that I've got "about 5lbs left" to lose before I'm done; 'course, the last 5lbs are sort of stubborn, but yeah, lose a few more pounds of fat.

 Then I'm going to turn around and eat for muscle gain. At which point I fully expect to gain about 1-2lbs of muscle a month, or roughly one quarter the speed of the newbie gains I had back in the day, but beating out the net zero developement I'm enjoying these days. (Enjoying, because it could have been worse, I could have been losing muscle.)

 Any training regime actually gives you the best results in the first 6-8 weeks, and gains slow dramatically after 10-12 weeks. It's why the Body for Life challenge only lasts 12 weeks - beyond that point the easy gains of the newbie come to a screeching halt. The way to re-ignite stalled developement is to make radical changes in your program at that point - I've made very radical changes to my programs several times but while I've reignited the fat loss muscular developement practically stopped after the first 3-month period. And keep in mind that I'm returning to strength training after a long lay-off, so I'm a returning athlete with a newbie metabolism. I'm "results not typical", 10lbs of muscle gain is exceptional.

 Chad gives a more detailed explanation - but..

Say you have 10 High Threshold Motor Units (probably more like 10,000, but bear with me here) - but in your daily life you only need to use 2 of those to lift a 5-lbs weight. So your brain is only used to firing on 2 of 10 HTMU's at once, and if you were to try to lift a 15lbs weight, you'd fail because your brain would need to fire off 6 HTMU's but it's only able to recruit 2 at once.

 But you persist and train, and eventually your brain learns to use more HTMU's - you're firing off more motor units at once and developing more force, but you haven't changed the size of your muscle fibres or the number of motor units, you've trained your nervous system. So you're significantly stronger, without adding muscle mass.

 Eventually, this tapers off when your brain is firing at all 10 cylinders at once, at which point your body needs to add mass to the fibres in the HTMU's itself to get stronger - this is when your strength gains taper off.

 Both processes are ongoing of course, and it's horribly complicated when you look at all the various biochemical processes that go into muscle growth, but the upshot is that once you've stimulated your muscle fibres to grow to some minimum level (newbie gains) your nervous system takes over. And since muscle growth is such an energy-expensive process and requires more and more disruption of the homeostasis of your muscles to have a training effect, muscle growth beyond the initial newbie gain process doesn't happen unless you're a genetic exception like Duke or JasonTarin.

read the first one.  for the record: the guy is not a good writer, and doesn't follow through with his "thoughts" very well.  but i guess he had to dumb down a bit for t-nation?!?  ;)  also hes got some misplaced humor, when he should be explaining things.  but that aside, i was reminded that "reapeating a movment is fine tuning your cerebellum" -- motor end plate/neurotransmitters.  yup yup.  oh and the three category's for muscles -- that was helpful, but sadly lacking because there was no link indicating what muscles fall into what category's.  [other than the absurd cancer looking runner and the genetically superior african american].  right so you can fine tune movements...got it.  ATP, myosin, calcium -- contraction.  cerebellum :)

NEXT ARTICLE!  [indeed the superior of the two!]

Let's say you're performing a set of squats with 80% of your 1RM. If your goal is size and strength I'll recommend a target number of total reps for each lift. In many cases that number is 25.

So you perform your first set. If you follow my principles, you'll terminate the set as soon as you notice the speed is slowing down, which means that the last rep will always be the slowest in the set. If you stop the set with the speed you start with, then you've stopped too soon. Don't stop until you actually notice the bar slowing down.

And you should never stop in the middle of a rep, even if you do notice that you're slowing down. Finish the rep, then stop. Got it?

GOT IT!

However, you should always attempt to lift all loads as fast as possible, even when the load is very heavy. If you do, you'll augment the descending neural drive from your brain to your muscles. This results in greater motor unit recruitment (force-generating potential).

...sounds like he'd be a fan of the tabeta hell. 

AND FINALLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR!!!

First is your motor unit recruitment threshold. For the last 30 years, research has clearly demonstrated that fast lifting tempos reduce your motor unit recruitment threshold. (1) This means you can train your nervous system to recruit your motor units sooner. That's great for strength and subsequent size gains.

Second, fast tempos will train your nervous system to recruit more motor units. There's always a reserve of motor units that, usually, can only be recruited in life-or-death situations. But with fast contractions, you can tap into this reserve.

alrighty.  got it.  motor unit recruitment is basically the fight or flight response...but its on a different level, its not exactly where i thought it was.  no wonder HIIT produces the best results. 

let me say this:  i've been training like this....for the most part, in the exercises i do engage in.  even if its not all weight lifting.  so no wonder i've seen gains in strength and speed.  besides fine motor tuning of my brainy mcbrain, i've been motoring my 4 cylinder engine to behave like a 6.

thanks for the links melkor...but, for the most part -- this forum should stop saying you can't gain muscle in a caloric deficit.  its simply not true.  for the long run -- you will max out, yes.  and of course, use it or lose it right?  so if you aren't in it for the long run, gaining muscle is pointless.  the body will use it for fuel at some point.

i don't know duke, jason or blondie, but i've seen you drop the names like i should. i wish you were closer, i'd make you sit down and explain all this **** to me as you understand it.   meh.  time for dinner!  :)

Well, to repeat myself from a couple days back:
 
Check this metastudy from the  Journal of American College of Nutrition on protein needs and muscle building for athletes.

 You'll note that a consistent calorie surplus is a prerequisite for building muscle.

 You body always balances anabolic and catabolic states. This is a good thing - if it didn't, you'd keep on growing muscle until you literally exploded. Barring any sudden and unforeseen rather messy incidents with exploding biceps though, what matters is which state predominates - and in a calorie deficit, that's the catabolic state.  Which means that your body absolutely will not build muscle unless you have exceptional genetics like Duke or Jasontarin - and even for them it's much, much more efficient to build muscle in a calorie surplus.

 Genetic superiors have newbie metabolisms or one step away from it for their entire athletic careers, so they can do things that aren't possible for the average human being, but no, apart from the insignificant (1-4lbs) muscle gains of the normal newbie and the very significant muscle gains of the steroid user, muscle gain in a calorie deficit mostly just doesn't happen.

 For a drug-free male athlete in his late teens/early twenties muscle gain tops out at about an ounce a day assuming perfect training and nutrition, and a consistent calorie surplus. Once you start not eating excess calories you've essentially removed the prerequiste for muscle building - positive nitrogen balance. Add in not being in your twenties, male, and eating excess calories, and you're lucky to mostly retain what you have ;)

Original Post by melkor:

Well, to repeat myself from a couple days back:

Check this metastudy from the Journal of American College of Nutrition on protein needs and muscle building for athletes.

You'll note that a consistent calorie surplus is a prerequisite for building muscle.

You body always balances anabolic and catabolic states. This is a good thing - if it didn't, you'd keep on growing muscle until you literally exploded. Barring any sudden and unforeseen rather messy incidents with exploding biceps though, what matters is which state predominates - and in a calorie deficit, that's the catabolic state. Which means that your body absolutely will not build muscle unless you have exceptional genetics like Duke or Jasontarin - and even for them it's much, much more efficient to build muscle in a calorie surplus.

Genetic superiors have newbie metabolisms or one step away from it for their entire athletic careers, so they can do things that aren't possible for the average human being, but no, apart from the insignificant (1-4lbs) muscle gains of the normal newbie and the very significant muscle gains of the steroid user, muscle gain in a calorie deficit mostly just doesn't happen.

For a drug-free male athlete in his late teens/early twenties muscle gain tops out at about an ounce a day assuming perfect training and nutrition, and a consistent calorie surplus. Once you start not eating excess calories you've essentially removed the prerequiste for muscle building - positive nitrogen balance. Add in not being in your twenties, male, and eating excess calories, and you're lucky to mostly retain what you have ;)

okay hon, heres where i'm telling you: you are contradicting yourself.  you yourself just said that in your first 3 months of training you had your most significant gains.  scroll up.   what gives.  this all sounds a bit hypocritical.  and wish washy.

you either can or cannot gain muscle in a caloric deficit.  i've gained something and if you dare tell me its not muscle, i might throw my protein shake at you.

Very simple - I wasn't in a calorie deficit. I tried guesstimating portions, but I was actually having a consistent calorie equilibrium for the initial pre-strength training period, and a surplus for the first few months of proper strength training. It wasn't until I joined CC and started counting calories that I started losing weight ;)

 It's not as inconsistent as it may seem, really - if I had gone the powerlifter route of not caring about body fat I might have never joined CC to control my calorie intake. People like Dave Tate and other competing powerlifters can eat up to 10,000 calories a day when training, and though they're strong they do look like they spend most of their day eating. So I might never have lost significant body fat if I'd not started to control my intake, but I would have kept on gaining mass. Unfortunately, once you're past a certain level of obesity, you'll gain 70%* fat no matter how you train when you're in a calorie surplus, and I was way past that level. I need to get down to ridiculously shredded levels, single-digit bodyfat, before I can risk a calorie surplus for muscle gain and have 70%*  of my mass gains in the form of muscle.

 'course you've gained something - a few pounds of muscle mass, quite a few pounds of muscle glycogen, enlarged muscle sarcoplasm to supply energy to your muscle fibres - lots of things go into lean mass besides muscle protein and it does add up.

(*Numbers not accurate, and varies by individual biochemistry.)

Original Post by mgosie:

thanks for the links melkor...but, for the most part -- this forum should stop saying you can't gain muscle in a caloric deficit.  its simply not true.  for the long run -- you will max out, yes.  and of course, use it or lose it right?  so if you aren't in it for the long run, gaining muscle is pointless.  the body will use it for fuel at some point.

Well I guess it is not 100% true but it is 99.9% true.  Let do the math on melkors 10lbs, he said it was 10lbs in 2 years and most of it was in the first three months.  Lets assume 5 was in the first three months and the other 5 over 21 months, and assume he trains three times a week.  That would be 5 pounds over 36 sessions or .14 lbs of muscle gained in a session, so not bad. But the other 21 months would be over 264 sessions at .02 lbs per session or 1 pound every 53 session, 1 pound every 18 weeks, so not very good at this point.  Also he was a returning athlete so he definitely had that in his favor which you probably say it accounted for 2.5 lbs so if you take that out of the equation the normal person could expect over those same 36 weeks at 2.5 lbs gain would work out to .07 lbs per session.  So triple the other 21 months but by no means very significant.  Also assuming Melkor knew how to lift properly and what to do, which a lot of people don't, that to would have played a big roll in the development of those 10 lbs.  I would also argue unless you are pushing into that upper limit of you 1 RM and compound movements, which most are not, the gains would be even less in the first few months.  So I guess not gaining muscle in a deficit is not exactly accurate but it is pretty much the truth, and I just used the Melkors numbers as an example but his results are not typical and most could expect to gain little if any while training in a deficit.

Original Post by melkor:

Very simple - I wasn't in a calorie deficit. I tried guesstimating portions, but I was actually having a consistent calorie equilibrium for the initial pre-strength training period, and a surplus for the first few months of proper strength training. It wasn't until I joined CC and started counting calories that I started losing weight ;)

It's not as inconsistent as it may seem, really - if I had gone the powerlifter route of not caring about body fat I might have never joined CC to control my calorie intake. People like Dave Tate and other competing powerlifters can eat up to 10,000 calories a day when training, and though they're strong they do look like they spend most of their day eating. So I might never have lost significant body fat if I'd not started to control my intake, but I would have kept on gaining mass. Unfortunately, once you're past a certain level of obesity, you'll gain 70%* fat no matter how you train when you're in a calorie surplus, and I was way past that level. I need to get down to ridiculously shredded levels, single-digit bodyfat, before I can risk a calorie surplus for muscle gain and have 70%* of my mass gains in the form of muscle.

'course you've gained something - a few pounds of muscle mass, quite a few pounds of muscle glycogen, enlarged muscle sarcoplasm to supply energy to your muscle fibres - lots of things go into lean mass besides muscle protein and it does add up.

(*Numbers not accurate, and varies by individual biochemistry.)

okay.  <3 you.

Hi,  I am a Newbie out here. Checking things out. I am trying to download a picture, however, it won't work for some reason. Anyway, be careful when you start your squats and lunges. I have to tell you I am pretty athletic and I powerwalk all of the time, however, I started doing lunges and squats and the first time out I was in so much pain in the next two days, I thought that I would never be normal again. Obviously I did too much and I was holding 8 lb weights when I was doing them. So start out very slow, with limited (maybe none to start) added weight and not too many reps.

Hope this helps alittle.

Harleygirl47

I am confused. If you can't gain muscle on a calorie deficit, what is the point of resistance training whilst dieting? Am I right in thinking that it is just a better way of burning calories than cardio?

Original Post by andybarc:

I am confused. If you can't gain muscle on a calorie deficit, what is the point of resistance training whilst dieting? Am I right in thinking that it is just a better way of burning calories than cardio?

The main benefits to resistance training is the maintenance of muscle mass.  While you won't gain much if any while in a calorie deficit, having a solid resistance training program will help your body retain its current muscle mass.

Other benefits obviously include increased strength, bone density, joint health, etc.

 It's to keep the muscle you do have - check out my two favourite studies on the subject in this post.

 If we're discussing calorie burn and effiency, sprint training or swimming is probably the top two calorie burners per minute - though distance running or biking is also up there. But it's not enough of an adaptive stress on your muscles to make your body retain your existing muscles in a calorie deficit, which is why doing lots of cardio doesn't really affect your fat loss over and above what diet alone can do for you. Add strength training to the mix though, and you'll retain muscle while shedding fat, giving you a dramatically different outcome as far as body composition goes.