Of course, working “for mass” is much easier than “for relief”. Basically, all you need to do is maintain an increased protein intake and constantly increase your working weight, and your muscles will grow. As for honing and drawing muscles, unfortunately, such a simple answer cannot be found here. After all, even the formulation of the task itself already raises a lot of questions – you need not only to burn subcutaneous fat, but also to preserve the muscles obtained with great difficulty.
Therefore, it is not surprising that many bodybuilders fail during the final development of their muscles, and their muscles, which previously impressed everyone with their volume, quickly lose their former shape and become flat. To avoid such a fate, you need, firstly, to realize that by achieving muscle definition, you are actually “accelerating” two processes that are opposite in nature – muscle building (anabolism) and fat burning (catabolism), and secondly, find the right way to “reconcile” them with each other. “But, unfortunately, most athletes never manage to solve this problem,” says Milos Sartsev . Their most common mistake is to move away from heavy weights and moderate reps per set, and completely switch to high reps with relatively light weights. However, such a strategy is aimed only at burning excess fat and is not able to preserve muscles, since it ignores the main condition for their growth – a progressive increase in the load in strength training.
To understand how you can burn fat and build muscle at the same time, you need to understand the structure of muscle fibers. The fact is that they are not homogeneous among themselves, and according to the degree of susceptibility to load they can be divided into two types – “fast” and “slow”. “Fast” (or white) fibers dominate in the human body and are the first to be activated during physical activity. Moreover, they are much more susceptible to hypertrophy (increase in size) than their “slow” counterparts (red fibers). By training with a high-sets-and-reps pattern, you primarily activate the slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are more oxygen-sensitive and actually determine your endurance level. A high-intensity training regimen is inherently anaerobic and aims to stimulate fast-twitch fibers.
To achieve muscle definition and not lose muscle, you should structure your training regimen so that it involves working both types of muscle fibers. Milos solves this problem by breaking the workout into two stages, each of which is aimed at stimulating a specific type of muscle fiber. He recommends starting the session with two exercises, preferably multi-joint and involving large muscle groups (squats, presses, deadlifts) with a weight typical for mass work. By doing 3 sets of 5-8 repetitions in each exercise, he performs the minimum work that is necessary to ensure the growth of “fast” fibers. Milos then moves on to the second phase of the workout, which targets slow-twitch fibers. He again performs two exercises from three sets, but now these are isolated exercises, and each set consists of 10-100 repetitions. The main emphasis here is to follow the technique and achieve “peak” muscle contraction. In addition, in the second phase, Milos uses other methods of “shock therapy” for muscles. These are supersets, step sets, etc. This training scheme allows you to maintain competitive shape almost throughout the year.
However, working on the relief is not limited to the gym. “Cardio training” is your main weapon in the fight for “lean” muscles, which can burn fat reserves literally before your eyes. Milos constantly varies the duration and intensity of cardio training, in a word, he tries to conduct each session differently. And although in the pre-competition period Milos increases cardio to 40-90 minutes every day, he advises to always be on alert so as not to get caught in the net of overtraining. “Do what your reflection in the mirror tells you to do. Once your body fat has decreased to the level you want, cut back on your cardio, otherwise you will quickly lose muscle. Don’t forget that only high-intensity training with decent weights will allow you to stay on top its form.”
Rest and nutrition are also equally important aspects during the period of working on the relief, since the conditions that you have created for the recovery processes to occur are known to directly determine the quality of the muscles.
