a question ive never really had answered before

tommo

this may sound a weird question but what are you supposed to do (diet/trainnig wise) when you have reached your goals? Assume i successfully "bulked up" to a level of muscle i wanted to achieve (this wasnt a large amount i wanted to maintain a lean physique) and i am now nearing my desired body fat percentage, couple of percent to go.

But what happens when i reach this goal?

To continue a "cutting" regime would surely mean i would do so much cardio and lose so much fat i will eventually start burning muscle.

But i dont really want to bulk up much more so surely this suggest i shouldnt switch back to doing weights. Which leaves me in a positon where im not sure what to do.

PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!

My goal is to MAINTAIN a low body fat percentage not DECREASE my body fat %.

And also MAINTAIN my newly formed muscles but not ADD any more.

baring this in mind please someone let me know what sort of calorie intake i should be looking at?

And also what should my training regime be? how much cardio and what sort of weights workout?

My only thought i have so far is to do lots of weights but high rep low weight variety of lifting.

If anyone can help, many thanks in advance

vinger

very good question.

Ive never thought of it like that. :shock:

Ive allways assumed id never be happy with my gains and will allways want more.

There's a 77 year old in my gym who still trains like a nutter!!!

Anonymous

And a very difficult one to answer. It depends on your body type, metabolism and diet. You'll need to find a level of protein intake sufficient to retain the musclemass you have. Then you'll need to adjust your training so as to not stress the muscle beyond what will was cause growth. Pre-contest training of lots of isolation exercises combined with say one compound exercise but only taken to failure and no further. You tend not to push things pre-contest thru the fear of injury. Your fear would be more growth. With this type of training gaps between sets are smaller and you kind of end up doing circuit training.
A good example I can think of (through experience) is the physique of a military physical training officer. Muscular but not a BB type. Always fit and cut and defined. They train hard but not only with weights. They chose the healthy option at scran time but don't supplement with extra protein like a BB would.
I'm what you would describe as a endo/meso morph so putting down muscle and keeping it is quite easy but getting lean and defined takes a whole lot of other things besides weights. Tons of cardio, jogging, shuttle runs, cycling etc.

IanUK

Experiment a bit mate and find your maintenance regime, experiment with calories and workouts till it keeps a pretty even balance

stan666

hmm, well to BUILD muscle we make our muscles work harder than theyre comfortable with - forcing them to grow to cope with the extra demand on them. On the other hand if we don't use them as much and to the extreems theyre used to they'll shrink as the demand for strength is no longer there. Now if we want to maintain a level of muscular size then we need to find the happy medium, not as hard as you think!

Alter your diet to a maintenance level, slightly higher protein and carbs etc than the rda for a regular male, then train less and watch your weight to see losses or gains- a decent set of scales is required.

Now you obviously have to train less but the question is what do you decrece? If you keep the same intensity of training but decrece the regularity then you'll be yo-yoing up and down so thats no good, if you keep the same frequency but decrece intensity you may well keep your perfect body but you'll still be in the gym every night!!!

Find your happy medium pal, in diet, in training in rest in cardio and you'll find you hardly have to work at it at all to keep it just eat right and i guess train once a week... but only you can work out that medium.

do me a favour and keep us posted on what you discover, i for one would like to know where the threshold between gains and losses lies. :twisted:

tommo

thanks a lot to everyone that gave me advice, you've helped me out a lot. Will keep you posted....