This article is a guest post by Luke.
Luke is a fitness and health blogger at Ripped.me and a great fan of the gym and a healthy diet. He follows the trends in fitness, gym and healthy life and loves to share his knowledge through useful and informative articles. You can also find Luke on Facebook and Twitter.
When people exercise, they usually focus on either building muscle or losing fat. Depending on their goal, they stick to either a mass gaining or calorie restricted diet plan. But is it possible to manage to do both at the same time? The answer is yes. Here are some valuable tips on how to burn fat and build muscle inside and outside the gym.
1. Make your workouts more intense
To see any results, you have to work out in a continuous and focused manner that stimulates fat burning and muscle growth. If you keep on checking your smartphone notifications between each set, you’ll break the momentum of your workout. Leave it in a locker or at home instead, and hit the machines. So far, you’ve rested between the sets of the same exercise, but now try to alternate an upper body push with an upper body pull (push-ups and pull-ups). Keep yourself moving and you’ll maintain the intensity you need in order for your workout to be effective.
2. Mix up your workouts
If you don’t change your workout routine, you’ll see less progress over time. What happens is that our bodies quickly adapt to certain movements or intensity. So, if you mostly exercise in the gym, go outside at least once a week, and vice versa. Do a routine of dips, pushups, pull-ups, and Burpees at the nearby park or beach. If you choose the beach, working out on the sand will add some difficulty to it. Breathe some fresh air, break the gym monotony, and challenge your body in different ways.
3. Get faster
You want a leaner body with more muscle, which can be achieved by running. Take a look at any professional sprinter, and you’ll realize that they have the most powerful, lean bodies. What happens when we get faster? We improve flexibility, the efficiency of our nervous system, as well as our strength and muscle size. Go to a soccer field or a running track, and alternate 400-meter runs (80% effort) with 400-meter walks. Do four of these intervals, with a light run (half a mile) before and after each one of them.
4. Eat at regular intervals
A lot of people propose that eating small meals more often is better than having only three large meals per day. It eliminates overeating and mood swings, promotes muscle mass, and regulates blood sugar levels. In order to make this work, you need to plan ahead. Make sure you always have something healthy on hand while on-the-go or at work, so you can fuel yourself every three hours. Combine protein, fat, and carbs for main meals, while ready to drink protein shakes, energy bars, seeds, dried fruit, and nuts are perfect when on-the-go.
5. Sleep
No matter to what extent all the muscle-building and fat-burning techniques differ from each other, the one thing they all have in common is the importance of sleep. Without adequate sleep, it’s difficult to burn fat or build muscle. While sleeping, most of your hormones are released, such as testosterone and growth hormone. On the other hand, fatigue raises your level of body fat as it undermines your ability to train hard and eat right. Your brain doesn’t know if it’s starving or sleep-deprived, so it starts craving sugar. Your efforts to burn fat and build muscle are compromised when you fail to get enough sleep (7 hours is considered an optimal sleep duration).
6. Tune your lifestyle to fit your goals
You need to be disciplined if you want to see some results. Nothing happens overnight or by accident. What does this mean? It means – plan, plan, and plan. Time your sleep, time your supplementation, and time your meals. Whatever your goals might be, it will be much more difficult to succeed without discipline and purpose. It is also important to be patient as there may not be some visible changes in the first month or so, which can demotivate you. Stay consistent, and after 4-5 weeks of sticking to a disciplined regime, you’re going to notice some enormous differences. Once this becomes a routine, you’ll eat properly and exercise hard with much more ease.
Follow these tips to start off with the right regime to burn fat and build muscle. If you have been telling yourself that it is not possible to achieve both at the same time, know that you’ve been wrong, so this can’t come up as an excuse anymore. Track your progress by measuring your arms, legs, hips and chest, or taking photos every week (but make sure you always take them at the same location, e.g. in front of your bedroom mirror). You’ll achieve much greater results once you take this kind of disciplined approach to your workout routine.
Interesting article. I haven’t heard the sprinting advice yet. I’ll have to try that out, as I’m currently cutting down while trying to gain strength, but am looking for ways to speed up the fat loss a little bit without going crazy low on calories.
Might be a good thing to try on non-lifting days. Thanks!
Yeah hit some sprints and other HIIT things on off days. If you can be consistent with your diet, start incorporating more protein and nutritious fats into your diet and then dial back on some carbs (that’s where you will save calories). If you do this, you can eat basically the same amount, but you’ll be able to hold onto muscle, burn some fat, and not have to starve yourself. The added nutritious fats in either olive oil, peanuts, fish, etc will help keep you satisfied for longer.
Seriously, eat some bacon and a steak, keep your calories in check, and enjoy the process.
Hi, I am looking to get back in the gym, I was 200lbs and I lost 50lbs and then recently put nearly 10 back on. I have some muscle mass but I feel that I need to build muscle but I am still fat. I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction and show me a program that will help me lose the fat I have right now, I am 23 % bf and my goal is to be able to see abs for the first time. But I want to build strength as I havent properly lifted before. If you could help, it would be much appreciated. Any tips on diet and a program will be helpful. My friends and I want to go on holiday next year, next summer, and I want to, for the first time, be in shape, have a flat stomach, chest etc, and built. If you could email me if needed, that would help very much. Thank you in advance and thanks for the website, best help by far!
The more you exercise, the more fat will burn… building muscle. Any workout would suffice, as long as your diet works with it. Check out my nutrition articles and you could also check out our sister site The Byrn.
Cool tips!
I really enjoy sprinting and try to do it both when I focused on burning fat and building muscle. I feel like it improves my mood and energy. However, I think the trick is moderation especially if you are trying to burn fat. I like to also incorporate low-intense steady state cardio as this doesnt affect my hunger.
Great tips! Thank you for the kind words. I love the all-out burst activities. I’ve always liked those more than anything else.
That hit of dopamine is great, isn’t it?