q&a section specializing in muscle gain training issues
1. What should people with an easy-to-lose-weight physique pay attention to when trying to gain muscle?
If you have an easy-to-lose-weight physique, you first need to determine whether your thinness is simple or secondary. Simple thinness has no clear endocrine disease, while secondary thinness is caused by organic lesions in the nervous or endocrine systems. If it is secondary thinness, you should wait until you recover from the illness before starting training. If it is simple thinness, pay attention to the following issues:
1. Choose a reasonable amount of exercise; the intensity should not be too high;
2. Do more strength training; you can do less aerobic training, but you should not skip it entirely. Each session should not exceed half an hour;
3.Eat more and more frequently (note, this means eating more meals, not just more frequent meals). Ensure sufficient protein intake and even more carbohydrate intake, and drink plenty of water;
4. Ensure adequate sleep time.
2. Can muscle gain and fat loss be achieved simultaneously?
Before answering this question, let's first discuss the main differences between muscle gain and fat loss:
Muscle gain is a positive energy balance, meaning the energy intake is greater than the energy expenditure.
It generally focuses on high-intensity resistance training, emphasizes nutritional intake, increases testosterone levels, and promotes muscle growth.
Fat loss is a negative energy balance, meaning the energy intake is less than the energy expenditure.
It generally focuses on medium to low-intensity endurance training and dietary control, which increases cortisol levels and to some extent inhibits muscle growth.
If muscle gain and fat loss are attempted simultaneously, meaning a person's muscle mass increases while fat mass decreases, this is clearly impossible. Therefore, in an absolute sense, muscle gain and fat loss cannot be achieved simultaneously.
However, in a relative sense, muscle gain and fat loss can be achieved simultaneously. Specifically, during the muscle gain phase, you can do a small amount of fat loss training to burn fat, but you need to control the intensity and frequency. During the fat loss phase, you can also do moderate strength training to slow down muscle loss while ensuring that the rate of fat loss is faster than the rate of muscle loss.
3. What does 'GI' commonly mentioned by fitness enthusiasts mean?
GI stands for 'Glycemic Index,' which measures the extent to which food raises blood sugar levels.
Fitness enthusiasts often use GI to measure the metabolic rate of carbohydrates. If the GI is high, it means that blood sugar increases significantly within a certain period, indicating a fast metabolic rate of carbohydrates. Conversely, if the GI is low, it means that blood sugar increases relatively less within a certain period, indicating a slower metabolic rate or a different metabolic pathway.
Foods with a high GI are also known as simple carbohydrates, such as fruits and processed sugars. Foods with a low GI are known as complex carbohydrates, such as starch and cellulose. Low-GI carbohydrates can provide sustained energy over a period, thus having a long-lasting effect.
4. Can you train multiple body parts in one day?
Yes, you can train multiple body parts in one day, but you need to ensure that the muscles have enough recovery time. The recovery time for large muscle groups is generally 48-72 hours, but the specific time depends on your own feelings.
Therefore, under the premise of sufficient training intensity, reasonably arrange your training plan and avoid training the same body part again within 48 hours.
5. Why do fitness enthusiasts like to eat chicken breast?
Chicken breast has always been a favorite among fitness enthusiasts for the following reasons:
1. Extremely low calories
Chicken breast is almost the lowest-calorie meat, of course, this only includes chicken breast. Other parts of the chicken, such as wings, have very high calories. The cooking method also greatly affects the calorie content, with boiling having the lowest calories, making boiled chicken breast a favorite among fitness enthusiasts.
2. Low carbohydrate, high protein
It also contains a large amount of iron, which is beneficial for metabolism.
3. Strong satiety
Low calories, low carbohydrates, high protein, and strong satiety make it hard to find another food that meets all these requirements as well as chicken breast, which is why it is so popular.
6. Why do you feel particularly tired the day after training?
Feeling tired after training is mainly due to delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which is primarily caused by the accumulation of lactic acid and slight damage to muscle tissue.
During training, muscle tissue is slightly damaged, and muscle fibers are slightly torn. After training, through nutritional supplementation and muscle rest, the muscle fibers slowly recover and re-heal, becoming thicker than before. This is the theory of supercompensation and the principle of muscle growth.
You often feel more tired on the second day after training than on the first day because the second day is when the muscle fibers heal the fastest and need to fully absorb nutrients, making the soreness more noticeable than on the first day. However, if you experience not only ordinary muscle soreness but also symptoms like lethargy and lack of concentration, it may indicate that the training intensity was too high and exceeded your body's capacity. You should reduce the load and focus on post-training nutrition and rest.
7. Can you continue to train when you have muscle soreness?
First, as a common fitness question, there is no rigorous scientific evidence to back this up, but based on experience, muscle recovery time is about 48-72 hours. This means that the same body part should not be trained again within two days. After this time, as long as the soreness does not affect the correct execution of movements or the intensity of training, you can continue to train. But if the soreness is so severe that it prevents you from performing normal movements or significantly reduces your performance, or if you experience pain, you should stop training and rest well.
Additionally, if a training plan causes continuous muscle soreness for a period and is difficult to alleviate, it indicates that your body cannot adapt to such training intensity, or there may be insufficient nutritional intake or rest. In this case, you need to optimize your training plan or make appropriate changes to your diet and sleep.
8. Do you need to take protein powder to gain muscle?
First of all, protein powder is just a protein supplement, nothing more. Normal people can consume it, and there is no need to demonize protein powder. As long as it is a product from a reputable manufacturer, it can be consumed normally without any side effects.
The significance of supplementing with protein powder is:
The efficiency of protein powder supplementation is higher. What you consume is what you get, but this is not the case with food. For example, 100g of meat contains 20g of protein. If you need to supplement 100g of protein, you need to eat 500g of meat, which is quite a large amount. However, it should be noted that protein powder can only serve as an auxiliary supplement and cannot replace food. The primary source of protein should be food, with protein powder as a supplement.
For those looking to gain muscle, whether you need protein powder depends on your needs and goals. If you are an ordinary fitness enthusiast with not very high training intensity and a high-protein diet, the protein from food is sufficient to meet your body's needs, and you do not need extra protein supplementation. But if you are a professional fitness enthusiast or aim for bodybuilding and shaping with high training intensity, then supplementing with protein powder is very necessary.