February 2008

Lean Muscle Mass

Why you want it and how to get it

Pack a bigger punch, without becoming a heavyweight. Become a lean, mean racing machine. Pack more power and endurance into your muscles without piling on the pounds and looking like a young Arnie.

It may be more important to bench press 150 kgs 4 times in order to become Mr Universe, but for most of us our goals are less ambitious. Be it toning up, losing weight, running a 10k, knocking 2 minutes off our triathlon time or pushing to finish an IronMan and that is where lean muscles comes in.

So how do you become lean? Physical activity and speeding up your metabolism are of primary importance, and there are several ways to help this.

Resting Metabolic Rate

Increase your resting metabolic rate (calories burned through thinking and tissue repair) by adding muscle. The best way to do this is through physical activity, aerobic, interval training and weight training. Lean muscle tissue can be stimulated by exercise to burn energy and calories.

But there’s more! After a long run, cycle ride or training session, your metabolism will stay elevated for over 30 hours after the workout. It is vital that during this period that you feed your muscles with the right ingredients to not only encourage growth (thus increasing muscle mass), but to make them more efficient during rest, at burning calories.

By increasing your muscle mass, you will automatically burn more calories, even when just sitting in the office or watching television. Put simply, this is because muscles need energy to work, and the more of them you have, the more energy they require. Roughly, for every pound of muscle you gain, you will burn 35-50 more calories per day.

Weight Training

The type of resistance training you do is also important. When properly performed, strength training can provide significant functional benefits and improvement in overall health and well-being including increased bone, muscle, tendon and ligament strength and toughness; improved joint function; reduced potential for injury; improved cardiac function and even elevate levels of good cholesterol. One or two weight sessions per week will do wonders for your endurance, as long as you do it properly.

Here’s how:

Work out your one rep max (the most weight that you can lift once), then halve it. For example, if you can bench press 80kg once, you will use 40kg for your endurance weights session. Try doing 3 sets of 20 repititions per exercise. Move quickly between each exercise and only rest for short periods between sets in order to keep your heart rate up.

Important things to remember are:

• Remember to lift light weights, but with high repititions. Don’t get tempted to lift the heavy stuff and put unnecessary strain on you body. It won’t help your fitness.
• Always stretch and perhaps spend a bit of time on the mats working your core strength – situps and stomach crunches.
• Don’t overwork one muscle group, and remember that most back exercises will also engage the biceps, in the same way that most chest exercises will also exercise the triceps, so don’t just sculpt your “guns”.

Endurance weights and circuit training are a great way to build strength into your programme and to promote lean muscle, but remember to rest and recover. Your muscles will generally need between 30 and 90 hours to fully recover from a weights session, and by overdoing it you risk injury, illness and a long time spent on the sidelines feeling frustrated.

Eating Regularly

Eating more frequently will increase the process of thermogenesis (the burning of calories through chewing, digesting and swallowing food). It is important to eat little and often. So instead of three big meals, which will cause big peaks and troughs in your energy levels, try eating six smaller meals throughout the day. This gives you a more stable release of energy by elevating your metabolism to a lesser degree more times during the day.

Eat the Right Stuff at the Right Time

If you are not a regular gym goer or are just getting into a sport, a few simple changes to your diet could make all the difference to increasing you muscle mass. Contrary to popular belief, eating healthily is not more expensive, less convenient or a big hassle. Try to avoid sugary drinks and snacks. Gain natural sugars and fibre from eating fresh fruit (the more colourful the better), omega-3 and monounsaturates (good for regularizing blood lipids and protecting from cardiovascular deterioration) from nuts and seeds, olive oil, and oily fish such as Salmon... and the key ingredient? Water. Drink it regularly. Have a bottle on your desk. Exercising means sweating, and a 5% loss in hydration leads to a 30% drop in performance.

After exercise, aim to have a reasonably high protein and carbohydrate drink within 20 minutes. This is when you muscles crave nutrients and are the most receptive to absorbing them. A drink will leave the stomach quicker than solid food, speeding up the process of assimilation (the transformation of food into substances and materials to be used internally by the body). When you exercise, muscle damage occurs, and to assist tissue repair, your body needs more than just water. Within two hours you should aim to eat a high carbohydrate meal that will re-energise energy stores.

If you want to avoid tired, aching muscles the next morning, don’t starve your body after exercise. Recovery begins immediately. In fact, your exercise regime isn’t over until you have recovered.

Regular aerobic sessions – runs, cycle rides, swimming – mixed with endurance weights and power sessions will reflect a new you in the mirror, but be realistic with your goals. Even when you feel like you are doing nothing, your body will be working hard, especially whilst in a training schedule. Notice yourself getting hungry earlier in the day? That’s the sign.