There comes a time almost every year where all the fitness enthusiasts and lifters want to start to lose weight. Its usually right around this time of year when summer is coming in soon and people want to start losing some fat. The problem a lot of people face is the fact that they don’t want to lose all their strength gains that they have made over the past 8 months or so. Even when losing weight there does not need to be a tradeoff from weight loss and strength loss.
There may be a few exemptions like say someone wanting to lose 40 pounds in a 16 week span. In extreme cases like that then yes weight drop will also most likely lead to some sort of loss of strength. In most other cases where there is not that much of a drop there is no reason you have to lose strength in the gym. Here are some bullet points about this.
- Don’t completely switch your training style from heavy to lighter just because you think you are going to be weak anyway. Keep training heavy, this will lead to much more dense muscle tone during a weight loss period.
- Stay motivated and confident. Don’t get discouraged even if you have one bad day in the gym. Yes your energy may be down due to less filling foods but keep yourself confident and consistent and everything will work out great.
- RELATIVE STRENGTH. If you maintain your strength the same as when you began you are technically still getting stronger. Although the weight is not moving up you are moving the same weight at a lower body weight. So say you lost 10 pounds in a month and kept all your strength then that means that all your PRs are now based off your relative weight and as you begin to put more weight back on you will see the strength follow.
These are 3 basic points that i follow when losing weight. Especially for me I hate losing strength and I could never see myself getting many new maxes on my lifts during a cut, but once I actually started understanding that the strength in relation to my weight loss I realized that I was stronger now at my new low weight than I was last time I was at that weight. It can be a confusing concept but like i said, keep yourself on track, stay confident and consistent, and keep lifting heavy!!
