Maintain mass with Intervals

[NewlyDesigned]

Hey all,

Just looking for a little advice. I am just on the tail end of a bulk right now and am preparing for my upcoming Rugby season. I was just looking for a little advice on how to maintain my current weight but improve my cardiovascular drastically. I usually lose between 10-15 pounds during rugby season but am looking to maintain it. During pre-season and in season my cardio sessions are hard interval sessions lasting an hour or more about 4-5 times a week. The cardio consists of Rugby practice, rowing intervals, Run/jog intervals, hill sprints etc. This sheds both excess fat and some muscle off of me quickly. I'm wondering if I can maintain my weight by just maintaing a large caloric surpluss on cardio days or should I be doing some other type of training? If you have experience with this your advice would be appreciated.

Stats- 5'11" 215 lbs

Thanks,
NewlyDesigned

[pebble]

Food + stimulus to retain muscle.

[Turkish Juicer]

Hello,

I have been helping a friend with his supplementation and diet who is currently a semi-pro rugby player. He is a big guy like yourself and regardless of size, cardiovascular traning has always been a double-edge sword for athletes largely due to an anatomical fact: you loose both fat and muscle during a session of HIIT, which you seem to be aware of.

First and foremost, I would strongly recommend that you employ a harder and more intense HIIT type cardio training instead of a longer and slower one. You are already training 4-5 times a week, that is a plenty of cardio even for a pro. Try to set your HIIT time at around 30 mins., that way you can at least make sure your body is under less stress with contrast to a prolonged cardio session which results in a much greater relase of cortisol (most dominant catabolic hormone that your body relases under stress). If this suggestion falls under your expectations, you can always perform a 30 min. HIIT in the morning and another one much later during the day, with several meals and enough rest time in between. Such employment of split HIIT will not only result in a faster metabolic rythm but also will result in less burning of muscle tissue.

Here is the list of the correct supplementation that you should take about 30 mins. before your HIIT sessions (with water):

1. BCAA (2-3 servings, 10-15 gr)

2. L. Glutamine (1-2 servings, 5-10 gr)

3. Acetyl-L Carnitine (1 serving, 500 mg pill)

4. Caffeine (1 serving, 200 mg pill)

Take another servings of Acetyl-L Carnitine and L. Glutamine immediately after training, with water.

Eat a lean meal with enough protein and a healthy amount of complex carbs about 60 mins after your HIIT.

You are good to go, my friend!

[pebble]

Hello,

I have been helping a friend with his supplementation and diet who is currently a semi-pro rugby player. He is a big guy like yourself and regardless of size, cardiovascular traning has always been a double-edge sword for athletes largely due to an anatomical fact: you loose both fat and muscle during a session of HIIT, which you seem to be aware of.

First and foremost, I would strongly recommend that you employ a harder and more intense HIIT type cardio training instead of a longer and slower one. You are already training 4-5 times a week, that is a plenty of cardio even for a pro. Try to set your HIIT time at around 30 mins., that way you can at least make sure your body is under less stress with contrast to a prolonged cardio session which results in a much greater relase of cortisol (most dominant catabolic hormone that your body relases under stress). If this suggestion falls under your expectations, you can always perform a 30 min. HIIT in the morning and another one much later during the day, with several meals and enough rest time in between. Such employment of split HIIT will not only result in a faster metabolic rythm but also will result in less burning of muscle tissue.

Here is the list of the correct supplementation that you should take about 30 mins. before your HIIT sessions (with water):

1. BCAA (2-3 servings, 10-15 gr)

2. L. Glutamine (1-2 servings, 5-10 gr)

3. Acetyl-L Carnitine (1 serving, 500 mg pill)

4. Caffeine (1 serving, 200 mg pill)

Take another servings of Acetyl-L Carnitine and L. Glutamine immediately after training, with water.

Eat a lean meal with enough protein and a healthy amount of complex carbs about 60 mins after your HIIT.

You are good to go, my friend!

Some BCAA may help, but CHO controls cortisol affects better because it has a stronger insulingenic response (plays a bigger role in the cortisol:insulin relationship). I have posted about the blunted cortisol response before with CHO in this form here.

As for the rest of the supplements there I see no point in any of them. Glutamine may reduce inflammation, great, but a lot of new science is showing that the inflammatory response to exercise is the signal for remodelling. By blunting it, you are effectively blunt your stimulus for change. Long chain fatty acids (LCA) are not a rate limiting factor in aerobic capacity or fatty acid oxidation (FAO) so the extra protein transporter for LCA is not going to help spare muscle by providing more fat for fuel. Caffeine (CAF) is a great tool for aerobic exercise for increasing time to fatigue and reducing perceived rate of exertion, but neither of those are a benefit for reducing muscular trauma. It's more likely that they induce more muscular trauma due to prolonged overloading. And no research to date has showed that CAF is CHO sparing by increasing FAO.

[InfiniteMuscle]

Make sure you are getting plenty of calories bro! you can do it.