HST incorporated w/boxing - best way to retain muscle mass ... ?

J

Jester

Well-Known Member
Hey ppl, long time reader, HST-practioner and former poster (new house, machine, career etc means I can't access [or even remember!] my old account :P). I've recently started taking up boxing (used to do a bit of Karate and then MMA back in the day). I'm wondering what the opinions are on the ideal way to maintain muscle mass when during fairly rigorous cardio regimes for ~ 3x45-60min per week, and then 3x steady-pace walks per week, (give or take 45-60min in length ... can't shake these, girlfriend-prerogative has been activated ;)). Way back when, I remember Lance (is he still around? @ Totentanz and Fausto, Lol, Dan Moore - you probably remember the kid?) used to advocate doing heavy 5's for 6 weeks with 1-2 weeks of negatives added in and the general consensus was lifting heavy is best for reducing // preventing muscle mass loss when cutting (which is essentially what the boxing is going to do). Thoughts, opinions ... ? I keep my workouts to the bigger compound workouts, tend to emphasise Chins//Rows (weighted), Deadlifts, DBell Shoulder Press and Dips (weighted) over Bench, Squats, Lunges and don't pay much attention to minor isolation exercises for the arms, never found them necessary.
 
What are you trying to do? Bulk, Cut or Maintain?

There is a post that has been made into a sticky about cutting above if that is what you are trying to do
 
Maintain, whilst incorporating the mentioned cardio into my activities. I assume heavy weights, high protein and increasing intake in general?
 
Yes you are going to have to up your calories to meet the energy requirements from all your exercising

As you are not going to be in a calories deficit (assuming you eat for maintenance) then going all heavy all the time is probably just going to unnecessarily stress your joints, so you might just want to stick with the standard HST format.

Also doing boxing I am assuming it is going to be mainly upper body so you might want to factor this into your weights routine and and reduce volume for your upper body exercises, although if you have good recovery this might not be an issue.
 
By keeping at maintenance calories and doing the standard HST routine, can you actually burn fat and build muscle?

Especially if you are doing a lot of sport and eating the necessary carbs to fuel both cardio and lifting?

I assume you'd go for about 1g/lb protein, 0.5-1g/lb fat and fill the rest with good quality carbs?
 
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Maybe if you are new to lifting, however if you have been lifting for a little while then you probably won't gain much eating at maintenance unless you have very good genetics
 
I've obviously up'd the calories, as mentioned.

My primary inquiry is w/regard to which relative weight I should be training with. Atm I'm doing:

Dumbbell Rows, using 3's, 70kg, normally 3 sets, sometimes if I'm feeling energetic I'll crank out 4-6 sets

Dumbbell Shoulder press, using 3's, 35kg

Dips, body-weight, using 5's

Jumping-squats, boxing drills etc, non-HST. Focusing on building 'explosiveness' or I suppose 'acceleration'. I also do 'blanket 10s' for squats and SLDL's just to keep everything where it should be.

Workout frequency is every 2nd day (weights and boxing on the same day, spaced apart ofc).

The heavy weights haven't affected my joints at all, I haven't really had many issues with that over the ~ 8yrs I've been doing HST. I tend to do 10's, 5's, then 3's and negatives rather than 15's, 10's and 5's. Fish Oil capsules also go a long way for me, speaking from experience.


Physiologically speaking, are heavy weights the best way to 'preserve' my muscle mass when I'm doing intense cardio training? The disclaimer to that qn is that I've added in extra food to compensate, the bulk of it centred around workouts (love the carb re-feeds).
 
Physiologically speaking my opinion(unqualified opinion) is that the best way to preserve muscle is by doing what is best to put it on in the first place i.e HST

I think as long as you are eating enough carbs to replenish carbohydrate stores in your muscles between workouts then you shouldn't have too much of a problem keeping your lean mass during your cardio sessions assuming they are only short in duration.
 
If you've already added in extra food to compensate then you should just do standard HST - this would compliment boxing the best, I believe, as you will also be able to continually improve your overall conditioning aside from simply increasing strength and possibly adding muscle mass.
 
Cheers all. I haven't done 15s in years, I don't tend to respond to them well (plenty of cycles to back this up) but I'll try out 10s, 5s and clusters w/negatives (the usual cycle for me).

I find that v.high protein intake is particularly helpful as well, taking about 300gm per day atm (would like to get up to 400+ but life, time in the day etc ... working on it).
 
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