Still eating the same food, following the same diet, and doing basically the same workouts? Sure, consistency is important, but if you’re not making progress anymore it may be time to do the opposite, at least for a while. If You Always Eat Low Carb… Raise your carbs for a week or so. Eating more will serve as an “anabolic switch” of sorts allowing you to bust through the muscle-building plateau you’re likely experiencing if you’ve been a low-carber for a while. The increase in anabolism will occur primarily because of the subsequent insulin secretion (thanks to the bump in carbs) and an activation of mTOR (2). Likewise, your training performance will be better because of the increased glycogen your muscles will store (2). Your ability to get more reps with a given weight will improve, especially on subsequent sets of an exercise or other exercises for the same body part. Getting more reps will lead to muscular hypertrophy as an adaptive response to an increase in time under tension and metabolic stress (4). You’ll also get to enjoy some skin-stretching pumps like you haven’t felt in a while. Even if you don’t compare a good pump to climaxing, like Arnold did, it still feels good to get your swole on. Another, often overlooked, benefit to eating carbs is ingesting the nutrients contained in them, particularly via fruit and vegetables. Don’t use your period of increased carb consumption as an excuse to eat junk. Choose healthy, nutrient-dense carb sources, including those that are high in fiber. Expect to gain a few pounds relatively quickly, largely from increased glycogen storage. And make sure to maximize your time consuming copious carbs by training hard with a higher training volume than normal. This will maximize the amount of lean muscle mass gained during this insulin/mTOR-mediated period of increased anabolism. If You Always Eat High Carb… Try a low-carb diet. Although you’re likely to lose some excess water weight, that’s just the beginning. Your body will be forced to burn fat for fuel and will get more efficient at this process (1). This is also called beta oxidation of fatty acids, which occurs in the mitochondria within cells. Speaking of mitochondria, another adaptation to a low-carb diet is increased mitochondrial biogenesis (2). This simply means the mitochondria will grow in size and/or number. Given that the mitochondria produce energy (i.e. burn fat), this is a huge benefit. Taking a break from carbs may also help reduce inflammation (3). When available, carbs are the preferred source of quick energy production for your body and brain. So be prepared for it to take about three days for your body to run out of stored carbs and get reacquainted with the fat-burning byproduct, ketones, for energy. However, if you get to that point, you’ll likely notice that your overall energy is stable, and your hunger and cravings are reduced. This is confirmation that your effort was well spent. After all, you want your body to be metabolically flexible – ready, willing, and able to efficiently use fat for energy. In my experience (supported by research), occasionally doing a low-carb or ketogenic diet makes your body more efficient at burning fat regardless of what type of diet you use most of the time. This makes fat loss easier, both physically and mentally. That’s metabolic flexibility in action! That’s why I recommend implementing a low-carb diet fairly regularly – to make sure your body’s ready to oxidize fat. Like Snoop Dogg says, “If you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready.” If You Always Train Like A Bodybuilder… Try exercising like an athlete. After long periods of training with a traditional body part split, moderate rep speed, and the typical 8-15 reps, your body could really benefit from a change. So instead of looking at training through the lens of muscle groups, shift your focus to a movement-based, athletic approach. Work out like an MMA fighter, football player, or do some CrossFit-style training, all of which focus more on doing explosive, athletic-type exercises that train a particular movement as opposed to a certain muscle. Box jumps, clapping push-ups, medicine ball throws, kettlebell swings, ladder and cone drills, Olympic lifts, as well as sledgehammering and/or flipping a big-ass tire are exercises that practically never make it into a bodybuilding routine. That’s precisely why they’ll be of such benefit. Explosive exercises will increase your power output and cause positive neuromuscular adaptations. For example, an increase high-threshold motor unit recruitment and rate coding, as well as hypertrophy of fast twitch, type-II muscle fibers (which happen to have the highest potential for growth) occur as a result of training for power (5). Simply put, fast-twitch muscle fibers and the nerves that innervate them become more efficient via training explosively, leading to muscle growth. Performing unique, dynamic movements that you don’t typically do will
Origin: Flip Side Physique Development