Maintaining a build

Guys

If, through virtue of attending the gym 3 to 4 times per week, you have reached a build that you are happy with and want to stick with as opposed to growing further, what would be your suggestion in terms of training frequency?

I trained 3 to 4 times per week on a split basis...shoulders, chest, back+biceps, triceps (triceps in with chest when I went 3 times per week).

However, I have recently taken up boxing twice a week, and as such my gym visits have been cut down. I don't want to lose any of the muscle mass that I put on through my weight training, but at the same time I'm not sure if weightlifting twice a week will be enough to maintain my current physique.

Any advice?

I think you would need to stick to basic compound exercises & lift heavy. Any intense cardio training you do whether it is circuit training or combat sport training will strip you of mass & zap some of your strength, not such a problem if you are not into power lifting. You will however look more cut, obviously I don't know how much body fat you hold, but its probably a good idea to increase your food & water intake. I do kick boxing but at the moment I only do body weight exercises & cardio whether its rounds of skipping, running a mixture of a bit of distance & then some short sprints, tabatha training & any other little circuits I can think of. Also high intensity interval training can often be the way to go rather than bouts of long slow cardio.

My body fat was at 11% a couple of months ago, haven't checked it since.

I have never lifted particularly heavy anyway, and my build is more a lean one than overly muscly. Never done powerlifting, and I'm a 3 sets of 10 man (with some drop sets) as opposed to 1 rep max's and 4-6 reps etc.

Is that any help?

My point about heavy compound exercises with lower reps is that this is what gives you all round body strength rather than higher rep isolation exercises, you will get those in a form with the boxing training & anything else you may decide to do outside of boxing. Its a good idea to do some of those exercises at home, it will make it easier when you go, also some running & skipping. You will probably have less time to go to the gym due to this & letting your body recover so I feel that it is important to maximize your visits to the gym. You must keep your protein levels up & increase your carbs prior to boxing as you dont wont to gas out halfway through or lose muscle tone.

How long have you been doing boxing? In time you are going to know the effects of the change of training & also if you are happy with it & which direction you want to take. Even though I am interested in doing weights again I'm more into kick boxing & doing body weight exercise & keeping my fitness levels up, doing lots of weights doesn't help with toughening you up against kicks & punches.

I have only been boxing for a month, twice a week.

Yeah that is the thing, less gym time as 2 days are taken up with boxing (tues and thurs) so obviously wednesday is ruled out due to recovery. Planning on going to the gym on both weekend days and then either friday/monday if I can get away with it.

If I can manage to go the gym 3 times then it won't be a problem as I can do chest/tris, back/bis, shoulders in those 3 sessions, but my concern is if I can only fit 2 sessions in.

If you ensure you are maintaining a high level of protein the muscle would be harder to lose.

Try to have a shake a day, sometimes two if I've trained, and eat a decent amount of chicken etc, do you think that's enough or would you go for more shakes?

Fists of Fury wrote:Try to have a shake a day, sometimes two if I've trained, and eat a decent amount of chicken etc, do you think that's enough or would you go for more shakes?

I'm no expert on this, you are supposed to have 1 - 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. I have never actually worked mine out though and go for 1 protein shake in the morning, 1 at night and one after training as well as eating a lot of chicken.

I'm a bit of a freak though in that I struggle to maintain any weight and if I do any cardio the weight drops off me.

Tried skipping for 10 mins a day a while back and ended up losing about half a stone in a week!

I never usually have any weight fluctuations, so it'll be interesting to see what my weight is at after another month or so of boxing.

At the moment just ensuring that I am carb loading in the day before boxing, and then having regular protein shakes/chicken etc.

Managed to hit the gym 3 times this week along with my 2 boxing sessions, but it will be hard work keeping that up each week.