The big difference between what bodybuilders do for shreds and what I see most people to for general weight loss programs, is the shred will keep your hard-earned muscle while typical fat loss programs lose body weight indiscriminately between muscle and fat. The main goal of a shred is to lose weight by burning body fat but maintaining muscle mass. Something fun but gets you moving around but not intended to be a marathon race or anything like that. Then on your rest days you do some form of active rest, I usually recommend doing something outside of the gym like surfing, skiing, yoga, hiking or biking.

I will talk about weightlifting splits in my next post, so stayed tuned!Įach weightlifting session typically last about an hour and then depending on your goals a small amount of cardio maybe 10-15 minutes of High Intensity Interval Training cardio on a stair master or treadmill or none. The training program is typically build around a full body split where you train a different muscle group every day 5-6 days a week.

Your body needs so many calories a day just to function properly then throw in intense weight lifting you will now need quite a bit of food to be in a caloric surplus to enable muscle synthesis.įor the average male this can be anywhere between 3,500 – 4,500 calories a day to enable muscle growth. Then after the gym when you are resting in your recovery stage you need to supply your body with lots of lean protein to breakdown into basic amino acids and then rebuild them into new muscle tissue. If you are in a state of caloric deficit (like a low-calorie diet) you cannot create new muscle tissue.įor your body to create new muscle it needs to have that muscle overworked/damaged, which is what we do in the gym. The key to muscle building plans is having a surplus of clean calories for your body to synthesize new muscle tissue. However, I have trained with several people who spend about half the year in a bulking phase and then move to an intense shred for a few months then into a more maintenance type program though the summer “swimsuit season”. The main goal of these programs is to add muscle mass and strength, typically these programs last around 3-4 months and usually people do them in the winter months.

Difference between bulking and cutting