Gaining muscle mass whilst simultaneously burning body fat is the holy grail of health and fitness. In fact, itโs the goal around 80% of my online personal training clients ask me to help them achieve.
This achievement is best referred to as โrecompositionโ as itโs literally the pursuit of changing the composition of your body, i.e. having more muscle and less fat, lowering your overall body fat percentage.
This is not to be confused with weight loss, because the gaining of muscle is actually adding weight to the body, but in a positive way. Additionally, having more muscle mass will increase your basal metabolic rate or the amount of calories your body burns to sustain itself. That’s not to say you won’t lose weight, but likewise, you might gain a little it all depends on where you start, but by continuing to focus on weight, you’d really have missed the point of composition, as we are focusing entirely on body fat percentage as our marker of success.
Think of it like this, take your body right now, if you were to gain 1kg of muscle mass your body fat would be lower as a percentage, even without losing any body fat, because it’s a ratio. Likewise, as long as you consolidate your muscle, and lose body fat, your body fat percentage will go down. So if you are able to do these at the same time, you can see how quickly you might stand to see excellent visual results.
As a word of warning, If you focus on weight whilst training for recomposition, it’s going to be very frustrating for you because you’ll be measuring the wrong thing entirely. So please make sure you are clear on how to measure the success of your recomposition attempts before beginning a training program. I’d go as far as to say that the hardest part of recomposition is to get your head around the idea that gaining weight can actually make you leaner, once you’ve done that you’re halfway there.
Is recomposition possible?
For a long time, recomposition was generally considered impossible for those who deeply invested in fitness training without the help of drugs and supplements that would change an individual’s hormone levels. But I believe that’s because the conversations were being had by highly trained bodybuilders and athletes, who had been training for years, if not decades
In fact they had trained so successfully and consistently that they were very close to what their bodies were ever going to be able to achieve. Therefore it makes sense that at that stage of development, they were now settling for marginal, incremental improvements year after year.
Because they obviously knew what they were doing, these conclusions filtered into the mainstream understanding of fitness and wanting to be like those they admired a whole generation of fitness enthusiasts, who looked to โcuttingโ and โbulkingโ as the only route forward to achieve an aesthetic physique.
The problem is that when most people try to gain muscle, they gain body fat with it, and then when they try to lose the fat theyโve gained, there is an over-correction and a lot of muscle is lost, itโs very frustrating, I know because I lived those frustrations too in my own training, before figuring out the unique set of factors that would allow for a positive body recomposition.
I outlineย my journeyย with recomposition in the video here:
Who is body recomposition for?
The conventional wisdom I alluded to above misses a crucial factor, which is that 99% of people are nowhere near their generic potential for muscularity, nor can they say in all honestly that they have done everything perfectly for the last 30 days, let alone months or years, of course, there are some exceptions, but 99% of the population including myself are in the first category, which means that recomposition can work for almost everyone, and the degree to which itโll be fruitful depends on how much low hanging fruit is currently on the table.
Is it going to work for a professional bodybuilder or fitness model, probably not. Is it going to work for you? Well, the chances are that it will, after all, it worked for me, and at the time I found this methodology, I was at the early stages of myย career as a personal trainerย and I had already been training for years, so there is a great deal of opportunity for almost everyone.ย
How to tell if body recomposition will work for you
Body recomposition can work for almost anyone, but it is more effective for some than others, letโs take a brief look at some hard and fast guidelines.
Recomposition may be perfect for you if:
- You are seeking to stay in shape year-round, happy to take a slower route to muscle gain whilst maintaining a lean physique
- You are currently undertrained, potentially coming back to exercise after a lay-off and are about to embark on a new health initiative
- You are beginning your fitness journey quite overweight and don’t have a long history of weight training
- You feel like youโve lost a lot of muscle with aggressive dieting or cutting and need a more maintainable solution
Potentially avoid if:
- You are close to your genetic potential with regard to muscle gain (i.e you’ve successfully trained for 5-10 years and have basically utilised all possible low-hanging fruit)
- Consider yourself a โhard-gainerโ or โectomorphโ – You would probably be best with longer gaining cycles, losing body fat is not really your challenge.
- Getting into fitness in your 20s or younger and are a beginner with exercise – you might see more utility in taking advantage of the muscle that can be gained in the early days of lifting, youโll never have that time again so make use of it!
How to achieve body recomposition
For the most part, everyone should be able to achieve some kind of positive body recomposition with consistent effort, by focusing on the core principles listed below. Actual workouts, exercises, and meals can all change, those are the details.
It’s the wider framework working in unison that is the key to successfully losing fat and gaining muscle. Iโve included exercise examples of training programs Iโve used myself as highlighted in the video above.
Core principles:
Calorie cycling
Conventionally, to gain muscle we must be on a caloric surplus, and to lose weight we must be on a deficit. Typically these cycles can last anywhere from a few weeks to 6 months or more depending on the goal.
However, to achieve positive recomposition weโre going to have to change the rules a little bit. Firstly weโre going to shift the focus away from calories per day over to the number of calories across the week. This shift in focus allows us to maintain an overall caloric deficit over the course of a week, whilst eating a break-even or small surplus caloric intake on the days in which we are engaged in intensive weight training, this will allow us to have long periods of maintaining protein symphysis meaning that muscle gain is going to be possible as a direct response from our training despite being in a very modest deficit for the week.
Progressive overload
Progressive overload must be utilised because A vital element of recomposition is, of course, gaining muscle mass. This means youโll need to be engaged in regular intensive resistance training (which weโll define as any resistance workout that is demanding enough to force an adaptation).
The key here is that you must be making progress in your weightlifting efforts. It’s the element of progressive overload that will confirm that you are benefitting fully from the training and that strength is not being lost (indicative of muscle preservation). All you need to do to maintain progressive overload is move up in weight by the next incremental weight you have available to you. Though never at the cost of exercise technique, that wouldnโt count.
The great additional bonus you get from progressive overload is that you establish the habit of workout tracking, which alone can massively impact the success of your training, as you’re able to keep an excellent read on how you are progressing at a time.
A focus on holistic health
If I could condense my 14 years as a personal trainer into one tip that could save you weeks, months even years of frustration with poor results, not to mention all the money you might save on gym fees, supplements, and coaching over that period it would be this:
If your mind or body is compromised by stress (in its many forms) you will not get optimal results even from the same workout and nutritional intake as you would if you were better managing stress. This is why I never provide a training program that doesnโt have some form of stress management accompanying it.
Whilst itโs beyond the scope of this article to go into the deep science of muscle gain and fat loss (muscle protein synthesis, Mtor protein & the AMPk enzyme) suffice it to say that the chemical and hormonal processes that regulate muscle growth and fat loss will be less efficient in a compromised body, and what I mean by compromised is one negatively affected by stress and inflammation.
Taking care of your general health and wellness is paramount to achieving such an ambitious training goal as recomposition, oxidative stress, lack of sleep, poor nutritional content, low protein intake, overtraining & failing to properly manage stress can all hold you back. So a health-centered approach to exercise is necessary both for its own sake (this isnโt a rehearsal) and because of how itโll influence your results.
The recomposition program
Caloric Intake
First things first youโll need to calculate your caloric intake so that you can benefit from manipulating your break-even points on training days and your small deficit on your resting (not intensive weight training) days.
How to calculate your caloric intake:
One of the most frequently used calculations is this one, the Harris-Benedict equation:
| Men | BMR = (10 ร weight in kg) + (6.25 ร height in cm) – (5 ร age in years) + 5 |
| Women | BMR = (10 ร weight in kg) + (6.25 ร height in cm) – (5 ร age in years) – 161 |
This gives you your basal metabolic rate, which means the number of calories that is needed to maintain your current body weight. But that doesnโt factor in the number of calories you burn over the course of your daily activities, which would give you your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) so here is one last step to account for that:
| Lifestyle | Example | PAL | Calculation |
| Sedentary or light activity | Agricultural worker (non-mechanised) or person swimming two hours daily | 1.53 | BMR x 1.53 |
| Active or moderately active | Office workers getting little or no exercise | 1.76 | BMR x 1.76 |
| Vigorously active | Agricultural worker (non mechanised) or person swimming two hours daily | 2.25 | BMR x 2.25 |
Once you have your calculated calories you will opt for:
Break-even or +10% surplus on training days
&
-10 – 20% deficit on resting / active rest days
Body recomposition is an intricate process and everybody is different so close monitoring of your progress is essential. You can observe changes in a mirror or use an electronic device to measure the changes in your body composition more accurately.
For successful body recomposition, you will need to maintain a slight deficit over the course of a week. If muscle gain is more of a priority then consume a slight surplus on your training days and if fat loss is more of a concern have a larger deficit on your rest days and break even on training days. You can vary these ratios over the course of the program or as you see fit if priorities change.
Calories vs content
The calorie content debate is a contentious one in the health & fitness industry, with one argument being that you cannot scientifically disprove the calories in vs calories out numbers, i.e a calorie is a calorie and on the other hand, another school of thought is to do away with the numbers and focus on nutrient diversity and how different food affect the body regardless of calories.
There are clearly good points on both sides, to me the logical solution is to work within both, the method Iโve used to achieve a positive body recomposition on my own body and many of my clients is to respect and work within the caloric intake recommendations but use a common sense approach to the quality of the nutrients that are being introduced into the body after all there is a lot to be said for the old adageย you are what you eat.
As I touched on before, both nutrient availability and the overall state of health, inflammation, and free radicals in the body are going to influence the extent to which our body can make the intended adaptations in the body. What Iโm drilling home here essentially is that even if you eat the right amount of calories and do the right training you will get sub-optimal results if your overall level of health (even down to the cellular level) is compromised. So that should always be the priority and one shouldn’t knowingly take on a risk to health to facilitate an aesthetic fitness goal.
Macronutrient-split
The ratio between the three major macro-nutrients are just as important as caloric intake when you are looking at your fitness goals through the lens of recomposition. Crucially, this is massively overlooked by most weight loss methodology which only looks at caloric intake. To be clear you could have a perfect caloric intake, but if the macronutrient split is not set up well you could be in a position to fall short of your fitness goals for many reasons. For example, a low protein intake will massively impact your energy levels which could trigger over-eating or a higher than optimal carb intake could impact insulin levels, which in turn could promote fat accumulation, particularly abdominal fat. Actually this is a positive second-order effect of training for recomposition, you’re essentially forced into a health setup around nutrition.
A great place to start from for a positive recomposition is the following split:
30% Protein 30% Fat 40% Carb
Protein
Protein is essential for muscle growth, if your protein intake falls too low you may not be able to achieve muscle protein synthesis and will not only not be able to gain muscle, but youโll also stand to lose your existing muscle mass, particularly when on a caloric deficit, of course, this doesnโt happen overnight but its worth conscious effort to keep optimal.
It’s typically taken that for the most part grams of protein from different high-protein food sources are of equal value. However, through the recompostion lens, I would suggest the inclusion of leucine-rich foods because the combination of leucine-enriched nutrients and resistance exercise enhances both mTOR signalling and muscle protein synthesis. Suggested foods would include chicken, beef, nuts, seeds, beans, pork, and fish.
Fat
Fat is essential for healthy hormone balance and many other aspects of health including maintaining healthy skin and hair. When we factor this into a recomposition training goal, itโs going to be essential because, without healthy hormone regulation, it would be very difficult to gain muscle. Dietary cholesterol is also important, especially for men in regulating testosterone, so if you are engaged in heavy training and maintain a low sugar intake do not fear a reasonable intake of dietary fat and cholesterol, itโs refined sugar and processed foods that make us fat and causes inflammation, not healthy dietary fats.
Carbs
Letโs start off by saying that ketogenic diets can also be used for recomposition. However, for the purpose of this article, weโll be utilising a moderate carb intake as itโs the more easily maintainable approach to nutrition for the vast majority of people. Ideally, we keep the carb intake healthy, avoiding refined sugars and heavily processed foods and having a clear preference for lower glycemic index carbohydrates. Great choices would be rooted vegetables, low-GI fruits, and possibly slower-release grains like oats, quinoa, and buckwheat.
Suggested further reading: A complete guide to fitness nutrition
Resistance training
As we touched on above, the most essential element of resistance training in a recomposition program is that you maintain progressive overload, i.e. you have to be making consistent progress to force your body to react with an adaptation, the adaptation being muscle growth.
Progression doesnโt just have to be measured in terms of lifting more weight. For example, if you are limited by the amount of weight you have access to, you could also reduce rest time, slow the cadence of your repetitions, increase volume, or raise the intensity by super setting.
As a hard and fast rule youโll want to be training 3-4 times per week (I generally suggest 3 because it’s an easier way to have a slight surplus on training days and still be at a deficit due to the 4 days of deficit). Youโll also want to focus on big multi-joint, compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, rowing, and pressing movements.
You can use a number of training programs and protocols for body recomposition. However, I lean toward HST or โhypertrophy specific trainingโ, for two reasons. Firstly the whole system is built around compound movements and utilising progressive overload in each workout.
secondly, it works on the concept of minimum necessary muscle stimulation for growth, which means that despite being in a caloric deficit, performance remains high, which would be more tricky to achieve with a shock-and-awe style high-volume program like German volume training for example. A close second I would use would be the 5×5 strong-lifts program.
A modified HST program I like to use looks like this:
BB = Barbell
DB = Dumbbell
KB = Kettlebell
Workout A
BB Squat 2 x 15
KB swing 2 x 15
BB Bench Press 2 x15
Close Grip Lat Pulldown 2 x 15
BB Military Press 2 x 15
BB Upright Row 2 x 15
BB Bicep Curl 2 x 15
Overhead DB Tricep Extension 2 x 15
Workout B
BB Deadlift 2 x 15
Leg Press 2 x15
Inc Bench DB Bench Press 2 x 15
BB Barbell Row 2 x 15
Seated DB Press 2 x 15
BB Shrug 2 x 15
Preacher Curls 2 x 15
Tricep Pull Down 2 x 15
You would perform the workouts in the following sequence:
Week 1 – A,B,A
Week 2 – B,A B
For 2-3 weeks at 15 reps, meaning you would do each workout three times. At the end of which you would skip two weight classes and perform 2-3 cycles of the A and B workout, at 10 reps before finally skipping two more weight classes again and moving to 5 reps.
Rest periods should be 60 seconds. Only move on to the next weight if you successfully achieve the stated rep count, you can then repeat the cycle entirely, or change the exercise selection, effectively making the training program a completely new one, or indeed move forward on the strong-lifts protocol.
Cardiovascular training
On a program like this, cardiovascular training can be implemented to help accelerate fat loss, ideally in the form of short, sharp high-intensity workouts on your resting days (remember we are defining rest by the absence of heavy weight training not by the absence of a workout) My go to cardio for recomposition is 4 x intense Tabata drills.
Tabata is a cardio protocol developed in Japan specifically for fat loss, as it was found to help weight class athletes change weight classes without a drop in muscle mass or performance, i.e. itโs perfect for the minimum viable stimulus that targets fat loss. The drill itself works on the basis of 8 sets of 20 seconds of work vs 10 seconds of rest.
You can also implement LISS/steady state cardio training and an overall active lifestyle but donโt go overboard with the higher heart range cardio as you might start to impair your recovery. Remember that as much as we seek to achieve our fitness goals, we should always be doing so from a place of improving our health rather than sacrificing it for the short term, cardio is an important element of overall health so do try to keep your hand in this arena even in the presence of intensive resistance workouts.
Think of your cardio efforts like bookends that book contribute to your goal. At one end you have HIIT training. This is where you benefit from the thermic effect of that workout, i.e. because you’ve done it you will benefit from increased exercise calorie burn EPOC. There are also mechanisms at play with HIIT that make you more efficient at burning fat at lower intensities including better insulin sensitivity and mitochondrial efficiency. Then at the other bookend, you have lower heart rate training which burns fewer calories overall but a higher proportion of calories from fat as a fuel source. It’s also a form of exercise that accumulates very little fatigue meaning if you have the time you can really lean into it to improve your results. This is not true of HIIT and resistance training as their rate limiting factor is always going to be your ability to recover from the sessions.
Intermittent fasting (optional)
Personally, when pursuing a recomposition goal I tend to utilise a 16:8 intermittent fasting protocol alongside it. There are numerous health benefits associated with IF, including an enhanced ability to shed body fat and the fact that your natural growth hormone levels are able to stay elevated for longer than they usually would which is conducive to muscle protein synthesis. Incidentally, itโs generally advised that women use a slightly shorter period of fasting for example 12-14 hours. One of the other secondary benefits of intermittent fasting here is that it forces one to consider factors outside of pure caloric restriction that can influence fat loss rather than always falling back to the idea that calories must be reduced to see progress, which is weight loss thinking and would undermine half of the goal here, which is to gain muscle.
Final thoughts
This style of program can help you significantly shed body fat and gain muscle over a period of 6-24 weeks and at times might feel like itโs a slow burner, but thatโs only because youโre going in both directions at the same time. But if you stick with it, you will see recomposition and it will be most apparent visually rather than on the scale.
The greatest benefit is that by its very nature for it even to be feasible for this style of program to work it canโt be restrictive, which means that if you stay with the framework long enough youโll be able to keep what you achieve and walk around in shape year round. Think of it like the Pareto principle, whilst recomposition training might not get you to your genetic potential of muscle gain, or as shredded as you might with a long, hard cutting phase, it could allow you to walk around at 80% of both of those at the same time without restriction. Thatโs a trade-off Iโve chosen for my own life which affords a relaxed approach to travel, social settings and maintaining a work-life balance, itโs a system that has worked well for hundreds of myย online personal training clientsย as well.ย
So if youโre looking for a permanent solution to walking around in shape year round, confident in your clothes, and comfortable taking a beach holiday at a day’s notice, perhaps you should put an end to
the endless bulking vs cutting cycle and give recomposition training a try, it might be exactly what youโve been looking for.
Of course, this is a very broad guide to recomposition, and many of the parts can be modified to fit particular schedules, restrictions, and preferences, so if you would prefer to outsource the decision-making to me, and have me build a recomposition program thatโll work for you, letโs discuss working together on a free consultation call.