Transitioning Your Fitness Goals

With the cooler winter months now ahead, many people may start to think about switching their fitness goals around – which was geared towards fat loss during the summer – to muscle building instead for the winter.

Since you’ll be wearing more layers as you head into the winter months, if you have a few pounds of additional fat it isn’t going to be as big of a deal as during the summer when you were sporting your bathing suit.

If this is going to be your new goal, what adjustments need to be made in order to transition to it successfully?

Let’s look at the main points to know if you want to move into a winter muscle building period with your fitness goals.

Assess Your Diet

First, the most important thing that will need to change if you are going to aim to build muscle now after coming off a fat loss period is your daily calorie intake.

Since you are now aiming to gain body weight, not lose it, you’ll need to eat more calories on a day to day basis.

Shoot for around 10% above your maintenance needs to start.  Then increase from there if you aren’t gaining at a speed you are comfortable with.

Remember though that if you aim to gain too fast, you’ll just gain additional fat mass, not lean muscle.  Slower is often better when the goal is muscle gain.

Consider Splitting Your Workout Up

Next, also evaluate your workout. If you were using a full body approach for your fat burning program, it may be time to switch this to an upper/lower split instead.

This will help you do more total exercises and sets for each muscle group in every session you do, which will help to spark more lean muscle mass increases.

When it comes to building muscle mass, adding more volume is typically key, so you’ll need to make sure your workout sessions allow for this.

If you were already doing an upper/lower split, simply consider adding more total volume by way of more exercises or sets completed.  Now that you have more fuel coming in, you’ll be able to accommodate to the volume better.

Focus On The Squeeze

Also make sure that you are focusing on squeezing the muscles at the top of each exercise you do.  The squeeze is an underrated part of a proper strength training program to reach your fitness goals and see muscle building taking place.

Don’t just go through the movement. Really focus on the muscle contracting and relaxing as you go through each rep.  This will also help build more intensity in the program as well.

Add New Exercises

Finally, as you change your fitness goals, consider adding a few new exercises to shock your body and spark greater strength and muscle gains.

Either adjust one of the exercises you are currently doing to a new variation or simply add in something that you have never done before.

Not only will this benefit your body, but your mind as well.

So keep these points in mind and you should be able to successfully transition to a muscle building program after a fat loss one.  Work hard and you will see great results in the months ahead.