As you move along with your quest to get 8 pack abs, one thing that you may start to think about using in your training sessions is depletion workouts. This is a whole new gruelling form of self-torture that can bring about great results but there’s one catch – you must know how to do them properly.
When not used properly, depletion workouts can quickly cause muscle mass loss, high levels of fatigue, and a decline in your overall strength levels.
This is why making sure that you fully understand what depletion workouts are about and how to use them correctly is vital to success.
Let’s have a look at what you need to know.
What Depletion Workouts Are
The very first thing that you need to understand is what depletion workouts are. These workouts have the primary goal to use up all the stored muscle glycogen within the muscle cells. This is then going to enhance the rate of fat burning in the body so can come in very helpful for those trying to get off those last stubborn few pounds.
In addition to this, when the muscles are fully depleted they will have a very high tendency to store large volumes of carbohydrates once again, therefore they are great to use right before you plan to have a large reefed or cheat meal. By using them, you can help ensure that all the carbs consumed during that meal (or day depending on how you structure it) move right into the muscle cells where you want them.
How To Perform Depletion Workouts
When it comes to how to perform this style of training, typically the full body approach works best. Since your goal is to fully exhaust your body’s muscle glycogen, if you’re breaking this down into two days, that means you have to maintain a low carb diet after the first workout is finished, so this can get to be quite trying.
When you do it on a full body day, you get everything done at once and then can go on to your reefed.
Since higher rep training will deplete muscle glycogen much faster than low rep training, that’s the training style protocol that will be utilized. You’ll aim to perform around 8-10 sets per muscle group and perform 10-15 reps per set.
Remember that smaller muscles will be worked on compound movements, so if you’re doing bench work for 5 sets, you’d only need to do another 5 sets of isolated tricep exercises.
Isolation exercises do tend to come in very helpful for doing depletion workouts so this is one place where you’ll definitely want to add them in.
Being Smart About Depletion Training
So when it comes to adding these to your overall workout program, make sure not to go overboard. If you’re doing depletion workouts too often, especially while on a very low carb diet, this will enhance the rate of lean muscle mass loss.
Since you can’t use fat as a fuel source during lifting, if you have no muscle glycogen and are attempting high rep training, your body must use another source for fuel and that source will be protein. This is bad news as far as lean muscle maintenance goes.
In addition to that, also make sure that you are having at least one day off to rest after a depletion workout to ensure full recovery.
So there you have everything to know about this form of workout. It’s definitely going to be a challenge as the high levels of lactic acid will make it quite uncomfortable at times, but if you can get through it, it offers many potential benefits.
