Low-carb diet: How to train?

If you eat a low-carbohydrate diet and train hard as usual, you probably feel different, right?

An athlete following a low-carbohydrate diet often feels very tired, sore, has difficulty concentrating, and/or lacks the energy to face the weights, right?

Eliminating or reducing carbohydrates from your diet can have a beneficial effect on fat loss, but it has one drawback… your energy levels can drop a lot, a lot…

Even so, many bodybuilders achieve success with this strategy in preparation for competition season. How do they do it?… By manipulating their training to make it work…

What Happens on a Low-Carbohydrate Diet

Yes, a low-carbohydrate diet can help you get in shape by reducing your body-fat levels, but it can also cost you valuable muscle size.

This is because glycogen stores (glucose stored from carbohydrates) within your muscle tissue and liver become compromised when your intake of these macros is too low.

• With low glycogen stores, it is difficult for the muscles to exert the sustained high-intensity effort required to lift weights.
• As a result, you experience a decrease in strength and a drop in training weights, so your muscles receive less stimulation, leading to muscle loss.

In addition, when you diet (whether low-carb or not), you are almost always in a calorie deficit, where your body looks for the “missing energy” it needs to function, generally breaking down protein structures into amino acids, which can then be used as energy.

Structure Your Workouts

Because of these factors, you need to structure your strength workouts to be brief, heavy, and intense when following a low-carbohydrate diet.

• Short workouts consume fewer calories than longer workouts. Remember that there is an inverse relationship between training volume and training intensity.
• You can train hard for a short period or not as hard for a longer period, but you cannot train hard for an extended period.

In fact, if you truly give your all in every set of every exercise, you will not last more than 20 to 30 minutes per body part.

You should try to go as heavy as possible, as quickly as possible, in your workout after warming up.

This is key because when a muscle is fresh, ATP (the chemical responsible for energy and contraction) and the glycogen stored in the muscle are at their highest levels, and that is when you can generate truly high power output.

• To do this, train your body parts by exerting as much force as you can in the shortest time possible.
• This will allow you to maximize the stress during your training session, and that is your first objective.

Because of the intense nature of this type of workout, warming up becomes even more crucial for preventing injuries, so you should always, always start with a couple of light sets of your first exercise.

Don’t forget that while dieting, there are exogenous ketones that will help you stay focused and energized.

Increase the Intensity

For example, if you want to adjust your biceps routine to ensure you are training at high intensity, follow these four steps:

Start with a major mass builder, such as the barbell curl, which should take no more than 6 minutes.

• Do 2 light warm-up sets of 10 repetitions.
• Increase the weight to a load with which you cannot perform more than 8 repetitions with good form.
• Decrease the weight by approximately 10% for your second set, performing another 6–8 repetitions.
• For the third and final heavy set, lower the weight by another 10% and give it everything you have, performing 6 to 8 repetitions before you cannot complete another repetition.

Then choose an isolation movement, such as concentrated biceps curls; another 6 minutes:

• Do your first heavy set with a dumbbell with which you cannot perform more than 6–8 repetitions.
• For the second set, lower the weight by approximately 10% for another 6–8 repetitions.
• For the third and final set, lower the weight by another 10% and give it your all, performing as many repetitions as you can.

Finish your biceps workout with a movement that targets the muscle group in a somewhat different way:

• You can choose the hammer curl, which focuses more on the brachialis and brachioradialis.
• Perform 3 hard sets of 6–8 repetitions, which will annihilate or burn your arms like never before.

In this example, one minute has been allotted to complete a set and one minute to rest, making your workouts shorter.

Limit your rest between sets to approximately the time needed to catch your breath—perhaps as little as 45 seconds when training smaller body parts and up to 2 minutes when training larger muscle groups such as the legs.

11Do Cardio with Little Fuel

Following a low-carbohydrate diet promotes fat burning, so adding cardio to the equation can really accelerate the process.

Do 30 minutes on a stationary bike, climb stairs, or jog on the treadmill immediately after your workout 3–5 times per week.

During this period, keep your cardiovascular intensity between 70% and 80% of your maximum heart rate.

You can roughly calculate your target heart rate by subtracting your age from 220 and multiplying the result by 0.7 and 0.8 for your target range in beats per minute.

Doing cardio after a large amount of glycogen has been depleted will cause your body to gradually switch to burning stored fat for energy.

If you cannot do cardio after your workout, try doing it in the morning before breakfast. Since you have been fasting overnight, you are already burning a higher percentage of fat for energy, making this an ideal time to do it and allowing you to burn even more stored fat.

Remember that there is no reason you should feel tired when you are following a training regimen on a low-carbohydrate diet.

The ideal approach is to balance your carbohydrates to obtain enough energy to fuel your activities, but nothing more.

Do not let a short-term lack of energy supply undermine your goals and gains. To do this, you must leave behind the fatigue caused by the low-carbohydrate diet.