Geschatte leestijd: 4 minutenDry training, also known as cutting, means systematically reducing your body fat percentage with the goal of better highlighting your muscles and especially muscle definition. This is often done by creating a calorie deficit and applying the right ratio of macronutrients. When you dry train in this way, there is a good chance that you will achieve maximum effect without excessive muscle loss.
Dry Training Schedule
A commonly heard myth among athletes who want to dry train is that you need to do more repetitions when you want to dry train. According to followers of this myth, it is inseparably linked that doing more repetitions will better highlight your muscle definition. What we think about this:
What is Muscle Definition
Let’s start by addressing muscle definition. After all, that is the goal when you go through dry training: to better highlight your muscles. Muscle definition is nothing more or less than increasing the visibility of the muscles and individual muscle groups. The ingredients to increase muscle definition are:
- Muscles and muscle mass
- A low body fat percentage
Every person has muscles so requirement 1 can be easily met. Of course, the size of the muscle plays a role, but muscle mass is required to achieve better visible muscle definition.
A low body fat percentage is requirement number 2. This is often the problem for the hardcore dry trainers among us. The body fat percentage is the main reason why you don’t see muscle definition on your shoulders, biceps, and the reason why your six-pack is hidden.
How Many Repetitions When You Want to Dry Train
Okay, dry training is therefore equal to more visible muscle definition. How should you train then? Because doing a lot of repetitions to get tighter muscles is a nice thought and a fun bro science story for the gym, but that’s not how it works. If it’s scientifically proven, we certainly welcome it, until then we recommend the following:
The number of repetitions you do affects several factors. Low frequencies with relatively heavy weight can contribute to your maximum strength. Think of powerlifters who mainly train in a rep range of 4 to 6 repetitions. The 8 to 12 repetitions have the maximum effect on muscle mass and muscle growth, and above 15 repetitions, you mainly train endurance and thus the muscle condition of the muscles.
As you can read, it is advisable to stick to 8 to 12 repetitions when you want to dry train. This will correspond to the fitness schedule that you are probably using now as well. The challenge mainly lies in maintaining muscle mass since the number of calories decreases during dry training.
How Much Can I Eat If I Want to Dry Train
So to improve your muscle definition, you need to maintain your muscle mass, point 1, and reduce your body fat percentage. The amount of fat on your body is independent of your weight. The number on the scale says something about the complete mass that is on the scale at that moment, while your body fat percentage tells you something about the percentage of fat distributed over your body based on 3 measurement points. To measure your body fat percentage, a skinfold caliper is used. With this skinfold caliper and with the help of a table, you can easily calculate your body fat percentage yourself, but nowadays there are also digital skinfold calipers that do the calculation for you based on the measurements.
To determine how much you can eat, you first need to know how much you are eating now. A good way to keep track of this is through an app like Myfitnesspal. In the app, you can easily add food items and quantities so you can see how much you eat per day. A common mistake is that you often eat more calories than you think. So consciously deal with this and do not estimate how many calories are in a cheese sandwich. There’s a good chance you’re way off.
In addition to the total amount of calories, the distribution of macronutrients is also important. The macronutrients are carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Especially proteins are incredibly important to prevent muscle breakdown during a period of dry training and cutting.
How Many Calories If I Want to Dry Train
Okay, so now you know exactly what muscle definition entails and how you can promote this in terms of muscle mass and training. In addition, you know that your amount of food plays a major role in reducing your body fat percentage. To determine how much food and how many calories you need when you want to dry train, you can use a number of calculations and calculators.
NOTE: these are all indications and estimates. Because every person is different, also in terms of daily activities, you can never rely 100 percent on just these calculators and calculations.
The simplest way to determine how many calories you need per day is to multiply your body weight by 25 – 30 calories. If you are fairly active, multiply by 30. If you are moderately active, take 28 kcal. And if you have an office job and mainly work from the car, then multiply your weight by 25 or even by 20. If with this amount of calories for a period of 4 weeks you do not lose weight in body weight, then you are probably too high and you need to lower your calorie intake.
Above you will also find a calculator in which you can determine your calorie requirement. Based on this calculator, you can calculate your maintenance. Then try to stay 10 to 20 percent below that, so you don’t lose too much muscle mass. Your body adapts to change, this is called homeostasis. To keep the changes from being too great, you need to gradually adjust the amount of calories.
