Loosing muscle while running?

Question

I've been running cross country for awhile now and I've noticed that i've lost alot of fat (6.8% body fat now) and not extremely skinny but somewhat, and I work out alot and lift more lb's/weights than most of my football friends but I am way skinnier than them. I've also seen some CC runners that weren't skinny at all but were fast...So I wanted to know is their anyway you can look somewhat mascular or bulky and maintain crosscountry endurance and speed or how do you go about doing this???

Answer 1

Running decreases body fat and and subcutaneous fluid. So we can be look rather thin but have a ton of muscle. There is a point where you reach a level of fitness where body fat is low and you actually begin to build muscle from. I good strategy for maintaining muscle mass is consuming and adequate amount of calories while lifting heavy weight at low reps. Well how do I know it is heavy enough? For every exercise , figure heavy weight is a weight where you can do no more than 8 reps with good form. Each week you should increase your weight by 5 lbs as long as you can do  8 reps with great form. But what about   changing the number of reps? You know 'll when  to lower reps when  for

Bench Press-  you using 75%  of you total body  weight for * reps.

Squat"100%"

Military Press 65%

Dead 100%

Power clean-70%

Bent over rows - 60%

Straight bar barbell curls. 50%

Answer 2

exactly what lord britin said. you get more toned by doing low weights and more reps, so do much higher weight with less reps. also, try different excercises. not just squats, lunges, etc. try different leg workouts. ask your coach or trainer, but try calf raises, or something else you havent done. just make sure you do it a lot with heavier weights.

do the same for you upper body, different excercises with more weight.

Answer 3

you just have to eat more calories and do more upper body training in ratio to running. Also when doing weights do low repitions of heavy weights. This builds the size of the muscle as apposed to high reps low weight which will give you a slender toned physique