Hammer

Losing muscle in my upper body from cycling?

Shane asked:

Ok here is my question.....I have been cycling for about six months now and ride about 20 miles a day during the week and 40 to 50 miles on Saturdays. I've lost 68 pounds of fat but I've noticed that my upper body muscle mass is disappearing as well. I never lost any muscle in my upper body while I wasn't exercising so why would I be losing it now? My legs on the other hand, are getting super lean and developing a lot of muscle it seems.

I don't want to lose muscle for obvious reasons but I have zero interest in lifting weights, it bores me to tears. So I ask you, what do I do to prevent further muscle loss?

Our Answer

Shane....first congratulations on dropping the tonnage. Your health has no doubt improved dramatically and I am sure you are MUCH faster on the bike now that you aren't hauling all of that mass around...so cudos.

As for your questions.....this is a tough one to answer without knowing a LOT more about you, your exercise regimen and especially your diet. I will offer some vague thoughts on the subject that you can interpret and investigate on your own.

First off you need to consider that you may not be losing muscle in your upper body, you may still be losing fat. A lot of body fat is intramuscular fat, meaning it's almost embedded in the muscle and isn't a "layer" around your muscle like many think. As you continue to lean out then your muscles and your arms may appear to be shrinking. The only real way to know for sure would have been to know your real bodyfat % before you started losing weight. So give this a thought.....again I am only speculating.

Second you might consider your diet....you might not be consuming enough calories for your new exercise regimen. If you've lost most of the fat you want to lose and are still eating in a caloric deficiency then you will be cannibalizing your muscle tissue. An active adult should be consuming a MINIMUM of 2500 ish calories a day in maintenance mode. This number is a rough guess and could fluctuate up and down dramatically from person to person.

If you are serious about your training then I would go have a very thorough body fat analysis done on yourself, not one of the "scales" that measure bodyfat or a skin fold test but a doctor supervised body fat test. This will give you a solid baseline to measure from. At that point then I would start analyzing your diet to make sure you are not only eating enough food but the right food. It's way too complicated to answer here but you can find a lot of information on the web for eating right.

Good Luck and enjoy the ride.

5 Comments »

Binkers17 rated this:

biking works the lower body, mostly your legs, not the upper body

# 27 January 2009 at 3:17 pm

sirmrmagic rated this:

You need to exercise you upper body as well, bicycling only builds the lower body.

# 30 January 2009 at 3:08 am

Roz C rated this:

Because cardio activities burn muscle.

Of course your leg muscles are developing though because biking involves mostly those muscles.

Eat protein to maintain your muscle. Try and use your arms more if you can, you don’t always have to lift weight — Lean on a wall, swing from a pole, etc.

# 1 February 2009 at 10:29 pm

RockOut rated this:

It sounds like you’re overtraining. Your body is conserving energy and shifting all the muscle nutrients to your legs because they need it the most right now. I hate to say it but you’re going to have to balance it out somehow. Lift some weights, you don’t need much and cut back on the bicycling. Make sure you’re getting plenty of protein and complex carbs right after your workouts. That’s prime muscle re-building time. And, if you’ve noticed loss of muscle mass you’re not losing just fat. Some of that is muscle as well. You might gain a little back on the scale but it won’t be fat.

# 4 February 2009 at 4:12 pm

Brie rated this:

If you’re interested in crosstraining, swimming is an excellent upper body workout. I used to swim and bike when I was younger, and I was in the best shape of my life.

# 7 July 2010 at 1:03 am