Body recomposition workout guide

A body recomposition workout focuses on progressive resistance training designed to stimulate muscle growth while maintaining or reducing body fat. This guide provides workout and training principles aligned with your recomposition goals.

This article is from the Exercise section of our Library.

This article is part of a four-part series on body recomposition — the process of losing fat while maintaining or building muscle.

Across the series, we cover what recomposition is and how it comes about, the role of resistance training, nutrition, and rest. Each article builds on the previous one to provide a complete overview, so please read away!

When most people think about changing their bodies, they’ll focus on the number on the scales. But that single number obscures something far more important: what your body is actually made of.

Body recomposition: the simultaneous reduction of fat and increase in muscle, represents a different approach to defining what a “healthy” physical change is. Rather than simply making your body smaller, body “recomposition” focuses on improving what your body is made of.

Articles in this series:

Article 1: What Is Body Recomposition?
Article 2: Training for Body Recomposition
Article 3: Nutrition for Body Recomposition
Article 4: Rest and Recovery for Body Recomposition

Beyond Body Weight: Body Composition

Your total body weight consists of many parts: fat mass, skeletal muscle, organs, bones, nerves, water, and connective tissue, to name a few. When you step on scales, you're measuring all of these components together.

Whereas, body composition refers to how “much” of these different tissues you have, usually their relative proportions to each other (or sometimes your relative to your height).The most commonly used body composition measure is the ratio of fat you have relative to your fat-free mass (i.e., muscle, bone, and other non-fat tissues).

But many others are looked at as well.The distinction between body weight and body composition matters a lot. Two people of the same height and weight can look completely different and have vastly different health profiles depending on their body composition.

The person with more muscle mass and less fat tissue generally has better health prospects, greater functional capacity, and lower disease risk — even if they weigh the same as someone with more fat and less muscle.

Mechanical Tension: The Primary Biological Signal

When you lift a weight, your muscles generate force in order to move that load, be it a barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, or your own body weight.

This creates “mechanical tension” in your muscle, just like when you flex your muscles, and they become “tense”.

When you “overload” a muscle, meaning you lift weights until they are either too heavy to lift or you become too tired to lift them anymore, your body recognises this tension as a signal.

In response, your muscle triggers a signal that instructs it to grow. The individual muscle cells (or muscle “fibres”) within your muscle start to make more protein (than they normally do) and therefore end up getting bigger and stronger.

From Signal to Structure: Muscle Protein Synthesis

After a good bout of resistance training, your body starts this process of making more muscle protein, which lasts for up to 48 hours — assuming you’re eating enough protein.

The training provides the signal, and the (dietary) protein provides the material for you to build new (muscle) protein.

It is important to understand that you aren’t simply repairing the muscle that has been worn and torn and restoring it to its previous state. It’s an adaptive process.

You are repairing the damage, and you're making more muscle, and stronger muscle, making it more capable of handling stress in the future.

All of this is happening at the cellular level, meaning you aren’t going to notice any growth after a single session. However, over time, and with repeated training, these small changes will accumulate into noticeable changes (in both strength and size).

What About Cardio?

Studies show that aerobic exercise (or cardio) can burn fat, but it doesn’t build (large amounts of) muscle. But does this mean it has no place in your recomposition plan? Not necessarily.

Aerobic exercise, like walking, running, and cycling, increases energy demands and burns calories, which can help create the energy deficit needed for fat loss.

And although you are undoubtedly using your muscles, it doesn’t seem to generate the amount of mechanical tension required to trigger meaningful muscle growth.

The contractions your muscles are doing during cardio are light, low-force, and repetitive, which doesn’t challenge the muscle in the same way heavy resistance training does.

This doesn’t mean you should avoid cardio. In fact, it offers several health benefits and can actually help lose fat. However, it is not a substitute for resistance training. But if you want to maximise body recomposition (and general health), you should probably be doing both.

Progressive Overload: Adaptation Requires Progress

Your body will adapt to the demands placed upon it. Once it has successfully adapted to a given amount (or intensity) of work, that stress is no longer challenging enough to trigger further adaptation.

This is why “progressive overload”, gradually increasing training demands over time, is needed for continued growth.

This doesn’t necessarily mean consistently adding weight to the bar (although it's the most common way to do it) — it can involve: increasing the number of reps, sets, reducing the rest period, or even improving your technique or form.

This is particularly important for body recomposition, as maintaining (or increasing) the training volume is one of the key determinants of preserving muscle mass during energy deficits.

Even when building new muscle is challenging due to limited availability of energy, providing a strong training stimulus helps ensure that existing muscle is prioritised (at least) for retention or (ideally) growth.

Training During an Energy Deficit: Difficult but Not Impossible

There's a common misconception that you cannot build muscle in an energy deficit, only maintain it. Whilst an energy deficit indeed creates constraints, or limitations, and it is not optimal, it doesn't eliminate the ability to build muscle in response to resistance training.

When combined with adequate dietary protein intake, resistance training can stimulate muscle growth. Yes, it is not as easy or efficient as building muscle while in a calorie surplus — but it can still be done.

The size of the deficit also imposes limitations. Very large deficits (over 500 kcal a day) will impair the capacity to build muscle, and it’ll also impair the ability (or quality) of your training, which will indirectly affect your capacity to stimulate growth.

Generally, the smaller the energy deficit, the better your chances are of preserving or building muscle. For optimising recomposition, rather than fat loss, very large calorie deficits should be avoided.

The Indirect Benefits: How Muscle Growth Supports Fat Loss

Beyond directly building the muscle component of body recomposition, resistance training offers several indirect benefits that support fat loss. Whilst these aren’t going to be the primary drivers of fat loss, they will certainly help.

First, muscle tissue is metabolically active, so increasing muscle mass does contribute to a higher resting metabolic rate, meaning you burn more calories throughout the day. Over a year, five extra kilograms of muscle will use the energy equivalent of about 2-3 kg of fat tissue.

Second, resistance training itself burns energy, both during the workout and even for a few days after exercise. The more training you do, the more energy you’ll expend. This can accumulate over time and meaningfully increase your energy expenditure.

Third, the more muscle you have, and the stronger that muscle is, it means that your work capacity increases. You can move more weight, more often, and increase your training volume over time.

This means higher energy expenditure. It may also make daily activities easier and may encourage you to be more physically active.

Finally, the muscle itself can influence your metabolism. Trained muscle becomes more efficient at utilising fat as a fuel source, particularly at rest and during lower-intensity activities. This “metabolic adaptation” may help/support the fat-loss side of body recomposition.

The Non-Negotiable Foundation

The message is straightforward: if body recomposition is your goal, resistance training isn't optional — it's essential. No amount of protein, no degree of caloric deficit, and no volume of cardio can substitute for it.

You don't need to spend hours in the gym or follow complex programmes. Read our articles on the basics of resistance training:

These articles will take you through how much, how frequently, what exercises, what intensity, and how much rest you should take. However, these questions are just refinements to actually prioritising resistance training as part of your plan.

In the next article, we'll look at the nutritional requirements for body recomposition: how protein intake, calories, and nutrient timing can work along with resistance training.

3 Quick Questions

Q: Can I build muscle with body weight exercises, or do I need to lift weights?

Any form of resistance that creates (sufficient) mechanical tension can stimulate muscle growth. Body weight exercises are effective, particularly for beginners, as long as they're challenging enough. As you get stronger, you'll need to find ways to increase the difficulty.

Q: How quickly do I need to progress to keep building muscle?

There's no fixed timeline. Progress naturally slows over time. What matters is that you're attempting to do slightly more workloads than you previously could. This might not happen every session, but keep an eye on the overall trend.

Q: If I'm losing fat, does that mean my training is working, even if I'm not getting stronger?

Fat loss indicates you're in an energy deficit, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're building muscle. However, ideally, you want to be improving your strength over time. If you’re getting weaker, you probably need to review your training and/or nutrition.