What Is Body Recomposition, and Who Does It Work Best For?

Not sure what body recomposition is and how it works? You've come to the right place. Below, we'll give you and quick-and-easy walkthrough of body composition: what it is, how it works, and who it works best for.

What Is Body Recomposition?

Body composition (also known as recomp) is a term that stands for losing body fat and gaining muscle at the same time. You're re-comping your body. 

You typically see dramatic body recompositions in people who are newer to training. If they haven't trained in building muscle in the past they have a lot of potential to recall their body because it's a completely new stimulus to them. People you'll see this in include:

• Beginners
• Someone returning from injury
• Anabolic steroid takers

These are the people who tend to have the most success with body recompositions.

It's difficult to lose body fat and build muscle simultaneously—that's why so many athletes alternate between cutting and bulking phases.

How Does Body Recomp Work?

You're basically eating around your maintenance, caloric intake, or in a very slight deficit, and you're building muscle and losing fat at the same time. Eat too much, and you'll gain fat. Eat too little, and you won't get the muscle gains you want.

The category of people who have a little bit of a harder time losing body fat and building muscle at the same time are those who are more advanced.

They've been training for a long period of time and their body actually needs a little bit more to get the same result. People have stabilized their gains and have to add bigger stimuli to see the same results—that's when you begin hearing about fat loss phases, gaining phases, or bulking phases, because they've kind of squeezed out all of their natural body composition potential.

Now, they actually have to now focus on one goal for a period of time. And then they transition to the other goal for another period of time—flip-flopping between the two until they reach a happy medium with their body.

Do Recomps Work for More Advanced Athletes?'

Yes, they just take a bit more work and dialing in the details. If you are more advanced, and you're looking to continue to change your body composition, you actually might need to go into a building phase (a muscle building phase for a period of time).

During this time, focus on eating enough calories, putting yourself in maybe a slight surplus, and really focusing on dialing in your training. Stay there for a while building muscle. This could take a while—I generally never advise a client to do a building phase for less than six months.

It takes time to build muscle, and the surplus calories can often lead to a little bit of fat gain. Once you're past the beginning training phase, it's practically impossible to put on muscle mass without putting on a little bit of body fat as well.

Fat Loss Phase of Body Recomps

Once you've finished with that phase and are happy with your muscle mass, you'll primarily focus on fat loss to lose the excess weight you gained during building. That means you have to get into a calorie deficit, while still maintaining what you're doing in the gym.

The mistake that people make is if they switch to a fat loss phase, they think they need to change their training in the gym. You actually don't want to do that—you want to continue to train as if your main goal is to build muscle because that's going to send that signal to your body that says, "Hey, you know, I need to hold on to this muscle while I'm losing the body fat so that I don't lose the muscle along with body fat."

Within that, you cycle through stages of building (or maybe you're at maintenance for a little while), and then you go into a fat loss phase. In terms of body composition, if you're newer to training, if you're coming off of an injury, or if you're on anabolic steroids, those would be the main categories that have the best potential for body composition.

Other Ways to Assist Your Body Recomp

One caveat here is if you are someone who maybe has been training for a long time but you haven't been paying attention to other lifestyle factors. For example, you haven't been paying attention to your sleep or stress management.

Sometimes, once you just start to get those in check, you're actually gonna put yourself in a better place to potentially squeeze out additional body comp.

For example, if my clients have been lifting for a while and they have had their nutrition in check, we start to get their sleep dialed in. Then, we start to get stress management dialed in, and we pay attention to recovery more. Those are the times when we do see body composition, even in someone who is more advanced. With body composition, there are no black and white answers here.

If you want to learn more about body recompositions, nutrition, fitness, or metabolic flexibility you can check out the rest of the content on the site!