I’m trying to lose weight so I have cut down my calories a lot but have still been going to the gym three days a week to lift. I’ve noticed I haven’t been able to bench as much since I’ve been losing weight which of course makes sense. In general I am a pretty muscular guy, especially my legs, my calves are freaking giant and muscular, but I’m really not interested in being bulky anymore I’d rather just get skinny. So should I stop strengh training if I just want to be skinny? I know more muscle means using more calories to maintain the muscle so it would seem it would be better to keep the muscle but like I said I really don’t care about that anymore.
You might want to consider adapting your weight training, if you haven’t done so already, to lower weight and higher reps. That way, you’ll keep lots of nice fat-burning muscle, and keep it toned and flexible, but not add any more bulk.
If you’re losing strength, you’re losing muscle, and if you’re losing muscle, your metabolism is slowing down. That’s not good for fat loss–in fact, it’s why fat loss slows down as you diet longer–so no, you should not stop strength training. You should do like OneCentStamp says and move to a high weight/low rep protocol.
And the fact that you’ve only talked about benching is not reassuring. You are squatting and deadlifting, right?
I do things other than bench but I don’t bother squatting, I really don’t want my legs to get any bigger as they are already very large and I’ve always been able to squat heavy weights without doing it regularly.
If you’re losing muscle mass while strength training, I wonder if your protein intake is adequate?
Well I’ve had a calorie deficit since I’ve been on the diet and yeah my protein is probably inadequate.
By stopping strength training, do you mean stop lifting weights completely, or do you mean you want to do some other form of weight training aimed at doing something other than improving your strength?
If you want to be skinny, with no muscle, then stopping weight training would be the way to go. If you want to lose your fat and get shredded, then you need to keep working out, but do so in a way to burn more calories (higher reps and lower weight is a good idea). Keep in mind that you should still be eating eat healthy in order to prevent as much muscle lost as you can.