Joe

[Tarvis]

Yeah you get your own topic, but can you tell me what your workout routine is, in detail. What you've found to work best, and what didn't? Looking for mostly upper body tips, and I'm too lazy to search.

Also would be helpful would be what you ate, and how often, and if you ever just said fuck it and pigged out (and how often).

Thnx

 

[Joe]

I will do that after I get back from class so stay tuned

 

[Joe]

OK so let's go. This is gonna be a LONG post!

Well it depends what you're trying to accomplish. Do you want to just build muscle, or cut fat, or what? Or both? Because doing both at the same time is extremely difficult and requires extremely meticulous, precise calorie counting. It's easier to just do it in cycles - remove the fat, then build muscle, then cut what fat you gained while building muscle but maintain your muscle mass, so at the end of one cycle you're a little bit leaner and fairly more muscular.

For bulking, which is what I'm doing now, I'm doing two days lifting, one day off, two days lifting, etc. Day 1 I do legs - squats, deadlifts, and calf work. Even if you don't care about your legs, you need to do squats and deadlifts, because they build the most muscle everywhere in the body. Day 2 I do chest - bench press, incline bench, and dumbbell flyes, and triceps.

For the record, go to http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html for great visual descriptions on how to properly do the exercises. You also want to do them with free weights, that is dumbbells and barbells, instead of machines. You need to get the form down properly for squats and deadlifts, you can search youtube for instructional videos if you want.

Day 3 is back and biceps - lat pulldowns, chinups, rows, and curls. You don't need to do a lot for your biceps - most people go to the gym mostly for bigger biceps, and end up overloading them. Do 3 sets of barbell curls, and some dumbbell hammer curls, once a week. Day 4 is shoulders - overhead press, upright row, shrugs, and side or front dumbbell raises. You can use either dumbbells or a barbell for the overhead press. I find it's best to use dumbbells, but my gym sucks and they don't go any heavier than 55lbs so I have to use a barbell.

Do some ab work every few days. Don't just pound out 1000 crunches, that doesn't do anything for you. If crunches are too easy, hold a weight to your chest while you do them. Also, do this: http://www.bodybuildingforyou.com/training-fitness/8-minute-abs-workout.htm

There are probably thousands of different programs you can find online, you just have to experiment and find what works best for you. But, if your routine doesn't contain squats and deadlifts, it sucks. Period. You'll also want to stick with the bigger, compound movements that I've outlined here. Don't do froofy shit like leg extensions unless you're either a little girl, or an advanced bodybuilder looking for a little more definition in the quads. And if you were, you wouldn't be asking me this shit.

How many sets and reps you do depends. If you want bigger muscles (hypertrophy), do 3-4 sets of 12 repetitions. If you want strength, but not necessarily big muscles, do 6 sets of 6 or fewer repetitions. A good program that a lot of people do is 5 x 5 - that is, five sets of five repetitions. Just don't half-ass anything - you need to really put all your effort into every lift or you won't get anywhere. It also helps, I find, to keep a log of how much you lifted each workout, otherwise you'll forget and you won't increase the weights as fast as you could be doing. Try to push yourself a little further each time you workout. If you can't increase the weight from what you did last week, try and squeeze out just one or two more reps. A single rep higher than what you did last week is still good progress. Lifting the same thing each week won't help you.

Now, nutrition is just as important as the workout. You need protein. You need a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. Buy a protein powder (http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/opt/whey.html is good), and take it to the gym with you. Drink a shake immediately after you're done working out, and eat something with protein in it within an hour of finishing working out. You generally want to eat 5 or 6 smaller meals a day instead of 3 bigger ones. If you don't have time to make 5 meals, get some protein bars or take a shake with you to work/school/whatever. I don't really watch my diet too strictly, but try and stay away from stuff like soda/junk food. Of course, it's ok to eat these things every once in a while, but not too much.

Also, believe it or not, pigging out once in a while is good for you. If you don't eat a lot of sugar/fat, your body can horde it's current supply of fat. Eat something fatty once a week, and it'll actually help you lose. Cheat meals also make sure you don't lose your motivation.

I think that's about it, well that's all I want to type now anyway. Ask me for anything else.

 

[Joe]

Christ, I just wrote all that and realized it doesn't really help if you're trying to cut fat. Well this post will be for that!

To cut fat, you need to do cardio. Lots of cardio. Dripping sweat, heart pounding, out of breath cardio. Running, swimming, cycling, intense martial arts, it's all good. 3 times a week. You also need to lift weights, though, because otherwise your body might burn its muscle instead of its fat. Lift 3 times a week too. Again, stick to bigger compound movements - squats, deadlifts, bench press, over head press, pullups. Still get a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.

Now, you need to figure out how many calories to eat. There are lots of different sites that'll tell you a lot of different things, but try this one: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_6_1x_Calorie_Calculator.asp Basically, if you needed 3000 calories a day to maintain your weight, to safely lose weight you'd want to eat 2500 calories a day, and to safely gain weight you'd want 3500 daily. You don't want to be losing more than a pound or two each week, otherwise you're just losing water weight/muscle instead of just fat. Likewise, you don't want to be gaining too much weight too fast. Gaining muscle will inevitably lead to some fat gain, but you can cut it down to almost nil if you know what you're doing.

Eat lots of protein, a medium amount of complex carbs (brown bread, brown rice, pasta, fruit) and a medium amount of healthy fats from fish and stuff. Take a multivitamin. Stay away from sodas and whatnot.

Losing weight is not difficult, it's a simple formula: calories out > calories in. Of course, it's a bit harder than that in reality, because it takes a while, but stick with it. Eat a cheat meal once a week.

 

[Tarvis]

Thats good stuff, cardio might be hard to do, since most of the stuff you mentioned would be alot easier in a gym obviously. But it'd be better to find things to do at home, instead of the gym since I can't get there as much as I'd like too, and $30 a month kinda cuts into my paychecks pretty good.

Diet is always a hard thing to do, I've been used to eating Junk Food, and thats all mom ever gets at the store, save steak and shit like that. I can't even tell if milk is bad for me anymore, but I've been eating turkey more than anything else lately.

But anyways, thats alot to read and go over so should help alot. Thanks :3

 

[Joe]

Milk is good for you! Unless you're lactose intolerant. In which case it isn't!

You can do some good cardio exercises just at home without any equipment. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/rossboxing2.htm for example.

 

[Joe]

Oh and I also forgot to mention:

For cardio, it's actually better to do high intensity interval training (HIIT) for a shorter period of time rather than just 30-45 minutes of steady state cardio. That is, instead of jogging for 30 minutes, do a minute of jogging, a minute of faster running, a minute of jogging, etc, for 10-15 minutes. This raises your metabolism for longer, and burns more fat. And it doesn't take as long! Score.

 

[Bronson]

this vegan girl at work tried to tell me milk was all bad because there's blood and puss and shit from where the machines and shit cut the cows.

guess she forgot about all the processing that milk goes through to clean it and stuff, but whatever.

 

[Joe]

Vegans are dumb, we should eat them.

When you kill a pig, it gets to at least run for its life. When you kill a zucchini...not so much!

 

[Joe]

Also, eat a big breakfast. Make breakfast your biggest meal. Have some eggs, and some whole grain toast, and some fruit. If you're not hungry, force yourself to eat it anyway. I can't stress enough how important breakfast is.

 

[Natalie]

Or save up for Liposuction lmao

 

[Joe]

Or be a lazy bum and do nothin!

 

[Tarvis]

Working out has made different parts of me hurt every few days. Great!

 

[Joe]

great!

 

[Natalie]

haha just wait till you dont work out for a while then go back.. FEEELS GREAT!!! *not the sarcasum*

 

[Joe]

yeh i haven't worked out for 2 weeks and i'm doin it tomorrow

it'll be fun cuz i'm doing squats and deadlifts!

 

[Tarvis]

you behind me now biiiitch

 

[Joe]

not for long biiiiiiitch

 

[Natalie]

biiitch

 

[Joe]

YOU CAN'T BRING THAT WEAK ASS SHIT UP IN THIS HUMPY BUMPY!