So, are their any other "Meat-heads" here? LOL I posted this to attract anyone looking to get in shape, cut weight, or stack on lean muscle mass. Not only did I go from weighing 135 pounds soak & wet to 230 lbs of muscle, but I am also a certified ISSA Personal Trainer packed with knowledge on anything that has to due with physical health. I know everything about nutrition and every supplement or prohormone out there. I'm here to help you with your fitness goals! Here's some picks to show you I'm not bluffing.
I'm gunna get this out of my system now: Gamers? Exercise?! On topic: my max for bench press right now is 145 lbs :\
I'm ex-Infantry... way before I was on here. What's wrong with gamers exercising anyways, lol. What's your bodyweight?
I'm no body builder and never will be, but I did just join a gym for my first post-collegiate regular exercise. I was also a stringbean in high school and did my first weight training in college... got up to about 165 bench (can't do anywhere near that now though). Currently I'm doing half an hour of cardio and half an hour of weight training three times a week. Any suggestions for a guy looking to lose fat and get in good shape, but not necessarily huge? Any exercises that are better than others? I've been focusing so far on crunches, curls, shoulder presses, pulldowns, pushdowns, and bench press. Oh, and some thing where you pull weight toward you like a rower, I don't know the name of that; it's supposed to be good for back muscles, which I need to strengthen. I'm not really working on my legs, I've always been stronger there and I figure the regular cardio will help with that for now.
Well, it's hard to build muscle while losing fat, very hard and most people don't understand this. It seems like your main goal is to lose weight and what you're doing is fine. When it comes to cutting fat, over 75% of your results come from what you put in your body. Your body is constantly burning calories, working out causes you to burn energy @ a faster pace for a temporary amount of time. Say you spend 1 hour in the gym, 3 times a week. That's 3 hours a week @ an accelerated rate of burning calories leaving 165 hours left in the week. Your body does burn calories more than usual after working out to help it recover but you still have that solid 165 hours left. That's where nutrition comes into play. If you want any nutritional tips, just ask. As far as lifting goes, the exercises you're doing are called compound lifts (meaning you're moving more than one joint at a time). Compound lifts are great for fat burning because it causes your body to work even harder. What I would recommend is supersets though @ a 8-15 rep range. Supersets are two sets of exercises done back to back with no rest. You could do one set of rows and superset it with bench, then take 60 sec rest and repeat 3 more times. Doing things like this cause your body to work even harder, getting more bang for your buck out of that hour (fat burning wise). When it comes to building muscle though, it only requires one "all-out" set per exercise to stimulate maximum growth. *The exercise you're referring to is rows. Nothing wrong with that. I hate most gyms because people don't go there to lift, they go there to socialize and steer others down. I get a lot of attention at gyms and it pisses me off. It breaks my focus and gets me distracted. I go now to a 24 hour gym after hours, less crowds that way.
At the moment weight loss is foremost, but I don't have all that much to lose - maybe 15 lbs to get to what I think is optimal for me. After that I'll probably be looking to build a little muscle, and tone whatever I end up with. Based on previous experience (maybe 8 years ago I weighed roughly 40 lbs more than I do now) I figure I should be able to lose the excess fat in a few months. That's definitely been my experience. My average gym trip I figure is burning maybe 400 calories at most (the cardio stuff is coming in just under 300 and I figure the weightlifting is probably less). If I was going every day that would be substantial, but diet is where I've had the most success losing weight in the past, and I'm still focusing on that right now. Trying to keep my caloric intake to maybe 1600 a day until I get to where I want to be, weight-wise. And I'm focusing those remaining calories on mostly vegetables and lean meat, and rice (probably my main source of starch). Thanks, I'll give that a shot! Mostly I've been doing standard sets, e.g. 3 sets of 10 reps with short breaks between, then move on to the next exercise. I'll try the supersets out tomorrow night.
Google Convict Conditioning. Some of the best advice for calisthenics around. Also, buy the book, it's a good read.
Alright, here's a situation for you: I'm a 17 year-old white kid with a metabolism that could burn through rocks, which means I've never been motivated to work out in the past unless I've been doing sports, which I haven't been doing in 3 years. I want to start getting back in shape, though not the large-muscles type of fit, moreso the lean, endurance muscles type of fit, like what I had back when I did soccer. The only difference is, now I'm starting to get an interest in parkour, which requires a lot of upper body work that I've never had any experience with. I bought one of those doorway chin-up bars, but aside from that, I don't really have any equipment. What would be your recommendations when it came to starting out a workout routine, given the above? Feel free to ask any other questions if you need other information as well
Thanks for submitting to the conversation. Conditioning isn't necessary about cutting fat though, it's just about becoming conditioned to w/e physical sport, event, thing you want to do. Calisthenic conditioning does burn a lot of fuel but like I stated before, 75% of your results come from nutrition. Cutting fat does not require conditioning but conditioning can cause you to lose fat depending on the type, especially calisthenics. Also that is a lot to read for someone just looking to shred a few pounds and get in shape.
I loathe gyms. While I am home I use my parent's machines (eliptical and a multi purpose weight lifting one to be precise) and free weights while watching Scrubs. I clearly am a very casual man when it comes to lifting and cardio. While I am away I try to so some pushup and curls, though honestly it slips my mind far more often than not. I've lost about 25 pounds by simply eating better and less, and I feel rather fit (even though I know I could do better if I worked at it), so I'm comfortable with my exceedingly casual things. Still though, if anyone has any ideas on other casual excersoze aside from jogging, free weights, benching and the self working curls and what-not, mention them and I'll give it a shot. Ive never been trained on how to work out and High School PE never helped my knowledge of any workouts a bit. So really I'm just doing whatever I can think of that requires effort.
A few months is more than enough time. It all depends though on how much effort you put into it though. Cutting fat is sooo much easier than trying to gain muscle. The only thing that is hard is portion control and fighting hunger. Hungry people get angry and irritated easily and puts you in a bad mood. You must endure the cravings if you want the results. Depending on your BF%, you should be able to lose atleast one pound per week if you put in maximum effort. Losing weight to quickly puts your body into a catabolic state and it will feed on your muscle for fuel. That's a good caloric intake for a male trying to lose weight. However, I don't know your age, weight, BF%, etc to give you a meal plan. If you provide me some details I can actually give you a daily meal plan that will tell you how many grams of each nutrient to eat per day and what times of the day to eat them. When it comes to training, your heart needs to be at or above 135 BPM for a middle-aged male to have maximum fat burning potential. It doesn't matter how you get it there, as long as you get it there and maintain it there for your entire training session. Otherwise you're just wasting your time @ the gym. Most bodybuilders lift while cutting to maintain muscle mass while losing the fat. Lifting weights moderately will remind the body that the muscles are needed so it will go to a different source for fuel, and that source is either what you ate recently or fat. Your heart is what burns fuel, not your muscles or anything else. Your heart is the engine, you have to make the engine work hard to burn more fuel. Calories are transformed into fuel by the body.
160 pounds. 250 pound bench. 525 pound squat. I run three miles every other day. I can help in this thread, too
I'm curious what the ratio of steroid to testicle size is acceptable to make me have larger muscles yet still be fertile.
I'm about 5'10" or so, and fluctuate between 145-150lbs. I started lifting at my HS before class for an hour 3 times a week and doing some free weights on my own at home. Before the baseball season started, I think I got up to about 165 on 4x6 deadlift and 135 squat (he didn't let me go more, althought I could've) was what the trainer guy had us doing. I used to try to run 2.5-3.5 miles once a week. Now since the season started, the coach told us that he doesn't want us lifting anymore, so I'm not really going to, at least in the capacity that I was before. He also has the pitchers (which I am one of) doing core every day, a small amount of running, 2 50 100 50s, and some shoulder work, and Jbands. Any tips on gaining some strength (not bulk) in the arms and back?
145 max on your bench @ 195 lbs bodyweight. Society (especially in sports) considers being able to bench your bodyweight 10 times generally strong (not bodybuilding strong, just strong in general). It doesn't take huge muscles to do this. Sports like pro football measure upper body strength by having the player bench press 225 lbs for max reps. A quarterback can usually knock out 8-15 reps while the linemen can knock out 30-50 reps. I'm not picking on you here but you stated so I will comment. You are very weak, I believe any male should be able to bench press atleast their own bodyweight one time. You're very young but what many "gamers' will realize when age starts becoming a factor is that they will start to develop many health problems as early as their 30's. Not only will your bones be very frail, but your immune system and your heart will be very weak. The lack of physical activity will have it's way of reminding you of it later down the road. It is said every hour of physical activity is another hour added on to your life. Top 5 things that determine how long you live: 1.) Nutrition 2.) Physical Activity 3.) Sleep 4.) Stress 5.) Genetics Basically this activity requires a balance between strength, endurance, and speed. The muscles mostly worked are the Lats (Primary muscles for pulling anything towards your body), Shoulders (you're going to want conditioned shoulders to prevent injury, they are the center of your movement here), Traps (traps are the connection between your shoulders and lats and keeps everything stabilized, Triceps (used to push yourself up between two guard rails, and Grip (grip is everything from the elbow down and you're going to need some strong grip). If you like to do this kind of thing, you wouldn't be able to add on much muscle mass anyways because that would just make it harder on you. You need to focus on endurance and strength of the muscles, not muscle size. Strength takes a very long time to build up, many years but muscle endurance can come rather quickly. Here would be a recommended workout plan that I would do: Warm-Up & Pre-Exhaust Get under a pull up bar, drop to the push up position without putting your knees on the ground, then get back up, jump up to attach to the pull up bar and perform 1 pull up then drop back down and repeat. Perform atleast 20 reps or until you become pretty exhausted then take a 20-30 sec rest pause. Then repeat 2 more sets of these. Exercise 1: Bent Over Row 1 set @ 8-10 reps Exercise 2: Standing Overhead Press 1 set @ 8-10 reps Exercise 3: Cable Rope Face-Pull 1 set @ 8-10 reps Exercise 4: Dips 1 set @ 8-10 reps Exercise 4: Pull-Up 1 set @ max reps + max hold after failure Rest Times between sets: as long as it takes you to get to the next piece of equipment and get the weights right. I would suggest having everything prepped before hand to make your workout more challenging. Finish it off with the "Body 100" and perform 20 air squats, 20 push-ups, 20 lunges, 20 pull-ups, and 20 high-jumps in place. When you start becoming advanced at this routine, you can start adding more sets to each exercise and purchase either a dipping belt or weighted vest to add more bodyweight. This will especially help you on endurance. When you start adding more sets in, I would suggest adding 20-30 seconds of jump-rope in between sets to keep the body starved of oxygen, this will make you weaker, the heart work harder and get your body more conditioned into the constant flow and movement of this sport. That's incredible, obviously you have been resistance training for quite some time with those stats. I would love to see a video of that 525 squat with you being at 160 pounds, you could win a lot of lifting tournaments. 250 bench @ 160 pounds bodyweight is average for the gym buff though. Strength just comes with time and consistency. As long as your working at a low rep range, you will continue to develop strength. For overall strength, nothing beats the Squat, Deadlift, and Bench Press as your foundation. Barbell Rows and Standing Overhead Barbell Press are good alternatives as well. Here's some stats you should shoot for when aiming to be considered strong: Bench Press Body weight 10 times or your 1RM (one rep max) should be close to your bodyweight x2. Squat 1RM should be 2 - 2.5 times your bodyweight. Deadlift 1RM should be 2.5 - 3 times your bodyweight.
;A; better get on that then I used to be able to bench 275, but then AP happened. E: should I be worried that I am one of the heaviest lifters in my class?
They can do w/e the f*** they want to do (no pun intended), everyone is entitled to do w/e they want. I'm just making some points and handing out advice. If you actually approached them with what we're talking about they would probably just smirk or laugh inside. The general public nowadays is at it's absolute worst in history when it comes to health. The body was designed to hunt down and eat saber tooth tigers, not play video games and eat hot pockets, lol. Technology has been our worst enemy.
1.) College board doens't include weekends so I frequently eat a ton on friday and hibernate until monday 2.) The times I go to class I walk there. I also climb trees occasionally. 3.) Equally likely to be awake at any time of day ie. no sleep schedule 4.) More people drop out here from stress than anything else 5.) Maybe I'll get lucky? That just made my day.