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Argh, first day back at the gym, I'm destroyed. I haven't gone for the last month due to work and being sick for two weeks with swine flu.
I have lost a ton of strength and I've lost about 4lb in fluids and muscle. I'm not that strong, but my bench press has gone from 187 to about 154, not my one rep max, but being able to comfortably do 6-10 reps.
A lot of the definition in my chest and arms has gone, so I am going really strict on my diet for a couple of weeks, nothing but vegetables and protein shakes throughout the day, with some heavier carbs only during post workout.
To be honest I am actually a bit disillusioned, I hate that fact that you can lose gains you have worked so hard for, so rapidly.
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Hi everyone, first post!
i have been working hard on my health for a few months now. First I might give a little history. When I was young, I was a very chubby little boy - I couldnt get enough fast food and chocolate. By the time I was 12, I weighed about 155 pounds - not the WORST child out there, but certainly I was in a poor condition. Of course, the years of obligatory bullying resulted.
Years later I made my first attempt at losing weight, at around 16-17 years old. I did a lot of cardio, cleaned up my diet and did my best - long story short I got down to 170 pounds at about 5'10", which i was happy with.
Sadly, a few years later I got it into my head that even at that size I was very fat. I think it was a combination of the androgyny period that swept the media here about 2 years ago, coupled with the latent effects of the bullying from my child hood. I lost a lot of weight with excessive meal skipping and far too much cardio. At my lightest, I was down to 130 pounds at 5'11". Really skinny. One thing I did not expect was that I actually became chubby during this period - no real muscle work meant that i lost as much muscle as anything else due to the starvation I put my body through.
This phase continued until about 4 months ago, when my family and long time girl friend came to me shortly after my 21st birthday and sat me down, telling me I need to put on weight.
With that established, here are my starting stats, current state and goals:
START CURRENT GOAL
Weight 61kg 68kg 70kg
Chest 78cm 94cm 102cm
Waist 64cm 71cm 68cm (see below)
Bicep (unflexed) 24cm 28cm 35cm (aim for the sky!)
Thighs 44cm 50cm 55cm
BenchPress (flat) 40kg 60kg 70kg
Bicep Curl 10kg 17.6kg 25kg
ShoulderPress 30kg 40kg 50kg
This has been about 4 months work. Ive started cardio again to help tone up a little (gaining weight so quickly has been a little yucky - ive got a stomach and love handles now haha!) and ive really streamlined my diet under the guidance of some pro-athletes I know through school (as in, since school they have become athletes).
In case anyone is interested, my workout and diet plan is as follows:
-Eat about 2000 calories a day
-Should intake about 6 meals a day, consisting of one part protein, one part natural carbohydrate
-twice a day, include an extra portion of vegetables
Currently, for example, ive been having eggs and toast for breakfast (wholegrain bread, no butter or anything else), some brown rice sushi with tuna for morning tea, a tuna and vegetable panini for lunch (italian sandwich), a protein shake with banana + apple post workout, a meat and vegetable combination for dinner (I try for chicken or fish every evening, often with pasta, noodles or brown rice) and then either another shake or left overs from dinner as a final meal.
So basically, every meal is carb + protein in a fairly equal ratio. My protein mix is 33:6:1, which i find gives good results post workout.
I must mention that i drink 3+ litres of water a day, every day. it helps with putting on weight, improving metabolism to avoid fat gain and helps with muscle reecovery.
My workout regime is broken up as follows:
-monday; chest and back (brench press; flat, incline, decline then bent over rows
-tuesday; 20 minute intense cardio, then a combination of crunches for abs and obliques
-wednesday; biceps and triceps (curls, skull crushers, preacher curls, tricep pushups, tricep pull downs, 21s)
-thursday; 20 min cardio, crunches
-friday; shoulders and legs (bent over raises, lateral raises, frontal raises, shoulder barbel raise, calve raises, lunges)
-saturday; 20 min cardio, crunches
sunday is a rest day.
i find this to be a realtively regime to stick to, and its very rewarding every time I put on some weight (either in the gym or on the scales!).
Good luck everyone!
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1 MORE TIME:
Sixsongs
Age:25
Height:6'1"
Current weight:195lbs
Goal weight 180lbs.
I would like to reach two goals:
1) Loose about 10-15, especially in my belly area and get a "six-pack".
2) Gain more strength. Especially with my Bench, Squad and Dead lift.
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hey guys just one question
i dont have access to a gym due to my lack of income and thus i cannot do bench press or any exercise that uses a barbell. so my question is, would doing dips, dumbbell shoulder press and pullups be a decent enough replacement for upper body workout??
thanks!
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wow... lots of tall people, over 5'10"
go to hell
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Even at 5'11", i still want to be 6'+...its all relative...im the shortest out of my friends!
hi unknown sam!
for your chest, you could do dumbell (flat or incline) bench presses, or dumbell flyers if you have an appropriately shaped chair.
for shoulders a steated dumbell press will work, as will side raises or brent over raises.
one arm dumbell rows can help with your back, as will dumbell pullovers.
the pullups you mentioned are especially good!
ps. I had some cookies today...oh the shame of it all...off to the gym this evening!
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United States44190 Posts
Just wanted to update and say I'm under 200 lb. I was 210ish and I'm aiming to get about 190. Not going to the gym as much as I was  but I'm still making progress. Will be going back to uni soon so will most likely start drinking heavily but with that comes vomiting which should even it out. Good times.
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(6' 5")193 centimeters, (198lbs) ~90kg. Between my friends and I, theres a bit of competition that's been going on lately, so i'm hitting the gym more frequently. Right now i'm mostly focusing on the bench press - i've hit a wall at 295lbs, and i can't seem to get any higher. Currently i do assorted lifts for about an hour and a half to two hours a day. Any tips?
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On September 16 2009 16:18 jfazz wrote:
ps. I had some cookies today...oh the shame of it all...off to the gym this evening!
Love it <3
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Hey ghermination.
The length of your session coul be overly fatiguing your muscles - if all you want is to increase your strength, you should be doing shorter sets, say in the range of 4 sets of 6 reps only. With sessions as long as yours, you may very well be doing much longer sets - this will help create definition, size and endurance, but not raw strength (muscles are funny, size =/= strength).
So shorter sets heavier weight would be my first reccomendation.
Secondly, you need to look at nutrition - are you getting enough protein? its very important that you really get a LOT (there isnt really such thing as too much...excess gets pooped out anyway), and you need some quick protein after your gym session - I myself use a 33:6:1 ratio mix of protein/carb/fat in shake form. Thats pretty concentrated, so it works well.
Then. you need LOTS of water - to shift big weights often you need to be concerned with muscle recovery - water helps a lot by clearing away the lactic acid build up in your muscles post work out that slows recovery. Additionally, water weight does to some extent help you lift more anyway - thats the basis of the creatine supplement. The additional water weight turns to muscle and thus bulk is lost while retaining strength. You need about 10 large cups of water a day.
One thing my brother does when he plateaus (I havent tried this, but then again, I cannot bench big figures yet!) is to stagger the weights at intervals, so say:
-1 set of 8 reps, at X weight
-1 set of 6 reps at X+Y weight
-set of 4 reps at X+Y+Z weight
this helps increase your maximum slowly.
finally, if you are working yourself to exhaustion and muscle failure, make sure you arent working out key areas of muscle more than twice a week - any more and the sessions are often wasted, because the muscles have not had a chance to fully recovery after the previous session!
ps. I did make it to the gym, I think im almost ready to go up on the bicep curls, from 17.5kg to 20kg...im very excited!
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lol, I was just going to say add another 10lb and lift it.  .
When I plateau on anything I increase the weight by 1-2 of the smallest increments, I ask one of my friends to spot me and I try for 2 reps trying to get at least 1 rep all by myself. The next week I try the same weight and I can go for 3-4 reps. I just do that until I can comfortably do around 6-8 reps without a spotter at that point I go up by a very small increment again and try for 2 reps once again with a spot.
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That could very well be highly effective when we are talking about big weights Energies! Sadly, I can only speak with any knowledge in the small weight range (having gone from 45kg/100pound to 60kg/130pound); so all my increases are relatively very large - at the heavier weights where each increase is relatively smaller, your method sounds very good!
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
I know I should do this research on my own but I'm really pressed for even 30 minutes of free time these days so I'm goign to cop out and ask here, hopefully you dont mind.
My question is with regards to doing "training", be it lifting or HIIT relatively close to going to sleep, say 60-90 minutes before hitting the sack. (ie HIIT for 30 minutes, shower, do some chores, sleep). I imagine this isn't even close to ideal, but oftentimes it's this or nothing .
Also, b/c my cardio and sleep times are so crammed, I'm forced to intake a meal really close to sleep time, which I know is 'bad'. But I imagine this is at least better than NOT taking in protein after a workout.
(fwiw my workouts currently consist of 30 minutes of HIIT for two days, then 8-10 sets of bodyweight upperbody/core work the 3rd day, then repeat - shifting focus towards cardio with the limited time I have atm)
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8751 Posts
On September 17 2009 23:45 thedeadhaji wrote:I know I should do this research on my own but I'm really pressed for even 30 minutes of free time these days so I'm goign to cop out and ask here, hopefully you dont mind. My question is with regards to doing "training", be it lifting or HIIT relatively close to going to sleep, say 60-90 minutes before hitting the sack. (ie HIIT for 30 minutes, shower, do some chores, sleep). I imagine this isn't even close to ideal, but oftentimes it's this or nothing . Also, b/c my cardio and sleep times are so crammed, I'm forced to intake a meal really close to sleep time, which I know is 'bad'. But I imagine this is at least better than NOT taking in protein after a workout. (fwiw my workouts currently consist of 30 minutes of HIIT for two days, then 8-10 sets of bodyweight upperbody/core work the 3rd day, then repeat - shifting focus towards cardio with the limited time I have atm)
In my personal experience, exercising at night and not eating before sleep results in fatigue the next day. I would eat at least 300 calories.
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You already answered your own question! It is not ideal and your improvement will be slower than it would be under ideal conditions, but you will still have improvement.
A meal close to sleep is not that bad, so long as it is not a terribly unhealthy, heavy meal. The earlier it is the better if it is a proper meal (before 10pm basically is fine), but if it is a meal supplement like a protein shake, having it really late is not a problem at all - you just want to avoid as much as possible your body having to break down complex foods - if you want a real meal late, concentrate on fruit/veg/natural carbs and you will be fine. I want to second Nony and say yeah, at least 300 calories is ideal.
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working out is so addicting ^_^
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lol i completely failed at my goals
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I get home from the gym at around 8:30-9:00pm by the time I shower and settle in, it is usually 9:30 by the time I have dinner.
I slam down a protein shake on the way home from the gym, that helps tremendously in giving me the feeling of fullness, as well as providing much needed energy. When I get home, I typically mix either chicken or fish with some rice or vegetables, but it is a fairly small portion as I feel full from the protein shake, I have noticed if I skip the protein shake I'll eat like a pig, and go to sleep an hour later.
I haven't had any issues with this routine, although I have been doing it for a very long time, I'd say my body had adjusted to it.
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i like to run at 7~8 in the morning (aprox. 40min running) and not eating carbs at night
im eating 5~6 portions of food at day ..
im losing 2 pounds per week
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EPT
