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ok i need lotsa help...

mike507

New member
Ok i was in a...well decent shape...best i have ever been in though haha.. but i recently gave in to :pizza: : / and all that crap so now this is where i am at Invalid Link Removed /

im 5'6
145 lbs.

I can not seem to lose the man boobs tho hahah : //

even when i got down to 125 lbs. they are still there!! ahh
im not sure if its gyno or wat but whatever it is it wont go away!

so any help on what i could do to lose the fat i have and get down to about...6-8 bf% would be much appreciated

thanks in advance

mike.
 
First, learn to love the bench press and free weight chest press.

Second, learn to love free weight fly's. (Your chest will learn to love you back)

Thirdly, your biggest problem is not 'weight' as much as BMI. Your proportion of muscle to fat. You cannot keep off weight without raising your baseline metabolism through gaining muscle.

Thus, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to learn the finer points of pushing yourself beneath heaping piles of iron, and learning to become one with the pump.

No, seriously, those aren't man boobs :) You don't 'appear' to be in bad shape, just need to get some muscle built to eat away at the fat. Otherwise, the next time you fall off the nutrition truck, you'll be in the same boat.

I would recommend getting yourself caliper or otherwise dunk tested (underwater fat test) to see where you stand in a muscle to fat ratio. Then go from there.

But seriously, you're not in bad shape man, at least not from where I'm standing.
 
Thanks...how about a weight gainer or creatine? would either of those help me out?

and i think of it as bad shape cuz this is where i use to be... Invalid Link Removed
 
Creatine helps the ATP cycle when you're lifting. Conventional wisdom says that when you 'load' creatine, IE take it for a week in moderate doses, with servings immediately preceding work outs, it allows you to push harder, and longer due to more efficient energy conversion and stores in your muscles.

This has been my experience as the conventional wisdom suggests. As for weight gainer, you really need to be burning 1k of calories in your work outs for it to be really effective in my opinion. Otherwise you just get 'fat'. Some people say that dextrose (sugar) helps protein absorption, which I believe to be true. However most weight gainers have a disproportionately high amount of dextrose in them. The GNC generic stuff is exceedingly bad in this regards. If you're concerned with your body composition you would probably be better of going with a low sugar whey protein, with a good amount of Casein protein and other slow burning long chain proteins. I swear by Isopure, but others are good as well (it mixes clear in water). You can also just get pure whey, which I believe something like On Whey is good for.

Mixing creatine in with your protein shakes also helps. For the 'sugar' you're best off using fruits as they don't instantly metabolize and get burned up immediately. You DO need some sugar to most efficiently absorb protein in my opinion.

Also, don't overdo the protein especially if you haven't ever taken tons of it. You'll give yourself the 'protein farts' and your bowls won't be happy with you. I find anything more than 50-60g or so of protein after a work out to be largely wasted.

Some people 'think' that more than 35g of protein at a time is just wasted, but different people's physiology can process different amounts of protein. My own experience seems to suggest that more than 50-60g for myself ends up coming out in the stool straight through. Anything below that is fine for me. But your mileage may vary. Also, after a workout you can process/absorb significantly more protein within the first hour after a work out. Something to keep in mind.

Things to keep in mind:

Creatine creates water bloat. You will retain more water, but this is good for bulking, and building muscle. You NEED TO DRINK LOTS OF WATER. I tend to drink a gallon + a day on Creatine to make sure my liver doesn't hate me when I'm 40. Creatine Mono-hydrate can end up being bad for your liver in high concentrations, so moderation, lots of water, and not doing it for longer than say 6 weeks at a time is recommended.

Pre-Workout nutrition is just as important as Post-Workout nutrition if you're trying to gain muscle. You don't want to cannibalize muscle trying to get energy to work out. So feed your muscles before and after the work out with adequate protein and complex sugars from fruits preferably.

Banana's are my favorite because the potassium keeps me from cramping up post workout, but that's just me. Berries, and other fruits like pineapple are good too.

At night, most people swear by cottage cheese as it keeps you full and you don't wake up hungry. Also consuming a bit of protein before you hit the sack gives your body building blocks to build muscle while you sleep, and keeps you from cannibalizing muscle overnight.

For ultimate muscle build out, make sure every meal has a good portion of protein, and eat 2-3 snacks in between, with protein. Food bar's high in protein, and other things are good to have handy in between meals.

All that said, you need 1.5-2g of protein per pound of muscle mass, to adequately feed your muscle gains.

Last but not least, don't over train. If you are still sore from your last work out, don't work out that muscle group again until it is mostly not sore. You don't have to wait until it's completely NOT SORE, but your muscles are telling you they need time to rebuild, and recoup. Otherwise you are just destroying muscle as opposed to building it. High repetition weight lifting is also bad in this regards. If you can do more than ~15 reps, you have too little weight, and it's an aerobic exercise, not anaerobic, which encourages atrophy (muscle's getting bigger).

Ok, these are some of the basic building blocks you can start with. I'm not a personal trainer, nor am I a professional body builder. This is just what I've learned from my foray into building a better body.

There are many other things you can do to step it up another level, but you have to get the basics right first. Things like BCAA's (branch chain amino acids) help increase recovery speed, and muscle mass quicker, but cost more than just plain ole' creatine and whey protein. For your money, working hard, eating properly, and feeding your muscles gets your furthest from the get go.

Others may tell you differently, but learn what's working for you first, then add on to it later.

p.s. one thing to note: don't take creatine with coke or anything acidic as it neutralizes the creatine. It works most effectively with just water. Some people supplement dextrose with it to help increase the absorption.
 
awesome thank you so much for all of that...but my main question is for the chest workouts...would it make more sense to lift really heavy with little reps...or low weights with high reps?
 
You'll gain endurance with high rep workouts, but that won't help you 'build' muscle as that requires an anaerobic workout. Basically, if the exercise causes you to become winded and out of breath pretty quickly, you can bet it's most likely an anaerobic exercise. This 'builds' muscle. If you can do 100 reps with it, it's mostly aerobic, good for the heart but not much else besides calorie burn.

So yes, low rep, high weight. Between 5-15 reps typical.

Some people like to do a pyramid when they're just starting out. Find out what your max 1 rep is, then build off that.

15 reps 50-60 percent weight.

7 reps 70-80 percent weight.

3-5 reps 90 percent weight (or however many you can get up).

This is a pretty typical starting regime for building strength and muscle in a given exercise. You can modify it to fit, this is just 'rough'. Like I've said previously, you have to find what works for you, but you can do some of the fancier low rest, high workload craziness later if you find that it works. The basics of good form, and focus are key though. Make every rep count! Don't just throw the weight around to try and impress the guy on the next bench, it does you no good whatsoever.

If you don't feel comfortable stacking a bunch of weight up, make sure you have a spotter, and always use the clips. The big gorilla's in the gym won't use clips because they're 'real men' and honestly if they lose it, the weights coming off anyways. But anything under 2 wheels per side will benefit from clips on the bench.

If you need help with form, find a partner who's experienced in lifting or take a few lessons from a certified trainer (and yes I despise trainers), but find someone who can teach you proper technique so you get maximum yield, and don't hurt yourself in the process.

Last but not least, always be careful when you're lifting lots of weight. If you don't have a spotter, put it back on the rack before you get the weight stuck on your kneck or your chest.

Respect the weight.

Anyways, I hope this helps. And yes for chest, or anything else you want to 'grow', low reps, high weight. But not so high weight that your form suffers. Your form will give you more strength and mass than sloppiness and throwing things around. Besides, throwing weight up is how you get hurt.
 
ah you're still a young guy, you have tons of room for growth, just keep lifting and eating smart and you will be on your way.
 
SteelEntity said:
ah you're still a young guy, you have tons of room for growth, just keep lifting and eating smart and you will be on your way.
Click to expand...

ditto to what he said.

And I'd recommend staying away from the pro-hormones since you're young and still growing. You'll get more traction out of just eating right and working hard.
 
yeah that is what I have figured out :) quick question....is it ok to do push ups every day? or should I rest just like every other time I lift? I know its the same as sit ups but I have looked and looked and looked and half say yes and half say no so i was wondering what your opinions would be?
 
Mike,

If your pectoral muscles aren't too sore to do to pushups then next day, you probably aren't pushing yourself hard enough on the bench :)

The idea of rest is that when you push yourself hard, you tear down muscle fiber, which requires your body to repair it, and hopefully grow larger, fatter muscle fibers. By fat I mean, larger, not really fat. If you are able to do pushups every day, you're probably not training hard enough to get the benefit of rest.

If what you are going for is just extreme lean muscle, you can train every day as that will keep you from puting on mass. But if you want to 'grow' your muscles, they do need to rest for a day or two at least before you work that specific group of muscles again. Most people rotate through muscle groups, legs one day, chest another, back and shoulders another, and perhaps arms on a separate day. Your arms though get cross-trained on a lot of excercises so you have to be careful not to over-train (ie keep destroying muscle fiber without giving it time to recover and repair) otherwise you won't build any real mass in your arms.

I tend to leave off arms until I'm in a somewhat 'rest' period every 8-10 weeks for a few weeks, then I just do arms very heavily twice a week for 2-3 weeks before I go back to training other things.

But that's what works for me. What you have to remember though, is you need to give each muscle group time to rest and recover (rebuild muscle fiber) for you to get the benefits of anaerobic exercise and allow your muscles to grow.

It's always a balance between working too hard, over-training, and not working enough.
 
yeah...well i just switched to a four day split and yesterday was chest and tri's and im too soar to really do anything like that ha so I understand what you are saying about if i'm not soar then i didnt push hard enough.. so my new schedule is

mon- back & bi's (morning cardio)

tues- off (morning cardio)

wed- chest and tri's (morning cardio)

thurs- off (morning cardio)

fri- legs (morning cardio)

sat- off (morning cardio)

sun- off

I am currently on an ec stack which i will be done with in 3 more weeks. I am taking creatine and amino acids also as far as supplements thats all I am taking.

but I also race motocross so i am training hard with that right now also.... but does that look like a good schedule? And also wouldn't it be considered a 3 day split since im only working out 3 days out of the week?

Satire! Thanks for all the help You told me you didnt really know that much but every time you reply its a loong ass reply and it seems like you know what you are talkin about :) but all in all thanks for the help.

If there is anything you think I should add//subtract or do or not do lemme know im open for any suggestions because i'm still learning :)
 
mike507 said:
yeah...well i just switched to a four day split and yesterday was chest and tri's and im too soar to really do anything like that ha so I understand what you are saying about if i'm not soar then i didnt push hard enough.. so my new schedule is

mon- back & bi's (morning cardio)

tues- off (morning cardio)

wed- chest and tri's (morning cardio)

thurs- off (morning cardio)

fri- legs (morning cardio)

sat- off (morning cardio)

sun- off

I am currently on an ec stack which i will be done with in 3 more weeks. I am taking creatine and amino acids also as far as supplements thats all I am taking.

but I also race motocross so i am training hard with that right now also.... but does that look like a good schedule? And also wouldn't it be considered a 3 day split since im only working out 3 days out of the week?

Satire! Thanks for all the help You told me you didnt really know that much but every time you reply its a loong ass reply and it seems like you know what you are talkin about :) but all in all thanks for the help.

If there is anything you think I should add//subtract or do or not do lemme know im open for any suggestions because i'm still learning :)
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell, you're doing a great job. Just keep it up and you'll gradually see results over the next 3-4 weeks.

Good job!
 
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