I occasionally do weight work with my dad and bike a lot when it's not winter...and that's really hit for physical fitness stuff, haha

Its really lame the sheer lack of exercise I do. I have a gym membership and I only go once or twice a week. I have to go at least once a week because I would feel completely terrible about myself if I didn't at least have muscles in my arms. Started snowboarding this week, hope to get a lot more of that in. If anyone is knowledgeable in this type of thing I was wondering how important diet is in getting decent muscles.

VERY important! The number-one-diet-atributed ingredient is PROTEIN! the body uses protein and other nutrients from foods to rebuild muscles after a workout. When you lift, you are actually tearing muscle fibers; your body repairs them with nutrients, and makes them bigger and stronger. Protein is most available in meant (DUR), eggs, beans, tuna, peanut butter, and some other obscure shit. Of course you can also get it from protein suoppliments, but it;s better to get reall non synthasized shiet. i'd provide links but work acess blows.

You really can't have fitness without diet. What you consume directly fuels your body and different kinds of food, and quality of, have different effects on the body, as the guy above said, protein is probably the most important for muscle building. Eating shitty food will only hurt you and any gains made in the gym or exercising wont be nearly as efficient (if at all) as compared to eating good foods. Once you get balls deep into a routine though, you start to learn what exactly your body is craving so you can sort of maximize your nutrient intake instead of stuffing your face full of bad carbs, fat and empty calories like the rest of the world does.

my suggestion: eat what you want, and just snowboard your ass off. Hit the mountain every day and you'll shape up pretty quick and have a far better time then constantly watching what you eat.

Wow. Now, is this at a time or per day? Is it a bad thing if I do say, three minutes but over a course of half an hour or an hour? Or should I just lift some decent sized weights that I can do a dozen reps of and then retire for the day (at least as long as that activity is concerned)???

Can't believe the shape I was in in the military compared to my self now. Unemployment and depression can be a real bitch. Change will come with 2011 though.

Atm I've been learning how my body works... it seems like as a general rule I have to give my muscles 2 days of recovery/3 nights @ 10 hours of sleep per night to be able to come back and put on more weight next workout. So to make sure I get max workage I'm doing an upper/lower split 2x week, going U/L/off/U/L/cardio/off. Pretty much base each workout on 5x6 compounds and 3x8 isolations.

A couple years ago I had been working out for about 9 months and I was really starting to get somewhere and I was just so pumped about it that I overdid it to the extreme and got into a cycle of overtraining and pretty much lost everything that I had gained.

Wish I gave myself that much rest.

Sounds like a plan.

I'm pretty good about keeping to my workout routine. day 1, i do bench press, military press, curls, triceps extensions with a lat pull machine, and upright row. day 2 i do box squats, dead lifts, and leg curls. and day 3 i do lat pull and some other rowing exercises. i usually take a day off before repeating the process unless i feel rejuvenated enough to start my upper body work again. My only problem is how injury-prone i am. i've had about 5 separate chest injuries, a torn hamstring, and lots of shoulder injuries in my time. I was at my strongest as a senior in high school during football; I was benching 365x1 and had a squat of 495x2. i'm not too far off but i'd like to at least get as strong as i was then.

As for diet, i don't really watch what i eat at all. i eat what i want, when i want. i'm not too fat but i have to lose 15-17 lbs at least.

How tall are you/ how big is your frame?

right now, i'm 5'9 and 219lbs

That's a LOT of weight for someone 5'9" and 219 lbs! Are you like completely jacked? I'm 6'5" and in my 330's. Some of it is fat, but a lot more of it is muscle. I'm not super defined (not yet) but I have a fair bit of muscle mass. My frame is also wide as hell. even if i was at a low weight, There's no way you'd ever call me "skinny". even before i worked out, my chest was stil 46". My max bench so far has been 315, but i'm working my way up. Max used to be around 215, and i got it up over 100 lbs in about 2 months, so at least i'm lifting (more or less) correctly.

no not really. i mean i guess my upper body's pretty solid but i've always had really big strong legs, if i do say so myself.

But that's awesome man, keep working out. bench press has always been tricky for me but i can't complain about where i'm at considering all the injuries i've had. What kind of routine do you do for upper body work?

Well when i'm doing endureance, I go for sets of 25(or 30 towards the end) I do all types of shest workouts,: Inclined, declind, and flat bench, incline, declined, and flatbench chest flies. when I'm doing strenght it's a target 6 reps, while doing a type of ladder. I'll worm up with something super light like 135 of 10 reps, then jump to 185 and do between 8-15, whateer i feel like, then keep going to but intervals of 10-25 lbs, aiming for 6 reps. i just go until I can no longer hit 6 reps, unless i feel like maxing out. I might do the last set a couple times just til i'm satisfied. Also with strenght I still do all the flies, just trying for 6.

ya that's what i did for about 1 1/2 years, but then i guess my body got stale doing it and i couldn't go up. Now, i just do a good weight i can do 7-8 reps with and go up once i can do 3 sets of 10. sometimes simplicity is a good thing

True that. I'll probably end up going for hypertrophy after i've lost enough wehgt and gotten big/toned enough

I go to the gym 3 times a week. I used to go 6, but decided that was too much.I'm 5'3 and weigh 215 currently. I lift pretty fucking heavy. I work out with another metal head I met at the gym that listens to black metal and shit, and he's fucking huge. He's 6' and weighs 250, but is at like 10% bodyfat.

knocked out 300 reps this evening in 24:42 using the following method:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggiYjRelWgc

this was after a 6.5 mi. run early this morning. already feeling the effects of both training sessions. likely overdid it a bit, but no matter.

going to try the '300' again next week, but not on a cardio day. hope to improve on prior time.

6'1", 185. ive got some holiday fat to lose. shooting for a bulky 178 lbs before my first formal mma training class on 1/31/11.

im out to down some whey.

I I tried to do the 300 workout once...didn't work. And just to straighten things out, the "300" workout is NOT what they used to beef up for the moive, "300." I've seen snipest of gerard butler's routine for that movie and it makes the 300 workout look like stretches

did a 3.9 mile run with a 500' elevation change through the beautiful torrey pines in 20 minutes and change.

Man, reminds me...I have to start doing more LSD-type workouts. I've been trying to cut weight for various grappling tournaments this year...been doing a lot of strength training and then anaerobic type workouts; started doing kettlebell conditioning circuits, barbell circuits and burpees etc.

I've never been particularly fit, and aside from the necessary PE classes in high school, have been virtually inactive until I got my gym membership. I've been on and off with it. I'm on again.

Anyway, I'm fairly chubby (6'-6'1" and 270lbs), looking to lose a lot of weight and gain strength/definition. What's a good way to do this? A year ago, I was doing mostly free weights with some pushups, and some machines, and I was down to 250 (from 290!) in about 3-4 months; then I stopped going.

Anyway again, is it better to try to lose weight before building muscle/definition, or the other way around? Will lifting for strength/definition do a decent job of taking the weight off?

Thanks in advance.

You know it's funny, after not working out for a long time it's extremely hard to get back into the swing of it. I never bought into all the shams out there like stay slim pills or whatever the things are that make you brown your pants, and all the stupid gimmicks like shake weights and the wave.

I just always was into hitting the gym and doing running or jogging, some stair climbing, free weights, push ups and cardio stuff like jumping jacks. Played lots of basketball and racquet ball as well. If anyone plays drums as well like me, that also burns massive energy and calories, especially with death/thrash metal

But it's been like 5 or 6 months since I've even gone and I can kinda feel myself slowly getting weaker or something haha, it's odd. And the even worse thing is, the gym is literally right next door to the apartment were staying at! Man, now I feel totally lame. Hmm, where's my half a burrito from yesterday afternoon to dry my tears?.....

Wow, well it sounded like you lost quite a bit of weight doing your own thing the first time! it's always good to mix up non-weighted excersizes like pushups or pullups. I can't really do pullups (not at 330 anyway) but you get my drift.

Anyway, i've always found that for me I loose more weight durring my 6 week endureance training than strength. You burn a lot more claories making tons of smaller reps then a few reps with big weights. Like say yesterday, i must have doen over 220 different reps for my chest. that def burned more calories than doing, say 50 reps. Also, try losing weight while gaining muscle/definition. before your workouts, go for a jog for half an hour on the treadmil. if you can't make it for half an hour, walk for 3 mintues, runs for 1-2 minutes. Do this for about half an hour, and you'll find fairly soo than youc an run longer each time.

You live NEXT TO A GYM?

I used to work out regularly. 4 times a week, every week. I went to school at the time, and I usually just went to work out straight after school. This kept me motivated, but then the summer came, and I finished school. I'm the sort of person that really needs a reason to get up in the morning, otherwise I'll just sleep till I wake up. And I can sleep forever, like 10-15 hours easily. I know, it's stupid as hell, and honestly it's annoying as fuck. I didn't really pack on any weight or a lot of muscle when I worked out either, which was also pretty demotivating. I did increase my strength a lot though, but it didn't show as much.

However, lately I've been considering getting back into working out. I need more income though, working out is expensive as hell if you wanna do it properly. Shakes, proper diet, gym membership are extremely expensive, at least where I live. I also want to start biking, so I need to buy a bicycle aswell.

I'm around 1.85m and weigh about 80kg atm. Not a bad weight for my heigth, but that doesn't necessarily equal a good body. Not working out at all, and generally having a shitty life style has cost me my flat stomach.

My goals would be getting rid of my stomach fat, not necessarily getting a six-pack, because god knows how hard that is, especially if you're not skinny. I'll probably focus on my arms a lot, training my biceps and triceps. I'm not a big fan of bicep workouts, but I love working on the triceps, and the pec workout you get in the process is a huge bonus.

Has anyone got some good tips regarding a good, but fairly cheap diet? I'm gonna focus a lot on getting enough protein, and a healthy dose of carbs. I'm definetly going to get a protein shake, and maybe a weight gain shake aswell, for the healthy carbs. I'm considering creatine aswell, it's not expensive at all in powder form, and apparently very effective. I'd also welcome a good excercise plan. If, or when I start working out again, the muscles below the waist isn't a huge concern. If I start riding a bicycle a lot, that's enough practice anyway combined with a good amount of protein.

If you have a lot of extra fat, and are fairly weak to begin with, then a decent strength program will do a good job of helping you lose fat as well as gain muscle.

Well, what exactly are you looking to do for your rms, strenght, tone or both? And as far as protein goes, besides meat (which may or may not be expensive in your area:

Tuna: Cheapt, tatses good with mustard, maybe some mayo, cooked pees and some kind of noodle (usually elbow maccaroni (there're your carbs))
Canned chicken, same as tuna as far as preperation
Beans! protein and carbs, all in one can
Peatun butter! Tons of protein, tons of crabs, callories and fat content.
Hummus

Foods high in protien are usually high in calores too, even though protein itself is extremely caloric.

FUCK Creatine, UNLESS you're naturally skinny, or people don't throw up if they see you shirtless, its not all that beneficial. Creatine will sap all your water from your body and store in muscles and fat. It will make your muscles "look" bigger. It does give some benefeit to lifting, but it also cause fat cells to retain more water than they would, giving you a constant "bloated" apperance. It can also be straight up dangerous if you take it without drinking water, and cause some of the most painful cramps/charlie horses of your life! durring the summer, i drank on average two gallons of water a day, and my urine was always nasty yellow, then at that point, it should have either been almost clear, or i would have dry drowned. In a lot of cases, the benefits are several over-shadowed by the negatives.

I'm about to start a "sprint interval" training routine. You basically run as fast as you possibly can for 30 seconds, rest for a minute, and repeat (usually you aim for around 6 cycles). I tried it before but ended up feeling horribly sick to where I honestly wondered if I was dying. The thing is, though, that I get bored with most other exercises and give up way too quickly. I need a punch-in-the-face level of intensity to wake up and enjoy myself.


Back when I was weight training in high school (I never played any sports, I just kinda set up my own half-assed routine), I would bench three sets of eight reps every other day. I would aim to be totally fatigued just in time for a ninth rep on the third set. So I'd start off benching 80 pounds for the first set, then 90, and finish with 100. I'd eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after my workout sessions in the basement and I swear I made quick progress that way. I was never too picky about my diet, I just made sure I was getting a decent amount of protein from meat every day. About five months of benching in my basement and I went from being a scrawny fuck to at least having the confidence to work out in front of the guys at the public gym.

Oh, and those elliptical machines are brutal but they got me into shape pretty quick.

only 10% of my cardio is lsd. my body responds better to short and quick runs/sprints.

both have their place, and since every body is different, you have to listen to what your body tells you.

my opinion: creatine is a fantastic sup, regardless of if you are into bulking or being cut. it works wonders for both body types assuming two things; you DO the work (it is not magic or a hormone and will not work if you dont push yourself) and you stay well hydrated. creatine will not work if you are not properly hydrated. it relies heavily on this, so you must drink tons of water, if you want optimal results from it.

hundreds of studies have been done on creatine and all show it is a safe sup. here is a link to understand it more: http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/creatine ... _facts.htm

did some grappling this morning for the first time in 8 months or so. mounts, escaping the mount, takedowns, stopping the takedown, etc. all while trying to put on various submissions.

3x 3 min rounds, 3 min break, than 3x 3 min rounds (had a group of 6 of us with 3 mats today) before a final 3x 3 min round. it reminded me that no matter how good you think your cardio is, grappling will test you to the utmost.

glad i have tomorrow off to rest as every body part from my ankles up to my chin is extremely sore - i expect tomorrow to be much worse.

I'm wondering what you guys have to say about alcohol and working out. How bad is alcohol for your body/muscles and how detrimental is it to an exercise routine? Is it especially harmful to any specific part of your body (other than the liver)?

I would never trust a body building website for information on creatine. Why would they ever want to make something they sell (http://abcbodybuilding.com/nutritionstore.html) look bad to potential customers? It's the same for many such sites and even gyms who work with certain manufacturers of creatine supplements.

Creatine can be quite damaging to your kidneys. Granted, the same is true for many supplements, it should not be ignored or overlooked. Renal damage is nothing to shrug off if the potential for it is increased by taking supplements. Renal failure and renal disease are not easy fixes:
http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/creatine.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11136170

it's pretty bad, yeah I'd say try not boozing it up 24 hours before/after gyming it up.

And Musick, I wasn't just spouting off bs/misinformation. for some people it does work wonders, but those people are, in most cases already skinny. It's not a good idea for people with a lot of excess body fat to take it because of the water storage. I'm saying it from research/ personal expirience

Yeah, my MMA gym has been closed for the past 2 weeks more or less because of the holiday period; besides attending a couple of student-organised open mat sessions I haven't done much in the way of grappling/striking. Today is the first day the gym fully re-opens...hope I'm not too sore after tonight's session tomomorrow morning.

Do you do many grappling specific conditioning sessions?



I wouldn't generalise about who it works for...sure it may work wonders for "skinny" people but it seems to enhance the performance of many higher level lifters/athletes as well.

Secondly none of the research I have read really conclusively show that creatine, used properly, is linked to organ damage (renal or otherwise) even when subjects used had pre-existing kidney damage (check links below).

Also water retention due to use of creatine really is not that big a deal. In fact it seems to have some beneficial effects besides making your muscles look larger (http://www.1fast400.com/?ingredients_id=1). Apparent "bloating" also seems to be a myth or at the very least occurs extremely rarely. As long as you drink plenty of water and cycle the creatine on and off none of this should be a problem.

There isn't any data to support the idea that creatine in and of itself inhibits weight loss either and I'm not sure what your point is linking being fat and water retention. Having said that, a fat/overweight person has better things to spend his/her money on and better things to do than creatine ie. fixing their diet.

I personally think creatine is usually wasted by the people that use it either because they use it for shallow reasons (I want big gunz bro!!!!1!1!1!) or they use it for a quick fix when proper nutrition and good training routines will do the job better for them in the long term.

Other good sources on creatine are:
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_art ... ontroversy

http://www.absolute-creatine.com/

Either way, I'm on the fence about creatine, I've tried it before and it didn't do anything for me.

To CFMono: That's per set, not per workout or per day or whatever.

On weight loss: You want to lose weight, number 1: Eat healthy. No two ways about it. Number 2: Train to put on muscle mass. That would be your typical 3 sets of 8-12 reps. The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is, and the faster you will burn fat. If you're brand new, 1 set per exercise. Once you've been training for a couple weeks, 2 sets per exercise. After you feel you've adapted, 3-4 sets. Stick to the basics, don't overtrain (no more than 30-36 sets per workout, and that's a max - aim to stay around 20-24), and keep workouts under an hour to prevent cortisol. Don't worry about endurance training, unless you play a sport that requires endurance or you're looking to have some fun, break a plateau, etc.

On creatine: This is the most studied supplement out there. It has been shown time and time again to be safe. 10 years ago, creatine monohydrate powder was known to cause bloating, but modern creatine supps do not do this (Kre-Alkalyn and CEE and whatnot). Creatine does not add muscle, it increases the fuel available for the mitochondria in mucles to use (because it is that fuel) for moderate to high intensity training (IE - not endurance or any set that lasts longer than one minute). It can be hard on the kidneys, if one doesn't drink ample water though. That all said, if you're new, no need for creatine. Just eat well and train smart.

- Edit - Mentioned water intake regarding creatine