My article (beginners might want to look here)

[Sychokid]

I noticed that most threads on this workout forum are about people having goals, yet having no clue what to do. I decided to make a little informative post that might want to be made a sticky. I was thinking we should all chip in our knowledge.

If your looking to slim down and lose the gut and/or gain some lean muscle, here is some information you might want to know.


"A BEGGINER's GUIDE TO BODYBUILDING"


MYTHS

SPOT REDUCTION

NO SUCH THING!!! Doing a hundred crunches will strengthen the abs, but won’t do anything to the fat. Only through hard work, cardio, and a healthy diet will you achieve this.

HIGHER REPS = MORE DEFINITION AND "TONENESS”

The truth is, higher reps will NOT tone your muscles or make them more defined. Once again, this is having a low body fat %. Higher reps will work on endurance though and is great for some athletes and marathon runners.

GAIN MUSCLE AND LOSE FAT

When we all start out lifting, we have this lucky gift of being able to lose fat yet get muscle at the same time. Over time, this completely goes away. I notice a lot of posts are “oh my goals are to lose the old gut while getting my chest bigger...”. This isn’t going to happen unless you are a beginner (a.k.a newbie) or on steroids. Think about it. How can you gain muscle on a calorie deficit and/or lose fat on a calorie surplus? Once you feel you gotten to the point where you can no longer do the above, then you have a choice of doing a cutting or bulking phase.

THE MORE THE BETTER (RIGHT?)
Ever hear the phase “muscle grow outside the gym”. Well, this phase fits in right here. When people first start out lifting, they tend to think that more is better. This is definatly not the case. Your muscles and body needs time to recover. Also, around an hour or so (differs from everyone), cortical is released from the body which can actually kill off muscle tissue and cause muscle catabalism. This can be prevented if you train smart. Do no more then a 5 day split training each muscle once a week (smaller ones twice most) and working out no more then an hour. Now don’t get me wrong, everybody is different and people respond to different methods, principals, techniques, etc. But this most likely all you need to do. Most people say “oh, I’m training each body part 2x a week and only have one rest day and getting good results” but what they don’t realize is that they aren’t giving their body (central nervous system) full time to recover as well as their muscles. Even though muscles only need 48-72 hours to recover, they still don’t recover fully which is why it benefits you to take a week off every 2-3 months.

I DO CARDIO FOR MY LEG WORK..THAT’S ALL I NEED
The truth is, legs also need heavy anaerobic sets just like the upper body. Running is to aerobic to call it a leg “mass builder”. Besides, the best exercise known to us bodybuilders is for legs (SQUATS!). By the way, chicken legs and a huge upper body will look very unproportianal and kind of weird.

I DIDN'T GET A PUMP OR WAS SORE THIS MORNING...
"Pumps" and soreness in your muscles doesn't mean too much (for hypertrophy [ muscle growth]). I could get a good pump from picking a weight and lifting it for 100x. This will porbably deal way more with endurance then hypertrophy. Samething goes with soreness. The real way you can tell if your workouts are good is over time.

CUTTING

Now lets say your goal is to look nice and thin and get rid of the old gut and get abs by the summer times Here you are going too need to start reducing your calories, increasing protein, decreasing saturated fats and carbs.

DIET
Some diets where people got good results from: Atkins diet, keto diet

Here are some estimations to help you figure out your calories and protein needs:

Calories: bodyweight x 11-13
Protein: bodyweight x 1.2-1.4

The key here is too keep saturated fats in moderation. Don’t totally eliminate them from your diet. You still need some. Also, don’t go overboard with decreasing the carbs (unless you are on keto which requires you too). Depending on your metabolism, try to split this into 4-6 smaller meals over the course of the day.

CARDIO
You are also going to have to start doing some cardio. Start out with one short cardio session. By starting out with a lot of cardio days, you are only hurting yourself and looking for an injury. Each week, start increasing it until you get around 20-45 minutes. You might also want to look into HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio. Don’t let the time (12-15 minutes) of these cardio sessions fool you. The sessions are very intense.

WEIGHT TRIANING
Training splits should stay the same. Like I said before, reps shouldn’t go higher. I prefer a 3 day split while cutting because it is easier to fit in cardio and easier to recover while under a calorie deficit.

SUPPLEMENTS
Some good supplements too look are: whey protein, multi vitamins, glutamine, and fat burners (WARNING: only take a fat burner if you are in good cardiovascular condition and have good blood pressure with no history of bad cardiovascular health).

TIPS
A way you can minimize muscle loss is not decreasing the calories all over night. Don’t just decrease your calories all in a day. Your body has to get used to what it has. Slowly decrease your calories by 200-300 each week until you get to your desired calories, carbs, and saturated fats.

LINKS
Some good informative links while cutting are:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/teen/bigcourse.htm
http://www.teenbodybuilding.com/anthony2.htm
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/catcommand2.htm
http://bodybuilding.com/fun/south9.htm


BULKING
How many people out there no matter how hard they try, can’t gain any muscle? There are a few reasons why this is so. Are you over training? Are you eating enough? Are you getting enough sleep? Etc.

DIET
Most people have a good workout, but ignore there diet. Like I said before, you must be eating. Take a look at these estimations:

Calories: bodyweight x 19-20
Protein: same as cutting

Keep carbs high too around 300-450 gram range (depending on bodyweight). If you limit saturated fats and bulk cleanly, you will limit the time you need to cut and minimizing muscle loss. Try to eat this in a matter of 5-7 meals.

TIPS
If you are getting too fat (do not do this if you aren’t gaining at all) throw in a cardio session or two during the week.
If you are having trouble eating during class, eat a big breakfast and keep things that can be sealed like powerbars, peanuts, mrb shakes/bars in your locker. Here is a good article on this by big red:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/teen/college.htm

www.fitday.com and www.calorieking.com are both great links for nutritional breakdown of certain specific foods.

WEIGHT TRAINING
Here I would recommend a 4-5 day split. There are a ton out there. Anyone will pretty much work as long as you are eating & sleeping enough, and not overtraining. Most people respond best to the 8-10 and 6-8 rep range. Some people respond better to lower reps like the 4-6 and/or higher reps like the 10-12. Anything lower then 4 IMO, is for strength gains,

SUPPLEMENTS
Some good supplements to look into are: whey protein, multivitamins, creatine, bcaa, liver tabs, and zma.

LINKS
Some good bulking links are:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ice19.htm
http://www.teenbodybuilding.com/mike3.htm
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/layne2.htm (nice one by good old layne )

THE WORKOUT

When working out, you want to try and stick with heavy compound movements.

Back- Deadlifts, rowing movements, chinning/pull-ups
Legs- Squats, stiff legged deadlifts, calf raises
Shoulders - Shoulder presses (standing/seated, Arnold, DB/BB,etc) ISOLATION: raises
Chest - Bench press, Dips, ISOLATION flyes and crossovers
Biceps - Close-grip chinups, ISOLATION curls
Triceps - Close-grip bench press, skull crushers, ISOLATION tricep pushdowns
Traps- shrugs
Abs- weighted & decline crunches, hanging leg raises, lying side bends and twist crunches (obliques)

link to Brit_beef's workout split thread:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hreadid=111953

Here are some good websites for videos on proper form and exercises:

http://www.2-fit.com/video/index.html
http://www.theministryoffitness.com/exercises.htm
http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html

Have a protein shake (Whey protein shake) and some sort of simple sugar like honey and/or dextrose after your workouts.

I recommend every month or two changing up your split. This will avoid a plateu when you no longer can gain anything. You can do something simple like superset or totally rearrange your split. Some great things to do are: pyramid (both up and down are good), supersets (and all variations), forced reps, down the rack, negatives (warm up properly before this), drop sets, etc. Bump up your calorie intake, protein, and carbs as well. Here are a few good links for the descriptions of the above:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ice4.htm
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/luis3.htm


GET MOTIVATED!
I know a lot of you really want to start but don’t have a good motivation and are too lazy. Here is a great link for some motivation :

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/bbmainmind.htm

Like I said before, if there is anything you guys would like to add, please feel free to do this.

[trick081]

MAKE THIS A STICKY!!! All my questions that have accumulated over the last year were summed up here!!! DEFINATELY A MUST SEE for beginners!!! GREAT JOB SYCHOKID!!! This was very informative and helpful, and I think it will be a HUGE benefit to ANYONE who needs their questions answered!

[SUPAJAwS1]

awesome article bro, very informative! Mods you should make this a sticky, it would be very helpful to all the newbies to read before they post about their routines.

[sean168]

This is really an excellent article with many good links.

The part about not doing cardio on an empty stomach, may I know how is this point substantiated? There are other experts for example the BodyforLife Bill Phillips who said the best cardio is on an empty stomach and some people back up this point with a 'scientific' explanation.

Overall, it was still a great article.

Cheers!

[bigdun]

Nice job sychokid!

[coneytt]

sychokid, this is awsome. I remeber asking you a million questions back in December/ January, but this posting would have answered 90% of them. They would be crazy not to make this a sticky-icky... Great work

[FortifiedIron]

Yes dont be fooled by HIIT's methods. I have some studie's supporting HIIT and how effective it is.


Kc

[sehnsucht]

nice article, definatly hit upon alot of common misconceptions. Defintly worth a read even if your not a beginner

[PSUPOWER]

Good article!!!

[Donovan t.]

great article really helps your the man sycho

[massmatters]

good info Sychokid. you might want to post a link to the search button in there.

[Scar Culture]

yeah good article......should help alot of new people and just anyone with questions.....we should keep replying to this post to keep it towards the top so people can find it easier.

[Sychokid]

Originally posted by Scar Culture
yeah good article......should help alot of new people and just anyone with questions.....we should keep replying to this post to keep it towards the top so people can find it easier.

Yeah, but if it gets stickied, it can just stay at the top.

ADD ON TO MYTHS PART:
DO I DO CARDIO BEFORE OR AFTER MY WORKOUTS?

Neither. By doing it before your workouts, you are taking energy away from your lifts and depleting your nutrition stores. By doing it after, you will be going into muscle catabolism and not getting the nutrients you need after your workout session. I suggest doing cardio in the morning or something so it keeps your metabolism up the whole day. Also, don't go on a completly empty stomach. Something high in protein/low in carbs like beef jerkey or a protein shake never hurt anybody .

[Fanatikk]

No, No...don't sticky this!!! Almost everyone's questions will be answered from this one article and there will be no more posts!!!!lol jk

Excellent job Sycho. Not only do I think it should be a sticky..but i think it should have a "Please read before posting questions" attached to it. It would definitely cut down on repetitive posts.

I'd just like to add to the part where you talk about how guys don't work out legs. I've found that doing squats has helped me in other areas of working out. I believe squats release a lotta growth hormone and in doing so will make you bigger all around. Does that mean I can say"hmm, my biceps are lacking..better do more squats!!"

[Bignbuff]

Well what can I say Sycho...

You are the man. I was thinking about making an article like this but just never got to doing it.

MODS WE NEED TO STICKY THIS!

I'm PMing D&G right now to tell him.

Excellent job Sychokid, you are the king of this section. And well, I'm the prince.

[Sychokid]

Originally posted by bignbuff
Well what can I say Sycho...

You are the man. I was thinking about making an article like this but just never got to doing it.

MODS WE NEED TO STICKY THIS!

I'm PMing D&G right now to tell him.

Excellent job Sychokid, you are the king of this section. And well, I'm the prince.

. Hey thanks for pming the mods.

[_Deader_]

Great post! Answers a lot of good myths and questions. Keep up the good work

[91TalonTSi_53]

That should definately be a sticky...alot of great info in that one.

[wl270]

BUMP! MAKE THIS A STICKY!!!!!! : D

[*WiNgS*2]

great article jon!

[Sychokid]

Ahhh finally, its official, its a sticky . Lets all keep adding to this if there is something I don't have listed.

Than you all for your responses too.

[GDS10]

Originally posted by Sychokid
Ahhh finally, its official, its a stick . Lets all keep adding to this if there is something I don't have listed.

Than you all for your responses too.

Ah Great Article Sycho



Well Done !

Some Great Info

[younglifter13]

Wow, awesome article bro.

[THECHAMP#2]

I got one, Don't do cardio after a workout! Right sychokid

[Sychokid]

Originally posted by THECHAMP#2
I got one, Don't do cardio after a workout! Right sychokid

lmao. So what did you end up doing anyway . You sonna bit..... . Hey that actually isn't a bad idea.

[hikw]

great job Sychokid thanks

[Vaines]

Sychokid.

I wouldn't say im a complete beginner, but what should I do when you just came off a horrible infection?

Take another extra week off, and after cut the amount of days in half?


That is what Im thinking right now.

[Slack-arse]

Gotta be a STICKY !!! Great article Sychokid...nice job.

[Vaines]

He still hasn't helped me out.

[cheffrey19]

This if my first post so bear with me... I know that cardio shouldn't be done before lifting as it will deplete my energy but if I drink a high-carb (high GI carbs) and high-protein shake immediately after lifting, would it be so bad to do about 15 min of high-intensity cardio after lifting? I ask because with my schedule and some transportation issues, it is really tough for me to get to the gym twice in a day to do cardio early in the day and lift later on. Also, I am bulking right now but I hesitate to completely cut out cardio because I don't want increase my BF% too much. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.