Getting back into the gym

[dantm]

Intro: 30 year old male, 5'10", 170 lbs.

About until ~1 year ago I was going to the gym regularly and doing a series of weights and also cardio -- 5 times a week.

I was ~160 lbs and 12% body fat.

I took a break for about 1 year due to a change in my job and family situation and now that things are going better I have made time for the gym again.

Went a few times and I'm looking for a new approach to weightlifting and cardio. I got a body fat measurement and I'm @ 18%. They also measured the water retention (?) and it was 55%.

Regardless, I want to work towards a goal of <10% body fat, tone up and build muscle.

I'm going to track my calorie intake and see how that works out over the next ~2 weeks. I normally would do cardio after lifting every day for about 30 mins (and ~500 calories burned either on treadmill or elliptical).

I'll post my workout schedule but needless to say I'm looking to change it since last time I had gone on this schedule I had reached a plateau.

Do you guys have any recommendations on whether I should focus on getting body fat down first then building muscle, or bulking up first and then toning down or both at the same time?

Thanks!

[dantm]

This was my workout schedule -- basically I would have 3 exercises for each of:

chest
shoulders
back
biceps
legs

and alternate chest + shoulders and back + biceps on different days. I'd do legs every other day (squats and calf raises).

I'd pick two exercises for each of chest/shoulders/back/biceps and cycle between them.

so say

Monday -- chest + shoulder day, I'd do:

chest -- bench press and incline press, ignore flys
shoulders -- presses and delt rows, ignore lateral raises

legs -- squats

then

Tuesday -- back and biceps day, I'd do two of each of back and biceps, ignore the 3rd and do legs as well (calf raises);

Wednesday -- do chest and shoulders again, alternate two different chest and shoulder exercises as opposed to Monday.

Anyway -- there's gotta be a simpler way to do this and achieve the same or better results.

Thanks!

[dantm]

TTT -- can you guys give me any suggestions?

Thank you!

[SayNoToCardio]

Do you guys have any recommendations on whether I should focus on getting body fat down first then building muscle, or bulking up first and then toning down or both at the same time?

Thanks!

If you are at 18% I'd probably drop some fat first.

[dantm]

What would you suggest focusing on first?

Should I just up my number of meals to 6/day while having a calorie deficit? Right now for maintenance it looks like I need 2400 calories, I was thinking of dropping to ~2000 calories/day while having 6 meals:

7 AM - breakfast -- ~400 calories
10 AM - snack -- ~300 calories
1 PM - lunch -- ~400 calories
4 PM - snack pre-workout -- ~300 calories
7 PM - dinner -- ~400 calories
10 PM - snack -- ~200 calories

Along with this I am working out 5 times a week, approx 1 hr for each workout, consisting of 4-5 exercises and 20 mins of cardio (right now).

Thoughts?

[SayNoToCardio]

Give a try and see how it goes. You can always adjust things later.

[dantm]

Give a try and see how it goes. You can always adjust things later.

Ok, I've started to do this...

With regards to cardio and toning up (getting fat % down as much as possible as well as building muscle), what's better:

20-30 mins of cardio every day

or

40-60 mins of cardio every other day -- with some of it being interval

I'm tending to think that the 40-60 mins would burn more calories and have the body more in the high heart-rate state?

Thoughts?

Thanks!