Old Newbie needs help...

[us2menos]

Hello everyone. New to this (bodybuilding and this site) and could use some help. I'll give you all a little background first and then see where this goes. I'm 45 years old and just started working out last August. I got tired of looking and feeling like crap and decided one day that was enough. I started P90X (yeah, I know) and was making decent gains. I lost 20 lbs., went from 6', 170lbs down to 150lbs. in about 30-45 days. This was good as that was all fat. I was starting to gain some muscle but not the gains that I was hoping. To complicate matters I had to stop for rotator cuff surgery in October so it was a month or two before I could get going again. Since then it's been difficult to achieve any kind of measurable gains, either in weight or mass. I am trying to eat 200g of protein a day but am finding this difficult to hit as well. So these are my goals, in this order; 1) Muscle mass, get bigger 2) Strength 3) overall fitness. I currently am working out 6 days a week, weights on Mon, Wed, Fri, and then cardio or stretching in between. I would like to get some size pretty quick, if anyone has tips for that. At least from my experience I know it helps to get up at 5 every morning when you can see some results. Hopefully I've given you enough info so that you can offer some advice. Thank you all so much for you time.

John

[davidwhatever]

don't think there is any safe quick way to gain muscle, it takes time and consistency. I'd go real slow if you have not worked out a lot recently to avoid injury and more time off. Better to do less than you think you are capable of until your body get accustomed to the exercise. You can also expect good results the first 6 months or so because you have not been doing much, but after that its going to slow down and results will be coming less quickly. Recent studies have shown that higher reps with lower weights reaps pretty mush the same muscle gain benifit as does lower reps with higher weight, fatigue is fatigue it seems. so don't feel like you have to lift gut busting and dangerous weights to get results.

The three programs used in the combinations were:
one set at 80% of the maximum load
three sets at 80% of the maximum
three sets at 30% of the maximum

After 10 weeks of training, three times per week, the heavy and light groups that lifted three sets saw significant gains in muscle volume -- as measured by MRI -- with no difference among the groups. Still, the group that used heavier weights for three sets developed a bit more strength.
The group that trained for a single set showed approximately half the increase in muscle size seen in both the heavy and light groups.