Help me decide on a good supplement/workout plan

[forumname05]

Alright guys (and gals) i'm a newbie to the site and to most of this in general

I will be graduating from the NYPD academy come the end of the month.
I used to work out about 2 years ago, and just sort lost the motivation to do so
I'm 23 and my entire life i've been pretty fit, and being in the academy and doing all the PT there has gotten me very motivated again. I've never given up during PT and have never fallen out of a run, i'm very motivated now and would love to feed off of that and go further with this. I'm about 5'10" or so and 160lbs. After these 5 months of PT/Calesthetics i now have a decent base to work on. But, ofcourse my goal is to get bigger and more cut. To be honest, it'll be to my advantage on the streets over here, which is also why i'd like to get into some sort of self defense such as kickboxing, akraba or the sort.
I try very hard to eat healthy and am very motivated to stick with this.

I currently have ON's Protein and GNC's Mega Man Sport multi vitamins

My question and such are as follow's...
Can you guys recommend a good workout plan/routine?
What would be the best way to go, join a gym such as Gold's or buy a home gym...granted, as a rookie i will not have the best schedule, but at the same time i find having to go to a gym more motivating.
What would be the best supplement plan?
I have tried No-Explode and will say i did notice it, but i am very open minded
If you could, be specific and say why each would be good and their functions

Also, any ideas as to a good self defense art/practice/routine to get into?


Thanks a ton, any help is greatly appreciated

[9cyclops9]

As a newbie, you don't need to worry about supplements. Protein powder and creatine are fine, but that's all you need. Get your diet and training in order first, then maybe worry about supplements. Guys seems to have this idea that you need them when you first start in order to make gains. This couldn't be further from the truth. They're called supplements because they're supplemental to good nutrition and training.

Try this program. It's great for beginners. I'd suggest looking into www.crossfit.com for some cross-training and conditioning ideas. You may try doing some of their cardio workouts on days off from the gym. You'll benefit a lot from this as a law-inforcement guy.

Here's a routine for beginners suggested by Mark Rippetoe, who specializes in getting beginners big and strong. A 30-40 lb increase in muscular bodyweight over a 6 month period is pretty standard with his athletes.

Workout A

3x5 Squat
3x5 Bench Press
1x5 Deadlift

Workout B

3x5 Squat
3x5 Military Press
3x5 Power Clean

Warm up using several sets before doing the 3 work sets (or 1 for the deadlift). If you're using 175, for example, it would look like this:

Warm up sets

2x5xbar (sets x reps x weight)
1x5x85
1x3x125
1x2x155

Work sets

3x5x175


You alternate workout A and B, 3 non-consecutive days per week. So you might do:

Week 1

M

Workout A

W

Workout B

F

Workout A

Week 2

M

Workout B

W

Workout A

F

Workout B


Add weight to the bar whenever possible. If you're very new to lifting weights, or if most of your lifting has focused on curls and other isolation movements, you'll probably be able to add some weight each workout. Maybe 5-10 lbs each time in the squat and deadlift, and about 5 lbs in the other three lifts. Eventually you won't be able to sustain such progress, and you'll have to get microplates so you can increase by smaller increments. Or you could make them out of chain:

http://davedraper.com/forum/showflat...3/Main/126754/

And eat a lot of food. A whole lot.

It's fine to add some assistance work such as abs, hypers, or maybe some direct biceps and triceps work, but don't overdo it. For direct arm work, 3 sets of 8 of one lift for each muscle at the end of your last workout of the week will be plenty. Your arms are getting hit hard all week on this routine, so you don't want to blast them with iso stuff as well.

The part about food is important. You MUST eat big to get big. Rippetoe recommends 4 meals per day, plus a gallon of milk spread throughout the day. That seems to be working well for me. Make the meals big. For instance, I might have an 8 oz steak, large baked potato, a big salad with olive oil and vinegar, and a large glass of milk. This is around 1000 calories for this one meal. A lot, yes, but you need a surplus to grow. You may gain some fat, but it's much easier to lose fat and preserve muscle mass than it is to gain muscle without gaining fat.

[forumname05]

Thanks alot man
Seems pretty good

That workout seems pretty basic and only involves 3 different exercises in each days routine...i also like that it can all be done wth just a barbell/weight set.
I've been thinking of getting a home gym set-up, and this workout could definitely be very do able that way.

I have a few questions about it...
How do you decide what is a good weight to go with, on the 3x5 sets how hard do you want to go? Go so high that you barely complete the last set, how high should you go???
Also, it says you can also incorporate other direct bicep or tricep workouts to help. I'd like to do that as well and think it would be a good idea. So i would be able to throw in a 3x8 set of bicep curls at the end of day A and a tricep workout at the end of day B, correct?


Thanks a ton

[AnaerobicAndrew]

yeah, thats some great advise from 9cyclops9, he deserves a rep for that.