Starting a new routine for strength and size, opinions?

[Elijah_MB]

I was thinking of doing Intermediate 5x5, or this...http://www.defrancostraining.com/art...s_westside.htm

I've been training for almost 2 yrs. now. I'm around 5'9", 133lbs. (I seriously need some help) Thanx for the suggestions

[SuicideGripMe]

Link no work, if its westside for skinny bastards...DO IT! I love it and do modifications out of it.

[John Prophet]

u need to eat more brother...even the angel made Elijah eat before he went across the desert

try to add a chicken breast or protein shake here and there...or a protein bar

[88morden88]

That ain't gonna cut it old son. He needs 1.4g of protein per lb of LBM, and .5g of fat per lb of body weight, with a caloric surplus of 10-20% above maintenance on healthy foods to qualify as 'clean bulking'.

u need to eat more brother...even the angel made Elijah eat before he went across the desert

try to add a chicken breast or protein shake here and there...or a protein bar

[Elijah_MB]

u need to eat more brother...even the angel made Elijah eat before he went across the desert

see, the Bible has all the answers

I'll see if I can get the link to work..

[Elijah_MB]

http://www.defrancostraining.com/art...s_westside.htm

lets try this one...

[Madcow2]

That ain't gonna cut it old son. He needs 1.4g of protein per lb of LBM, and .5g of fat per lb of body weight, with a caloric surplus of 10-20% above maintenance on healthy foods to qualify as 'clean bulking'.

While it may not qualify as "clean bulking" in your book, I think you'd be staggered at the amount of muscle that has been gained while staying reasonably lean in gyms around the world that don't meet these fairly stringent requirements.

As long as a diet is reasonable and provides enough to sustain life and growth - which is fairly easy, the major issue is eating enough. If you don't eat enough, you will not gain anything. This is the same regardless of whether the intake is Zen clean and meeting every requirement in the book or McDonalds 4 times a day.

At 5'9" and 136 on a BBing board with 2 years of training and asking for help, the OP needs to learn the lesson in eating enough to move the scale more so than any fancy macronutrient balance.

[Andrew.Cook]

Madcow... While I agree that "eat more" is a good start, it is important to get people on the right kind of diet. Pizza Hut and McDonalds is grossly lacking in nutritional value. The macro's might be there, but there is more to food than macro levels Will you die if you eat a Big-Mac now and again? Absolutely not, however, you have to look at how that ONE burger factors into your diet. I could turn a single big mac into several multi-hundrred calorie meals, I would probably end up OVER on my fat for the day... well, I am not here to list the evils of fast food. My point was that if you are going to teach someone about nutrition in a broad sense, why not take the extra step and explain how to meet these goals (caloric, macro/micro-nutrient)?

[scherzo]

Reverse Anorexic? From what I just looked up on the net, that essentially means you trained yourself like crazy in fear of losing muscle, right?

Let me share my current eating habits in hopes to help.

Right now I'm 28 years old, 5'10", 155 lbs, doing Rippetoe to the letter. And I swear it's working. Three months ago I was 140 lbs. I kind of freaked out. I hadn't been that skinny since high school. I instantly began increasing my food intake. Now I feel that I've settled into a good routine in both nutrition and exercise and only see myself getting bigger and stronger from here on out.

What I realized is that I have a pretty fast metabolism and guessed that 2000-2500 calories could maintain my weight with light exercise. I read that you need an excess of 500 calories to grow, so I shoot for 3000 calories a day.

Now rather than eat three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, I decided to divide my 3000 calories over 6 meals a day. So that's roughly 500 calories a meal.

I wake usually wake up at around 5:30 to get ready for work, so I decided to put my meals on the threes... 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm. That way I still eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same times my family usually eats.

Since I weigh 155 lbs, I shoot for around 150-200 grams of protein a day. I'm not anal about the numbers. As long as I'm somewhere in the vinicity, great. I try my best to get my protein from food, but I do take two supplement whey protein shakes a day. One an hour after my first meal, and one an hour after my thrid meal or if it's a workout day, immediately after my workout.

I supplement 5 grams of creatine a day. I divide it between my two protein shakes; 1/2 teaspoon each time.

Reading several topics about oats on this board convinced me that they're essential. I eat a bowl of oatmeal in milk twice a day. One cup oats each.

So here's a typical day for me:

6am - 1 cup of oats in milk. ~500 calories
7am - Whey shake /w creatine ~130 calories
9am - egg and cheese on english muffin and cup of OJ ~400 calories
12pm - lunch with the family, made by the wifey which might be something like:
sandwich steak or
pasta with ground siloin or
chicken thighs or breast or
shrimp
rice or
lentils

I try to eat a little more than 500 calories at lunch
3pm - oats in milk again
4pm - whey shake again (if not a workout day)
6pm - dinner with the wifey. like lunch
9pm - 1-2 cups of milk before bed

Also, an hour after every meal, I drink around 10oz of water if I'm not supposed to be drinking a shake then.

And that's it. Sorry for the long post. I just felt inspired to document my current eating habits, especially for someone who might appreciate it.

[Elijah_MB]

thanx for the help and replies. I guess the fear of getting fat will always be there alittle. I've been eating around 2900 +/- 50 cals on lifting days (4days/week) and been doing Hiit cardio w/ a jumprope 2 days a week, eating 2600-2700 cals on these days, and then a rest day w/ 2100 cals. My routine was centered around compound lifts, so I know my problem is the food....

[duong]

Reverse Anorexic? From what I just looked up on the net, that essentially means you trained yourself like crazy in fear of losing muscle, right?

Let me share my current eating habits in hopes to help.

Right now I'm 28 years old, 5'10", 155 lbs, doing Rippetoe to the letter. And I swear it's working. Three months ago I was 140 lbs. I kind of freaked out. I hadn't been that skinny since high school. I instantly began increasing my food intake. Now I feel that I've settled into a good routine in both nutrition and exercise and only see myself getting bigger and stronger from here on out.

What I realized is that I have a pretty fast metabolism and guessed that 2000-2500 calories could maintain my weight with light exercise. I read that you need an excess of 500 calories to grow, so I shoot for 3000 calories a day.

Now rather than eat three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, I decided to divide my 3000 calories over 6 meals a day. So that's roughly 500 calories a meal.

I wake usually wake up at around 5:30 to get ready for work, so I decided to put my meals on the threes... 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm. That way I still eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same times my family usually eats.

Since I weigh 155 lbs, I shoot for around 150-200 grams of protein a day. I'm not anal about the numbers. As long as I'm somewhere in the vinicity, great. I try my best to get my protein from food, but I do take two supplement whey protein shakes a day. One an hour after my first meal, and one an hour after my thrid meal or if it's a workout day, immediately after my workout.

I supplement 5 grams of creatine a day. I divide it between my two protein shakes; 1/2 teaspoon each time.

Reading several topics about oats on this board convinced me that they're essential. I eat a bowl of oatmeal in milk twice a day. One cup oats each.

So here's a typical day for me:

6am - 1 cup of oats in milk. ~500 calories
7am - Whey shake /w creatine ~130 calories
9am - egg and cheese on english muffin and cup of OJ ~400 calories
12pm - lunch with the family, made by the wifey which might be something like:
sandwich steak or
pasta with ground siloin or
chicken thighs or breast or
shrimp
rice or
lentils

I try to eat a little more than 500 calories at lunch
3pm - oats in milk again
4pm - whey shake again (if not a workout day)
6pm - dinner with the wifey. like lunch
9pm - 1-2 cups of milk before bed

Also, an hour after every meal, I drink around 10oz of water if I'm not supposed to be drinking a shake then.

And that's it. Sorry for the long post. I just felt inspired to document my current eating habits, especially for someone who might appreciate it.

Good job, bro. You got it down good. I, myself, went from 150 to 190 lbs with "good" eating habits and diet. Keep it up.

[Elijah_MB]

so any opinions on routine?...

[scherzo]

so any opinions on routine?...

I do Rippetoe's Starting Strength. It's working great for me so far. I bet it would be a great routine for you too.

[88morden88]

Aye, i do agree, but only so far, because there is a limited amount of muscle the human body can build in a week.

While it may not qualify as "clean bulking" in your book, I think you'd be staggered at the amount of muscle that has been gained while staying reasonably lean in gyms around the world that don't meet these fairly stringent requirements.

As long as a diet is reasonable and provides enough to sustain life and growth - which is fairly easy, the major issue is eating enough. If you don't eat enough, you will not gain anything. This is the same regardless of whether the intake is Zen clean and meeting every requirement in the book or McDonalds 4 times a day.

At 5'9" and 136 on a BBing board with 2 years of training and asking for help, the OP needs to learn the lesson in eating enough to move the scale more so than any fancy macronutrient balance.

[88morden88]

Schzero, do you take creatine on non-workout days?

[scherzo]

Schzero, do you take creatine on non-workout days?

Yes. I take 2.5g twice a day regardless if I'm working out that day or not. Also, while on the subject of creatine, I didn't do a loading phase when I started. I read somewhere that doing a loading phase will get your muscles saturated with creatine faster, but if you just take the maintaince amount from the beginning you eventually get the same results but more slowly.

[88morden88]

You do know that the 'average' human body produces 5g of phos****en per day, right?

[Elijah_MB]

thanx for the sugg. scherzo

[Madcow2]

Madcow... While I agree that "eat more" is a good start, it is important to get people on the right kind of diet. Pizza Hut and McDonalds is grossly lacking in nutritional value. The macro's might be there, but there is more to food than macro levels Will you die if you eat a Big-Mac now and again? Absolutely not, however, you have to look at how that ONE burger factors into your diet. I could turn a single big mac into several multi-hundrred calorie meals, I would probably end up OVER on my fat for the day... well, I am not here to list the evils of fast food. My point was that if you are going to teach someone about nutrition in a broad sense, why not take the extra step and explain how to meet these goals (caloric, macro/micro-nutrient)?

Eating clean is a separate goal. Sort of like living a healthy balanced life. Sure you body might run better, maybe have more success in the gym and add muscle at a faster rate, and you'll have a more fullfilling life but I don't concern myself with teaching such things.

I certainly don't eat junk all the time, never did. But then again, when I needed to get bigger and it was between a 99 cent whopper or missing a meal, that whopper got eaten. It was a tradeoff I was willing to make (muscle at the expense healthiest diet possible, plus I like Whoppers). What I was pointing out was that if one insists on the healthiest diet possible and fails to eat enough, they won't gain any muscle. Someone else may live an ultimately shorter life or suffer issues but they can get big and strong off KFC and McDonalds all day long.

[Madcow2]

Aye, i do agree, but only so far, because there is a limited amount of muscle the human body can build in a week.

So don't over-eat. You still need caloric excess. Just keep raising maintenance as your weight increases so there is always a surplus. And keep bodyfat levels a bit above average so the body adds muscle as fast as possible.

And the "human body can only add so much muscle" is a rough argument. Most of those stats thrown out are ****. Take a raw novice high school kid and get him eating like a hog and squatting like a beast - that's basically Ripp's formula for adding 30-40lbs to a novice in 4-6 months without much bodyfat. Take a guy straight out of a concentration camp and start feeding him. He will gain muscle ultra fast just like a former lifter getting back in the gym after a layoff of a year or so. Take someone else and jack them full of anabolics, lots of fast muscle there too. All of that can happen at rates that far exceed those that are quoted all the time. I haven't read the studies that produce those statistics but I'd venture they aren't real impressive.

[mjw8204]

Right now I'm 28 years old, 5'10", 155 lbs, doing Rippetoe to the letter. And I swear it's working. Three months ago I was 140 lbs. I kind of freaked out. I hadn't been that skinny since high school. I instantly began increasing my food intake. Now I feel that I've settled into a good routine in both nutrition and exercise and only see myself getting bigger and stronger from here on out.

What I realized is that I have a pretty fast metabolism and guessed that 2000-2500 calories could maintain my weight with light exercise. I read that you need an excess of 500 calories to grow, so I shoot for 3000 calories a day.

Now rather than eat three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, I decided to divide my 3000 calories over 6 meals a day. So that's roughly 500 calories a meal.

I wake usually wake up at around 5:30 to get ready for work, so I decided to put my meals on the threes... 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm. That way I still eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same times my family usually eats.

Since I weigh 155 lbs, I shoot for around 150-200 grams of protein a day. I'm not anal about the numbers. As long as I'm somewhere in the vinicity, great. I try my best to get my protein from food, but I do take two supplement whey protein shakes a day. One an hour after my first meal, and one an hour after my thrid meal or if it's a workout day, immediately after my workout.

I'm in a similar boat. I've gained almost 20 lbs in 4.5 months with negligible extra fat on Rip's program just taking a common sense approach to eating. Maybe I'm missing out on something by not counting and documenting every calorie or gram of food I put in my mouth, but I'm pretty happy with how things are going thus far. Maybe I'll drive myself nuts with the counting if I want to start "cutting" at some point; but until then I see no reason to change how I do things.

Do you have a workout journal on here, Scherzo?

[Elijah_MB]

ok, I just wanna lift some heavy freaking weight, I don't care about the fat anymore, I wanna get my lifts up to respectable limits. I've been lifting for almost 2 yrs. w/ a crappy diet (not enough).

[Madcow2]

ok, I just wanna lift some heavy freaking weight, I don't care about the fat anymore, I wanna get my lifts up to respectable limits. I've been lifting for almost 2 yrs. w/ a crappy diet (not enough).

A couple options.

1) I'd consider buying Mark Rippetoe's book Starting Strength (Amazon or www.startingstrength.com). It will get your lifts perfected (I assume your technique sucks, most are in the same boat). And follow the program in that. It's on this site also but it's important to build a foundation and it will give you some knowledge. MJW is talking about it in his post above.

2) Take a look at the Linear program on my site: http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow...Linear_5x5.htm - this would be after Mark's program but maybe you can use it. You could also use the Westside for Skinny Bastards program although I don't know much about it.

3) To get your head around the "what's and why's" in training, read the training primer I wrote. Then you'll at least have a solid knowledge of what's happening and realize how little most people know: http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow...ing_Primer.htm

4) For some additional reading just kick around my side in the Contents page. Read the articles on bench, squat, deadlift. Read the training theory stuff. Whatever.

The real key is getting better at big effective lifts. So make your goal to put 100lbs on your deadlift and squat, 50 on your bench and row, and 30 on your military. Use a program with some kind of an implicit system of progression (i.e. go up 2.5% each week or some other type of plan relevant to your experience level). Do that and eat to move the scale. If the scale stops moving, eat more.

[mjw8204]

ok, I just wanna lift some heavy freaking weight, I don't care about the fat anymore, I wanna get my lifts up to respectable limits. I've been lifting for almost 2 yrs. w/ a crappy diet (not enough).

What have you been doing for those two years, Elijah? What are your squat, bench, and deadlift numbers?

[scherzo]

Do you have a workout journal on here, Scherzo?

Funny you should ask. Just ten minutes ago I actived my BodyBlog here. I'm going to be posting my progress on there. If you actually care to look in the future, go on ahead. Thanks.

[wannab-BIG-]

Eat more food... but dont gain more than 5-10 lbs per month. Get to about 200 lbs in 1 to 1.5 years. If you do it faster than that, and you can, a higher % of the weight will be fat. in 1.5 years to around 200lb the majority of it should be good solid muscle if u train hard and heavy.

[88morden88]

Is it not true that having BF over 17~% shoots anabolic hormone to f*ck then?

So don't over-eat. You still need caloric excess. Just keep raising maintenance as your weight increases so there is always a surplus. And keep bodyfat levels a bit above average so the body adds muscle as fast as possible.

Should really have said added '.. in a given time frame'. Let's say 30-40lbs in 26 weeks, which is 1.15 - 1.54lbs of muscle added per week. I've read that the absolute maximum your body can synthesise in seven days is 1lb? See below~

http://www.wannabebig.com/article.php?articleid=68

And the "human body can only add so much muscle" is a rough argument. Most of those stats thrown out are ****. Take a raw novice high school kid and get him eating like a hog and squatting like a beast - that's basically Ripp's formula for adding 30-40lbs to a novice in 4-6 months without much bodyfat. Take a guy straight out of a concentration camp and start feeding him. He will gain muscle ultra fast just like a former lifter getting back in the gym after a layoff of a year or so. Take someone else and jack them full of anabolics, lots of fast muscle there too. All of that can happen at rates that far exceed those that are quoted all the time. I haven't read the studies that produce those statistics but I'd venture they aren't real impressive.

[Elijah_MB]

What have you been doing for those two years, Elijah? What are your squat, bench, and deadlift numbers?

o gosh,..this is gonna be embarrassing but oh well. I'm coming back from a torn tendon injury so my dead and squat #s fell about 40lbs.(I had to recover for 4 months w/ no deads or squats!)

bf injury...(weight x reps)
squat: 140x6
dead: 240x6
flat bench: 160x1

now...
squat: 120x6
dead: 220x5
bench: same as before, i haven't done flat BB bench in a while

[mjw8204]

o gosh,..this is gonna be embarrassing but oh well. I'm coming back from a torn tendon injury so my dead and squat #s fell about 40lbs.(I had to recover for 4 months w/ no deads or squats!)

bf injury...(weight x reps)
squat: 140x6
dead: 240x6
flat bench: 160x1

now...
squat: 120x6
dead: 220x5
bench: same as before, i haven't done flat BB bench in a while

Your lifts are at a novice/beginner's level. I'd recommend following Madcow's advice and starting off with Mark Rippetoe's "Starting Strength" program. If you play it right, you should be able to progress on it for quite some time. There are some great journals in the workout programs section by people following that same program. Check them out. Give mine a look, too.

[Elijah_MB]

Your lifts are at a novice/beginner's level. I'd recommend following Madcow's advice and starting off with Mark Rippetoe's "Starting Strength" program. If you play it right, you should be able to progress on it for quite some time. There are some great journals in the workout programs section by people following that same program. Check them out. Give mine a look, too.

thanx, I will mjw