Take it slow man! When you do 7 sets of a lift (we'll use deadlifts) it's more like 3-4 warm up sets in the 10 - 6 range (incrementally going down in reps, up in weight), then 2-3 sets at 5 reps, then some 3 reps, then some 1-2 rep sets, then some cool down sets. A lot of it is based on how you feel (which is a learned skill) and it's more like 12-14 sets really, but the real work is mostly in the 7 sets you do with heavy weight. That's also very specific training for a lift and it takes a little time to work up to. You're probably better off rotating between 5x5 and 3x3 for a bit.
Ahh right ok. I'll keep that in mind. Im not training for anything other than self confidence really. I'm not Going to be entering any competitions (martial arts, body building or otherwise) so I can take my time. I'm just eager to get training!
That's a decent enough mindset to have. I never really trained to compete in anything when I weight lifted, I just did it for the enjoyment. One thing you should focus on to build strength are the compound lifts. Deadlift, squat, bench press, military press, dips, pull ups, and rows. Compound lifts are the lifts that involve many muscle groups working together, and the ones I mentioned are the big ones for general strength training. They will also grow the most muscle quickest. You should also keep up with doing the planks, but you should evolve how you do them to get stronger. (website is not posted because website is a great source of fitness information. I can't vouch for site because I'm not familiar with it, I'm just using it because it has the variations readily available) http://www.fitbodyhq.com/strength-training/13-awesome-plank-variations/ Overall you shouldn't focus much on single body part lifts, like curls or hamstring curls on a machine. Doing the compound lifts involve the muscles you would work individually, and they'll get stronger as you progress. For example, when I was deadlifting 500+ for reps I still looked like I had T-Rex arms, but I could hammer curl 60lbs for sets of 5-6 without ever really implementing curls into my routine. If you do want incorporate single body part lifts (which you may need to do if you find that body part is a weak link during the compound lifts) do the lift in a way you're working that body part with both limbs together. Do barbell/EZbar curls for biceps, or straight leg deadlifts/good mornings for hamstring work. This will allow you to use more weight and it helps the muscles adjust to handle heavier weight quicker than using dumbbells or machines. Your workouts should also last an intense 45-50 minutes, and not a couple hours. There is an exception to this if you're working on technique for a single lift, or focusing heavily on a single lift. In the 7 sets of deadlift example I posted above, that alone used to take me an hour. After that I had other stuff I wanted to do, so those workouts tended to take 90 minutes but only happened 1-2 times a week. As far as eating goes, just make sure you're scarfing down protein and you'll be good. Be sure to ask questions as you go along though, or maybe join a health/fitness forum like bodybuilding.com where there are numerous trainers and experienced lifters. Working out is about 10% of the effort in reaching your goals, being knowledgable on how to go about them is the real struggle.
Gotcha. Sure thing. I'm impressed with how far I've come so far. I'm naturally very weak - when I started training, I struggled to bench the bare Olympic bar for 10 reps! I can 5 sets of 10 over hand pull ups now at bodyweight, the 6th set gets me to about 4 reps before I conk out. I do find myself spending hours in the gym, though. Will cut it down now, focus more on the bigger movements. Thanks alot for all your help.
Creatine? The powder of the devil? Hear my warning people! It will mess your lives, destroy your friendships and give you creatine farts to remember Images removed
I'll message you. OP creatine is not a magical supplement, it's 6 quid a kilo, take a teaspoon a day or don't but stop putting so much thought into it and start squatting, pressing, deadlifting and rowing with all the extra energy you have.
To Ero-Sennin and pseudo (of course, this is not an offense), I've seen A LOT of guys in high school, university and in my life generally that have a REALLY nice body, most of them with an 1RM of 90-110 kg at the bench press and without doing squats or deadlifts at all. Now, I don't agree at all with this, strength is the base for pretty much everything in my opinion, either performance or appearance, BUT (this goes to OP mostly) it shouldn't be your ONE AND ONLY goal if you want to look ripped. What I mean by this is, go for strength like the other guys said, strive to improve your basic lifts and your compound movements whenever possible, but don't get too obsessed with this. What really matters about appearance is nutrition, nutrition is a huge percentage of your appearance. Search in google about the term "bodybuilding illusion", it's something all of us encounter everyday. There is this guy in the gym with a big sculpted chest, you see him going to the bench, he lifts 70 x 10, not that much. Then, you see a guy who looks big, but has nothing worth mentioning. He goes there and lifts 100 x 10. Who has the bigger chest? Of course, the second guy, but accumulated bodyfat in this area makes his chest look much more "round", he doesn't have the athletic lean look by any means. Therefore, visually, the first guy, even much weaker, looks bigger (at least in terms of chest development for this example). So, set your goal, either fat loss or size, have a caloric deficit or a caloric surplus accordingly, always keep the basic compound lifts in your workout routine, always strive to improve those lifts regardless of goal and be patient. Stay focused to your goal! As far as supplements go, pretty much everything does nothing significant, they might give a minor boost but they're nothing compared to your nutrition. As far as I know and from what I've tried, whey protein is the only supplement that works in the long term, but you need it if you can't get enough protein from your normal whole foods, otherwise there is no point. I made "in the long term" bold because most people (myself included), when trying supplements for the first time, think that 2 scoops of whey per day for 2 weeks will make them ripped and big like the guys who advertise them. To close up, looking at your body stats, you must have a lot of weight to lose (I'm not trying to discourage you) so you should focus in losing fat right now, in my opinion of course. Martin Berkhan of leangains.com, a much respected in the natural fitness industry guy about his research, has made the calculation that most guys, at a ripped and really lean stage and with the maximum muscle mass they can obtain NATURALLY, will have a weight of = Height in Cm - 100. Then, for you this is: 164 - 100 = 64 kg. This shows that you have at least 20 kg to lose to look REALLY lean, and this if you have already reached the maximum muscular potential of your body, something impossible. As a conclusion, If I were you I would focus on the big lifts, really care about my nutrition, have a caloric deficit and try to fall at 75, maybe 70 kg. You will look a lot better at those kg's in my opinion. Just my 2 cents
Those guys have a "REALLY nice body" because they have a low body fat percentage, not because they have big muscles. You will grow while getting stronger, but you'll only grow so much. There is a difference in lifting for hypertrophy and lifting for strength. One involves training the nervous system (which muscle grows to adapt to the gains of the nervous system) and the other involves growing the muscles cells. Those are really weak 1RMs, about what your average gym goer things is "strong." Based on my experiences and having met some pretty ridiculously strong people, I tend to see things in another light. Hell, look at Sokklab's videos of him in his log. He's putting up some big numbers, he hardly looks like the hulk though (but he is big ). This is the difference between working out for strength and working out for muscle growth. The guy in the first photo can lift FAR MORE than the second photo, but clearly does not have the same muscle growth as the second. Body builders are still extremely strong though, don't get me wrong. In order to get as big as they are (along with steroids) they have to be able to lift heavy amounts of weight, which ties in with my earlier point: You need a base of strength to grow any kind of decent muscle.
I know they have a lean and more aesthetic (for most people and of course, women) body because of low bodyfat percentage, that's what I said in the paragraph about the "bodybuilding illusion" too as you can see. I agree, you DO need a base of strength to grow any kind of decent muscle, you don't need to have the lifts of a strongman or a powerlifter to reach that base though like so many preach. For example, the OP does 110 x 8 at Squats, with an 1RM calculator (not extremely accurate, I know) his 1RM is is roughly 140 kg and he weighs 85 kg. 140 / 85 = 1.64xBW, not that bad in my opinion. I know, you will now say that every guy can reach 2xBW at Squats pretty easily and I agree, but really, the OP said that he lifts for self-confidence and to look big n' ripped. What I'm trying to say is, if one lifts to look better (therefore he is a "bodybuilder") he should care about his lifts, but MUCH LESS than how he looks. If I deadlift 100 kg, squat 80 kg and bench 60 kg and have a really better appearance than a guy who deadlifts 150, squats 120 and benches 90 and has a bodyfat percentage close to 20%, then I really don't care at all, I'm the winner here. All this of course, if my goal and his is appearance. (I'm talking about the present moment, I know that if he cuts, there is a big chance he will look better than me.)
Wow, I've not checked this forum for a few days and suddenly loads of replies - thanks so much for your help everyone. If I'm going to get bigger while on creatine - I may aswell finish this cycle I'm on (I've only a few weeks left now) then work on dropping weight like there's no tomorrow. 75kg we say? I've not been that weight since I was 14! I know a guy who's the same height as me who's a semi-pro mma fighter and he weighs 63kg. I don't know where 20kg can drop from my body? I've not got so much of an overhang so surely my gut can't weigh that much!? When I drop the fat, will I still be able to lift as much as I can now?
You lose what you do not persist training. The loss in your case would be minimal though, since the weight you're pushing currently isn't a lot. It works the same as anything else. For example if you work on sprinting and get good at it, you're going to lose the ability to sprint as fast when you if you shift to training to swim, and then you'll lose some swimming ability when you start focusing on your sprinting again. Same thing works in the weight room. If you train to get strong, you'll get strong. When you shift into another method of training you won't keep the same amount of strength, but you'll get good at whatever else you are training in. Unless you're making a shift from a strength athlete to an endurance athlete, the decline in ability isn't going to be extremely drastic. It's not something to really concern yourself with until you're in the upper tier honestly, or you're competing in events where strength is absolutely necessary (like strongman).
I don't even know what to say to some of this stuff. Creatine = heavier training load = moar weight lifted = greater training stimulus Greater stimulus is needed to maintain muscle mass and in general hypertrophy. The lean gains natty equation you've posted is a super simple version of genetic limit formulas. Calories in vs calories out matters, protein intake matters, training stimulus (volume and loading) matters.
The numbers I put up earlier are nowhere near strongman levels. I also wasn't "the huge" when I was doing those numbers either. I was 240lbs sure, but I could have easily been 195lbs lean. If you want decent muscle growth gains, you need to be near those numbers as far as bodyweight ratio to lift weight goes. I think what I might define as decent growth gains and decent strength gains may differ between your opinion and my own. For example, the numbers I posted were a little over 2xBW for deadlifts, but I regard that as "starting to get strong" and not "strong." Most people are happy with what I would consider minimal gains, and I think that's due to a lack of understanding of what they are capable of honestly. Sure you get your socially indoctrinated, "eww that's nasty to have muscle" people too, but those people are hardly worth listening to if you ask me!
The emphasis people put on creatine is interesting. Creatine is used to produce energy during the first 5-10 seconds of movement (we'll say "lift") and depletes extremely quickly from energy stores. This happens regardless of creatine supplementation, because your body makes the stuff and gets it from food. After that you move into your glucose stores which will provide energy for about 1 min. max. The lactic acid that is produced from turning glucose into energy is what forms "the burns" which is literally raising the acidity level in the muscle, which is why you cannot perform intense exercise (specifically weight lifting) at high intensity (effort only possibly maintained for 1 min. time) for long. Creatine supplements increase the availability of creatine in your system, which means your body can replenish the stores quicker during a workout. This means you can do that first hard set of x3 two or three more times. This increases your work volume at a heavier weight, which in time (significant time) can give you greater strength gains due to the extra volume of work you can perform. It's really as simple as that. It's a minor edge. It's a minor edge because note that glucose provides up to 1 min. of energy for intense exercise, and good ol' oxygen from breathing provides low intensity energy for the forevers'. If you're good at extrapolating information, you would realize that a good diet and breathing are your best options for success here.
Anecdotally - All the natural bodybuilders I've met and trained with compete in both powerlifting and bodybuilding. They stress the importance of heavy lifting whether bulking or cutting (they stay under 12-15% body fat during the entire time) and that volume is important when bulking but not so much with cutting. Again they say - calories in vs out and protein intake will sort you out on the nutrition front.
@Ero - agreed but it's depends how people train e'g. Multiple singles, high rep sets or slow eccentrics. It's a big advantage in power and sprint sport especially multiple sprint sports (this is where most research is)
Steroids always sound like such an easier option you know . . . . (Not really though, because the steroid guys do the exact same thing as the natural guys do)
Oh of course. None of it is nearly as simple as I just made it out to be. The ratio of each energy system changes with what type of training and shape you're in, what your nutrition and training tempo is, etc.. Same thing goes for the abilities of the muscle fibers, your fast twitch/slow twitch ratios, blah blah blah.
