Fat loss and muscle gain - my training - advice

[weedweaver]

Hi im 23, 5,8 weght 11.4 and have a body fat % of around 14-15%. Im in need of some training advice. My goal is essentially to lose body fat and gain lean muscle. I train 3 times a week and start off doing 40min of medium intensity on the cross trainer (i keep my heart rate between 140-160) and burn around 500 calories. I am thinking of starting a new training regime. At present i work different muscle groups on different days of the week (pyramid scheme using dumbels).

Tues : 40min fat burn, Bicep and tricep on the free weights (dumbels) using the pyramid scheme (usually curl 12.5k (10reps) 15k (8 reps) and 17.5k (6 reps))

Thurs : 40 min fat burn, Abs (3 sets of 30,25,20 with a 5 kilo weight on stomach crunch) Thighs 3 sets (10,8,6) using 70,75,80kilos and calfs (10,8,6)

Sun : 40min fat burn, Abs (as above) Chest (10,8,6) (15k,17.5k,20k) and shoulders (10,8,6) (10,12.5,15)

I am thinking of changing the scheme to start off on the highest weight and doing as many reps until i fail (chest,bicep,tricep,shoulders) then change to the lower weight and repeat etc. Will this offer me any more advantages to what I am currently doing now? Can my excercise regime be improved (im sure it can)?

Also would i benefit from creatine? I take whey protein isolate 3 times a day (30gram serving) and eat a low carb diet eating around 120-150grams of protein a day and approx 1000-1500calories a day.

Sorry for all the detail guys but thought i would get everything in there so i can get advice on what areas need improving. Cheers for any help guys.

[TheGreatGatsby]

Hi WW welcome to MP! Firstly I would move your cardio to after your muscle workout as your glycogen stores will already be depleted after the workout and so the cardio will burn more fat. Do you do cardio exercise on the days in between you weights? You may find that you could split your cardio so do a weights day with 20 mins cardio at 40%MHR and then the following day do 20-30mins HIT cardio with no weights. and repeat the cycle and have one complete rest day?

With regard to your pyramid sets I would stay with increasing the weight as you lower the reps and every time you reach the rep range with the set weight increase the weight and keep doing this. Doing them to failure is not always great as it implies muscle damage - tearing - but the reps should defitintly make it harder for you to lift. Remember if your form is compromised then stop as thats when injuries occur.

I can't really comment on creatine as I don't use it - from what I've heard it a bulking powder. With regard to you cals they seem VERY low for what you're doing and you may want to increase that. 1500 cals a day when not training is in deficit of what you need. Sure you'll loose weight but there's not the other goodness your body needs to grow lean muscle as its essentially becoming maintainance for your body so you won't grow. Have you posted your diet up? The protein intake seems fine but you may want to increase you fat and carbs in order to grow lean muscle - this doesn't mean you will gain fat essentially, its just food for your body.

Hope that helps some (guys is that advice OK?)

Gats

[Duncan]

Do cardio after resistance training. Not only will this help recovery, but it's the best way to lose fat. I'd stay away from isolations and do compound lifts because really the resistance training should accompany cardio whilst attempting to lose bodyfat. Realistically, you'll make better gains if you look at losing fat and building muscle as two separate objectives andwork towards them at different times, i.e. go on a cut (lots of cardio and some resistance training) then a bulk (loads of weights with a bit of cardio).

[Ollie]

Weedweaver..firstly, welcome!

Please don't take offence to anything in here...it's all good advice to help you out! I've spent 10 minutes doing it during a boring part of the day so don't get wound up!!

Frankly your diet and training are both awful at the moment

You need to decided whether you want to build muscle or lose fat first, because you can't do both at the same time.

Calorie deficit = fat loss/some muscle loss
Calorie surplus = muscle gain/some fat gain

You can minimise the undesirable effects by eating properly and training properly, neither of which you're doing at the moment!

1500 kCals is roughly what a grasshopper burns every time you push it's back legs! I'm kidding obviously, but if you've just started training it's invariably the case that you'll need to build some muscle first. If I was you I'd up your calorie intake to 3000 kCals on training days and 2500 kCals on non-training days, split into AT LEAST 5 meals per day (including post workout). Because you're new to training you should find that you gain some strength/muscle on that sort of intake.

There's absoutely no point in you taking creatine unless you're committed to building muscle. You can't build muscle unless you're on a surplus calorie intake, so that's the first thing you need to sort. Don't bother with whey isolate. It's really only for pro competitive bodybuilders and even then they'd be hard pushed to tell the difference over whey concentrate. Just get some WPC 80. After you've worked out you'll need some carbs as well. A lot of people advocate a mix of dextrose and maltodextrin. Personally I just stick to malto and that works for me.

Don't bother with 3 whey shakes a day either. Solid food is much better when you don't need instant protein synthesis (i.e. post workout). There's plenty written about the thermic effect of food so run a search on here or on Google.

Your training at the moment is TERRIBLE frankly! Everyone on here will want to help and tell you the same thing.

You need to concentrate on compound exercises, and lifting heavy. That's likely to mean either a push/pull/legs split or a upper/lower off upper/lower off off split, depending on whether you want to workout on 3 or 4 days per week.

As others have suggested, keep your cardio to postworkout and drop the intensity if you want to burn fat. 150-160 bpm is far too high. Aim for about 130 bpm and go for 25 minutes...no more.

Take that on board and post up your revised routine, and then we can offer more critique to fine tune it

Hope that helps mate

[weedweaver]

Hey guys thanks for all the advice. Will take it on board. What is the usual case, do people usually bulk up and then do fat loss? or fat loss first then bulk up?
Ollie : Thanks for the good advice, could you clarify what ypu mean by "You need to concentrate on compound exercises, and lifting heavy. That's likely to mean either a push/pull/legs split or a upper/lower off upper/lower off off split, depending on whether you want to workout on 3 or 4 days per week." what are compound exercises.
Wow 3000 Kals! thats a lot of food! lol, will never go hungry. What kind of food should i eat to get that much calories? Obviuosly i need to limit the amount of calories from fat, shall i eat mainly protein based food like lots of chicken and fish and complex carbs?
I think im a little confused as to what i want to achieve, i want to lose body fat, gain muscle and get fit (cardio) but i guess i need to concentrate on each one seperatly?
Cheers guys.

[weedweaver]

Should i use Malto on non-training days for extra calories, cos in two servings thats nearly a 1000 calories or should i keep it to mainly training days?

[hailtotheking]

Quote

Hey guys thanks for all the advice. Will take it on board. What is the usual case, do people usually bulk up and then do fat loss? or fat loss first then bulk up?
Ollie : Thanks for the good advice, could you clarify what ypu mean by "You need to concentrate on compound exercises, and lifting heavy. That's likely to mean either a push/pull/legs split or a upper/lower off upper/lower off off split, depending on whether you want to workout on 3 or 4 days per week." what are compound exercises.
Wow 3000 Kals! thats a lot of food! lol, will never go hungry. What kind of food should i eat to get that much calories? Obviuosly i need to limit the amount of calories from fat, shall i eat mainly protein based food like lots of chicken and fish and complex carbs?
I think im a little confused as to what i want to achieve, i want to lose body fat, gain muscle and get fit (cardio) but i guess i need to concentrate on each one seperatly?
Cheers guys.

Make sure before you do heavy compound exercises you learn how to do them properly with a light weight first. Im fast begining to understand that the good ol' "go heavy with the compounds for max gains" is great in theory, but most beginners dont know what the hell they are doing when they try and squat, bench, deadlift, etc. and are putting themselves at risk of injury. Learn it as perfect as poss. first, THEN add more weight.

[Ollie]

Quote

Hey guys thanks for all the advice. Will take it on board. What is the usual case, do people usually bulk up and then do fat loss? or fat loss first then bulk up?
Ollie : Thanks for the good advice, could you clarify what ypu mean by "You need to concentrate on compound exercises, and lifting heavy. That's likely to mean either a push/pull/legs split or a upper/lower off upper/lower off off split, depending on whether you want to workout on 3 or 4 days per week." what are compound exercises.
Wow 3000 Kals! thats a lot of food! lol, will never go hungry. What kind of food should i eat to get that much calories? Obviuosly i need to limit the amount of calories from fat, shall i eat mainly protein based food like lots of chicken and fish and complex carbs?
I think im a little confused as to what i want to achieve, i want to lose body fat, gain muscle and get fit (cardio) but i guess i need to concentrate on each one seperatly?
Cheers guys.

Hello mate...

Compound exercises are basically exercises that involve groups of muscles, rather than muscles in isolation. For example, squatting involves the hamstrings, quadriceps and gluteals, whereas an isolation exercise like a bicep curl will exclusively hit the biceps.

A push/pull/legs split is one where you train with 'push' exercises on one day, 'pull' exercises on another day and legs exercises on the third day (e.g. Monday - push, Wednesday - pull, Friday - legs). That will be plenty of volume as a beginner. Concentrate on your form and you'll make massive gains on a programme like this provided your diet's right.

For example, Monday might include:

Flat bench
Incline dumbbell press
Military press or DB shoulder press
Narrow grip bench press or dips

Wednesday:

Deadlifts (IMO the most important single exercise)
Wide grip overhand chin ups
Bent over row
DB curls

Friday:

Squats
Stiff leg deadlifts
Calf raise


HTK has a good point in that form is crucial with compound exercises. You're likely to use groups you haven't used before, especially in stabilising the bar / yourself, so you'll probably need to start light. Lifting heavy is exactly what it says. If you want to build muscle, you need to lift heavy. That means going to within 1-2 reps of failure in every set, and completing 4-10 reps per set.

Eating too little was the major mistake I made when I first started lifting (I wasn't taking it very seriously at all at the time). You'll NEED to bulk before you concentrate on fat loss, because without any muscle there'll be nothing to cut back to.

Also, you don't want to 'restrict' your fat intake. This is such a massive misconception in the dieting world. Fats make up part of EVERY cell in the body, can raise protective HDL cholestrol levels (monounsaturated), lower total cholestrol levels (polyunsaturated)

Fats make up the membranes of ALL body cells. A lot of vitamins are fat soluble so fat is crucial for their absorption.

Even some saturated fat is important. I know there are some people on here (e.g. Terminator) that advocate saturated fat as a means of increasing testosterone levels, which itself will help you build muscle.

I'd suggest you aim for about 180 g protein a day, 70 g fat a day (15-20 g from saturated fat), with the remainder of the 3,000 calories you should start on as base coming from carbohydrates.

Have a look here for suggestions on the sorts of foods you should be eating:
http://forum.myprotein.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1725. It's far from a comprehensive list but it's a good start.

Have a think about it and post up your diet and routine.

Just a thought.... maltodextrin contains about 4 kCal per gram, so for you to be getting 1000 kCals per 2 servings, you'd need to be consuming 125 g in a single serving! You only need it post workout as it's very quickly absorbed. Aim for about 1.2 g / kg of bodyweight.

[Duncan]

Only use maltodextrin post workout! Any other time and you'll just get fat. Oats are great for throughout the day, though- nhothing better in terms of low GI carbs.

[weedweaver]

Hey thanks for all the advice. With regards to the training I have been doing, I have always, as you suggested, lifted to within 1-2 reps of failure and as that has become easier over the weeks I have increased the weight to keep challenging the muscles. Just to clarify, the weights I were lifting were dumbells so when i said I was curling 15kilos it was 2*15kilos (i.e. 30kilos), it probably doesnt seem much but as I am new new to weight training I do struggle within the last 1-2 reps of the bicep curl using these weights for example. I try to aim to leave the gym aching as i know then I've had a good workout :-) I did notcie quite a bit of gain withing the first month or two, i managed to put on half a stone in weight AND redcue my body fat levels. But as im starting to get more seious into it I believe I need to optimise my trainign for best results which is why I have come here, and thanks again for all the advice. I need to revise my diet and training for the bets results using the infirmation you have provided me with. I will put a diet and training plan in place and post it soon to see if its OK. Cheers guys.