working hard - no results..HELP!

surfin

Hi All,

I hope you dont mind me posting here and asking for your help. I have been reading through the fitness posts for a while now and most of you know a great deal about fitness and nutrition.

I just want a lil advice about where im going wrong / right and how i can improve things.

Basically I have started training a good bit since Dec 28, 05. i decided i want to get back to dancing competitively. So i rejoined the gym and dance classes (irish).

I want to loose the excess weight / body fat in order to be a good athlete. I have done a fitness test at the gym and have been given a new programme (i sometimes things those programmes are very generic and they just give everyone the same one to keep them happy!)

Programme is: Day one:

5 min warm up on bike. run 3k as fast as possible on threadmill (currently doing this in 18 mins) then 10 mins on cross trainer. then 15 reps of each weight machine (dunno names of all) i just do two circuts of about 10 diff machines working arms and legs. then 10 mins Abs. then strech out.

Day two:
5 min warm up on bike. Sprint for .5 km then two min jog five reps. crosstrainer for 10 mins. then deadlift, squats, calf raises and lunges. 10 mins Abs & strechout.

I do these programmes everyother day for four or five days if i have dancing that day then i dont go to the gym. so basically im doing something 7 days a week.

Food wise:
Brekie: either porriage, museli, or two slices of brown bread and tea.

11am: 1 orange or an apple.

1pm (this is bad i kno) pannini, sandwich or if i am good ryvita and salad. depends where i am and who im with (eat out a good bit for lunch due to work)

5pm. apple or piece of fruit

Gym

6.30 / 7pm dinner: peice of meat , chicken, steak, pork and veg, no potatoes or pasta. im trying not to eat the carbs in the evening.

8pm: cup of tea.

thing is, i havent lost weight which i really want to i want to loose about a stone. I have it to loose. I'm 10.5 stone. and im 5ft 6.

Its not shifting even now after i full month working out, any suggestions aparty from cutting the crap at lunchtimes. also i dont want my gym workout to be too long as in over 1 hour and 30 mins i can commit that amount of time.

Thanks.
Apologies for the long post just wanted to give a clearer pic.

Mr E

Hi Surfin,

If you are trying to lose weight:

1. Exercise in the morning on an empty stomach. The only thing you'll be burnin' is fat!

2. Make sure you are drinking plenty of water daily (at least 2 litres).

- Dave.

t-ha

Running in the morning on an empty stomach feels horrible and is an inefficient (in terms of time) way to lose fat. I've made a post on this recently on another board so forgive me if I just link it;
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=901682&pageNo=0#905403
I'm not saying it doesn't work - just that there's better ways.

Drinking the water is a great idea though.

To be honest, I don't think you're eating enough - it might be a good idea for you to try and log your food (kcals/protein/carbs/fats) for a month. Eating too little doesn't equal fat loss if it causes your metabolism to slow down and makes you expend less energy in the day. Along with some changes to your workout I'm about to suggest I would recommend these changes to your diet;

Breakfast] Looks good but throw in some protein, 2 eggs for example. Have some fruit too, grapefruit is a good choice as it keeps the insulin steady.

11]The apple's good but I'ld have something more substantial here to go with it. E.g. Half a tuna & sweetcorn sandwich (make it yourself and go easy on the mayo - the ones you buy are not made up with leanness in mind). If you have a habit of eating big at lunch it's probably 'cos you're too hungry. This more substantial snack at 11 should help that.

Lunch]Doesn't look that bad, but again you're alot better off if you make your own sandwiches as you can put in alot of some things (eg. chicken & lettuce & tomato) and less of others (cheese & mayo). You could also eat the other half of that tuna sandwich with a salad. Again, keeping the food log will help you to see what is ok in a salad that you can have alot of, and which bits to be more conservative with.

3.30/4.00]You should be hungry by now if you ain't stuffed yourself at lunch - something like a handful of nuts (no jokes please ), and I guess a small fruit portion although I tend to keep them to my first three meals (15g of sugar in a typical apple...).

If you're hungry or not feeling energetic on the way to the gym/dance then have a rice-cake or two with honey on it (or whatever, basically you should be energetic during your workouts).

Dinner] If you're having this after gym (and you've genuinely worked out with intensity) then you should really be looking for protein and carbs afterwards, even if it's the evening (although you definitely have the right idea about a carb cut-off if there isn't a gym session in the evening to complicate matters).

8] If you're having sugar or milk in your tea then I'ld personally switch to green tea - it's good for you, and any drink containing calories just makes it more difficult to work out your daily intakes. If you're having biscuits with your tea then I strongly suggest you have a look at the nutritional values of a chocolate digestive
Again, I'ld be looking to pack away some protein here for the night ahead, a serving of cottage cheese is perfect.

You may notice I'm telling you to up your caloric intake, if you have trouible increasing it this much then take it slowly and increase it week on week until it gets to something like what I have posted. The idea is that you will feel more energetic and burn more calories in the day, we're also going to try and bring up your lean body mass a little and safegaurd it with a decent and regular protein intake. I'ld also suggest (as always) that you supplement on fish oil and multi-vits.

Your workout;
Looks terrible, classic gym instructors garbage, designed not to scare off girls who are afraid they will become huge bulky mass monsters, but unfortunately also ineffective.

Firstly, in general, machines suck monkeys. Secondly, weights first - cardio second (or in a different session or day). Thirdly, putting squats,deads & lunges all together on the same day - after cardio - is an insult to each of those fine exercises.

New plan;
Day 1:
Warm-up on bike until warm (2mins, 5mins?? depends on the day)
Deadlift, warm up sets, then 4 sets of 6 reps. Select weight so you can do the required number with good form, but you wouldn't be able to do more (fairly heavy).
Pull-ups (or assisted pull-ups), 2 sets of 12
...super-setted with...
Chest-dips (or assisted dips), 2 sets of 12
Treadmill; run fast (9/10 km/hr?), up an incline (5 deg?) - that'll wear you down faster and the incline saves your knees and makes the running mechanics closer to road running. Those numbers don'r really matter - the point is do whatever will wreck you in ten minutes.
Cool down and stretch.
Total time in gym: under 1 hour.

Day 2;
Warm-up on bike until warm (2mins, 5mins?? depends on the day)
Squat, warm up sets, then 4 sets of 6 reps. Select weight so you can do the required number with good form, but you wouldn't be able to do more (fairly heavy).
Rotor cuff warm-up: something light x 20 (each shoulder)
Clean & Jerk, warm-up lifts, 25 good lifts
Cross-trainer; jog 2mins, sprint (I mean really sprint all out) 20s, jog 30s, sprint 20s, jog 30s, etc. (6-8 sprints), jog 2 mins.
Stretch
Crawl out of gym less than 1 hour after bouncing into it.

Day 3;
Warm-up on bike until warm (2mins, 5mins?? depends how you feel on the day)
Rotor cuff warm-up: something light x 20 (each shoulder)
Bench, warm-ups, 4 x 6
Lunges, warm-ups, 3 x 8
...super-setted with...
Calf raises 3 x 8
ERG (rowing machine) 30 mins at some respectable pace (e.g. 210min/500m at stroke rate of not more than 24).
Stretch & leave.

That's just an example off the top of my head but each of those should be well under an hour. The lifts are reasonably heavy which suits muscle maintenance on a hypocaloric diet. You will also develop alot of muscle in your legs and core (and everywhere basically) that, far from making you big & bulky will shape up everything far more effectively than doing tonnes of machine isolation exercises or infinite sit-ups and leg raises (and those stupid inny outty thigh thingys). Your muscle (lean body mass) is what drives your metabolism, with this workout and the dietary changes mentioned above you should be able to safeguaurd/build up your muscles and maintain/improve your metabolism as you lose fat.

Apologies for my long post but, also wanted to give a clearer pic

surfin

Hi TmB and t-ha,

Thank you both for your replies!
t-ha, im currently printing off that post, it's like you're new personal trainer!!!
Some really great stuff in there to educate me, I really like the work outs had a feeling my programme was pretty rubish considering the 70 yr old granny beside me on the threadmill last week was doing the same thing!

I'll post up some results for you in a few weeks hopefully things will have improved.

I also thing keeping a log of my food intake is a good idea so i took someone elses advice and started a journal on fitday.com this should give a clearer indication on where its all going.

I'm off to research how to do some of those weight techniques now.

Thanks.

t-ha

Mistress Krista has alot of good stuff on exercise technique;
http://www.stumptuous.com/

kenny11

Hi,


Are you saying so is that apples are heavy in sugar so that if yiu are looking to loose a little fat around the stomach as I am then you should ease off the apples, i am currently eating 2 a day along with 1 pound of grapes and an orange?

t-ha

Well I didn't mean to pick on apples particularly, but fruit in general, must be accounted for in a well layed out nutritional plan - unlike vegetables which you can basically eat as much of as you want. I also tend to eat them in the AM when I know I'll use up the energy - or in the early PM if I feel I need the boost.

In your case your two apples will be dwarfed by the roughly 300 kcal (at least) that your taking in daily from grapes (about 73g of sugar). Added to the apples and the orange you're looking at over 500kcal a day from fruit, and about 114g of sugar. I'm taking these values based on typical values of medium sized fruits from: http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/browse/0900.html
by the way.

There's nothing really wrong with that if it fits in with your total daily carb and calorie intake, but I think I've just shown that fruit definitely isn't 'free' food that you can just throw into a diet without any consequences. Fruit has many other benefits apart from it's basic calorific value and sugar content and should be part of any healthy diet - I would typically have 3 or 4 portions a day, for example - so I hope nobody ditches all fruit eating based on anything I post but if you're not losing the fat then re-evaluate your diet (I'ld cut down on the grapes first ).

t-ha

surfin wrote:

I'm off to research how to do some of those weight techniques now.

By the by, if you have any trouble with any of these techniques, there's no harm in using lighter weights and higher reps for a couple of sessions both to learn the exercise and to strengthen up the stabilizing muscles needed to do them. When I first went from smith machines to ATG squats I initially had to accept a weight drop of 410lbs - now that smarts the ego .

r3nu4l

Orignally posted by t-ha. Breakfast Looks good but throw in some protein, 2 eggs for example. Have some fruit too, grapefruit is a good choice as it keeps the insulin steady.

Very good advice but if you don't fancy eggs in your porridge try some chopped walnuts and sunflower seeds. The Walnuts will add protein and also some fat! That's important because a little fat in the morning will help stave off the cravings for a bag of crisps or a biscuit later.
I only started with the sunflower seeds recently because they are good for you, I thought I wouldn't like them but now I'm throwing them into my stir-fry veg and soups and everything. You'll hardly notice them.

If you can't stand the thought of squeezing grapefruit in the morning then buy some pure squeezed (not from concentrate) pink grapefruit juice (Pink grapefruits are better for you than regular grapefruit) but do go easy on it because all fruits and fruit juices naturally contain lots of sugar! Everything in moderation! Swapping fruit juice for Coca-cola and still drinking the same quantities is only marginally better than sticking with the Coca-cola

Seraphina

t-ha wrote:

Firstly, in general, machines suck monkeys. Secondly, weights first - cardio second (or in a different session or day)

how much of a difference does this make??
i do my cardio fist, just out of habit because im warm etc.
dont want to make more than 3 trips a week to the gym (got finals coming up) so should i do the weights first then?

r3nu4l

Seraphina wrote:

how much of a difference does this make??
i do my cardio fist, just out of habit because im warm etc.
dont want to make more than 3 trips a week to the gym (got finals coming up) so should i do the weights first then?[/QUOTE/

It is suggested that 3-4 times a week is the maximum you should do in a day-on-day-off format. The reason for this is that muscle fibre (and the entire body) needs time to rest.

Also, if you want to build muscle then do a lot more weight (free weights especially) and a lot less cardio, if you want, lean muscle with cardio fitness then by all means use the machines, circuit training is good for aiding cardio workouts.

The key is to decide exactly what you want to achieve, read reputable websites and magazines (not some side-of-page fitness article in Cosmo [girls] or Loaded [boys] and be careful of taking advice from people on forums. Check out the advice first before jumping straight in.

t-ha

r3nu4l wrote:

Also, if you want to build muscle then do a lot more weight (free weights especially) and a lot less cardio, if you want, lean muscle with cardio fitness then by all means use the machines, circuit training is good for aiding cardio workouts.

Not exactly sure what you mean here, using free weights doesn't automatically mean throwing 200kg on your back - your body can't tell the difference between the source of the resistance so I would still recommend free weights even for light circuits. I have hypermobile joints and am highly sensitive to the safety of a movement in terms of joint health, and I have frequently found machines to have unsatisfactory planes of motion. They also tend to have a far reduced crossover to real life strength than free weights as they don't involve the correct antagonisers or stabilizers for real life movements, and that's before getting into teaching the CNS crazy patterns of movement. Maybe real life strength is not a specific goal here, but while you're putting the work in you may as well take all the fringe benefits. For light weights, the problems with machines may not materialise, but I believe that time is a very good amplifier of exercise defects.

Seraphina wrote:

how much of a difference does this make??
i do my cardio fist, just out of habit because im warm etc.
dont want to make more than 3 trips a week to the gym (got finals coming up) so should i do the weights first then?

I would, when you do cardio you lower your blood sugar levels ('cos your burning up kcals) which can have a dramatic reducing effect on your strength. You may also quite possibly start catabolising your own muscles to meet your energy requirements (which is silly, breaking down muscle to lift weights). Although, again, you may not be lifting enough weight to make this a major issue, there is also greater risk of injury if you do strength training after effectively fatiguing yourself. Obviously get yourself fully warm before strength training and then go, like 5 mins of increasing effort on a rowing machine or whatever should do it. As for stretching, just get yourself up to your full range of motion before starting with light dynamic stretching - full out isometric stretches can weaken your joint tissues for some hours after performing them.

The three days per week is fine, and the cardio and weights on the same day is fine too, the lifting volume isn't that big anyway. The advice on doing strength training first and then cardio is to help you get the most out of the total training session for fat loss. The only other tip I'ld offer is that you should have energy while doing strength training & cardio. If after a bit of training I feel like a zombie kicking around going through the motions then I leave - have a look at my diet & sleep & training volume to see what went wrong and try again another day. You don't burn more fat just because you feel bad.

Anyway, lemme know how you're getting on - two weeks is a decent generic timeframe to assess a programme + good luck with the study.