advice to get re-focused (and some questions)

flogen

First up, my diet...

I usually have a bowl of porridge for breakfast with a (homemade) banana milkshake (low fat milk) to substitute my coffee. Lunch is usually a bowl of suit or a small brown-bread sandwich, or some boiled eggs. Dinner changes from day to day but I avoid fat where possible (gravy, mayonnaise etc.) and substitute wholemeal pasta/rice where necessary. If I do have a fourth meal it'll usually be one of the things I mentioned for lunch... I know people will advise having 5/6 meals a day but I just can't seem to do that myself.

Anyway - I started going to the gym 3 times a week about 2 months ago and was really seeing the difference - I lost about a stone in a month (now at around 13' 11", I'm around 6 ft 1 inches in height) and saw the weight coming off my chest, stomach (to a lesser extent) and saw my arms and shoulders/upper body start to tone up.

I got a new programme (which I felt had too much in it and would often skip some of the cardio in favour of weights) but this coincideded with plenty of excuses, like going away, birthdays etc., where I missed the gym and over indulged.

So while I haven't reversed my weight loss too much yet I feel like I'd prefer to focus on it while doing a small bit of weight training, and then switch focus once I had achieved my weight goal (which I hope won't take long with the right cardio).

I've heard of a good treadmill run which is supposed to boost metabolism, perhaps someone can back it up or rubbish it:

I start with a 10 minute warm up on the bike, do my stretches and then spend around 20 minutes on the treadmill - 1 minute and a half walking, then 1 1/2 jog, then 1 1/2 run/sprint... I alternate between jog and sprint for the remainder of the time, putting up the gradient towards the end and slowly lowering it until I'm finished.

I tried it once so far and put the gradient up too high, but otherwise I really felt it work (even though I wouldn't say I was sprinting during the faster moments - I would have collapsed if I had!).

After that I do some sit-ups etc. and some bicep and tricep weights and perhaps latts too...

I want to work on my chest too and would like some advice on this - I remember someone here saying you should only focus on your chest once a week?

I'm thinking of doing this 3 times a week for the next few weeks and see where I get - when I start to get some definition on my stomach I'll feel ready to move my focus towards weights (my stomach is probably the least toned thing on my body ATM).

I'll also do some swimming on my off-days where possible - but a question in relation to this... is it just good cardio or does it do much in terms of muscle or toning definition?

Sorry for the long post - just want to get back into the swing of things and not waste my time doing a little bit of everything too (because then the results are slower coming and I feel I'm more likely to get bored/disheartened and fed up with my super-long programme).

flogen

bump!

Sorry - just hoping to get some input on this!

wasabi

OK, first off diet is king for weight loss. You will not out-train a bad diet unless you are spending hours in the gym.

The diet and nutrition sticky basically tells all - you should be eating small frequent meals instead of 3 a day, which you know. Unless you are tiny you look to me like you're either undereating fairly drastically, or else you're having a massive dinner in the evening, which is a bit of a disaster as you're then more or less starving all day long and slowing your metabolism, then storing a load of fat in the evening.

All your meals should have protein, which your breakfast doesn't - add some eggs or similar perhaps. Lunch ditto if it's just soup. Also, where's your veggies? Don't fear fats either - nothing wrong with them IMO unless you are talking about processed muck full of trans fats. Avocadoes, olive oil, nuts etc are your friend.

Now training wise you are best to focus on resistance training not cardio. Resistance training over the medium to long term boosts your metabolism and will help you lose weight and maintain that loss. Cardio will work short term but once you stop that is it, and if you have not been lifting weights as you do it you have probably lost muscle - which is a disaster in terms of keeping the weight off.

You need to train your full body, not just bits and pieces - doing that you'll either not progress much or you'll end up fairly unbalances. Sounds like you have a full-body programme already? Ideally it should include plenty of lower body work (these are your largest muscles and working these gives you most bang for your buck).

Training your biceps and triceps when you are looking for overall fatloss is really not your best use of time - these muscles are small and won't make much difference to your overall physique now, also they will get plenty of work from any upper body stuff you do. Worry about them later once you have your basics sorted. As for training chest you can do it more than once a week, but it depends on how hard you are training it and how you recover, if you have a fairly standard gym program more than once a week is probably fine.

Do your programme about 3x per week. Do your cardio for about 20 minutes at a reasonable level of exertion after your weights and you'll see fat loss results - doing cardio after weights will help you burn a higher % of fat as your muscle glycogen will be depleted already.

If you feel up to it you can do interval-style training, such as you described below, for some of your post-weights cardio or in a separate session. Very effective for fat loss, but also quite tiring and depending on your fitness levels you might not be able to recover from that plus the weights sessions.

I'd consider swimming more cardio than anything else, but great exercise.

rubadub

As said do the weights before cardio. You have way more energy so can lift more reps and hence promote more muscle growth.

Forget the situps, do heavy squats, pullups, chinups, military press, deadlifts, bench pressing, upright rows. Your biceps will be worked enough on other exercises so there is no real need to do isolation bicep work, maybe one set if you still want.

Hanley

rubadub wrote:

there is no real need to do isolation bicep work, maybe one set if you still want.

I'm sorry but that is a complete and utter lie, and one which has only gained any credence in the era of the internet and keyboard warriors.

wasabi

Indeed - however the point at hand is that in this particular instance since time is an issue the OP would be far better served by focusing on the bigger compound stuff rather than just doing work for arms and chest and neglecting the rest. Do you not agree Hanley?

OP if you'd like to post your full programme we might be able to give you more feedback on it.

Hanley

wasabi wrote:

Indeed - however the point at hand is that in this particular instance since time is an issue the OP would be far better served by focusing on the bigger compound stuff rather than just doing work for arms and chest and neglecting the rest. Do you not agree Hanley?

That is not what I said. So let's not argue semantics.

If the OP's training 3x a week then there's absolutely no reason whatsoever that he couldn't do 2-3 sets of bicep exercises per week.

In fact recently, my arms have taken off by super setting 2 bicep and 2 tricep exercises once and week, and heavy barbell curls on another day.

flogen

Thanks for all the advice - am certainly going to make a few changes on the back of this (although quite frankly I'm a little iffy about bench pressing and squats because I don't know what I'm doing in that area at the moment!)

Here's the full programme I was given (in the order I tend to do it, which going by the advice so far is less advantagous in itself!)

Warm up - 10 mins on bike at level 10+ keeping above 70 (I think it's kmph)

stretches etc.

Crosstrainer - level 10, speed 120 for 15 mins (with the resistance changing throughout)

Rower - 2500m, aiming to finish in under 11 mins

Weights (all are 3 sets of 15 reps)

Chest Press - weights 20
Shoulder Press - 15
Upper Back - 20
Lat pulldown - 35
Bicep Curl - 15
Tricep pushdown - 15
leg press - 60

Finish off with 3 sets of 15 reps doing ab curl and oblique curl on bench.

Hanley

ARe you planning on doing that 3x a week?

flogen

Hanley wrote:

ARe you planning on doing that 3x a week?

Yeah - Monday, Wednesday, Friday (and will try and go swimming here and there too, but that'd be more irregular)

wasabi wrote:

All your meals should have protein, which your breakfast doesn't - add some eggs or similar perhaps. Lunch ditto if it's just soup. Also, where's your veggies? Don't fear fats either...

Just in relation to this too - a bowl of porridge, a banana shake and some eggs seems like a lot for one sitting, considering I should be having 5/6 a day... is this the level I should be going for per meal or should I drop something in favour of eggs?

In terms of veggies I'd have a couple of types with each dinner, and with soup or on a sandwhich outside of that.

wasabi

flogen wrote:

Just in relation to this too - a bowl of porridge, a banana shake and some eggs seems like a lot for one sitting, considering I should be having 5/6 a day... is this the level I should be going for per meal or should I drop something in favour of eggs?

Yeah, that'd be a big breakfast alright. You need to check the stickies and figure out your calorie needs really, and eat according to those.

However, you could throw some whey protein into either your porridge or the shake. In fact, ideally, you'd have one of those first thing and the the the other midmorning. You could fairly easily bring a shaker into work to make your whey shake and eat a banana with it. Just a thought.

rubadub

Hanley wrote:

If the OP's training 3x a week then there's absolutely no reason whatsoever that he couldn't do 2-3 sets of bicep exercises per week.

I agree, when I said he could maybe do 1 set, I did mean 1 on each day. The OP sounds similar enough to my goals, losing weight, rather than body building. As wasabi was saying time could be better spent on other exercises.

I know guys who only do bicep curls and military presses. I remember getting more weights for shrugs and a mate who did lift a bit was saying "why would you need more than 50kg, surely you cant lift more than that", because all he was thinking of was bicep curls.

Weights (all are 3 sets of 15 reps)

Chest Press - weights 20
Shoulder Press - 15
Upper Back - 20
Lat pulldown - 35
Bicep Curl - 15
Tricep pushdown - 15
leg press - 60

Finish off with 3 sets of 15 reps doing ab curl and oblique curl on bench

Replacing 2 of the bicep curl sets with 2 sets of squats is going to result in more fat loss. And bringing the rep range down to 8-12 will result in more muscle growth.

And do the weights first as mentioned.

nesf

wasabi wrote:

However, you could throw some whey protein into either your porridge or the shake. In fact, ideally, you'd have one of those first thing and the the the other midmorning. You could fairly easily bring a shaker into work to make your whey shake and eat a banana with it. Just a thought.

Hmmm, how does that whey in porridge thing work (ratio-wise), does it make it far heavier, as in would you aim to eat a smaller bowl etc? I'm try to think of a way to get more protein into my diet in general. Would whey powder be a viable way to do this?

g'em

whey is YUMMY with porridge I usually have a yoghurt mixed with my porridge and whey and it's hot oaty goodness first thing in the morning.

I'm writing up the answers to your Q's now so I'll stick more in there!!

flogen

g'em wrote:

whey is YUMMY with porridge I usually have a yoghurt mixed with my porridge and whey and it's hot oaty goodness first thing in the morning.

I'm writing up the answers to your Q's now so I'll stick more in there!!

I was about to say that I had tried protein whey on my porridge and hated it, but I realised it was actually wheatgerm I had tried, which was disgusting!