Getting ripped

g-punkteffekt

Hi all. I've got in pretty good shape lately, don't have a belly on me anymore but I'm not that defined just yet. What is the next step in order to get "ripped"? I'll give you a run down of my diet/exercise

Diet
0800 - Bowl porridge with low fat milk and a yoghurt mixed in

1100 - Banana or some raw nuts or piece of chicken

1330 - Can of tuna, 185g, in spring water with 2 slices wholemeal bread, mustard for flavouring

After gym (1830ish) protein shake

1930 - Dinner - Chicken/fish/beef with veg and some brown rice/potatoes

I do about 3 hours cardio a week, usually on the days I'm not doing weights - so 1 hour jogging on threadmill at 9 km/h
I now weigh about 87kg, I'm 5'11'', I'm squatting 110kg, and benching 39kg dumbells

I'd also have some beers at the weekend, nowhere near as much as I used to drink though. Any changes on my diet you could recommend? If you include the protein shake as a meal that's 5 meals a day which is almost 6 I suppose. Or do I need more cardio? Thanks

Boru.

First off congratulations on all the hard effort and work that has brought you this far. That's already a great achievement.

In order to get "ripped" how ever you need to do a lot more, and to be honest it isn't always worrth it. There are health and comfort concerns at being ripped, which requires you to drop your body fat in men generally below 7%. Many of those air brushed fitness guys you'll see in magazines who are ripped to shreds are only like that temporaily and are sever calorie restrcited diets leaving them at betwee 3-5% bodyfat. Whle this often looks awesome, you generally don;t feel as good. Your brain get's all muzzy and your immune system is weakend among other things.

Perhaps the best people to talk to on this are G'em (who went through a bloody tough time ripping herself down to super ab definition), T-ha and Dragan. Each detailed thier experiences on sever calorie restricted diets and heavy workouts, done in order to strip as much bodyfat off as possible in the shortest amount of time.

With all of that siad, getting ripped largely depends on how far you have to go. You'll look good at anything around 7-10% bodyfat which will take a little longer than any initial fat loss you achieved (you're eating into your bodies emergency worse case senario food suppy you see and it doesn't like giving it up).

I'd suggest doing a little cleaning up of the diet - reduce the carbs (even healthy ones like oats/porridge (of course vegtables and a limited amoutn of fruti can be taken in anytime you like) until immediately after exercsie, make sure you are getttign lean protien into your system every 2-3 hours and a healhty dose of Omega 3,6 and 9 fats.

You could also reduce the cardio in favour of 2 workouts of shorter higher intensity supra-aerobics in the morning and evening.

And the beer is totally out of the question. Getting "ripped" (sub 7% bodyfat) requires 199% dedication and a lot of hard work. The only thing that should pass your lips is water and green tea. That's it.

Read some of the journal entires made by G'em Dragan and T-ha over on Team test - http://www.teamtestforum.com/ it will give you a good idea of the experience.

Money Shot

Boru. wrote:

In order to get "ripped" how ever you need to do a lot more, and to be honest it isn't always worrth it. There are health and comfort concerns at being ripped, which requires you to drop your body fat in men generally below 7%. Many of those air brushed fitness guys you'll see in magazines who are ripped to shreds are only like that temporaily and are sever calorie restrcited diets leaving them at betwee 3-5% bodyfat. Whle this often looks awesome, you generally don;t feel as good. Your brain get's all muzzy and your immune system is weakend among other things.

A very sensible post. Competition athlethes will sometimes go to extremes for their sport, but people who just want to get in good shape and be healthy do not need to put their body through extremes, in my opinion. Of course, it's every individuals choice what they take or do for their own goals. Personally, aesthetics are far less important to me than having my body as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

It's an interesting topic though - do people want to look better or be healthier ? Sure they go hand in hand, but where the balance is with some people surprises me. How far would you risk your long term health for short term good looks ?

P.S I'm not referring to the OP'er here before I get jumped on, just a general point I'm making...

g'em

Boru. explained it really well - don't believe the pictures of "ripped" models. It's mostly lighting and a temporary state of dehydration and very low body fat. Guys who get in the 7-10% bf range (whilst having decent levels of lean body mass) generally look fantastic without necessairy looking ripped.

At 5'11" and 87kg you have more than enough room to keep putting on lean mass - chances are if you were to 'diet' down you'd actually look pretty skinny. Eat clean and train hard and you'll lean out a little and put on quality muscle at the same time. Why so much cardio?? At your height/ weight it's going to slow down lean mass gains (I'm presuming you want to "look good nekkid but not get *too* big" :rolleyes: !!) and it's not going to help fat-loss as much as diet will.

You would need to strip a lot of those carbs and eat a hell of a lot more protein and start introducing some good fats in your diet - they're fairly non-existent right now, the occasional nuts being the exceptions.

The 'definition' you want will come from having lean muscle - eat clean, sleep well, train hard, repeat .

rubadub

What is the next step in order to get "ripped"?

Depends on your definition of "ripped", have you any examples of famous people, atheletes etc you consider "ripped". Some people would consider visible abs to be ripped.

In the other BF% thread a guy was saying he was 7%BF with no visible abs, I reckon his reading was probably incorrect. He was also saying some atheletes will go down to 3%, but as said here at that level you would be very weak, like BBers are at competition stage, so I doubt atheletes who need strength would be that low. And a huge BBer at 3% has a lot more fat than a 9-10stone guy at 3%, since it is percent of your entire weight.

I hope to get to 10%BF which I figure is sustainable for me.

tunney

rubadub wrote:

In the other BF% thread a guy was saying he was 7%BF with no visible abs, I reckon his reading was probably incorrect.

I didn't say, or at least didn't mean, no visible abs. Just not like the bloke in the photo I'm 5" 10 and a little over 10 stone with plenty of muscle on legs, is 7% really that unlikely?

Patto

I am now "offically" 7% BF, down from about 14% at the start of the year and mostly thanks to the one an only Mr. Transform.

I couldn't believe it at first becuase my abs don't stick out that much but you can see them. Mind you if I benched 39Kg dumbells and squatted 110Kg I imagine they would stick out alot more (that's the next goal).

How I got to 7%: I was running upto 40 miles a week in Nov, Dec, Jan and Feb, BF went down to 10% very quickly but I lost nearly as much muscle as BF. On Mar 1st I upped my daily cals by about 500, returned to the gym and reduced my milage by half. My weight has remained exactly the same since Mar 1 but my BF has gone from 10% to 7%. My arms are 1/2" bigger, my waist is 1/2" smaller. I eat alot of carbs still because I run about 20 miles a week. I take a lot of good Fats such as Edo's oil and fish oils, this seems to have made a big difference.

g'em

Great job Patto!!!

rubadub

tunney wrote:

I didn't say, or at least didn't mean, no visible abs. Just not like the bloke in the photo I'm 5" 10 and a little over 10 stone with plenty of muscle on legs, is 7% really that unlikely?

The quote was...

Emmm mine is 7% and not a hint of a six pack. Seems like all my 7% is on top of my abs. I'd have to be hitting 4-5 to be visible.

At 10 stone, 7% is only about 10lb of fat. I know a few guys who do no training at all and have visible abs like that footballer, but I doubt they are below 7%. I am just wondering how you measure your BF%, I am not saying you are lying or trying to cause an argument. If I put my calipers readings into one formula I can get 8%, in another it can be 18%. In a thread a while back a guy had very low measurements taken by a "professional" in the gym, but he, and nobody else thought they were correct.

At 4-5% and only 10 stone it would be like slapping a few blocks of butter on your body, a very low covering, compared to a pro BBer who at 4-5% will have far more fat due to their higher overall weight.

How did you get the muscle on your legs? if doing squats your abs should be well developed too. I wouldnt be impressed if my abs were not looking like that footballers at 7%.

g-punkteffekt

thanks for the replies fellers. Ok, I know it's not feasable to be pre-show Bodybuilder ripped, I just think that with the heavy weights I'm pushing and the sensible diet I should be more defined. But I think I'm at the stage where it's either go to extremes or just stay the way I am. Why so much cardio? I don't think it's that much, 3 hours a week is nothing really, considering I have a job where I sit on my ass all day doing feck-all. Oh G'em, I take fish oil pills, are they considered fats? I saw pics of you on some thread, looking all shredded, was that for something in particular or just for the hell of it? Man it's a shame I didn't get to meet you guys at the last boards beers, I'm in New Zealand now.

g-punkteffekt

oh yeah - another thing - as I eat a can of tuna nearly every day, does this mean I will soon die of mercury poisoning?

g'em

lol - the mercury poisoning? Nah, you're fine. I'm not saying there's *no* risk, but there are plenty of other thing you encounter on a daily basis that would be more likely to lead to an untimely death. Besides, tuna is a great protein source, the risks are easily outweighted by the benefits

Cardio is brilliant for heart health, there's absoltuely no denying that, and particularly if you're desk bound much of the time it's fantastic for stress relief, for relaxation, mood elevation etc.

I guess where I was coming from with my comments with the cardio was looking at it purely from a lean mas gain perspective. Like I said, with your stats, I personally think you could probably afford to gain plenty of lean weight (that's going on pure numbers of course, I don't know what you actually look like). There seems to be soooo many guys who are afraid of "getting too big" which, frankly, is ridiculous. Getting too big takes yeeeears of hard work and dedication. Puttin on a decent bit of muscle mass to fill you out a bit on the other hand is more achievable with some good eating habits and training hard. Excessive cardio will slow down the gains.

You don't say how long you've been training for, but remember that these changes don't happen overnight. If you are seeing positive benefits, but jsut don't have that 'defined' look you want, be patient. Train harder, keep pushing for heavier lifts and clean up the diet a litte. Up your protein and the fats. Personally I don't count the fish oils as dietary fats per say, I consider them a supplement on top of my diet. And ignore the "one-a-day" recommendation you see on the labels - most of those capsules contain ~ 1000mg of oil. As a lifter anything from 3000-6000mg per day wuld be more advisable.

As for my little shredding experiment, I did it as a test to see did I have what it takes to get up on a stage as a BBer really. Funny thing is, to compete, I'd actually need to lose *at least* 10lb more than I had in those pictures :rolleyes: I weighed up the pro's and con's... and became a powerlifter instead

g-punkteffekt

I've been training for about 5 years now! Initially I got down from 15stone to about 12st 11lbs, and I was pretty ripped then, stomach muscles all over the place, then gradually I put on about half a stone, and I'm still about the same weight. I never said I don't want to get too big! Ideally I'd like to be able to squat 150kg or so and bench 100kg without putting on too much more weight. Yeah maybe I'll split up the calories throughout the day more or something. Another thing - I used to drink 3 protein shakes a day, and now I don't bother anymore, not for about 6 months. I've found no difference since I stopped drinking them, in fact I'm stronger now than I ever was.

Patto

g'em wrote:

Great job Patto!!!

Thanks g'em:o

Its funny when you achieve a goal you tend to think "It wasn't that hard to do realy" then again its probably worth pointing out that I have drank 2 pints of guinness and 3 glasses of wine (all in one sitting btw) in the last 8 weeks, not that I've been counting mind you:rolleyes:

g-punkteffekt: you say you can bench 39Kg dumbells but you cannot bench a 100Kg bar You shouldn't be that far off?

I've been trying to work out the conversion recently. I reckon you can BB press 7/6s of what you can DB press. i.e. if you can DB 2x39 then you should be able to BB 2x39x7/6 = 91Kg for the same reps