Advice

secondspring

Hi all

I'm looking for some advice or feedback on how I would go about building up my leg muscles... and generally getting a bit bigger all round. I've always had quite skinny legs above the knee which seem out of proportion to the rest of my body. I'm quite fit - I run about 40 - 50k a week so my cardio is good but I've never tried any form of weight training....which is what I figure I need to do if I want to build up my legs a bit.

I guess my two main questions are:

Is the amount of running I do actually keeping my legs skinny? Should I cut down on the cardio and concentrate on some form of resistance training? If so... what sort?

Is it possible to only out on mass on your legs? I still think I could lose a bit of weight around my stomach so is it possible to do both at the same time?


My diet is good but not amazing. I don't drink much, keep away from the junk food and eat as much whole and unprocessed food as I can. Should I be looking at supplements to make any real progress?


I hope all that makes sense!

26 male by the way


Cheers!

Transform

do all of this and post up your current diet in detail and your height and weight -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Oxa__Fbi4

yes the running is not doing you any favours and cut it back to no more than 10-15km a week and bump food intake up

secondspring

Thanks for the info Transform. I actually stumbled a cross your blog not too long ago. Some really great stuff on there.


I'm 5'7" and weigh 60kg

A typical day would be the following:


Breakfast:

Branflakes or Porridge

2 pieces of fruit (usually bananas)

or

If I have enough time in the morning I might do scrambled eggs and grill some bacon.

Lunch:

Wrap or Sandwich - wholemeal or brown bread with any combination of chicken turkey cucumber sweetcorn peppers cheese

or

chicken or veg salad - the veg salad would usually come from blazing salads (great spot!!)


Dinner:

A pasta dish usually without meat (wholewheat pasta)

or

Chicken Stirfry with noodles of brown rice


Grilled chicken or Fish with plenty of veg

I might eat out once a week or so and the weekends might include the odd roast but I stay more or less to that sort of thing on the weekdays

I would snack a bit througout the day on occasion but I try to keep this to brown toast or fig rolls or that sort of thing and I drink a lot of water throughout the day.


As I said not amazing but I'm hoping its a good starting point. My main problem are the portions. I know I should eat more but am never hungry enough...

In other words I think I'd find it tough to get past my current calorie needs




One question on that video. Would I be likely to make much progress using just my own body weight to train? Ie. pushups pull ups squats etc.. or are weights essential from the very beginning?



Any other advice would be appreciated!


Thanks

SS

chadmustang

Squat... learn to squat with good form then jump on the heavy squat waggon! Just once you have good form, thats by far the most important variable here.

Start off with bodywieght squatting till you get used to sitting back, pushing your knees out and so on.
Get a video of you're squat up here for some feedback.
But that's the main thing you should be doing.. Squats and Deadlift variations!
Since you haven't done any weight training you'd make decent progress doing bodyweight stuff. You're best options would be: chins, dips, push ups, pullups and inverted rows. Stick to basic compound moventents. Just make sure you transition to using weights as if you want to keep making progress.