Advice muscle building, nutrition and protein whey?

The Shtig

I only recently started doing weights and now want to do a more serious workout plan and got some protein whey. I've very little idea and could do with a good bit of advice!

I'm 17 y/o male - 5'10 - 145lbs - 24% body (not exact but fairly accurate)

I want to build my overall strength, bulk up a bit and be fairly toned.

I'll start out with my work out plan:
I'm doing 30mins of jogging everyday for cardio and doing a full body workout every two days using dumbbells and a bench, push ups and crunches. I'm using a book for the different types of exercises I can do for each section.

There's a very small gym close by, should i join it for the machines or will a full body work out with dumb bells be sufficient?

Should I be jogging every day or should I rest for some?


Nutrition
This is where I need quite a bit of advice. I cut down a lot on junk food and still trying to cut it further but still allow a treat ever so often.

Breakfast: two weetabix, orange juice / beans on toast, milk

Lunch: two rounds of ham sandwichs (white - will try to switch to brown or a better option) orange juice

Dinner: potatoes, meat (steak, fish or chicken usually), veg (only carrots, pea's, sweet corn)

At night for supper: Usually pasta and tuna

There's a lot that needs to be improved there and need some advice.



Protein Whey
I had a look at the supplements section and decided to post this here with the rest of my post. Need a lot of advice here!

I got Kinetica protein and I'm not sure how much i should take. Here's the directions for use:

"For maximum results, drink 2-4 kinetica whey protein shakes a day to provide your tired muscles with the nutrition they need to develop rapidly. Depending on your personal protein needs, mix 1-3 scoops with 200ml of water or low fat milk in a shaker or blender or simply with a fork"

Nutritional info: 30g(1scoop)
Energy: 112kcal
Total Protein: 23g
Total carbs: 2.2g
Total fat: 2.5g


I really have no idea how much i should take, and like a poster said on the supplements sticky it comes with a 200ml scoop I presume this is way too much for the whey, should i weigh the grams I require on a weigh scales?

Do I take a shake only directly after I workout?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

jasonf9ace

Dumbells will be fine but id reccomend getting a proper program maybe this one would suit you > http://www.muscleandstrength.com/workouts/dumbbell-only-home-or-gym-fullbody-workout.html
I think a 30 minute jog a day is quite counter productive if you want to gain muscle and size as you need to be eating more calories than you burn to gain muscle/size.I think maybe doing cardio 2 - 3 times a week if you wanna keep fit but remember to eat more to help with recovery. You should try to have 6 meals a day every 2 - 3 hours if possible and try to have protein with each meal. You being 145lbs divided by 6 meals you should be getting about 25 grams of protein each meal.Try and get some carbs(veggies,fruit,oats etc) with each meal aswell and also some good fats. You should be getting roughly 1 gram of protein for every lbs of bodyweight so a protein shake when ever you need to up your protein take and maybe post workout is a good idea. Scoop wise i wouldnt know but if you have a scale its probably best to weigh your whey protein,maybe get one scoop and weigh it up to see if its actually 30grams...

The Shtig

Cheers for the reply Jason, very helpful advice.

Never thought about the jogging counter acting the muscle building, should I jog for a few weeks until I get my body fat percentage down or will it turn to muscle with the workout? any idea what a good percentage is?

Lantus

I'm going to assume that you haven't done much exercise till now.

Getting a lean muscular body and that ripped look requires a few ingredients.

Motivation & goal setting. (look this up yourself)
Superb nutrition
Resistance
cardio

All play their part for a lifestyle of health and wellbeing.

The whole body work out is great for beginners. Use it for 6 months. Use this time to focus on good technique and completing reps sowly with good form. Good technique is much more important than adding weight and doing an exercise poorly or dynamically because really you can't lift that much. (for example bicep curls done with a swinging action, knees bent and back arched means your not using your bicep...waste of time...)

When you start to add more weight the good form and control will prevent injury and time being wasted.

After 6 months if your still going move to a 2 day split and then after that maybe in 12 months a 4 day split. There are loads of routines and no hard or fast rules when you start one routine over an other. It's only MY persoanl opinion.

Buildng muscle takes years not weeks or months. Take it slow and steady.


Then look at your nutrition, it will take time to weed out bad habits and make good healthy eating a stable part of your life. Most the time is in reading and learning about the subject. There is loads of FUD out there.

Regular eating is something I would advocate every 3 hours or so. almost no alchohol and good ratios of protein, carbs and fats with every meal.

Supplements are just that, a supplement to a really good diet. Use whey powder within 10 mins of every workout to get fast assimilation of protein into your body so the muscle uses that and not existing muscle fibres (i.e it eats itself to feed itself.)

Resistance 3 times a week is fine to begin with. I would also do cardio 3 times a week. Your heart is your most important muscle after all. Rest days are important though. It is too tough to exercise 7 days a week and keep it up for the rest of your life. 5 to 6 days tops is realistic unless your body type demands that little bit extra. (which I doubt.) Remeber to rest for at least 1 full day after each full body workout. i.e. mon wed fri would be fine.

Muscle growth and fat loss are typically seperate things. You need a calories defecit for fat loss and excess for muscle growth. As you will add some fat as you add muscle you'll need to use both over time to get the look you want. Maybe work on fat loss first (more cardio.) and then muscle. However, still do all your resistance workouts even during these periods to retain muscle mass. As your just starting out you may get simultaneous fat loss and muscle growth. This is possible for the immediate short term.

The Shtig

Thanks a million Lantus, very useful information. Would three days of resistance and five days of cardio be suitable for the first few weeks then three days cardio?

Lantus

The Shtig wrote: »

Thanks a million Lantus, very useful information. Would three days of resistance and five days of cardio be suitable for the first few weeks then three days cardio?

It's not an exact science. If your happy with 5 days cardio and your getting the results you want and then drop to 3 and your still getting the results you want then great.

Some people can get away with 20 minutes cardio and eat pizza and still have a six pack. (insert rude word here) The rest of us need to invest more effort.

Look, if you do 3 days a week for say 45 mins and you are losing body fat over time then great. If not then up your cardio to 4 days and see if that works, if not then 5, if not then 6 days. We all react differently to exercise.

Beware the 'you only need 4 minutes a day 5 days a week brigade' There is no one solution fits all remedy. You need to taper and adapt your workouts to suit your goals and your body.

I would typically say that you shouldn't need to do more than 1 hours cardio a day for 7 days. If your doing moderate to high intensity cardio for 7 days and not losing weight then either your diet is wrong or you have an underlying medical condition which needs professional advice.

Bear in mind that fat loss runs at around 0.5 to 1.0% a MONTH and weight around 1 to 2 pounds a week tops (any more than that it's usually muscle or water.)

If your measuring your BF% then the rate of change and not the figure is important. Your eyes will be the judge ultimatley.