Good news everybody... I dropped 2 pounds of fat and gained 6 pounds of muscle in like 4 weeks. Neat. Though I figure if I am doing this right... I should be packing on fat, too. Maybe it's the running. Here's a program I read in a book the other day I thought would be great for pull-ups. Do as many as you can for 5 seconds. Then rest for one minute. Do as many as you can for 5 seconds. Rest one minute. Do as many as you can for 5 seconds. Quit. Do that for a week. Then every week after that, add 5 seconds to how long you do pull-ups for (in each set) and decrease 5 seconds from your rest time (after every set). After 12 weeks you should be doing pull-ups for 180 seconds straight. It looks good on paper.. I'll see how that works out. And I keep forgetting to get a picture of my homemade dip bar. The first day I tried it, my shoulders hurt like a bitch. It's what... 2-3 days later? I'm fine Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I haven't been doing anything for weeks. I feel heavy. 8 pull ups feels like I have tortoise shells for arms. Or maybe just weak arms.
What do you do after the 12 weeks? start 180 seconds of reps with 60 seconds of rest, or just be content that you can do pullups for 3 minutes strait?
I guess get better at pull-ups. The point of the "program" is to be able to do pull-ups.. non-stop.. for 180 seconds. Surely it can be done. Afterwards it's your choice how to proceed. If you want to add weight... do it. If you just want to maintain your ability.. do that.
I no longer have a set routine. I am not sure if I ever did. Until I start school and start attending my gym on a regular basis... I am going to be random. I just do what I feel like when I feel like it (rest days or not.. I don't care): pull-ups, dips, bench press, pushups, situps, legpress, deadlift, running (well this is probably the most regular.. lol). Anyway.. with this random bit of working out, here are my 1-month stats: Pull-ups: Increase from 0 to 5 in about 5 weeks (I had a rapid increase in weight for a few days.. 183 to 190 so my pull-ups suffered). Bench press: Increase of 30 pounds (140 to 172.. 1 rep max anyway... it's weak, I know). Pushups: Not really increasing past 1 because I get bored. I am thinking about adding weight (I went from 0 diamond pushups to being able to do about 10). Dips: Increase from 0 to 5-6 in about a week (how? hrm. Maybe pull-ups and bench?) Deadlift: didn't do enough to say.. or even weight. I just lift stuff. Legpress: 300 pounds on a machine for maybe 15 reps before I get a burn (not at an angle... at 45 degress probably 420 (if I did the math right). Running: I just do 2 miles running.. some walking... some more running.. for anywhere between 40 minutes to 90 minutes... burn a good 900 calories or so (I come home craving peanut butter sandwiches on wheat bread Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) And here is the rest (both taken under the exact same conditions with consideration of error over a few days to get good figures..): July 10: 179.6 LBS at 18.0% body fat (32.328 lbs) August 17: 183.8 lbs at 16.1% body fat (29.592 lbs) Overall, I gained 4.6 lbs and lost 2.74 LBS of fat. The equates to a gain of 7.34 LBS of lean body mass (perhaps 7.34 LBS of muscles? I hope). I think that's at least average for 4 weeks. The average gain of muscle in a week is 1-2 LBS for a human. I'm probably taking in about 140-200 grams of protein a day.. depending on how much I eat. Good ole' whey in the morning.. yum Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. Yay Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
God dammit. I was able to do 10 dips in a single set. The other day I bought a 5 lbs bucket of creatine. I seem to have gained 6 or 7 pounds in 3 days. Now I can only do 2 dips Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Does that even make sense? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
lol, yeah, I guess it sort of does. All of that weight gain is water. When you stop taking the stuff, you'll go back to your normal weight. But the stuff enables you to work out harder and give your muscles a greater stimulus, which should in theory result in more muscle gains. But of course, you haven't been on the stuff for long enough to reap those benefits. Keep on truckin'!
Yea I know it's all water. I am taking creatine to look a little bigger and to increase my gains more quickly (seems my newbie gains are dying down). But it sucks I can barely dip now. I mean.. on Thursday I was 182 lbs. I bought creatine friday and I am now 192. LOL. I've come to love the squat. Same for the standing military press. I'm all free-weights now Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And peanut butter sandwiches are my friend now. I just ate two for 30 grams of protein. My guess is that the sandwiches are totaling 400 calories. Plus my orange juice (I probably shouldn't have it.. but it's good) for 110.. total 500 or so. Damn that looks bad (protein vesus calories). I need some more protein powder. Chicken is getting old Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Natural and clean food is the best. It's really hard and expensive to do so, though. I try.. but when I am lacking calories and I need them... I'll go for the pizza. :bugeye: If it were possible I would eat chicken all the time alone with lots of veggies and fruits. But, eh. Chicken is getting very old so all I have left is my big bucket of protein and peanut butter.
I've just back into going to the gym after about 6 months of not going. I'm half as strong as I was. My school just opened the new and improved rec center, so it's pretty awesome. Too many machines, though.
A friend and I spent a summer a few years ago doing the "navy seal" workout program that was mentioned in the first post. I have to say that the program does actually work quite well. I only followed it for 12 weeks, but I was in much better shape after three months of doing the exercises. The problem with it, however, is that it starts to take a ridiculously long time to do the exercises each day. By week 10 it takes you 3-4 hours per day to do the workout. Who has time to work out for 20 hours/week? We were only able to do it because it was the summer and we didn't have anything else to do, but if you actually have a job or have to go to classes, there's pretty much no way you could do it.
Heh. I was planning for the inevitable in econ this morning about a zombie attack up there on the 4th floor. I'd have to get into the cieling, then shimmy through crawl spaces before climbing down the elevator shaft. And the only way to do that would be with a regimen of pull-ups and dips.
I'm calling bullshit. You can't loose much fat whilst gaining that much muscle in four weeks. It could be done with steroids over a longer period of time, but not four weeks.
Their called "newbie" gains. It happens for those that never worked out in their life (lose weight and gain muscle). As I said in a recent post, it's slowing down. Plus I had a period of about two weeks where I did nothing. Most of the gains must have been water, though. Muscles are 75% water and I think I was fairly dehydrated... so working out and drinking lots of water (plus protein) must have been the culprit. I now got a different routine that is doing very little right now, but it's catching up. I'm adding 10 lbs a week to my squats and about 5 a week to my bench.
There is also such thing as error in instrumental readings. I read about that somewhere I think. It's not impossible that he did it. I remember when I was a noobie, I used to make gains at a rate of about a little more than 1 lbs/per week. But that doesn't account for the fat I may have lost or gained. Typical when I lift a lot of weights I gain both muscle and fat because I tend to overeat to help maximize my gains. Since then, however, I've made hardcore cardio a part of my regimen 3 days a week (lifting weights 4 times a week) because it's nice to have a strong cardiovascular system as well as big muscles. So I don't see any reason to think he couldn't do it, although it seems a bit unlikely. You just want to impress the people here at Sciforums, don't ya, punk! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
