Questions about the body, body building

Well, still slowly working out once a day about daily. Cant do it more than once. I seem to of hit a brick wall at 15lbs dumb bells, but I can go over 20 reps. Likewise with the bike. I can petal at half resistance, but 20 minutes seems to be the wall.

Ive changed my diet, kept pain under control, lost 25 lbs the past 3 weeks. Not much muscle has developed. I still got the gut with doing 160 sit ups, arms are still mildly becoming curvy and legs becoming more tube than funnel shape.

Of all, I had two questions. When exactly do you start to develop the square pecks the wrestlers have? When will my arms become more muscular? What about elbows. Ive seen men and women with pointy right angle type elbows and those with recessed ones. Is that a bone thing of build/muscle?

Am I really going to need to work up to 130lb dumb bells like the guys in the muscle magazines to look muscular and or go on a 2 week crash diet before showing off? Are the somewhat over weight looking guys on the muscle challenges more relastic? You know, where they flip truck tires, pull a semi truck, etc?

How the heck did you lose 25 lbs. in three weeks? That's like "The Biggest Loser" (TV Show) weight loss.

cobb said:

Am I really going to need to work up to 130lb dumb bells like the guys in the muscle magazines to look muscular and or go on a 2 week crash diet before showing off? Are the somewhat over weight looking guys on the muscle challenges more relastic? You know, where they flip truck tires, pull a semi truck, etc?

Click to expand...

Theoretically, you can "design" your body to look however you want within your unique genetic parameters. How much effort is involved and the lenths you'd have to go to are another story.

It sounds like you are on the right track (weight loss and all), but that you want to get bigger muscles. Here's a basic rule of thumb: lighter weight with more reps (what you are doing now) is decent for beginners and for definition (burning calories), but it won't build noticable results and studies have shown its actually doesn't really make you stronger. What you need to do is raise the weight a little bit- to the point where you can do between 8-12 reps, but no more. When that gets somewhat easier, raise it again. Keep this cycle until you are happy with the results and then you can just sort of go into maintainance mode.

Another couple of pointers: with higher weights, you are really going to feel it and will be sore. The micro-tears in the muscle (which is what is actually happening- you are creating tiny little tears that when they heal, will heal bigger than before) need time to heal, so don't work the same body parts 2 days in a row.

Also, change up the types of excersizes for each part every once in a while, since if you always do the same thing, your body will get used to it and stop growing. Its easy to find variations on excerizes online or in magazines/books.

Last and most important: Be carefull! If you don't know what you are doing, it is easy to injure yourself and cause potentially irreversible injuries. Never "jerk" the weights like the "Ironman" guys do- always use controlled, fairly slow movements (jerking not only raises the risk of injury, but it also cheats the muscles by using momentum instead of the muscle itself). I'd recommend trying out a personal trainer once or twice to get the hang of it- or always if you don't mind paying more $$ and like the motivation of it. Also, at first, machines are a good way to go, since its harder to hurt yourself on them, but free weights are the best after you know what you are doing since you have to use all the little stablizer muscles and have a more full range of motion.

Hope this helps and good luck,
Jon

Make sure to warm-up and stretch, best routine i found is heavy upper day one ( low reps-high weight )day two heavy lower, day three light upper ( low weight-high reps ) day four light lower, then repeat, remember the moto is tear and repair, this is the only time in your life other than adolescence that your body will excreate HGH, Human Growth Hormone, this is released by the tearing of the muscle fibers, so when you start feeling like a kid again, it's because you are!! it will affect your hair and skin and raise your BMR, basal metablic rate, your bodys "furnace", you will burn twice as many calories a day just sitting, 24hrs a day, the body is an amazing thing, good luck and keep it up, it will take 6-8 weeks to start to see real results in definition of mucscle, just remember, if you stop it will go away almost as quickly as it came, maintenance is the key

My chest is quite huge now, I built it primarily using the decline bench press. Luckily the gym I go to has a machine, so I don't have to have my feet in the air and all the blood rush to my head doign it on a bench!

Basicly it targets your lower pecs. Like doing a pushup, only your arms/hands are aiming more towards your feet. I do 125lbs on each arm of the machine. I think the machine alone said 11 lbs each arm. I work out my triceps afterwards or on another day, using the pully weight machine thing that you can do all kinds of things on. I grab the rope thing, and pull down/straighten the arm out, but instead of doing both at once, I do one arm at a time. looks a bit weird but it keeps each arm of equal strength. I need to do that with my biceps, as my right is bigger, so I need to seperate them and not use a curl bar. That tricep excersize is very good, as my triceps are pretty big. I also do the butterfly chest thing. If you don't do any upper shouder excersizes, you might want to do some incline benchpress to, so your upper chest fills out too etc. I don't do any though.

I only weigh like 140-150 something. I'm not a big boned guy, but I'm not short. Before I started working out, I looked very skinny and weight a lot less. Now I look average compared to the next person my height, but take off our shirts, and I'm huge/pure muscle. I need to work out my legs/abs though, and loose a little belly fat. I know there is a 6 pack under there!! I need to do more back stuff too. Like middle back.. Hmm.

It took me about 1 year to really look a lot different. But I'm skinny and so change shows up easily. Now going on 2 years, with the right shirt I look pretty mean. My Biceps are just now starting to catch up. I've been doing less weight and 3 sets of 15 instead of 3 sets of 10 with lots of weight. They responded better to that for some reason. My triceps still are huge compared to my biceps (most eveyrone else it's the other way around).

I might make a post on my work out routine later on.

Hey Cobb,

More is not always the answer. Follow this line of reasoning for a moment.

The reason that working out produces bigger muscles is because our bodies want to adapt to what they need. If you work a muscle out properly you stress the muscle just beyond what it's used to. Hopefully, the muscle's response will be something like,"...jeeze, he might ask me to work that hard again -- I should get a little bigger/stronger." Working out is about stressing a muscle -- and then letting it relax so your body has a chance to make it bigger.

If you work out at too frequent intervals your body may never get the chance to make the muscle bigger becaise it's always too stressed out. Stress, adaptation, stress, adaptation. Too much stress = no adaptation.

This condition would be called overtraining and while we don't usually associate it with non-athletes, it happens all the time. Even if you don't think that you're pushing too hard it may be exaserbated by many factors. Insomnia. Change of diet. Plain old stress. Medications. Ongoing medical conditions. Lots of stuff.

The best way that I know to determine whether you're overtraining or not is to take your pulse first thing in the morning, even before you get out of bed. Write it down each day. If your pulse at this time of day keeps slowly creeping higher and higher -- you are overtraining. Your body hasn't got enough reserves to adapt to the physical stress of your workouts.

I know that this could be one of many answers to this problem but this is what jumped out at me when I read your post. I have had this problem myself because of long term health issues I have. The good news is that you may track and graph your waking pulse very easily and determine if that is the problem.

In many cases, the challenge may be to stress yourself just enough.

Same topic, different answer:

As we get older we produce less of the hormones we need to grow our muscles bigger after they have been properly worked out. (stressed) If you have used up the hormones you're body will have to wait for more before it can make your muscles bigger -- no matter how much you work out.

I think that the toughest part of this is trying to figure out just how much exercise our own bodies can take before being overtrained.

I wish I had something simpler to give you. (For me, too.)

Hope this helps
sub

Yup, I was goign to coment on this but forgot about the working out once a day.

You tear mucscles when you work out. You need them to repair themselves then, so they "scar" over and that's what makes them bigger. If you don't let them heal, then they just kind of keep tearing in the same spot and never have a chance heal and get bigger.

I work out one muscle a week. never more. Plus depending on how fast you heal, you need to take time off inbetween days of working out even if you are doing different muscles each day, or you might run out of "energy" and stress your whole body out when it's trying to heal the stuff from yesterday, and now the stuff from today.

Also do a short warm up with walking/or whatever to get your heart and lungs ready to lift. You use a lot of engery when lifting weights. I'll become very out of breath if I lift without doing that first.

When I can make it on these days, this the schedule I do. I've added stomach legs and back to this as I need to start doing those.

Monday: Biceps (several things), Shoulders(lateral arm raise 25lb, frontal arm raise 40lb dumbells) Stomach (sit-ups. I do no weight to tone them up, as I've already got mass there from 200lb's added resistance from a machine a year ago)
Tuesday: Rest. Sometimes treadmill for aerobic conditioning.
Wednesday: Chest (decline bench press 262, butterfly machine 190) Triceps (30lb seperate each arm push/pull down 15 reps 3 sets, or 40lbs @ 10 reps x 3 sets)
Thursday: Rest light treadmill conditioning. (not trying to stress body)
Friday: Legs. (calf raises, leg curl, leg extension, leg press) Lat machine & back excersises. Lbs unknown, haven't started yet
Saturday: Rest (usualy too busy)
Sunday: Rest (see above)

Please not that some excersizes are broken up (chest bench press- then go do something else, then come back and do chest butterfly press) to allow the muscles rest so I'm able to push myself to the max and really tear them down.

Any questions on the above on how I do a certain excerise just let me know I'll give detials as best I can.

Cobb

I can help you out a little if you are willing to share some info

. I was in the gym business for 19 years . I started in '77 and managed several mega clubs and then hit the private training thing in the 80's when it was all the rage. I probably trained more people than anyone alive today. I was featured in fitness and hardcore BB magazines as a trainer to the stars as well as a trainer to proffessional BB's. I also worked a stint or two doing physical therapy and exercise therapy so you will be safe with me.

First I need your stats (age, ht, weight,, and physical limitations) and I can take it from there. Please also tell me what your goals are and what equipment is at your disposal.

cobb said:

Well, still slowly working out once a day about daily. Cant do it more than once. I seem to of hit a brick wall at 15lbs dumb bells, but I can go over 20 reps. Likewise with the bike. I can petal at half resistance, but 20 minutes seems to be the wall.

Ive changed my diet, kept pain under control, lost 25 lbs the past 3 weeks. Not much muscle has developed. I still got the gut with doing 160 sit ups, arms are still mildly becoming curvy and legs becoming more tube than funnel shape.

Of all, I had two questions. When exactly do you start to develop the square pecks the wrestlers have? When will my arms become more muscular? What about elbows. Ive seen men and women with pointy right angle type elbows and those with recessed ones. Is that a bone thing of build/muscle?

Am I really going to need to work up to 130lb dumb bells like the guys in the muscle magazines to look muscular and or go on a 2 week crash diet before showing off? Are the somewhat over weight looking guys on the muscle challenges more relastic? You know, where they flip truck tires, pull a semi truck, etc?

Click to expand...

Solstice said:

Theoretically, you can "design" your body to look however you want within your unique genetic parameters. How much effort is involved and the lenths you'd have to go to are another story.

It sounds like you are on the right track (weight loss and all), but that you want to get bigger muscles. Here's a basic rule of thumb: lighter weight with more reps (what you are doing now) is decent for beginners and for definition (burning calories), but it won't build noticable results and studies have shown its actually doesn't really make you stronger. What you need to do is raise the weight a little bit- to the point where you can do between 8-12 reps, but no more. When that gets somewhat easier, raise it again. Keep this cycle until you are happy with the results and then you can just sort of go into maintainance mode.

Click to expand...

I think this is getting you on the right track as far as thinking about it.

Your body adapts to pressure you put on it.
Do lots of reps (like 20), and you're working muscular endurance -- the ability to tolerate lactic acid, etc. You're not using enough weight to cause the muscles to get much stronger, or doing enough hard work to cause the muscles to get much bigger. Doing 8-12 reps with higher weight causes muscular hypertrophy -- body-builder type muscle growth. You'll get a bit stronger, but this rep range focuses on size. You're doing enough damage to your muscles to build muscle size, but the weight is still not quite heavy enough to make giant strength gains. Doing 4 or less reps on even more weight focuses on strength -- you're not doing enough reps to cause much hypertrophy, but your body adapts to the higher weight by getting stronger.

If what you're going for is athletic performance, you would be doing full-body explosive lifts. Explosive power and strength that's balanced throughout the body, in addition to inter-muscle coordination, are critical for most sports, and only those types of lifts generate those characteristics. You'd add in separate muscular endurance days in as well, since that is also important for sports.

But you seem to be going more for a bodybuilder workout. You're looking at 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps. Should be interesting to see what colubrid puts together for you.

For ripped abs in particular, the most important thing to do is lower your body fat. You have stomach muscles already. There's still fat between it and your skin, so you can't see 'em. This is by far the most important factor. BTW, I would strongly warn against having your entire core workout be loads and loads of situps. Getting your core out of balance is a sure way to hurt your back in the long term. Concentrate on working all of your core, and keep the muscles balanced. I also advise keeping the core in balance with the legs and upper body, but that gets us back to full-body lifts. Edit: oops, when you wrote "square pecs", I read "six pack", somehow. sorry.

Joe

Wow, thanks guys. I think maybe I am going in the wrong direction.

Is it true you can look muscular and be weak, look thin and be strong? Id never considered that possibility.

I use to work out 2-3 times daily, 45 minutes on the bike and weights. I just follow the pictures in the handbook that came with a box of metrx protein I bought. At that time, my legs were funnel shaped and caused me problems pulling my pants up all the way as my legs were as big as the pants leg. Since i broke the petal off the recumbent bike and use a more traditional one, that has gone away.

As I have gone from 3 lbs on up I was fine doing it 3 times a day. Once I got to 10 lbs I had to cut back to twice and sometimes once. Now once for sure.

I like the idea of mixing it up. I may try that tomorrow. One thing I like is to flex my arms while petaling to feel the burn in my arms and shoulders/chest. I just have a bench, set of dumb bells, extra weights disks and a bike. THe elliptical makes my legs really sore after 10 minutes and my right knee is bothering me.

Anyway, I took jumpmasters advice about cutting sugar. No more desert, before or after a meal. Diet in place of regular colas. Diet country time lemonade instead of gatorade. I started eating turkey/ham sandwich for lunch and managed to cut one of the two protein shakes I took a day, thats a good 300 calories and cut the creatine with uptake, thats another 150 calories a day for a few calorie nitrate supplement. Thanksgiving week was busy for me. Shopping before the rush, visiting mom in nursinghome several times a day, walking with her, helping her practice getting out of bed. Then of course the turkey sandwiches I ate while there and when I ran out after 8 lbs, I ate pb sandwiches with wheat bread.

Now for what we are all waiting for....

colubrid said:

First I need your stats (age, ht, weight,, and physical limitations) and I can take it from there. Please also tell me what your goals are and what equipment is at your disposal.

Click to expand...

I am 28, 6 foot 3 29x lbs. I suffer from a muscular disease called marfans and was in a wheelchair the past 9 years from muscle pain in back and legs. Thanks to supplments and exercise th past 3 years for getting out of it.

Doc says as a start, do not over do it, do not make my face turn red and as a general rule of thumb, no more than 50lbs lift. He said that was generic and I could lift more, but not right away, to work up to it.

I want to over all build myself up for a non desk job. Stock boy, floor walker maybe some contractor type of work. You know, swinging a hammer, shovel or some tool.

Sure I wouldnt mind looking muscular, but I am using that to measure to see why or what is going on. Also loosing weight is on my mind. Up until recently I always tipped the scales at 315lbs. I have found in the past the less I weight the weaker I was and had more pain.

I want to join a gym, but with the bus and working full time it would be tough and tight. Thats why I work out at home with just a bench, dumb bells and bike.

Thanks

A CPF post on body building, wow, ok, my thoughts,...

For maximum muscle mass you need to pick a weight that you can lift 6 times and then "die". Repeat that 3-4 more times.

Diet, be careful, eat a very balanced diet, including plenty of carbs, since carbs make up a lot of muscle. I did the Adkins thing and I get sick every time, not a good idea. Limit calories, but make sure they are balanced. The Adkins scam is that it take "carbs" out of your muscle along with 3-4 grams of water (per gram of carb) and you think you lost weight. Then when you are "re-sugared", all the weight comes back. Just don't do it.

Like previous posts, lift every other day. 6 reps with the same weight was the last number I remember when I was in college and wanted to be BIG. The alternate days do aerobics to burn fat.

You have Marfan's Syndrome? You should be very careful with weightlifting. You might have heart valve problems, and not know it. You could develop a tear or rupture of the aorta while straining to lift heavy weights.

I don't mean to dissuade you from exercise, nor do I want to scare you.

Discuss your exercise program with your doctor first. You may need to consult with a specialist, if your personal physician is not familiar with Marfan's Syndrome. You might need to have an echocardiogram, or other tests, before you are given the green light for a heavy weightlifting program.

Recommendations for Physical Activity and Recreational Sports Participation for Young Patients With Genetic Cardiovascular Diseases

Sports and Marfan Syndrome - Awareness and Early Diagnosis Can Prevent Sudden Death

For someone that's already in reasonable shape, it's hard to lose fat (and improve definition) while simultaneously trying to increase muscle mass. These two goals are somewhat counterproductive.

BUILDING MASS: Requires consuming a LOT of calories (especially protein) and performing basic powerlifts (squats, deadlifts, bench press, etc.) with heavy weights at reps in the 6-8 range (to failure). During this process, you tend to increase strength and gain weight (including fat).

INCREASING DEFINITION (while maintaining muscle mass): Requires cutting your calories (except protein) and doing a LOT of aerobic exercise. Also, weight training during this time should be focused on lighter weight with higher reps (10-20 to failure).

If you're just starting out, you can get pretty amazing results in building mass while increasing definition. But, the better shape you get in the harder is to do both at the same time.

You might consider leaning down first and then bulking up w/ quality calories and heavy lifting. Then, leaning out again. It's worked well for me in the past anyway.

Good luck!

One thing I learned when I was in high school weight room was that some people would try to make the exercise easier so that they could do more weight. They were cheating really. Don't do that. Don't worry about how much weight you lift compared to other people, just do what you are comfortable with.

I think the best way to learn different exercises is to have some one that knows what they are doing over for a day. That way they could teach you the right way to do everything, so you will be off to a good start.

As far as diet, I agree don't do atkins. That sounds like the most unhealthy diet in a long time. Your'e just asking for problems, and your poor kidneys ouch. I found you can loose more weight by eating balanced. Don't cut out one thing like carbs or fat. I recently started eating less bulk, and a little more fat like I used to. Fat slows digestion and keeps you from getting hungry so soon. So eating non-fat you'll get hungry again soon and eat a lot of calories. Moderation for everyhting. eat balanced.

"I am 28, 6 foot 3 29x lbs. I suffer from a muscular disease called marfans and was in a wheelchair the past 9 years from muscle pain in back and legs. Thanks to supplments and exercise th past 3 years for getting out of it.

Doc says as a start, do not over do it, do not make my face turn red and as a general rule of thumb, no more than 50lbs lift. He said that was generic and I could lift more, but not right away, to work up to it.

I want to over all build myself up for a non desk job. Stock boy, floor walker maybe some contractor type of work. You know, swinging a hammer, shovel or some tool.

Sure I wouldnt mind looking muscular, but I am using that to measure to see why or what is going on. Also loosing weight is on my mind. Up until recently I always tipped the scales at 315lbs. I have found in the past the less I weight the weaker I was and had more pain.

I want to join a gym, but with the bus and working full time it would be tough and tight. Thats why I work out at home with just a bench, dumb bells and bike.

Thanks"

Well first of all congratulations on taking the time on doing this on your own. Most people join a gym for motivation and still drop off after 30-60 days.

I don't have the time to do a long post right now but I can say you should first work on diet and cardio before really getting into the weights. You need to get your BW (bodyweight) and BF (bodyfat) down . Your health concern is a real issue and I will address that later.

Since you do not have time to make it to a local gym try investing in a treadmill. If that is to hard on your joints then get something else that is challenging. The best time to hit the cardio is right before breakfast (after waking up in the morning). Doing 20 minutes first thing in the morning is better than doing 60 minutes in the late afternoon early eve.

Also diet is important and we really don't know much about your diet right now. The best thing you can do is get your body into ketosis (BF burning mode) it take 2-3 days to get into that mode from a low carb /high protien diet. Atkins is "okay" but fitness experts have tweaked the Atkins diet a bit to make it healthier. First thing you should do is pickup some litmus paper at the local pharmacy to test your urine to see when you body goes into ketosis. It is a simple urine test. This ketosis stage is important if you want to lose weight as it will help keep you from eating carbs (sugar, bread , rice, potatos ect). Basically you prepare large amounts of protien and fat and eat one salad a day and take sugar free pysillium seed power (metamucil or off brand) to keep the pipes flowing. This diet has shown to lower cholesterol even though you are eating animal fats and other sources of fat.

Once you have begin your diet and cardio routime you will see a weight loss in your face and upper body first and then your midsection is last. Thats just how the body reacts. Nothing you can do about it.

Sorry gotta run. I will post more later tommorow.

The advice on good form really is crucial to building strength in a muscle group. Remember, no matter how big a muscle is it is a brain sending signals via a nerve that controls that muscle to do work. The early strength increases when a person first begins training are primarily due to the brain learning how to properly use the muscle to lift the weight. So when you lift it is very important to concentrate your attention on the muscles that the exercise is designed to develope. Using your mind and focusing your attention on the activity is essential to properly work the target muscle. Some groups require more mental focus than others. Personally, the only way I get developement in the lats is if I manage to focus on the movement and feel the lat doing the work, without deliberately being attentive to the lats other muscles take over the movement and the lats just aren't worked. Training really is a mental effort.

Dont worry guys, I am under medical supervision. I have a yearly checkup and want to run a new program by my doc. He was the one I consulted with the supplements including steroids and said they were fine, he warned me to take no diet supplements. My valve was leaking early in life, but with a conservative plan and beta blockers it shrunk and no longer leaks.

I no longer take the steroids, but still protein and creatine. Ive worked from 3-22lbs dumb bells earlier this year in 4 months time, developed a bad tennis elbow and was off a month and started over with 3lbs. I got rid of the tennis elbow, but seemed to of topped out at 15lbs the past month. I work all exercises to the diagram at my disposal and work with the same weight for all groups. This may of made my progress longer, but it makes it easier to use one fixed set or configuration of weights then switching the disks out for each one.

I dont have or would want to use a tread mill, but what about the elloptical? I may just try the sliming thing and jump start the muscles with a new plan after my doc appointment.

cobb said:

Is it true you can look muscular and be weak, look thin and be strong? Id never considered that possibility.

Click to expand...

Things are all relative here. It's not that the big bodybuilder guys aren't strong -- compared to me. But if you look at the build of an olympic powerlifter, their muscles are smaller than a bodybuilder's, but they are *much* stronger. So you can't tell someone's strength by their muscle size, although I can pretty much guarantee you that someone with giant bodybuilder muscles won't be "weak" compared to a regular guy. He just may not be as strong as the strength athlete whose workout builds strength with relatively less increase in muscle mass. That's *relatively* less.

Resistance exercise builds muscle and strength, but relative to each other, different exercise emphasize different things.