Ask A Bodybuilder

#121

I am the manager of a concrete pumping business. It doesn’t really affect bodybuilding or vice versa. I never went to college.

You don’t need to be focusing on specific body parts until you’re relatively experienced and have a decent amount of strength and general size to you.

Bodyweight exercises and cardio is all I can really recommend to you if you aren’t interested in anything else.

There really isn’t an “ideal” age but 12-13 is probably the best time to start lifting casually. I’ve seen 12 and 13 year olds that are stronger than a lot of guys my age simply because they grasp the concept and the dedication so early on.

I’m just going to keep this simple: no.

Shedding water weight healthily is easy enough. Diuretics are unnecessary.

#122

Thanks, but what exercises specifically would you recommend?

#123

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#124

Okay Kaze, I’ll be returning to my local gym in a couple of weeks, as now I finally have at least some amount of money. And now it’s no wanking around doing every single exercise.

I don’t think I would be able to afford a coach so here’s my situation:

179 cm / 5’11"
63 kilos / 139 pounds in the evening
I mean, I do dumbbells at home (but only Bis, Tris, Shoulders…surely not what I need) and I look fit enough to my liking, I try to eat as much as possible, but… fucking acoustic guitar mang.

  • What would be the best routine right now?
  • What and when do I need to eat and how frequently?
  • How much to sleep?
  • DOs and DON’Ts outside of gym?
#125

The “muscle development will impede your bone growth argument” is just another one of the gym boy myths. Midgets aren’t created from lifting at a young age, and there are no adverse effects on height or growth in general from lifting. I guarantee at age 13 you aren’t going to be moving anywhere near enough weight to even slightly stress your skeletal structure.

If you knew anything at all, you’d understand that the increase in hormone production throughout your body during a good lifting session and the overall stimulation of your nervous system would actually promote growth, not hinder it.

And please enlighten me on your experience, since you said this is all “from your experience”. Are you just abnormally short and looking for someone to blame?

  1. My personal recommendation to beginners is the Bill Starr 5x5 strength routine. https://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/Bill_Starr_5x5 , and a spreadsheet that can be filled out with your personal maxes and printed for ease of use can be found here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/8000198/Bill-StarrMadcow-5x5-Logbook-Calculator (sign up and download).

  2. You need to eat over your maintenance, or BMR levels in calories to gain weight, preferably spread out in anywhere from 5-8 meals a day. You don’t want to eat 2 or 3 big meals, but 5-8 smaller meals. You can find a BMR calculator here: https://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ . These aren’t extremely accurate, but they give you a rough estimate. Keep in mind that isn’t the baseline for what you need to eat. You have to take into account any physical activities you do that day, including lifting, and especially any carido you may do. All of that burns calories, and without surplus calories, your body has nothing to grow on but air.

  3. At least 8 hours every night. If you aren’t getting at least that, you aren’t giving your body enough recovery time. Keep in mind your body regenerates cells and does the vast majority of its growing while you sleep.

  4. Common sense. You don’t need to completely change your lifestyle to just stay in shape and be fit and strong, nor do you need to be following routines I do or diets I follow. What works for one person almost never works the same for another because everyone is different and everyone has different needs. I could go use Ronnie Coleman’s routine and eat the same shit he does every day and I would probably just get fat and go nowhere simply because he weighs almost 300 pounds and is under the effects of androgenic steroids and prohormones, so different things work for him that wouldn’t work for me and vice versa. The human body is very complex but not terribly hard to understand in a basic sense. I can’t tell you how to live and how not to live. Unless you’re being serious about this sport, you don’t need to forfeit your current lifestyle simply to stay in shape.

#126

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#127

How much minimum of push up and sit up has to be done in a day?(for a 17 teenage)

#128

What the fuck. Is Fong really 17?

#129

You really don’t know? :fffuuu:

#130

Well I thought you were like 13.

#131

:hmph: It is fine since i always act like retard.

Back to the topic.

#132

Them asians have some sort of fountain of youth I tell ya.

#133

Okay, thank you very much.
Couple more questions:

  • Is there any guidelines on how to pick up the right weight? I don’t want to do the wrong weight all the time and fuck up everything.
  • Which rows do you recomend? Bars, dumbs or seated?
  • Seated or standing for military press? Does the bar needs to be behind or in front of your neck?
#134

I’d try to respond to this but it’s probably one of the most interesting butcherings of the English language I’ve seen on this forum yet. All I got out of it was you admitting you’re clueless.

  1. Yeah, there is a guideline: if you can’t lift it, it’s too much. This isn’t algebra, there’s no formula. You can either do it, or you can’t. Simple as.

  2. Barbell rows are the only rows I’ve ever used, although generally I do a T-Bar variation. DB rows are effective as well.

  3. Standing, stress your entire body when you get the chance. You’ll passively gain a lot of balance and strengthen stabilizers and other muscle fibers when you do it standing. In front of, behind the neck isn’t a military press, and it’s also a great way to fuck up your rotator cuff and destroy your shoulder. Anyone who does that “behind the neck press” shit is asking for an injury. I see a lot of pros doing it and the risk isn’t worth how little you gain from it.

#135

Hahha, I don’t think we have a proper T-Bar. The one we have is for pussies (i.e. with a bench).

  • How long does it take you to get in shape for a comp?
  • Have an opportunity right now to buy a barbell and dumbbell sets for home use. Y/N?
#136

You can make your own T-Bar with a T-shirt and a regular barbell. You just wrap the shirt around the end of the barbell like a handle to pull on, then load that side of the bar with weight.

  1. Depends. If by “in shape” you mean down to a very low bodyfat percentage, it’s all dependant on my current BF% and a million other variables. It’s usually anywhere from a month to two months for me.

  2. Only if you’ll also have a basic bench/squat rack to use the barbell in.

#137

When you were just starting, how quickly did you move up through the progressions of weights? You didn’t start out curling 100 pounds in each arm. Let’s say you started at 50.

How long did it take you to move up to 55 or 60 pounds?
Did you move up in five or ten pound increments?

#138

Hell, I don’t know. Everyone progresses at their own rate, and your initial gains, also known as newb gains, are going to be a lot more substantial than they will be a few months down the road. Your first few weeks/months of lifting are when you’ll gain the most strength in a short burst. You’ll hit plateaus, have huge gain spurts, slow down a bit, and everything in between. It’s not a uniform thing.

#139

Oh, I figured as much, I was just curious. I’m actually not seeing much of a gain at all after five or six week. I think I need to eat more protein…

#140

So, I’m looking to bulk up. I’m not necessarily looking to become a bodybuilder, I just need to gain some weight, and I would prefer to maybe tone myself up a bit in the process. I know nothing of bodybuilding, weights, or anything of the sort.

Starting off from weighing myself and measuring my height today, I’m 111 pounds. I’m about 5 feet and three inches tall, and I’m 15 years old. My goal is to be around the 140 mark for weight at the end of this semester, which ends in about 5 months. I… Don’t know where to start. I know that eating more is the way to gain weight, but that’s the extent of my knowledge. I have started taking bigger portions of food every time I have a meal, but I’m pretty friggin small, so I have a limit to what I can take. What sort of tips can you give me, to start off gaining weight? Though, I don’t want to just gain the fat and let it sit, so training tips would be appreciated too.

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