exercise regime

[UnknownLegend 5480]

Pebbz, why didn't you just ask Ronnie...

Also, good to see that you lift.

[Matty 889]

Thats a good amount. As for working out, if you want to get more toned then you should do more reps less weight so maybe 30 pounds for as many reps as you can, then do 45 rest.

It really becomes how comfortable you get with your workout. But work out everday in some fashion.

[Jopo 369]

id guess like 1500-1800? maybe less somedays maybe more others.

Are you sure? An average man should eat about 3100 calories a day.

Also, if you want improvement, try eating good and get your 8 hour sleep every day. It's very important for your muscles to rest.

You can also take supplements for gaining muscles faster.

[Faptastic 217]

• Eat 6 meals a day, and eat 75-100% of your bodyweight in grams of protein to gain muscle mass (so if you're 180 pounds, eating between 135-180g of protein a day will help build up muscle mass). Drink fuckloads of water too if you utilize protein shakes to hit that marker (kidney stones are no bueno and it's not good to retain all of that processed stuff in your body for too long). Water helps clean out the body and aids in increasing the metabolism.
  
• To lose fat, eating cleaner and doing cardio works best.
  
• Avoid being weighed down by set amounts of "reps". Use weights where you can get at most 6-8 reps with perfect form and increase the weights every other week by like 10%. If you can do more than 12 reps of an exercise with a given weight, or you can only do a measely 3-4 reps of a given exercise with a given weight (and you aren't a bodybuilder/competitive weight lifter), you're doing it wrong (and you should probably increase or decrease the weight for that exercise).
  
• I keep track of what I eat on MyFitnessPal and I eat 40% carbs, 35% protein, and 25% fat. So far I'm down 6 inches around my waist and down 12~ pounds.
  
• I have a cheat meal every other day to make sure I don't overdo it with sweets and other foods that are detrimental to my diet.
  
• Have a rest day so your muscles can rebuild themselves (you're literally breaking and tearing your muscles when lifting weights; you only gain mass after they recover properly).
  
• I do Insanity 6 days of the week, an ab exercise every other day from TTS, and I lift weights MWF.
  

Hope this helps out.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the importance of managing your caloric intake in terms of gaining muscle/losing fat. You should eat like 300-500 calories above your BMR (rough estimate calculators can be found online) to gain muscle and lose fat. If you can't handle eating entirely clean, try to moderate your junk food intake over the course of a few weeks until you're weened off of it.

Edited December 30, 2012 by Faptastic

[Sir. Hot Mayo 1143]

Dastan and Faptastic have offered some solid advice so far.

Some things I'll add:

Beginning to lift:

Before you try out any exercise, look up the proper form! Just hit up a quick youtube search for the particular exercise and use a very low weight to get the form down, once you're comfortable with that find the weight that you're going to be able to hit 3 sets of 8-10 reps with; that's generally the standard amount of sets and reps for gaining muscle. *ALSO* Do NOT be discouraged from the discomfort you will have the next day, it's natural, this shit does hurt if you're doing it right (and wrong, but hopefully not). Don't be afraid to push yourself, you'll get to know your limits.

Cardio:

If you have your diet 100% (or close to), you don’t even have to look at the treadmill. It’s a simple case of calories in vs. calories out. If you consume more calories than you burn, you put on weight. If you consume less calories than you burn, you lose weight. What cardio does is help accelerate burning those calories, but if you are already under your caloric maintenance, there’s no real need to do any cardio, although it can bring about fat losses much faster, you may also find it to be catabolic (muscle-wasting).

Routine:

I'm going to suggest you start working out 3 times a week. Get a solid workout going, know what you're doing each day. My routine is like this: Monday - Chest/Biceps, Tuesday - Shoulders/Legs, Thursday - Back/Triceps, and on the weekend just do the odds ie. forearms, cardio, w/e.

• I'm use to having a full gym at my disposal, so your workouts are going to be a bit different than mine --that's not to say that they won't be really good though, you can do a ton with what you have. You're going to have to research what sort of exercises you can do.
  

• If you want to see real results you're going to have to be working out ALL of your body. You can't just expect your biceps to be huge just because you've been doing a ton of dumbbell curls; you've got to build your entire frame if you want to start filling it in.
  

ESSENTIAL:

You MUST have a protein shake after your workout. This is really important --there is a window of time where the body reaps the most benefit from nutrition post-workout. Ideally, drinking a shake 15 to 30 minutes after a workout allows the body to take up the nutrients at a quicker rate to allow repair and recovery.

[Faptastic 217]

ESSENTIAL:

You MUST have a protein shake after your workout. This is really important --there is a window of time where the body reaps the most benefit from nutrition post-workout. Ideally, drinking a shake 15 to 30 minutes after a workout allows the body to take up the nutrients at a quicker rate to allow repair and recovery.

Sometimes I just have a high protein meal after a workout because the protein shake powder I currently have is also pretty fattening. It works too.

If you want an amazing recovery shake, I recommend Shakeology. Shit's a bit expensive but it tastes so fucking good and is probably one of the healthiest recovery drinks available. You can find it cheap[er] on Amazon than on Beachbody's website.

http://www.shakeology.com/

[fatb0y 1337]

id guess like 1500-1800? maybe less somedays maybe more others.

An average man should eat about 3100 calories a day.

I have never heard this before....

Asians eat plenty of calories anyways, the bulk of an asian diet is rice, bread, and noodles, so we also eat a bunch of carbs too.

Edited December 30, 2012 by fatb0y

[Sir. Hot Mayo 1143]

ESSENTIAL:

You MUST have a protein shake after your workout. This is really important --there is a window of time where the body reaps the most benefit from nutrition post-workout. Ideally, drinking a shake 15 to 30 minutes after a workout allows the body to take up the nutrients at a quicker rate to allow repair and recovery.

Sometimes I just have a high protein meal after a workout because the protein shake powder I currently have is also pretty fattening. It works too.

Word, the only problem with that is digesting and absorbing the nutrients will take a heck of a lot longer than if you were to have a shake. I recommend having the shake as well as having a high protein, but really light meal, like half a can of tuna or something, just something to tide you over until your next meal.

[Shadow 1044]

Man to much textbook/internet advice in this thread. You are 5'8 and 140 and you are saying you have surface fat, so you have a few options. Surface fat is great if you want to get noticeably bigger muscles. If you just want to be stronger and fit then you can fairly easily cut your body down.

As far as diet goes you sound fine. Eating 6-8 times a day for a normal person is ridiculous. Just eat 3 times a day and mix your food groups up. If you are looking to gain muscle go High carbs morning/preworkout and high protein for dinner/postworkout. If you are looking to just tone up then mix your food groups up and try to limit fast foods or greasy shit to about once a week and stay away from snack foods as much as possible. Chips once a week sure, chips everyday not so good.

If you are exercising often than diet is less important, you can more so eat how you been eating. If you are trying to lose fat/weight cut down on the dairy. If you are trying to gain muscle try to add fish and still keep dairy at moderate levels.

Don't get supplements, you don't sound like you are trying to become a body builder, so you don't need any. Your diet is balanced, you're young, and as far as I know healthy so it's unnecessary.

As far as routines go the one you have right now is fine beside you are ignoring legs. Asians have small legs already. Add dumbbell squats and leg lunges and for back add deadlifts. If you feel your form is bad youtube or go to the gym or ask people/friends. If you are building muscles 5 sets with 4-9 reps. If you are toning 3 sets with 20-40 reps. Either way start at a weight where you hit a high number IE 9 or 40 with whatever weight you can do it with probably 30lbs for 9 reps and 20/15lbs for 40 reps. Next set increase weight and your reps should decrease to about 5-8 with strength or 25-32 with toning and continue til you finish the 3 set or 5 set routine.

As far as body weight exercises go just do them for 3 to 5 sets til your number is reduced dramatically. Example you do 15 pushups one set rest for 1-2 mins do 13 rest 11 rest 6 rest 2. Done. Do as many as you can until you reach your struggle rep when your arms start shaking or your abs start hurting finish that rep then rest.

You can split up your workouts anyway you want. The shorter the span the more results you will see. The longer the span the longer it will take to see results.

Each week you should move up in weight and more reps. If you do not like running/cardio just do these workouts with less rest time and it is enough cardio to meet your needs. Just pm if you have any questions.

Edited December 30, 2012 by Shadow

[Pebbz. 953]

yay, this is fairly helpful

[Eek 724]

As far as diet goes you sound fine. Eating 6-8 times a day for a normal person is ridiculous. Just eat 3 times a day and mix your food groups up. If you are looking to gain muscle go High carbs morning/preworkout and high protein for dinner/postworkout. If you are looking to just tone up then mix your food groups up and try to limit fast foods or greasy shit to about once a week and stay away from snack foods as much as possible. Chips once a week sure, chips everyday not so good.

Eating 6-8 times a day is a good way to increase your metabolism, if you want to slow down your metabolism, you eat 3 big meals a day and no more.

[Shadow 1044]

As far as diet goes you sound fine. Eating 6-8 times a day for a normal person is ridiculous. Just eat 3 times a day and mix your food groups up. If you are looking to gain muscle go High carbs morning/preworkout and high protein for dinner/postworkout. If you are looking to just tone up then mix your food groups up and try to limit fast foods or greasy shit to about once a week and stay away from snack foods as much as possible. Chips once a week sure, chips everyday not so good.

Eating 6-8 times a day is a good way to increase your metabolism, if you want to slow down your metabolism, you eat 3 big meals a day and no more.

I know this. I am a personal trainer, but to tell an average person to start eating 6-8 times a day is unrealistic. Money wise, time wise, and going from 2 meals to 6 is tough on the stomach. It is unnecessary too. I eat 6 times a day because I am an athlete. Average people don't need to do this.

[Pebbz. 953]

is it better to designate a workout to a single area like work on bicep/back one day and then tricep/chest the next? or does that not matter? can u do all sorts of exercises? what changes?

[Sir. Hot Mayo 1143]

is it better to designate a workout to a single area like work on bicep/back one day and then tricep/chest the next? or does that not matter? can u do all sorts of exercises? what changes?

Yes, it matters to break up the workouts like that rather than do full-body each day. You're going to see major results compared to if you weren't to.

Breaking it up into different days allows for a strong recovery.

[Shadow 1044]

is it better to designate a workout to a single area like work on bicep/back one day and then tricep/chest the next? or does that not matter? can u do all sorts of exercises? what changes?

Varied results for most people. mostly it depends on your energy and time available. Do you have enough energy to do 3 muscle groups and the time to do it? People stick with 2 muscle groups because it is about a 45 to 1 hour work out and the soreness is only in 2 areas versus whole body/ more muscle groups. So depending on what you want to do you can do 2 muscle groups each day then after you finish all of them take a rest day, so 3 days on 1 day off. Or you can do 3 muscle groups, which would be 2 days on 1 day off or full body workout and rotate 1 day on and 1 day off. You need time to allow for muscle to grow and become stronger after you break them down. So it is all your preference really. Just need to make sure to give muscles time off. It's good to take one whole day off and just rest or do stretching/yoga or play games whatever.

[Freekiller #3 342]

How you should eat and exercise all depends on your goal. I would recommend you go to the gym because working out with dumbbells is horrible. You're not going to be able to do any heavy compound lifts, and you'll end up looking like Shadow. Unless you want to look like Shadow?

[KGameLover1 1306]

• Eat 6 meals a day, and eat 75-100% of your bodyweight in grams of protein to gain muscle mass (so if you're 180 pounds, eating between 135-180g of protein a day will help build up muscle mass). Drink fuckloads of water too if you utilize protein shakes to hit that marker (kidney stones are no bueno and it's not good to retain all of that processed stuff in your body for too long). Water helps clean out the body and aids in increasing the metabolism.
  
• To lose fat, eating cleaner and doing cardio works best.
  
• Avoid being weighed down by set amounts of "reps". Use weights where you can get at most 6-8 reps with perfect form and increase the weights every other week by like 10%. If you can do more than 12 reps of an exercise with a given weight, or you can only do a measely 3-4 reps of a given exercise with a given weight (and you aren't a bodybuilder/competitive weight lifter), you're doing it wrong (and you should probably increase or decrease the weight for that exercise).
  
• I keep track of what I eat on MyFitnessPal and I eat 40% carbs, 35% protein, and 25% fat. So far I'm down 6 inches around my waist and down 12~ pounds.
  
• I have a cheat meal every other day to make sure I don't overdo it with sweets and other foods that are detrimental to my diet.
  
• Have a rest day so your muscles can rebuild themselves (you're literally breaking and tearing your muscles when lifting weights; you only gain mass after they recover properly).
  
• I do Insanity 6 days of the week, an ab exercise every other day from TTS, and I lift weights MWF.
  

this.

insanity is great.

also MyFitnessPal is great for calorie counting.

[Jopo 369]

How you should eat and exercise all depends on your goal. I would recommend you go to the gym because working out with dumbbells is horrible. You're not going to be able to do any heavy compound lifts, and you'll end up looking like Shadow. Unless you want to look like Shadow?

Actually dumbbells are better than machines, if you know how to do the exercise right. Machines help you to hold your body in the right form when you lift.

When I go to the gym, I use most of the time only dumbbells for every muscle group.