aj_rock

According to your numbers, you need to pig out like this once a week in order to prevent wasting away

What knighwatch said. Wait until your bench numbers stop increasing, then start looking at other lifts. If you reaaaaaaaally wanna do more varied work, then sure, do some incline, but replace some sets on bench with incline, instead of adding extra work.

I would really try removing the extraneous variables first. I mean: - you consumed a LOT of refined sugar and preservatives - you ate things that have been removed from your diet from some time - you ate a lot PERIOD. Of course you feel sick after over-eating, that's what over eating is especially when you throw in all that sugary goodness.

Yeah, do the two weeks off, or at least greatly reduce volume. I'll be de-loading myself over christmas, which, intuition tells me is what you're doing as well If you don't magically increase your lifts after this time off though, I'll eat my shorts. I'm almost positive that it will get you moving again.

I'd have to agree with alecto; newbie gains are usually seen as a mechanism of improved proprioception, mind-to-muscle links, and muscle fiber recruitment. Just to adress some of the concerns: - If you look at a weekly basis, beyond just female diet, the typical athletic diet has traditionally been high carb. For someone new to lifting though, as long as you aren't feeling overly sore or fatigued (probably the more important indicator) following a workout, you're eating enough. Try tweaking your intake until you know how much to eat to prevent excess fatigue. - the 3x a week is more specifically how many times a week you should hit a given muscle group per week, so if you do full-body workouts, 3 is all you need. If you do split routines, then 4,5,6 workouts per week isn't unheard of - by all means, do IF if it makes you feel better. Just note that it isn't in and of itself a magic bullet for fat loss and mass gains. The only thing conclusively proven is that fasting will NOT strip you of muscle and make you fat, which was the prevalent pseudo-science surrounding skipping meals for decades. -The metcons and HIIT are relative to your goals. Just realize that combining exhausting cardio with heavy leg work will slow your leg gains, and possibly lead to over-training down the road. -

3kg * 2.2 = 6.6 lbs, 6.6 * 3500 cals of fat/pound fat = 23100. Over 26 days, thats over-eating by a little less than 900 calories a day. Of course, assuming n00b gains, you could easily make most of that muscle. As to your work-out schedule, how about 2 hard one easy? Push yourself hard 2/3 days and let the third day be recovery.

Well the Spezzy deadline came and went. We need to be moar pro-active guys

Ahh yes sorry if that wasn't clear! 100% I meant the goal was stupid/daft (I like the word daft better actually), not the misguided people seeking it.

Carb loading, if you want to do primal, is a lot of potatoooo. Otherwise you'll have to buck up and eat the easy carbs (pasta, juice, bread, etc). It's just not very manageble to get it from whole food sources.

Also; might I say it could be worse? At least people are focusing on BF% and not something stupid like total body weight. ZOMG NEED TO BE UNDER 100 POUNDS !!!!1!11!!! Note* MMA fighters need not apply. You guys are unique little snowflakes.

LISS is the way to go for beginners. A C25K program or something similar is a good starting point. Only once you've 'built' your aerobic engine can you start working on the anaerobic nitro boost

Fact of the matter is, the average age of the users on this forum is quite low (I would guess median around 25, average maybe a bit higher), so obviously you're going to have a lot of people who find their main motivation comes from 'looking good' Honestly, as long as people aren't reaching for unrealistic goals, I don't really see the problem. Everyone has to find his or her own muse.

Haven't we all. Choosing the right coach is a mission in and of itself.

Radiation; fun for the whole family! But no, really, microwaves are AWESOME.

The whole wheat/gluten thing impacts like 1% of the population, and tends to get over representation, because no one brags on teh internetz about how paleo didn't make them feel awesome 19... considering most people in RoC are 21-22, thats if they get in on their first try. I still love visiting quebec though! I will never get over the idea of having a tap from a keg right at the table you sit at

Hey ETF, sometimes that's why those of us with lofty goals would do well to get a coach. It's been proven that people who just coach themselves tend to end up doing things they wouldn't recommend to anyone they were coaching themselves. Get someone who can at least objectively be able to tell you when you need a day off

Yeaaahh, but he said visual. Pretty much means BB competition, unless he's just going to a beach

Carjack: while calorie cycling does slow down metabolic losses from dieting down, in the end, any diet with a caloric intake below maintanence is going to impair metabolism eventually to some degree. Lachy: six times a week, for someone trying to LOSE fat, is not ideal in the slightest. That's basically asking for overtraining I'd say cut back to 2 workouts through the week, and some walking like you said, or light jogging, etc. However, a de-load may be necessary first. Take a week to do lighter volume training. So like, follow the same rep/set scheme, but with like half the weight. Also eat at maintanence. When you get back into your fat loss scheme, 2 heavy workouts a week, coupled with adequate protein, should protect most of your muscle mass.

Dude! Why do we not have this in Ontario! Stupid Quebec and their fancy advantages *grumbles* Just remember that paleo is not the be-all-end-all that some can make it out to be. Make sure you find what's right for YOU.

Cut a lot of carbs. Make sure you get adequate protein, which, if you're going to aggressively reduce calories, needs to be at or above 1g/lb TOTAL body weight. Not lean. The week before you perform, bring carbs back. It'll put you're weight up a bit, but it's all lean, and it'll make you look fuller. BTW I'm assuming you mean bodybuilding performance.

So if I'm hearing this correctly, you're running on about 20 weeks of non-stop training? Most training programs de-load or take about two weeks for active recovery every 8 weeks, to allowed full healing of minor damage, restoration of glycogen, metabolism normalization, etc. Take a couple weeks down-time, lift light and only like once a week, and then go back to it. You'll probably jump 5-10 pounds off the hop.

I'd go for some muscle mass now if I were you. I think that if you added 10-15 pounds of muscle to your frame, you'd look pretty good.

If you ever come across a curl bar without any weight, let it be known they weigh 25 lbs naked long bars are 45. If you pay close attention to the size of the weights on the pre-set curl bars, you can see the 5#, 10# weights.

How long have you been working on your overhead press? Maybe it's time for a de-load. But yeah, the mid-way point is the weak point of almost every pushing movement imaginable; it is there, inevitably, that everyone kinda has to 'grind' the movement out.

Hmm ok I'll note things as I read the study. First, the abstract says that the changes in body composition are statistically insignificant... That's a LOT of exercise to be doing on a daily basis for what I would assume to be relatively advanced trainers... Normally, I dislike studies that use self-reported food intake, but most collegiate athletes are neurotic about that stuff anyways... Differences in weight between athletes makes the second table harder to decipher... I can't decide on how accurately carbs and fats were tracked on a per pound body weight basis So it seems to definetly suggest higher protein requirements; it's a shame they couldn't get more volunteers, otherwise they might have achieved statistical significance... The fact that ALL groups gained significant strength without adding significant LBM leads me to think most of the adaptation was neural in nature and not related to force produced by muscle cross-section... The take-away I got from this is that they really need to repeat this study with a much larger population. Smaller changes tend to be amplified in large populations. Also, the bench 1RM corresponds to about a 4lb increase in 1RM per week. At a 75% intensity (just an example), this corresponds to adding 5 pounds to a lift every two weeks. For advanced lifters, that's not all that surprising to me actually. The second one is a little more confusing, and I kinda skimmed it. It seemed to me though that the more protein they consumed, the more the body just used protein overall. While this seems kind of like a DUH moment, I think it's significant that, even though the low protein group did go a little into a negative nitrogen balance, it wasn't even to start stripping muscle off their bodies or anything like that. Keep 'em coming! These are fascinating