My only other advice is to not be afraid to lift big weight. Do real squats and deadlifts with serious weight. Your legs will come along.
after all this you know you are going to have to post before and several after pics... you know that right?
Lady_Di, To gain muscle you need to be in a calorie surplus. One way to put on muscle while keeping fat gain to a minimum is through calorie cycling. Simply put you eat more on workout days and less on non-workout days. A great place to start is leangains.com Martin Berkhan is the man when it comes to nutrition and working out. He also advocates Intermittent Fasting which has a host of benefits. His entire protocol is on the site and plenty of women follow the plan as well. Hope this helps.
weslinder, yeah, i figured that out. i was advised not to lift heavy with my legs by my physical therapist because of a bulging disc in my lower back so i have been doing resistance training. i def notice the results but i want a little bit more so i dunno how to work around my disc. i deal with sciatica pretty often and it is annoying. yoyo, no way, i did not know that!
I am kind of scared to eat more. I don't want to gain weight (non muscle gain) but I see that I am not eating enough to really gain muscles. I lost 10 lbs within a year last year. thanks for the site, i will check it out. i saw this page and it blew my mind how high the calorie limit is. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/lindsay-kaye-muscle-building-program.html
I didn't even recognize one of them was Trish Stratus. Some trainer named Brian McNamee maybe able to help you out...
That's the beauty of calorie cycling. You eat in a surplus when your body will use the extra fuel and you eat under maintenance every other day. It's basically impossible not to gain a little bit of fat but it's a lot less than if you were to eat over maintenance every day. Let me know if you have any questions. I don't claim to know everything but I have been into fitness and nutrition for years now as they're my passion.
v3.0, i already have him on the speed dial. franchise, thanks so much for the info. i just feel a bit overwhelmed with info that is out there. i do have some muscle in my arms and legs but still not enough. i need to firm up my derriere. it is my trouble area zone along with my tummy. so on your cardio days, do you adopt a high calorie plan?
No, on non-workout days you wouldn't eat in a surplus. And yes there is a ton of mis-information out there!
Well yes and no. Cardio isn't going to require a higher calorie amount since normally cardio is performed to cut calories for the day. You could sip a BCAA drink before and after doing cardio but you don't want a huge calorie hit. When you are focusing on muscle building you really want to keep cardio to a minimum if you do any at all.
I was thinking that maybe i could do more circuits to lose lbs...ideally i would like to be 120-125 then i focus on muscle building. i haven't been able to lose lbs after losing 10 lbs. not sure if this is the right plan. i know that weight training is the key to shed body fat.
It sounds counter-intuitive but the key to shedding bf is to really scale back on the volume of your workouts and to really dial in nutritionally. You tear muscle in the gym and you build it through nutrition and rest.
Pretty much most of my fitness advice is based around getting better at martial arts so I can't help you with a bikini competition unless you want to do some Judo for the talent portion. Good luck though!
if you just need to gain muscle mass, then it's all about adjusting the load you put your muscle up against. Start with weight you can handle up to 8 reps and as it gets easier go up in weight, not reps. Try that rep amount for a while and see how that goes. That may or may not be a good rep amt for your body to put on muscle, but you can always go down to the 6-8 range if you feel the muscle gain isn't enough. The basic idea is to make your muscle adapt to a new change, so that they will grow. The new change should make it tougher to push, pull, etc or otherwise youll have no growth. There's no one schedule to follow, like increasing weight every week or two weeks. You'll have to decide that yourself by monitoring your progress, but personally i felt the first week of a new load was to introduce it to the muscle and mind, let it know something new is coming....the second week the body has better idea of what's coming and can handle it more easily...third week it masters the weight or comes close to it...so by the 4th or maybe 5th week (once you master the weight/reps completely) you may be ready to increase the weight and start the cycle again. Again, the week numbers aren't set in stone, maybe more or less for you, but just know that's basically the progression the body goes through as it tries to adapt. And i can't emphasize enough to work out every joint possible, especially the more significants ones...It's usualy not a few major muscles that make the overall body seem "massive", but instead hitting all of them so they collectively make you look bigger. As for your bulging disc....get a second opinion, at least. I've heard of bulging discs that really were just due to bad posture/alignment. Just because youre not walking around hunched over doesn't mean you dont have a posture problem. I've been following this: mobilitywod.com and it has helped me out A TON when it comes to better understanding my mechanics and how lack of mobility (which will cause misalignment) can be holding me back physically... Sometimes the clips may not seem like they're relevant to you, but I'd still watch them, since sometimes he'll mention tidbits within them and you'll have that light bulb going off moment. I use to get a combo of back/hip spasms and and that's gone after improving my mobility. Had some thoracic outlet syndrome, also gone. Although I was always fit and in good shape all the desk work over the years was screwing up my body little by little, but i'm reversing all that and it's improved every dimension of my athleticism (balance, strength, flexibility, etc) Please do not disregard the mobility stuff...it's very underrated and people kill themselves trying to "lose the last 5 pounds" and feel like its their "problem area" like you've just mentioned, but that may just be your body's aligment holding you back...for example, when you sit your stomach "crunches" down and it brings out the "rolls". You stand up and it's gone. You're not losing any weight, just changing position....so if you have tight hip flexors it can create the same "crunching" position, which will also give you the appearance of having more flab than you really do. Again, don't just assume your fine because you stand up straight with shoulders back. There are ways for your body to circumvent problems, so it could just be tricking you into believing you posture is fine.
Muscle is priceless and you need to hold to every bit of it you can. Believe me everyone wants to cut the fat first and then build but it's the absolute wrong way. You need to slowly lose the fat while holding on to the mass you have.
RV6, you hit a nail on the head. my physical therapist said i had tight hip flexors. my belly seems to stick out when i stand... i def get a roll when i sit down but it is gone when i stand up so what you said makes sense. i have a desk job so it is not helping the cause at all. franchise, my goal for now is to decrease my body fat. i can't remember the percentage when i had it tested at the gym back in November. somewhere between 22-24%. i'm going to see if one of personal trainers at the gym would be willing to help me out to get my body fat tested tomorrow.
