How many times a week do you go to the gym?

i hit da gym 3 times a week n i hit da blunt erryday at home

Less weight with more repetitions on each set for "toning" is a myth. Like I said, you cannot "tone" muscle fibre by lifting weights, it's a popular misconception. When you lower your bodyfat percentages, you reveal more muscle, giving your body a toned, cut look. You do not get a toned cut look by lifting weights, you get it by eating right and cardio = lower bodyfat.

Building mass is just a goal. You can achieve it many ways. If you are more serious about strength gains, heavier weight with lower reps and longer rests inbetween sets would be ideal. If your interested in hypertrophy, I wouldn't go below 6 repititions and I definitely wouldn't rest longer than 60 seconds inbetween sets.

So, this means you would want to use a weight that would challenge you around the 6th rep. If you can't get to six reps with it it's too heavy.

Hope that gives you an idea.

There are many debates on the topic. It's really whatever you prefer. I'm specifically talking about cardio for burning fat. I could care less about being a good sprinter.

The bottom line is, and a known fact, is that first thing in the morning your body is most ready to burn fat. Your glucose levels are low from going 8 hours without food (sleeping) so it's most likely to be a fat burning machine at this time with some early cardio. Which in return will speed your metabolism up for the rest of the day, but like I said it's debatable. Do what you prefer.

i don't hit the weights though, i just play basketball as much as I possibly can

Thanks for the responce Mr. Samos. I will also be going to bodybuilding.com as you recommended!

6 DAYS A WEEK!!!

my work out is sex with tubby bitches

When I got out of the Air Force I stopped working out for 9 months. I looked like a dad with a beer belly. Everyone who hasn't seen me in a while called me a fat ass. First time in my life I've been called fat. So now I hit the weights twice a week and run twice a week too. It sucks turning 25. Metabolism slows down and you can't eat junk food like you used to.

5+ times a week

Mr. Samos, after doing research on hypertrophy i have deiced to follow this program. But, I do have some questions for you about the program. Are you still here??

I go about 5 times a week. Hit the weights 3 of those 5.

The only problem I have with that website is to weed out what are facts and what is BS. It gets confusing to find out what works and what don't.

I been turning it up a notch recently, 6 days a week.

I got a wedding to attend in 2 months and i gotta look sharp.

Currently 3 days a week, full body routine, almost 100% compound lifts.

More information for people who just dont know...

There is no one magical routine that will do it all. It depends on your body, and your body alone. One program may work well for this person and not work at all on the next. Pick your routine based on your goal, are you trying to gain muscle mass, build strength, loss body fat etc...

This is from Coach Christain Thibaudeau

what is optimal really depends on the level of development you are at right now, your genetic predisposition to gaining size/losing fat, capacity to tolerate training volume, etc.

To be honest, the biggest factor involved in getting bigger and more muscular is the nutritional aspect of things... the food (amount, type and quality) you ingest every day is what makes your muscles grow.

You need to eat enough to support maximum muscle growth, but not to much to avoid putting on too much body fat. You must also eat as cleanly (quality food) as much as possible.

Now, what I'm going to tell you might not be pleasing to hear, but you really cannot gain a lot of muscle while losing a lot of fat at the same time... (unless you are a genetic phenom, in which case you would not be posting this question in the first place). Basically, you can:

1. Gain a maximum amount of muscle while accepting a moderate amount of fat gain

2. Gain a significant amount of muscle while gaining a small amount of fat

3. Gain a small amount of muscle and maintain or lose a small amount of fat

4. Lose a moderate amount of fat while maintaining or gaining a small amount of muscle

5. Lose a lot of fat while accepting some muscle loss

So it's a matter of establishing your priorities. If you want to be lean all-year round you'll have to accept that muscle gains will come slowly. And if you want to gain a lot of size you'll have to accept that you will get fatter and will eventually need to diet down.

Even if you perform cardio it doesn't change the parameters... a 30-45 minutes cardio session will "burn" around 300-400 calories ... considering that a pound of fat has 3500-3600 calories you can see that cardio will not be able to halt fat gain if you ingest a ton of food. Plus, cardio work can (slightly) decrease the amount of muscle you gain if you keep the same caloric intake... this is especially true of hardgainers (those who have a hard time gaining muscle).

This was something I found somewhere off the web

Benefits of Higher-Rep Training (8-12 reps)

Less Neurologically Demanding: When conducting higher-rep sets, trainees can generate a high-volume output with fewer sets and a lighter load. This shortens the workout and decreases the session's overall degree of difficulty, making the trainee less susceptible to overtraining. When training with lower-reps, a trainee must perform more sets at a greater intensity to maintain the same volume output. This is extremely taxing to the central nervous system and most trainees won't be able to perform such demanding workouts for extended periods of time without frying their nervous systems.

Greater Density per Workout (work per unit time): When working in higher-rep ranges, trainees will be performing fewer total sets and will generally be resting for shorter periods of time than when training in lower-rep ranges, thus increasing the density of the workout. Density is a critical variable in the muscle building equation.

Greater Time Under Tension per Set: Given equal tempo prescriptions, higher-rep sets will yield a greater TUT per set than lower-rep sets.

Benefits of Lower-rep Training (<6 reps)

Greater Protein Degradation per Rep: When training with lower-reps, trainees can use much heavier loads than when working in higher-rep ranges. Heavier loads place greater tension on the working muscles, which will in turn cause greater protein degradation per rep. The amount of protein degraded during an exercise session is directly related to the growth potential of that session.

Greater Functional Growth: Substantial growth of the contractile proteins myosin and actin can be attributed to low-rep training, while higher-rep training tends to yield more sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. This is known as "functional" vs. "nonfunctional" growth, as the former yields substantial increases in strength, while the latter does not.

Greater Strength Increases: This is partly due to the contractile hypertrophy mentioned above, but neurological factors also come into play. Heavy training is much more neurologically demanding than higher-rep work and an increase in motor neuron efficiency will also contribute to strength gains.

Greater Improvements in Myogenic and Neurogenic Muscle Tone: Because the contractile proteins are by far the densest component of skeletal muscle, one's myogenic tone, or muscle density, will be improved while on a lower-rep protocol. Also, one's neurogenic muscle tone (tone when movements or contractions occur) will be enhanced through the high-intensity induced sensitizing of alpha and gamma motor neurons.

Also if you want a ton of great nutrition info please use the link below.

http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nutrition/index.htm

This is one of Dr Berardis articles.

The 7 Habits of Highly
Effective Nutritional Programs

By Dr. John M Berardi, Ph.D.
First published at www.t-mag.com, Dec 12 2003.

Take a look around the nutrition world. Confusing, isn’t it?

Conflicting advice is everywhere, and you’re stuck in the middle. You wonder whether anyone out there even knows what they’re talking about, or whether the experts will ever reach a consensus on anything. You start to wonder whether you’ll need a degree in nutritional biochemistry before you can lose that stubborn abdominal fat.

So what’s the deal? Why so much confusion? Why does one expert suggest that high protein is best for everyone, while another expert suggests high carb and yet another expert suggests high fat? Besides, what exactly do high protein, high carb, and high fat really mean? And why are other experts telling us that food choices should be based on our "metabolic type," our "blood type," or our "ancestry"?

One expert says to eat like a Neanderthal and another says eat like a Visigoth, or perhaps a Viking. But while searching for nutritional Valhalla, most people just get lost and eat like a Modern American—and end up looking more Sumo than Samurai.

These days, we have a cacophony of expertise: lots of confusing noise from the experts drowning out the signal of truth.

On the surface, it appears as if today’s nutrition technology is quite advanced. After all, we have at our disposal more nutrition information than ever before. More money is being spent on nutrition research than in any time in history. Every day, impressive strides are being made in the field. Dozens of nutrition experts are rising to prominence. Yet simultaneously we’re witnessing a steadily increasing rate of obesity, an increase in nutrition-related illness (Diabetes, CVD, and Syndrome X), and an increase in nutrition-related mortality.

Part of the problem is that much of the information hasn’t reached the people who need it. Part of the problem is that even when it does reach those people, they often don’t use it. And certainly, the problem is multifactorial—there are probably many more reasons than I can list here.

How much more information do we need?

But the curious thing is that many people try to solve the problem by seeking out more information. They know it all and still want more. If there’s one thing of which I am absolutely convinced, it’s that a lack of good nutrition information isn’t what prevents us from reaching our goals. We already know everything we need to know. Sometimes the real problem isn’t too little information but too much.

All the fundamental principles you need to achieve good health and optimal body composition are out there already, and have been for years. Unfortunately, with 500 experts for every fundamental principle, and very little money to be made from repeating other people’s ideas, experts must continually emphasize the small (and often relatively unimportant) differences between their diet/eating plans and the diet/eating plans of all the other experts out there.

In the world of advertising and marketing, this is called "differentiation." By highlighting the small distinctions and dimming out the large similarities between their program and all the others, they’re jostling for your next nutritional dollar.

Now, and let me be clear on this, I’m not accusing nutrition experts of quackery.

Yes, some programs are utter crap. Those are generally quite easy to pick out and don’t merit discussion here. But most experts do know what they are talking about, can get results, and wholeheartedly believe in what they’re doing. Many of the differences between them are theoretical and not practical, and on the fundamentals they generally agree completely.

It’s all good — sorta

In fact, many of the mainstream programs out there, if not most of them, will work. To what extent they work, and for how long, varies. As long as a program is internally consistent, follows a few basic nutritional tenets, and as long as you adhere to it consistently, without hesitation, and without mixing principles haphazardly taken from other programs, you’ll get some results. It’s that simple, and that hard (as you can see, results depend as much on psychology as on biochemistry).

But if you’re like most people, you’ll first survey all the most often discussed programs before deciding which to follow. And in this appraisal, you’ll get confused, lost, and then do the inevitable. That’s right, you’ll revert back to your old, ineffectual nutrition habits.

Instead of parsing out the similarities between all the successful plans out there, the common principles that affect positive, long-term change, you get thrown off the trail by the stench of the steaming piles of detail.

The Atkins program works for all patients under the direct care of the Atkins team—as long as patients follow it. The Zone program works for all patients under the direct care of the Sears team —as long as they follow it. The Pritkin Diet works for all patients under the care of the Pritkin team— as long as they follow it.

Yet, not all three plans are identical. How, then, can they all get impressive improvements in health and body composition? Well, either each team somehow magically draws the specific patient subpopulations most in need of their plan (doubtful) or each system possesses some basic fundamental principles that are more important than the ratios of protein to carbs to fats.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Nutritional Programs

Here’s my take on it. I call these principles, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Nutritional Programs," a shameless and possibly illegal play on Steven Covey’s book, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People." (Great book, by the way—you should read it sometime.)

These aren’t the newest techniques from the latest cutting-edge plan. Rather, they are simple, time-tested, no nonsense habits that you need to get into when designing a good eating program.

1. Eat every 2-3 hours, no matter what. You should eat between 5-8 meals per day.

2. Eat complete (containing all the essential amino acids), lean protein with each meal.

3. Eat fruits and/or vegetables with each food meal.

4. Ensure that your carbohydrate intake comes from fruits and vegetables. Exception: workout and post-workout drinks and meals.

5. Ensure that 25-35% of your energy intake comes from fat, with your fat intake split equally between saturates (e.g. animal fat), monounsaturates (e.g., olive oil), and polyunsaturates (e.g. flax oil, salmon oil).

6. Drink only non-calorie containing beverages, the best choices being water and green tea.

7. Eat mostly whole foods (except workout and post-workout drinks).
So what about calories, or macronutrient ratios, or any number of other things that I’ve covered in other articles? The short answer is that if you aren’t already practicing the above-mentioned habits, and by practicing them I mean putting them to use over 90% of the time (i.e., no more than 4 meals out of an average 42 meals per week violate any of those rules), everything else is pretty pointless.

Moreover, many people can achieve the health and the body composition they desire using the 7 habits alone. No kidding! In fact, with some of my clients I spend the first few months just supervising their adherence to these 7 rules—an effective but costly way to learn them.

If you’ve reached the 90% threshold, you may need a bit more individualization beyond the 7 habits. If so, search around on this site. Many of these little tricks can be found in my many articles published right here. But before looking for them, before assuming you’re ready for individualization; make sure you’ve truly mastered the 7 habits. Then, while keeping the 7 habits as the consistent foundation, tweak away.

Bein 29 I let let myself go for a few years, now Im seriously thinkin of getting back into shape. There's this new MMA fitness facility opening up in downtown so imma go check it out and sign up for a few classes....