Hi unannounced,
Although I’m no professional, i’ve been bodybuilding for the past 4 or so years, so I’ll give you a few tips to improve you health/fitness.
Originally posted by unannounced:
`Is there a workout that specifically focuses on improving energy?`Yes there is – it’s called diet! [biggrin] No matter how much exercise you do, how much weight you can lift in the gym, your mental alertness, energy levels, etc… all come down to nutrition. If you eat junk, you feel like junk. Try and eat a clean balanced diet rich in protein, moderate carbs, and moderate fats. Your protein should come from lean meats – fish, chicken breast, red meats, etc.. Eggs are good too. Carbs – go for the low glycemic carbs such as oats, basmati rice, sweet potatoe. This will keep you fuller for longer and will keep your energy levels up for longer. Avoid sugar, sweets, etc.. as this will give you a quick energy fix, then put you to sleep 15 minutes later. Fats – you need these to be healthy! Only the bad saturated fats should be avoided. Healthy fats such as nuts, olive oil and flaxseed oil are great for a healthy body.
Other things which help are:
– Eat 5-6 smaller meals a day (eat every 3 hours). This keeps your metabolism ticking over.
– Exercise 3-5 times a week at most. No need to over do it. You will only over-train your body, hence it won’t recover fully.
– Sleep – yes, rest is important. This is when your body recovers.
– Change your training routine every 4-8 weeks. This will keep your body guessing and reduce the plateau effect on results from doing the same exercise endlessly, over and over.Cheers
OziI’m with ozi on this one!
I have been out of it for too long for me to be pushing my own barrow. I seem to remember, though, eating fat free meat (mainly chicken – without the skin) and tonnes of pasta (I know that that is propably the wrong thing) heaps of vegies. I started in the gym because I liked this girl, she left and I had 6 months to go on my membership so I got more serious. Once I changed the diet and the workout got more and more intensive I started to get “the Buzz”. That is basically what happened. After a year I had to alter my routing because I lost ‘symetry’ and started to look seriously deformed! After five years, I was able to goof off for about four before I lost most of the energy and physique. Sad realy, working 12hr shifts realy busts up ones routine…..
Cheers
C@34
I knew i forgot something. VEGGIES! Rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, low in calories! Can’t get enough of them. Fruit is essential too! Just don’t over do it with fruit as fruit is high sugar (fructose).
Not only change your routine..
But importantly, your Tempo..
It’s gone pretty commercial, but check out MuscleMedia or http://www.bodyforlife.com/
It’s a start
“Money is a currency, like electricity and it requires momentum to make it Effective”
Count The Currency With This Online Positive Cashflow CalculatorOzi,
You have nailed it in ONE! “NUTRITION” is 99.999999% of bodybuilding. Finding what your genetics responds to (eg. super sets, drop sets, one maximum set to failure, etc.) and lagging body parts (eg, calves, etc) that need extra attention is the ‘easy bit’. So to is the discipline of ‘NEVER’ making excuses by missing a work out. If you stick to eating clean ALWAYS, then everything eventually comes together. Don’t focus on the size of the muscle. It’s development/growth will eventually be a side effect of sticking to nutrition and consistency.
Cheers,
Gatsby.Gatsby got it in one – nutrition / diet is indeed 99% of your results. Of course the other 99% of your results comes from habit. That is if you set up a routine to lift on Mon, Wed and Fri, make sure you follow that. Don’t miss a workout. Set your self a schedule.
And the final 99% of your results actually comes from what you are physically doing.
The big compound excersizes such as deadlift, squat, benchpress, overhead press and pulldowns use most of your musculature, so you are going to get greater results from a routine that includes these, as compared to a routine filled with isolation ex’s such as bicep curl, calf raise, leg extension, side bends and tricep pushdowns.
And remember recovery time is just as important.
and then there’s post-workout nutrition. and pre-workout nutrition, and workout nutrition.
who would have thought picking up some metal could get so complicated?[biggrin]rgds
ShauWoops should have looked further up, ozi got it right[blush2].
Although I disagree on your comment to leave saturated fats out of your diet. Important hormones such as Testosterone are built from Sat. fats, and test. is the best anabolic hormone a bloke could can have. Many illegal steroids’ action is to increase test. production, which can’t occure without sat. fats.
It’s probably a good ratio to keep sat. fats at under 35% of your total fat intake (mono and polyunsaturated fats make up the remainder).
Remember it’s the combination of carbs, fats and inactivity that lead to obesity and it resultant problems.rgds
ShaunWThanks Shaun,
Working out has to become as ritualistic as brushing your teeth. You have to be competitive. The best part is that you are only competing against yourself. For every workout/program their will always be other workout pundits who will give you every reason why their work outs are better. Just like some people love property/shares and it’s in their blood, so too are the gym rats. My work out is 2 days on, 1 day off then 2 days on again and then I repeat the cycle. I haven’t worked out for about 4 months and the current work issue of bullying has taken a bit of a toll as I don’t know if I’ll have a job or not. But instead of using that as an excuse not to work out, it is now my ‘reason’ to work out (which I’ve recommenced). Another personal belief is that if you are going to donate time to working out then you may as well give it a 110% otherwise why bother (I know some will disagree for valid reasons)? This approach just works for me. If you hate your job, boss, the ‘SYSTEM’- WHATEVER!, channel that into your work outs. Harness that emotion into 1 extra rep, half rep, etc. Reward a good workout with a good meal (clean). Don’t feel like ‘because I ate crap for lunch I’ll have to burn it off.’ It’s better to say to yourself ‘because I completed a difficult workout despite being over motivated, under motivated, tired, too active, too bored, too busy, etc I’ll reward myself with a healthy meal, a rest day to recuperate, etc. When is the best time to work out? When your body feels at it’s peak. For me that’s between the hours of 11.30am and 2pm. That’s the window where my circadian rhythm is at it’s most alert. For others it may be after they first wake up in the morning or just prior to going to bed. Also visualize your goals. Imagine your arms, legs, gut, etc already being the size you would love. Supplements are another area for discussion so I won’t go into it. However don’t rule out the placebo affect. If I gave you a sugar tablet and told you it contained steroids and you believed me, you would have no option but to lift heavier weights and grow larger muscles as a result. Also re: visualization I always watch about 10-15 minutes of some DVD to psyche myself up to maximize the work out. It may be a couple of scenes from Ali in ‘When We Were Kings’, De Niro in ‘Raging Bull’, etc. I also turn off my mobile phone and take the phone off the hook while working out. After all, with the busy/stressfull lives we lead, be it meditation or bodybuilding, it’s probably the only one time we get to shut out all of life’s distractions and allow time just for ourselves. This I believe is the GREATEST BENEFIT of all that bodybuilding can offer.
Cheers,
Gatsby!
PS. Where do I work out? In a room next to my bed which is about 10ft x 10ft. It has all I need to attack each muscle group. I don’t have a spotter (a major limiting factor to growth), however I don’t have to drive to the gym, find a car park, queue up to use a machine, be distracted by socializing, etc. Yet for others the sound of clanging weights, etc works for them.That’s exactly right Gatsby, the one thing I found to be a huuge inhibitor to regular exercise was creating the mental need, the habit, that forces you to do it.
You know, I would make a decision and say ‘OK, im going to get healthy, going to exercise’ then go overboard and be sore for a week. And then it would just slip out of my mind. Or somethign would come up, and i’d be busy.
It took me Years of on again off again messing around before I actually started going regularly. I actually told my friend that I would GIVE him $1000 dollars that i would get in shape by a certain date. It turned out that that didn’t stick and thankfully my friend forgot that I said this –
I was just trying and trying, but it never stuck.
One day I read in something like TV Week[heh] about this person who had started exercising and spoke of how great a sleep they would get at night and how easily they would get up in the morning compared to when they did not exercise. So I decided to set this as my goal – to get this ‘super sleep’.
And after about 3-4 weeks of some cardio I finally got it, which was an incredible thing for me because i’d always felt gluggly and foggy in the morning. And then I was just waking up as if I had laid down 10 seconds before closed my eyes, opened them and were completely refreshed and
mentally alert. An amazing thing for me.So this is what I rooted my entire exercise routine on. If I missed a workout, that was 1 step toward losing this new energy. If i missed two, i’d start to get panic-ey and developed a NEED to exercise, rather than a casual want. That is how I developed my habit.
Now though, my new goal is this Super energy state i’ve mentioned. I had it, and unfortunataly I’ve lost it because of an injury and a change in my workout that sent me backward. But I’ll get it back and make that my purpose for exercising.
[biggrin]
originally posted by unannounced
It took me Years of on again off again messing around before I actually started going regularly. I actually told my friend that I would GIVE him $1000 dollars that i would get in shape by a certain date. It turned out that that didn’t stick and thankfully my friend forgot that I said this –I’ll be your friend for $1000! Heck, I’ll be yourfriend for $900!
Cheers
C@34
Hi Unannounced,
try http://forum.bodybuilding.com/ its more of a body building forum, been a member for about 4-5 years now.. but they talk alot about excercise regims, nutrition, health and body building..
there roughly anywhere between 500 – 1000+ members online at any one time..
but alot of them are teen bodybuilders.. but a many of them, are quite smart and there are a few professional athletes who speak on the forum boards too..
Cheers,
sis
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