Post: #1

Okay, with only a few weeks left till my summer holidays, I'd like some advice/pointers on how to get the most improvement in order to look my best on the beach.

Stats: 5' 11" and 180lbs. I'm a Meso/Ecto if that's still a thing?

Current Workout: 4 days lifting (one big compound movement with 3 or 4 assistance exercises each workout, long rest periods during the compounds)
2 days a week cardio (running or bike for 30 minutes)

Diet: I don't even look at diet, I just eat when I'm hungry. But I don't eat crap anymore, snack on fruit and nuts etc.

Here's my dilemma;

Should I continue with the big compounds/long rests each workout and see if I can go heavier the next few weeks in the hope of building a bit more muscle?

or,

Switch to a full body workouts/short rest periods to burn last bit of fat off/define what I've already got? Does that even work? I haven't done a full-body workout since I first started lifting nearly 30 years ago so that might be fun.

Post: #2

What is your bf%? if you are around 13 or 15%, losing fat is the quick win for looks. I would do just one weightlifting session per week to maintain strength and five HIIT sessions.

Otherwise, AllPro routine is a great full body routine for cutting and bodybuilding.

Post: #3

(04-24-2018 07:06 AM)Montrose Wrote:  What is your bf%? if you are around 13 or 15%, losing fat is the quick win for looks. I would do just one weightlifting session per week to maintain strength and five HIIT sessions.

Otherwise, AllPro routine is a great full body routine for cutting and bodybuilding.

Yeah, should have posted that. Last time it was checked, it was 19% so plenty of room for improvement. I haven't got a clue about diet, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's where I'm going wrong.

As gaining muscle is hard and takes so long (and goes so easily), I hate the idea of losing strength and gains, even if it means me looking better. Getting that balance right is key, those HIIT sessions sound like a good idea!

Post: #4

If you want to look a little better for the beach, keep lifting and tighten up your diet to burn some fat. PM me if you want some in depth help with the diet.

Post: #5

Unless you are a newbie, you are not going to gain any real muscle in just "a few weeks" especially if you are not on anabolics.
Your focus should be purely on losing bodyfat, while maintaining the lean body mass you already have.

Intermittent Fasting will do this for you.

Stick to a simple plan of eating all your food in an 8 hour window.
EXAMPLE: 2pm to 10pm is the only time you are allowed to eat.
Eat lots of Fatty Meat, Fruit and Vegetables.
These types of foods are great for promoting an anabolic environment, which will help preserve your lean body mass.

Example: Baked Chicken Thighs, Broccoli cooked in Butter with Melted Cheese on top and a side of Watermelon, Apple, Pineapple slices.

Stick to Calisthenics, Yoga, Martial Arts and Weightlifting to promote anabolism.

I would not do any low impact, endurance based, cardio.
This type of workout is not good for promoting anabolism.
Sprinting is a much better choice.

Try my advice, I maintain 4 pack/6 pack year-round and get into sharper 6 pack/8 pack and beyond territory around summer time.

Post: #6

(04-24-2018 09:05 AM)Steelex Wrote:  If you want to look a little better for the beach, keep lifting and tighten up your diet to burn some fat. PM me if you want some in depth help with the diet.

Could you or ScrapperTL send me a good diet to stick to?

To ScrapperTL- What about Protein Shakes outside that 8 hour window?

I'm in the same boat as the OP. I'm 6'3, 200lb, 15-19% bodyfat and go the Gym 5x a week if not 6x. I've kept this up for a month and a half now. Just tried to get gains to go to the beach.

I tried getting into Keto diet 2 months ago (before I started weightlifting) and was successful until I traveled and broke the diet. The only reason I really couldnt get it going was because I started traveling and then dessert kills me as well.

Post: #7

(04-24-2018 06:52 AM)Richard Turpin Wrote:  Here's my dilemma;

Should I continue with the big compounds/long rests each workout and see if I can go heavier the next few weeks in the hope of building a bit more muscle?

or,

Switch to a full body workouts/short rest periods to burn last bit of fat off/define what I've already got? Does that even work? I haven't done a full-body workout since I first started lifting nearly 30 years ago so that might be fun.

I'd just stick to an aesthetics/hypertrophy program if those are your "summer goals", especially if you're maintaining or cutting weight.
Once summer is over i'd slow-bulk and put some more mass on. If you've not done compounds for decades, I think you'd profit from running a 3-4 weeks cycle of starting strength again.

Reason i'm saying that is that it doesn't sound you plan to eat more than what you are currently so probably a full body workout won't give you the results that you're hoping for.

Also remember, despite what the bro-science tells you:
> when cutting, you will lose fat but also a non-0 % of muscle mass and strength.
> when recomping, you will veeeeeeery slowly recomp fat into lean mass (no visible difference over a couple of months tho) but you can still gain strength.
> when bulking, you will gain both fat and muscle mass along plenty of strength.

Post: #8

The answer for me would be "Squats and Keto"

I prefer full body but some type of split could work although I highly recommend doing squats/deadlifts twice per week.

I think Pendlay said his favorite split was squats and pushing on Monday/Thursday and pulling on Tuesday/Friday.

For the guys that do PPL - do you do deadlifts on pull day or leg day? is there a good way to setup the programming to deadlifts on pull day?

Post: #9

No.

If you do full body alone, you're not gonna hit certain "show" muscles very often. Like your delts, namely. Bro splits get a bad name but I feel like they give your body way more details than a simple 3 day a week full body routine. I say this having done full body workouts for years and years. I'm currently doing a full body workout but I'm not fooling myself into thinking I'm going to look better than I would if I were doing a 4-5 days bro split with high volume and attention to all the little muscles that go towards making you look like you actually lift.

Let's face it: a lot of people who do full body routines for years and years don't actually look like they lift. I'm not saying that to throw shade, but if you don't pay attention to a lot of the anterior muscles like biceps, abs, upper/lower chest they're not gonna magically grow just because you're doing squat, bench, deadlift and rows 3 days a week.

If you want to look good for the beach you need to hit those other muscle groups more often and lower your bodyfat.

Post: #10

(05-16-2018 04:28 PM)birthday cat Wrote:  do you do deadlifts on pull day or leg day? is there a good way to setup the programming to deadlifts on pull day?

First thing on Pull day.
Leg day leave it for squats, leg press/belt squats, lounges, extensions, curls etc. Also I would probably order it as LPPxLPPx rather than PPLxPPLx.

You could also consider a PP routine only:
Push, Pull, x, Push, Pull, x, (x)

Back squats go as first exercise on push day, Deadlift first exercise on pull day.

Post: #11

What works best for me (all people are different):

upper body push pull Monday (hit the auxiliary muscles at the end of the workout)
lower body push pull Tuesday
Wednesday take a break (cardio flush)
Thursday push pull upper body (different exercises than Monday)
Friday push pull lower body (different exercises than Tuesday)

Cardio and abs 6 times/week. The only real "rest" day is Sunday.

Intermittent fasting is working for me right now. I've tried everything out there. After my 30's I could not lose fat. I wrestled and did combat sports my whole life, so I was constantly dealing with weight and weight classes. I've tried everything under the sun and the love handles just would not go away. I'm on my 5th week of intermittent fasting and I can see a difference already. Trimming fat and actually making gains in strength and endurance after years of stagnation.

I'm very strict during the week. Zero calories except between 1pm and 7pm. On the weekends, I let it slide a bit but i still eat reasonably well. I just need some "head space" on the weekends and that's when most of my friends are available to hang out, so a brunch or drinks during the evening is pretty normal.

I do traditional cardio Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri. On Wednesday and Saturday I either swim or bike.

Friday afternoon until Sunday morning, I'm just hanging with friends, so the fasting takes a back seat. Sunday is a day off. Saturday morning I'll usually go for a 35 minute to an hour long bike ride.

Work the "show muscles" at the end of your push/pull workouts--ie, biceps, triceps, etc.

Post: #12

Eeehh, forgot to say:

Cardio on upper body days is for endurance, ie. longer time intervals at about 75% max.

On lower body days, i work sprints. Shorter workouts, but at a much higher intensity.

On Wednesday and Saturday I do cardio, but I have no agenda. I just do something that I enjoy doing to work out the lactic acid.

It works for me because, although I'm very strict on most days, I still have "easy days" that keep me sane.

Post: #13

As has been suggested, the best way to get very lean is to reduce your portion size, and stick primarily to meats, animal fats, and vegetables.

The next best thing for getting lean in my experience is to run frequently. Conditioning does have a noticeable effect on your body composition.

My personal belief is that there are certain lifts that are particularly complimentary to getting and staying lean:

High rep bodyweight chinups - going a rep or two short of failure for a bunch of sets is both excellent for hypertrophy and conditioning.

Pushups (normal and one arm) - unfashionable, but pushups build good muscle even at high reps, improve your conditioning, and keep you lean.

Explosive movements, such as the 'clean and push press' and the 'dumbbell snatch'. I honestly believe that these two movements do more for a man's strength, fitness and body composition than the squat or deadlift.

Rollouts (from knees, and from standing) - I've built up to being able to do a couple of reps per set of standing ab wheel rollouts, and I believe them to be incredibly beneficial for the entire physique (except perhaps the chest).

Post: #14

^^^

He's right ya know.

Every combat athlete in the world runs to lose weight. They don't do it by accident or because they like running.

Post: #15

Well now that I'm back from holiday, I can provide an update on what I tried and what worked.

What I didn't do this time was do much tinkering with my diet, other than the obvious stuff like cut out chocolate, crisps, sweets, fizzy drinks etc. But I've since trawled through the forum and found some great tips and advice in particular from ScrapperTL and Steelex concerning diet that I'll start looking at now to improve things further.

I didn't have much time do try everything, so what I did was, I kept my split with heavy (for me) compound lifts, while also introducing HIIT training after my weights session. I have a treadmill and exercise bike so just did half an hour weights, followed by half an hour HIIT afterwords (40 second steady running/biking, followed by 20 flat-out sprints. I downloaded an app to help me with countdowns etc). On my non-weights days I did traditional steady cardio (runs). I also reduced time between sets to 1 minute, rather than the 5 I was sometimes taking!! 5 minute rests were helping me lift big ego weights but I was losing any pump I had and if I'm honest I was just being lazy.

In terms of the scale, I lost about 3lbs. But visually, I obtained a lot more muscle definition than I had previously. Which is exactly what I wanted. I even have visible obliques! I suspect these are from pull-ups somehow as they go when I don't get many in. Comparing my holiday photographs with last year, I'm definitely in better shape, so I'll take that. Especially for someone in my mid 40's, where just maintaining shit is a struggle, nevermind improving. As an aside, I must say there is very little competition these days! The state of both men and women by the pool was shocking and I swear gets worse every year. So anyone getting discouraged by their lack of progress should just stick with it as the bar isn't very high out there.

There was no gym where I went so I just gave my body a two-week break. Had my first gym session a few days ago and felt just as good and strong as I was before.

I still struggle with balancing running, cycling and weights. I accept that I'll never give any of them up and I just need to optimize them all somehow so that they help each other. HIIT training (which I've never tried before) may just do the trick and is something that I'll keep. It's still early days but I feel like while I may not be able to break any PR's in the near future, the muscle I have is more visible, vascular and ready to pop all the time, even when relaxed. It feels almost like when I first started lifting weights all those years ago.

I feel like the training is coming along nicely, and if I can just get the diet going, I'm encouraged that I can get in the best shape I've ever been in even at my time of life.