My First Workout Program that Really Worked

I was a freshman in college. I had done some weight training in high school, but I wasn't very informed on what I was doing. I did, however, see some small gains from my very flawed program. I think I did something like a full body workout every other day. However, not long after, I hit my first plateau. Naturally, I thought that if some working out was good, then more would be better. Soon I was doing a three hour workout every other day. I performed just about every exercise I knew. Not surprisingly, I didn't make any progress and probably got a little weaker from being so overtrained. Fortunately, I played a club sport, and one of the athletes on the team was a graduate student that had played division I football. Lucky for me, he was willing to help me with my workout program. He made two major changes:

• Drastically reduce the amount of volume. Good-bye three hour workouts—I was in the gym an hour at most

• Perform compound exercises with forced reps. That means that after I went to failure and could not physically lift the weight one more time, I'd have a spotter help me with a few more repetitions.

Compared to what I was used to, the results were amazing. First of all, despite the fact that I had previously been doing long workouts, I was never terribly sore the next day. After my first workout on the new program, that changed in a hurry—putting my mind at ease because I was worried that I was not doing enough volume to get good hypertrophy. More importantly, I made fantastic gains and was very pleased with the results.

So what can you do to learn from my mistakes?

• Don't spend all day in the gym. If you are there more than an hour, you are probably being counter productive, as your testosterone levels may start to dip.

• Get the most out of your sets. If you've been lifting for a few months and your just starting to hit your first plateau, try forced reps to see if you can create a little more hypertrophy.

Exercise Efficiently

Many people do not workout because they are unwilling to make the perceived time commitment associated with starting a workout program. To get folks over that hurdle, below are two relatively simple strategies to build the most muscle, lose the most fat, and become fitter in the least amount of time:

• Perform only basic compound exercises when strength training
• Perform high intensity interval training rather than enduring long cardio sessions at a relatively slow pace.

Compound Exercises

Compound exercises are exercises that involve multiple muscle groups. Some examples include squats, bench press, and pullups. When performing these exercises you are “getting the most bang for your buck” because you are working several muscle groups at the same time. For instance, bench press works chest, shoulders, and triceps. Unless you're a bodybuilder and have hours to spend in the gym, why spend your time doing specific isolation exercises when you could hit many body parts at the same time? Instead, do three sets of squats, pull-ups, and bench press for eight to twelve repetitions to failure and you've got yourself a full body workout in 30-40 minutes. Do that twice a week (feel free to switch in and out exercises working similar muscle groups such as incline bench press or dumbbell bench press instead of bench press) and you will be well on your way to adding muscle. The more muscle mass you are able to add, the faster your metabolism will become because muscle burns up to ninety percent more calories than fat. By adding three to five pounds of muscle you could actually burn 100 - 250 additional calories per day.

High Intensity Interval Training

Have you ever spent 45 minutes or more doing cardio because you heard that you don't start burning fat until after that point? Well, there is a much more efficient way to go about cardio training. Instead, perform ten one-minute intervals of perceived high intensity work (this work can vary from sprinting, to the exercise bike, to walking fast depending on your current fitness level) with a 30 second break in between. This type of exercise will not only burn more calories in a shorter amount of time, but will also increase your metabolism through out the day as well as raise your level of overall fitness. This workout will take you 15 minutes (maybe 20 minutes if you include a quick warm-up and cool down). Try this twice a week on days when you are not strength training.

These workouts are highly efficient. You'll probably spend more time surfing the Internet today than it would take to complete one of these workouts. So what are you waiting for? Get to it!

Workout and Nutrition for Young Athletes

I've been looking at a lot of questions from young athletes lately on various message boards. That got me thinking about all the mistakes I made as a young lifter. Therefore, I thought I give some simple advice for those just starting to lift weights:

• Use compound exercises (exercises using multiple body parts, such as bench press, pullups, squats)--these should be the core of your workout. In fact, you could make darn good progress using only those three exercises.
  
• If you do try muscle specific exercises (such as bicep curl or tricep extension) make sure you do the big compound exercises first because they work the largest muscle groups and that is where you will add the most muscle mass.
• Don't workout for more than one hour at a time. This was a huge mistake I made because I wanted to add muscle so badly. When you do workout for over an hour, your testosterone levels start to dip and you are being counter-productive.
  
• Eat your protein. Try to get 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. As an ectomorph, I didn't make big gains until I applied this concept.
• Do your homework and think about the future. Working out will get you plenty of girls for now, but when you're a poor twenty-something year old, nobody will be interested in how much you bench press.
  

There you have it. Its actually pretty simple. The good news is, as a beginner to weightlifting you are going to make gains way faster than I do these days.

Beginner's Exercise Program

Starting with the basics and moving towards more advanced, this post will be dedicated to a beginner's program with the premise that the trainee does not have a lot of history exercising and does not have much time to devote to fitness. The following will consist mainly of:

• compound exercises (movements that involve multiple muscle groups)

• short, but intense interval training (brief periods of high perceived exertion followed by rest)

MONDAY

• Incline Bench Press or Other Pressing Movement: 3 Sets * 8-10 Reps

• Stationary Bike or Other Cardio: 10 Sets (1 minute sprint, 30 seconds rest)

WEDNESDAY

• Chin-Ups or Other Pulling Movement: 3 Sets * Reps to failure

• Row Machine or Other Cardio: 10 Sets (1 minute sprint, 30 seconds rest)

FRIDAY

• Squats: 3 Sets * 12 - 15 Reps

• Ellipse Machine or Other Cardio: 10 Sets (1 minute sprint, 30 seconds rest)

NOTES

• Choose a weight where you are performing all lifts to failure (meaning you could not perform another repetition)

• Other compound pressing movements may include bench press, shoulder press, etc.

• Other compound pulling movements include pull-ups, row variations, etc.

• Running is my personal favorite for cardio, but I assumed that the trainee would not have access to a track or field.

• Rest 90 seconds or so in between lifting sets.

You should be able to knock out each workout in about half an hour--very efficient. If a sedentary person made a life style change by committing 1.5 hours per week to this program, they'd be quite pleased with the results. Your metabolism should increase both from added muscle mass and the short cardio sessions (which has shown to be more effective than longer sessions of light intensity).

Questions?
Comments ......

Workout Mission Statement

To provide the readers with advice, support and assistance pertaining to their personalized diet and fitness regimens. While experimenting with different dieting methods, lifting programs, and types of supplements, it became obvious that individuals need individualized programs. Whether you've never touched a weight in your life and have minimal time to workout and eat right, or compete regularly in bodybuilding or powerlifting and consider fitness a 24-7 job, I'd like to:

• Dispense my nutritional and exercise related advice to help improve your current fitness level
  
• Learn others' diet and fitness related successes and failures to disseminate their knowledge and even apply to my own routine