I was wondering if someone can help me create a good meal plan to gain muscle mass. I've been trying to do it alone, but I got sick, which slowed that down a lot. I go to school 5 days a week, so there is a time constraint to whatever I can do.

Figured I should probably post my diet and workout schedule.

Meals:

Breakfast:
* 1/2 cup Fiber One Cereal (Original)
* 1/2 cup organic skim milk
* 1 Cocoavia chocolate almond snack bar.
* 3 egg whites beaten with 1/4 cup each red pepper, cherry tomato, and onion.

Snack #1:
* 1 Cranberry Almond Bar

(Snack #1 is in school and must be eaten between classes, so any suggestions need to be small, and quick to eat.)

Lunch:
* 1 slice Nature's Promise Flax Grain Bread
* 5 slices Oscar Mayer roasted turkey breast
* 4 cubes Kraft Live Active Colby Monterey Jack Cheese
* 1 Dole Pineapple Chunks Cup (Way High in Sugar, but I can't find any substitution)

Snack #2:
* 1-2 Oatmeal Bars (Recipe at Bottom)

(This is also between classes, any quick ideas to bulk it up would be appreciated.)

Snack #3:
* Usually a serving of something high in protein and low in carbohydrates, like some tuna or chicken.

Dinner:
* This is usually a toss-up. Sometimes my family gets takeout, so I go to the restaurant's website to find something with lots of protein and not a lot of carbs, and sometimes we make stuff at home. Usually, it's a serving of something high in protein, and some vegetables on the side.

(Ex. Tonight we are having filet mignon with sauteed mushrooms and onions.

Oatmeal Bars:

2 cups Quaker Oats
1/2 cup Blueberries
1/4 cup Almonds, unsalted
5 tsp Splenda
1 egg

* Preheat oven to 375
* Heat Oats
* Beat egg well
* Drain Oats, add splenda, berries, almonds and egg
* Heat in oven 25 mins

It usually makes about 12-16 bars.

Workout Schedule:

I do 30 mins of light cardio in the mornings, and then:

Sunday:
Bench Press - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Incline Bench Press - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Bent-over Rows - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Shrugs - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Crunches - 3x12

Monday:

Rest

Tuesday:

Deadlifts - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Straight Leg Deadlifts - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Lunges - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Seated Calf Raises- 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Decline Reverse Crunches - 3x12

Wednesday:

Rest

Thursday:

Military Press - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Lateral Raises - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Bench Dips - 3x12

Biceps Curls - 2 warm-up sets & 3x12

Crunches - 3x12

Friday:

Rest

Saturday:

Rest

On days that I do weightlifting, I mix a scoop of whey protein with a medium banana in the blender, and drink that after my workout, instead of one meal listed.

Any suggestions to help improve my muscles and add some food intake to my schedule?

I figued someone that visits here that's ripped to all hell, such as my man Trypper, could give me some sound advice on this subject, and help guide me to a more defined, muscular look to my body. So how about it, any advice from ripped fellow lifters?

Getting ripped takes a few but necessary and important steps to follow. First you need to have a considerable amount of muscle mass to begin with. Second you need to burn the fat without compromising too much muscle mass. Lastly you need to combine weight training with cardiovascular activity to minimize muscle mass loss.
I recommend you to read "Burn the fat, Feed the muscle" by Tom Venuto. It will detail every single step you need to make to get shredded.
Have you tried carb-cycling?

I'm 18, 5'11" and 160 lbs and im skinny everywhere but my gut lol. My gut has grown 30 lbs. since i was middle school at the same height.

I've been lifting on and off for years, mostly off. I have been doing the following for the last month though and plan on continuing to do it. I hope to get a little bigger but mostly burn my fat and get my abs back. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Diet :
Whole-grain bread
Small ammounts of natural peanut butter
Almonds
Celery
Spinach
Chicken
Lean Beef 90/10
Grapes
Carrots
Skim Milk
Fat-free yogurt
Eggs
Turkey
Apples

I usually snack on the above 4 or 5 times a day til I have about 100 g of protein and 1500 calories. I let myself eat whatever the fk I want one night a week though so I stick to my plan. Any other foods I could add to my list?

In the gym- I do 2 sets of 8 or 10 and the third one always til failure.

Chest
Benchpress
Inclined Bench
Widegrip Bench
Dumbbell Flys

Biceps
Standing dumbbell curls
Concentration curls
Reverse curls

Triceps
Seated overhead extension (hammer, etc. etc.)

Need more tricep workouts with dumbells, tried kickbacks didnt like em.

Shoulders
Shrugs
Side Raise
Front raise

Calves
Calve raises

Abs - all done right after one eachother
25 crunches
25 leg raises
25 twists
25 crunches

Any other ab worksouts would be nice too. Any suggestions at all would be great.

Thanks.

progress: I've lost 5 pounds in a month and have noticed slight growth on arms shoulders and chest.

At 1/16/08 10:01 AM, atompluspackage wrote: I'm 18, 5'11" and 160 lbs and im skinny everywhere but my gut lol. My gut has grown 30 lbs. since i was middle school at the same height.

Fuck, not to double post but I run a mile before I workout and a mile after. Which is two times a week, and I run another couple miles on an offday. My lungs aren't quite there yet, I just quit smoking but I was wondering if this was enough running to achieve the results I want?

Anybody interested in fitness, pleae visit my website at bbuilding.net. It is just starting and I would like to know if anybody here is interested in writing articles for it.

At 2/12/08 04:11 PM, Trypper wrote: My advice if you do want to cut however, is cut your calories to maintenance level,

I don't eat much as it is, so that's not an issue at all.

limit your fat intake(something I'll never do),

To around how many grams per day? I usually land somewhere in the 50-80g/day level for fats, coming from peanut butter, fish oil, and meat/poultry.

watch your carbs,

I never take in more than 100g as it is; generally, on workout days I take in about 80-90g, and probably 30-50g on non-workout days; the spike comes from my post-workout drink (55g carbs mixed with creatine & supplemented with BCAAs, Vitamin C, and fish oil)

add in more cardio,

15-20 minutes of HIIT on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays is what I started doing about two weeks ago.

alternate your reps and sets every 2-4 weeks,

Been doing that for a while now; I've been doing 5x6 for 2 weeks now, to increase max's on my bench, squat, shrug, and deadlift.

and basically just do everything your body can take.

I pack in a lot of extra energy expenditure in gym class and walking/running around/carrying things around.

I have pondered whether it's because I don't eat enough most of the time; that my body can't burn the necessary fat off to get more cut and defined. It seems pretty plausible to me.

I'm not even asking for like, freakishly ripped, RARGHRGHAGHR RAWR abs that have that ultimate definition to it; all I'm asking is that I be able to see my abs in a defined manner without having to flex my core muscles like crazy.

saw this video and it was pretty inspiring and made me want to work out more http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWs94Pu_k G4

enjoy

pachow pachow, nobody's posted here in forever, I'm disappointed.

Started an arm specialization plan and I'm on week 4 of 6; increased the serving of PWD from 1 to 1.5 servings and increased creatine in the PWD from 1 to 1.5 servings (really makes the drink creamy and gross but I can deal by chasing it up with some juice/water/diet coke); tacked on an extra protein bar during the day (1.5g fat-25g carbs-20g protein, tastes good, best ratio I've found yet, albeit unavailable in stores), and cut down exponentially on the peanut butter during this timeframe (I down 1-3 servings on my off days of Thursday and Sunday when I'm high-fat, low-carb, but otherwise I stick specifically to moderately-high-carb, low-fat on workout days). I've increased my average protein intake from ~160-200g/day to 200-250g/day during this period as well, to offset the peanut butter. I'm eating mostly chicken breast (boneless, skinless of course), london broil, and occasionally buffalo, as well as the protein bars (Metabolic Drive, look 'em up, cause they rock balls) and the PWDs. Supplementing with PWD w/ creatine, 4-6 BCAAs & 2 Vitamin C tablets after workouts, and 5-15g fish oil/day.

I'm really feeling the burn and cannot wait until I go back to the regular workout plan to see some solid arm growth, which I felt was lacking in comparison to my shoulders and upper back (which tends to grow faster than the rest of me because of genetics, which is a little odd). I do some light running (30 mins @ 3MPH & 8-9% incline) on Mondays, Thursdays, and sometimes Sundays.

Current schedule is looking like this during the arm specialization:

Monday: Triceps (strength)/ Biceps (outer head)
Tuesday: Quads/Hams/Calves
Wednesday: Triceps (lateral head)/Biceps (inner head)
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Chest/Back/Shoulders
Saturday: Triceps (long and medial heads)/Brachialis
Sunday: OFF

Been working a lot on my squats in the past couple months as well, so I'm thinking I'll take one week to work them up a little more after the arm specialization is over, then one week for maxes, and then go back to working on my deadlifting. With that being said, it's become fucking HARD to buy pants & shorts in my waist size because of the discrepancy between my waist size (30-32) and the size of my thighs...they all feel painted on most of the time, so I've been having to wear larger sizes to compensate (34-36). I don't mind for casual wear because I dress like an asshole anyway, but for fancy things this may bode a problem. Luckily, I won't need to worry about that too much.

I've made a newgrounds workout. The workout is in my sig.

At 4/21/08 05:10 PM, Buddhist wrote:

Monday: Triceps (strength)/ Biceps (outer head)
Tuesday: Quads/Hams/Calves
Wednesday: Triceps (lateral head)/Biceps (inner head)
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Chest/Back/Shoulders
Saturday: Triceps (long and medial heads)/Brachialis
Sunday: OFF

I was just reading this program and I can't seem to make any sense of it, mostly due to the fact that you're individually working the heads of the biceps and triceps because from what I know of muscle physiology the only possible way to do so would be to physically detach the other heads or to inhibit the muscle at the other heads which would quite possibly inhibit the entire muscle.

Both heads of the biceps originate at the scapula so I have no idea how you would stimulate them individually unless of course you cut open your arm and were using calcium and ATP to cause the muscle to contract. As for the triceps, both the lateral and medial heads insert into the posterior humerus and the long head inserts into the scapula just below the long head of the biceps. I especially don't understand how you could work the medial and lateral heads individually.

I also don't understand the reason as to why you'd want to train like that because presumably if you aren't stimulating the entire muscle then the contractions would be weaker hence you wouldn't be able to lift as much and hence your gains would be less and they would be much slower. It would presumably also leave you very vulnerable to injury as your body isn't designed to function that way. You could potentially damage the tendon as it would be taking 100% of the load when it it used to taking only 50%. You could also tear or strain your stabilizer muscles due to the increased and more localized load that they would have to deal with.

Also, why aren't you doing anything for brachioradialis?

It would be appreciated if you could try to clear up my confusion.

At 5/28/08 02:21 AM, Grubby wrote: Hey guys, have you heard of the great benefits of medicine balls?

I heard of an article on ESPN that talked about how a football player who struggled to move up weights in dumbells just worked on medicine balls at summer, and rose up a lot of weight easily the next summer when he hit the weightroom again.

I'll be back with more weight room stuff.

The only problem I see with that is the relationship between the two seasons and how using medicine balls in one season would affect the gains you make in the next season. Also, if he made all his gains when he was using weights and not medicine balls would this not imply that weights were better than medicine balls?

Maybe there's something I'm missing.

At 5/28/08 07:44 PM, Grubby wrote: Hey guys, I ran the one lap test today for my conditioning class.

For a 13 year old, I ran it in 53 seconds, which is pretty fast. Btw, our track is a lot smaller than most regular tracks.

Do you know how long your track is because a time without a distance means nothing. Also, why don't you run in lane 8? Surely that would have to be at least 400m unless your track is really short.

Now we're working on harnesses for short distance sprinting.

You mean where you have to drag a tyre along behind you? God I used to hate that. Thankfully I don't have to do it anymore though because I'm specializing in long and middle distance.

We need to get this club more active.

Can you guys help me in making a workout plan. I'll list what i have nearby.

- A treadmill
- A Swimming Pool
- A lot of stairs
- A parking lot
- Fences

There's not a lot of things around and the only free time i have is during the weekends.

My diet is balanced. I always eat a lot of carbs and protein.

Anyway, that's all the info i have for now. If you guys need more info tell me. Since i'm really tired right now to read the previous pages.

At 6/2/08 12:17 PM, jackripperz wrote: Can you guys help me in making a workout plan. I'll list what i have nearby.

- A treadmill
- A Swimming Pool
- A lot of stairs
- A parking lot
- Fences

There's not a lot of things around and the only free time i have is during the weekends.

My diet is balanced. I always eat a lot of carbs and protein.

Anyway, that's all the info i have for now. If you guys need more info tell me. Since i'm really tired right now to read the previous pages.

I could help you out but I'd need to know more specifically what you want out of the program because right now I can't tell if you want to go to the olympics or just lose 2 kilos of fat.

If you were to outline some specific goals that you wanted to achieve from the program then I should be able to help you out.

At 5/5/08 10:22 AM, Corky52 wrote: I've made a newgrounds workout. The workout is in my sig.

The official newgrounds exercise program is complete and in my sig and on page 5 of my userpage.

My real objective is to build some muscle. I dont really think to the Olympic level but i guess to the point of having six packs.

But, you can post both guides. That way, i'll be prepared for next year's Sports Day.

Bottomline: I want to have a daily plan that can help me in getting in shape and getting a little bit buff. You should know by now i'm like a nerd a little bit since i have tuitions and extra classes.

Oh, almost forgot. I'm a member of Tae Kwon Do so i want to really strengthen up my upper body strength. ( Since TKD usually uses legs)

Haven't had the time to work out regularly in a long time, and it doesn't look like that's going to change much this summer, so I put together a series of really short workouts:

Day 1:
5 supersets of:

* 10x chin-ups (overhand grip)
* 10x push press (moderate weight)

Day 2:
5 supersets of:

* 5x deadlifts (heavy weight) (NOTE: Proper form during deadlifts is ESSENTIAL to prevent injury)
* 25x squats (no weight, done as quickly as possible)

Day 3:
5 supersets of:

* 10x hanging leg raise (keep legs straight)
* 10x hanging knee raise
* 10x chin-ups (underhand grip)

Day 4: Rest.

It's not a lot, but the idea is to rest as little as possible between the sets.

My deadlifts are pretty sad these days. 5 reps of 200 + bar wasn't a problem, but I decided to back off the weight a bit for the rest of the sets to avoid getting an injury just as I'm getting back into things.

I resinetly won a Bench press competition. The competition was how many times you can bench 225 pounds ( 102.27 Kgs ) in a row. I did it 20 times, second place did it 16 times, and third place did it 15 times.

At 6/5/08 09:51 AM, Elfer wrote: * 5x deadlifts (heavy weight) (NOTE: Proper form during deadlifts is ESSENTIAL to prevent injury)
* 25x squats (no weight, done as quickly as possible)

aren't you not supposed to ever mix deadlifts and squats?

At 6/10/08 01:18 PM, Buddhist wrote:

At 6/5/08 09:51 AM, Elfer wrote: * 5x deadlifts (heavy weight) (NOTE: Proper form during deadlifts is ESSENTIAL to prevent injury)
* 25x squats (no weight, done as quickly as possible)

aren't you not supposed to ever mix deadlifts and squats?

Not bar squats. Free squats. You basically just drop as far down as you can and spring all the way back up as quickly as you can. This usually involves swinging the arms to keep balance.

At 6/12/08 10:49 AM, Elfer wrote: Not bar squats. Free squats. You basically just drop as far down as you can and spring all the way back up as quickly as you can. This usually involves swinging the arms to keep balance.

Ohhh. I thought by no weight, you meant just bar or something, not entirely free of weight.

Forget I said anything. :p

At 6/12/08 07:57 PM, Buddhist wrote:

At 6/12/08 10:49 AM, Elfer wrote: Not bar squats. Free squats. You basically just drop as far down as you can and spring all the way back up as quickly as you can. This usually involves swinging the arms to keep balance.

Ohhh. I thought by no weight, you meant just bar or something, not entirely free of weight.

Forget I said anything. :p

These use to really give a good work out. We would do 10 slow squats, 10 fast squats, then 10 squats where we would jump up and reach as high as we could. Then we would do it time again and again until our coach thought we had done enough. This use to make some of the toughest kids break down into tears. But we did do it with weight ( expect the ones with the jumps ) we would have to use a 45 pound plate.

I know im late in the game, too years late :p but can i join? i , like almost everyone else want nice abs but the thing is im a girl so i dont want HUGE muscels on my abs so should i do the workouts you all suggested to each other and when i get the result i want just to eat healthy and still do workouts and such every now and then or still keep going on with the workouts even when i get my preferred results ?

btw i've been working out for almost a week and lost about 5 pounds am i making good progress?

Fuck, I took a week off from going to the gym for exams, and when I went back today it was literally painful when I went for my usual jog. I only managed to get a third as far as I usually get, just because of the pin in my stomach. It's like my abs just disolved away into nothing over the last week, and every step I took was their fibers breaking apart.

I'm going to try again tomorrow, but goddamn it that was the most painful workout i've ever had. Heck, when I got home, I even got on the exercise bike to make up for it, but then when I was doing the power "uphill ride" section, the fucking thing's weight wasn't properly distributed and it fell over! So now I have a sprained wrist as well. I'd be more pissed off if it weren't so funny.

Worst workout evar.

I guess I should folow protocol and ask to join too.

Anyway, I'm finally (after about 3 months training) at around my goal weight, and I'm looking to start to build my strength, I'm relatively happy with my arms, but I think my whole torso could use a bit of work.
Any tips on getting to the level of benching 200+lbs?

At 6/18/08 06:07 AM, NewFounder wrote: I know im late in the game, too years late :p but can i join? i , like almost everyone else want nice abs but the thing is im a girl so i dont want HUGE muscels on my abs so should i do the workouts you all suggested to each other and when i get the result i want just to eat healthy and still do workouts and such every now and then or still keep going on with the workouts even when i get my preferred results ?

I don't know if you have to ask to join, but check out the newgrounds workout program in my sig. or on my blog for an easier way to find the most updated version. It's used to lose fat, but not gain huge muscles just like you asked for.

btw i've been working out for almost a week and lost about 5 pounds am i making good progress?

Depends I guess. If it was fat you lost or muscle.

lol

I would very much like to be a member of this club. Maybe learn a thing or two, and help provide some useful information which I am full of since I spend most of my days thinking about lifting, lurking menshealth and other fitness sites, then actually going out a lifting.

I think that I'm going to start up my new workout tonight since I've been on the same one for almost a month now. I already have a couple in mind that for the most part I can do on my own since my lifting partner is well isn't the greatest. I want to see if you guys have a few suggestions, maybe workouts that you've been doing for awhile that are showing some good results, anyway I just want to see what some of you come up with.

At 7/14/08 07:00 PM, Zack wrote: I would very much like to be a member of this club. Maybe learn a thing or two, and help provide some useful information which I am full of since I spend most of my days thinking about lifting, lurking menshealth and other fitness sites, then actually going out a lifting.

That's great. You don't have to ask to join here. Just post questions, tips, or anything else workout related.

I think that I'm going to start up my new workout tonight since I've been on the same one for almost a month now. I already have a couple in mind that for the most part I can do on my own since my lifting partner is well isn't the greatest. I want to see if you guys have a few suggestions, maybe workouts that you've been doing for awhile that are showing some good results, anyway I just want to see what some of you come up with.

I can't wait till I get back to college so I can get my workout routine back. It's hard back here at home without good access to a gym.

----------

I've updated my workout in my workout thread and updated the one on my news post just a little. Go check them out guys.

Woah haven't been here for a while. Sup all.

Anyways, my situation: I just got a real gym membership (no more reliance on school gym anymore) so I can workout whenever I want, heh.

I setup a 4day split body workout that includes deadlifts, squats, etc, to achieve as much muscle mass as possible. That's my main goal for the moment. To achieve my goal I've been eating cleaner (not really bulking or cutting atm, just getting into the groove of lifting again) and working on a good stack to help me out.

Anywho, my stack:

Syntrax Whey Protein (gonna replace with Optimum 100% whey after the tub is done)-Morning and post workout.
No-Explode (trying it out, pretty good pre workout pump)-Pre workout.
Optimum Nitro Core (many amino acids, good mix of whey and casein)- my bedtime protein, after this tub I may just stick with a more tradition casein supplement however.

I feel that is all I need so far but it doesn't include one thing I really feel I need: Creatine.

I've done alot of research on how it works, what it is, etc. and feel that creatine is a powerful tool for muscle gain that would be foolish to pass up.

So to sum it all up: Any suggestions/comments on my stack + what is a good creatine monohydrate that you personally would recommend :D

Thanks all.