Physical Fitness, and martial arts training

[Matt G]

You need a quality regimen of diet and excercise to build muscle.

Running improves cardiovascular healt, but does not reduce fat if your diet is wrong.

http://www.bodyforlife.com/

This guy, Bill Phillips, has a good regimen for building muscle and decreasing fat. The diet he advocates is rich in quality protiens, fats, and carbohydrates. The workout regimens are 46 minute weight-lifting work outs 3 days a week and 20 minute cardio workouts 3 days a week with one free day. You must adhere to the diet closely to succeed, but the time requirement is minimal.

You will be eating 6 times a day. The 46 minute resistance training workouts will kick your butt if done right.

You can find the book (Body-for-LIFE) at just about any retailer (Target, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, etc) for under $20. It is a quick read and worth it. It is a total solution, not just a "diet".

FWIW, I increased my bench significantly on this program. 19" biceps fully pumped are nice, too, especially when you need to go down to the fitness supply place to pick up 60lb dumbells to do bicep curls with.

[tubeast]

Chris,
I remember You to be a big guy from earlier posts of yours.
Not exactly being petite myself, I´d like to share some experience:
I guess there´s two things that´ll have to match when it comes to physique: the right balance between food (real food, that is) and activity.
When I got here I weighed 108 kg, (that´ll be 238 pounds) at 1,96m (about 6´5"). I figure that wasn´t too bad. Got into food AND hiking or even running mountain trails in the alps. Got me up to 112 kg (almost 250 pounds, but of the GOOD kind). Did excessive snow-shoeing and had to ease up on the sports-in-nature-thing because of knee-problems, but didn´t cut down my diet in the process. So now I put on another 4 kg (totalling 260 pounds now), but of the BAD kind. Sports hurt now.
So, here´s a few simple rules that I wish I can persuade myself to follow:

1) Eat less.
2) Do more.
3) OBEY your body. Enjoy, but listen to signs of strain.
From what I know now, it would have been more beneficial for me to take it easy both eating AND running the mountains.

Bulk may be good for your ego, but your joints and sinews won´t care if it´s fat or muscle they´re hauling around.

One last thing: don´t worry about the speed at which you lose weight. I take it you do lots of sports, right now, and maybe haven´t done a lot of that before. That means, you´re turning BAD pounds (fat and other unwanted tissue) into GOOD pounds (mostly muscles, but bones and sinews grow in size, too).
Those good pounds have several times the density than your bad pounds, so to keep track of how you´re doing, don´t just look at the scale of a balance. Do what Archimedes did:

When you bathe, mark the water level in the tub both w/ and w/o you. That difference relates to your displacement.
For quick and cheap reference, see how much water you´ll have to take out to lower the level in the tub by one inch, and you´ll even be able to calculate a decent value of your volume.

Divide your weight by that volume and you get your density.
High density = more muscles and bones, low density = more fat.
This way you can monitor your progress better than using balances alone.

There´s a shortcut to all this bathing and measuring business, of course:
Your gym is most likely to have a balance that can measure the ratio of fat vs body mass by your electric resistance. These are cheap to buy, too. (At retailers, I got one for 25€)
I figure Archimedes´ approach to be more entertaining, though.

Good luck and keep going
Hans

[chevy68chv]

As a college student who works out, takes 19 units a quarter, and has to practice hours on end its really a pain to find the time/money to have six meals a day. Because of this I do take protein supplements in order to meet my daily requirements. It is very tempting for college students to go down to GNC and try to find a quick solution for muscle gain or weight loss such as creatine, Xenadrine, or Andro. My advice is to stay away from anything that you wouldn't get simply from eating more.

Also keep in mind the type of body you are shooting for. Most girls (come on, you know thats the real reason your working out ) aren't looking to date someone with 4% body fat and who looks like the governator.

[Dean]

Bulk may be good for your ego, but your joints and sinews won´t care if it´s fat or muscle they´re hauling around.

True, both fat and muscle are weight on your body.... But, when you resistance train, your joints and sinews are also trained and strengthened. This can be as beneficial (or more) than the increase in muscle bulk. Given a gentle curve of increased resistance, I think its safe to say you cant build muscle mass faster than your body can "handle it."

[tubeast]

Dean,

granted. The whole body will adjust to the strain you exert to it. I was talking about the past five years, during 3 1/2 of which I did all-day hiking tours and jogging for an hour straight on a regular basis. Those hiking tours (no running involved here) included up to 6000 feet of altitude, making that 12000 ft on the roundtrip. 1500 feet were descended within less than 45 minutes, at times. The usual jogging tour took an hour and covered about 1300 ft on a roundtrip.
This is not fast at all. A 10 mile alpine hiking tour took me 12 hours. There are crazy people around here that´ll RUN the same path within less than 3 hours. (These guys have 1/2 my weight at almost my height, of course.)
A little more than a year ago I quit because I had trouble walking stairs all of a sudden, and pain in my knee returns even when I WALK my former jogging tour and don´t pay attention. I blame this on too high INERTIA, which is the multiplication of mass and speed, on my knees.
Playing squash probably would have done the same thing.

My point was to not get carried away by increasing power.
Pay attention to signs your body gives you.
While you do that, go ahead. Enjoy sports.

Hans