Okay. Now that I've had some time to calm down, I'm going to try that again
First of all, I still want you to clear up those four questions in my previous post, but I also want to lay some ground work. I'm going to give you the benefit of doubt and assume that you really are totally new to this. Sometimes, it's too easy for someone who has been lifting for a while to believe there was ever a time when they were clueless, and we tend to blow up when people ask innocent questions.
I'm sorry, what? It's just me? Oh, okay. I'll work on that then...
Let's start with the basics:
All muscle growth is the result of your body repairing, but more importantly, OVERCOMPENSATING FOR damage that you inflict by overloading that muscle. Muscle tissue is metabolically expensive -meaning additional muscle requires additional blood supply, and places heavier demands on your metabolism. So naturally, your body won't bother building new resource-hungry muscle tissue without a
compelling reason to. And, uncomfortable as it may sound, a few pushups and situps are not nearly compelling enough. You have to work those muscles frequently (more on that in a second) with a progressively-increasing load involving heavy weights if you want to make them any bigger. Period.
The best laid workout plans are for naught if you neglect your diet. Seriously, to revisit my home-building analogy, working out religiously without a solid diet plan is like having the the most skilled carpenters in the world ready to build a house, while you dole out a single 2x4 at a time. If you want to pack on muscle, you have to supply the raw materials in
bulk -that means quality proteins, complex carbs for energy, healthy fats in the right ratios, and lots of water. I tried gaining muscle on "three squares a day", and that got me nowhere fast. Learn from my mistake -don't waste your time repeating it.
When it comes to building muscle, most workouts work for a while, but NOTHING works forever. The very process of building new muscle is your body's way of adapting to the demands you placed on it. If you provide the exact same stimulus week after week, and month after month, your body will respond with only as much growth as was needed to meet that repetitive demand. You have to constantly strive to increase the weights you are lifting, and vary the intensity and volume of your workouts to keep your body from growing accustomed to what you are throwing at it. The moment your body acclimates to the resistance is the moment you stop growing. There are hundreds of ways to keep your workouts productive and anabolic (inducing muscle growth), but you have to be an active participant -you can't just pluck Workout X out of a magazine and expect it to deliver continuous results.
Finally,
Building muscle takes time. Lots of it. Forget what you've read in the supplement advertisements about "packing on 30 Lbs of lean mass in two months". If you can pull that off, just make sure you don't get caught
with the steroids, because posession is 9/10 of the law, LOL. Seriously, if you're gaining 1/2 to 1 pound of lean bodyweight per week, you're making huge progress. Don't expect to build a killer physique for the beach if spring break is only three weeks away.
I'm going to leave the workout advice to someone else, because I've rambled on long enough
