starting out again

I've been here before; than having to get into grad-school kindof got in the way. Now i'm back. This is my re-starting point.





My goal is to bulk up and get a very balanced physique; I think a numerical longterm goal is kindof meaningless for now. People in my shoes throw out numbers like I wanna be 220 by such and such time; but that goal does not help at all in my opinion. For now I think I'm at a place where my body will respond well to pretty much any routine with a decent diet. I'll just do the right thing for a while and not worry about weighing myself. Once I get to a higher weight I think it is more important to keep good track because thats where your body might stop responding to a simple routine. Currently I am doing:

A: back squat 3x(3-5); flat bench 3x(3-5); clean 3x(3-5)
B: back squat 3x(3-5); deadlift 3x(3-5); front press 3x(3-5)

I workout three times a week and alternate workouts A and B, so one week I do two of one and the next week two of the other. This is from Mark Rippetoe's "Starting Strength". I think its a great routine for my goals. I add some cardio once or twice a week, sometimes I run sometimes I get a cardio intensive workout from crossfit, it depends. I eat 4 times a day and drink a gallon of skim milk a day.

Forget the strength training, You want to shoot for hypertrophy. Up your reps to 8 - 12.. you actually look like your under training to me.. Your routine is more of a power lifting / olympic lifting routine..


Your going to have to work on your diet big time. Thats going to be the number 1 issue with you, not the training.

Thanks for the input, I definitely appreciate it.

I should have discussed my goals a little more I think. I have two simultaneous goals in relation to fitness:

1) bulk up for the sake of vanity
2) gain enough strength to do all crossfit workouts

Crossfit is the website I linked to before; a lot of people are familiar with it these days. For those that are not it's a website that posts workouts a few times a week that emphasize general functional fitness. A lot of people in the armed forces, or law enforcement find it great for their purposes because there is a good mix of cardio (some of the cardio is doing lifting for time as opposed to running, etc.) and max effort stuff. Anyway I really agree with the training philosophy and I would like to be able to do it without scaling back the workouts. Some of them are for example doing something like lets say 3 sets of 15 reps of 225 lb dead-lifts + 3 sets of 15 pull-ups for time; I can't even do a 225lb dead-lift right now so I certainly couldn't get any cardio benefit of trying to do that fast.

I think depending on the training philosophy various people would agree that 5 reps is fine for hypertrophy. Like I did MaxOT a few months back and from what I remember the reps were that low, maybe I remember wrong. I agree that 3 is too low, I aim for 5 but I'm just re-starting so there is very high variation from day to day in what weight I can do for what amount of reps so sometimes I get overzealous and try to add too much to get 5 reps. But I will think about raising that, thanks for the suggestion. I wanna try to figure out how to best balance my two goals.

As far as the diet; from what I said is something terribly wrong? I mean I know that most people here recommend 5-7 meals a day; I will try to bring mine up to 5. Is anything else way off? I don't have the presence of mind to count callories on a daily basis. For those of you who can do that and keep a job/school I applaud you but I tried it for a summer and its too involved for me. From when I did count calories I have a basic idea of how big my meals should be to get 3000 calories, and thats how much I try to eat. As I said I drink a lot of milk and eat around 6-8oz of meat with most meals, except breakfast where I eat around 3 eggs.

Diet is big especially Post workout. your going to need to do some MAJOR bulking my friend. I agree that workout needs to be changed. Do u lift at home or do u have a membership? U also should lift 5-6 days and have more than 2 routines (3). And get yourself some protein powder.

It's all about that quantity of food.  My trainer sometimes only eats 2 - 3  times a day.. But I have seen him plow down so much food that he ends up throwing up "rarely" but it does happen.   I don't recommend only eating 2 - 3 meals a day though.
 
6 - 8 is what you need! 3 snacks 3 meals, it's really not that hard even if your busy.. Just walk around with your food all day.  Who cares about counting calories just progressivly eat more and more food.  I mean if you can count the calories, if you don't want to then just eat eat eat!   I can honestly tell you that your only as thin as you are because your not eating enough, it doesn't so much have to do with your training.   Food is what puts on the weight, training changes the way your weight is distributed through out your body. 
 
3 - 4 years ago I was only a little bigger then you are now.. So take it from me, It's all about the diet!