[Closed] body building / weight loss

mainly around the middle

I'm pretty sure you can't target areas, unfortunately!.

I'm the same as you, the cycling that I did didn't keep the timber off, running has whacked 3 stones off though and has me fitter than ever. That's what worked for me, but I appreciate lots of folk don't enjoy it like I do.

Not convinced by protein shakes either btw. Best of luck mate.

thanks. I do not mind treadmill running, but not on the streets so I will probably give that a go.

How often/far do you run and over what period?
thanks.

Whats the best way to lose weight and gain muscle mass.

Eat less. Exercise more.

Whats the best way to lose weight and gain muscle mass.

You generally do one at a time. Most body building programs will cycle between bulk phases and cut phases. Bulk phase will up calories into a surpless aiming to put on muscle mass and some fat as a side effect of the calorie surpless. Cut phase uses a calorie deficit to reduce fat and try to maintain as much muscle mass as possible.

To do both simultaneously would be very hard, rather than fuelling training and recover with carbs, you'd have to rely on metabolising your own fat which is much less efficient. You'll be unlikely to put on much muscle training in a calorie deficit as you'll feel like crap.

https://renaissanceperiodization.com/ have diet / training templates for bulk and cut phases. Buy a set of those and follow them....

I cannot eat any less really. Joining the gym so I can move more. Not sure if you can gain muscle and lose body fat at the same time though. In order to gain muscle you need to eat a fair bit of protein.

I cannot don't want to eat any less really.

FIFY.

thanks footflaps. that makes sense. I am going to start drinking green tea too and I have lost weight in the past drinking it ( about 4 cups a day ). Currently addicted to coffee. I am sure green tea speeds up the metabislim..

Whats the best way to lose weight and gain muscle mass. Should I be tackling each one seperately ( different months etc ) or doing both at the same time. I

That's essentially impossible. Muscle weighs more than fat by volume so you'll end up weighing more even if you get smaller. You may be better focussing on either body fat % or waist etc measurement.

In general, fat loss through exercise is difficult, if not impossible. Once you have established a healthy amount of exercise, including a mix of resistance training and cardio, if you aren't losing fat then you need to look at calories in, since calories out isn't getting the job done. Or a mediacla condition, of which there are many.

Depending on how much bulk you are really trying to out on, a mix of cardio and weights seems ideal. So you might do arms shoulders and cardio on day 1, legs day 2, chest day 3 back and cardio day 4, rest etc. Some variation.

thanks. When I train I rarely have a break between sets so that should help bodyfat too. I will not be weighing myself either and aim to get heavier.

In my experience you can lose fat and gain muscle. Studies have shown it works for people that have not trained for a while.

All you have to do is minimise the carbs and max out on the chicken and fish.

Also resting more at least 90 seconds between sets shows significant gains over less than 60.

If you want to keep up the pace do two body parts at the same time.

Any idea of how much cv or running I should be doing/ enduring!! I can ride mtb fine, push up at the bikepark fine. When I went to the bmx track I was out of breath after one lap.

I've been training regularly all year and eating better. I have lost weight, and in some respects gained strength, mostly though my strength to weight ratio is better.

This year so far I am 15kg lighter and still lifting equivalent amounts, my deadlift has marginally improved, by 5-10kg. Still only at bodyweight.

However, my body shape is definitely improved, I have lost a lot from around my middle and not as much from legs or chest. I am also 41 though so it's slow and hard work. For Cardio I parkrun once a week and my bike commute is 16 miles a day 5 days a week (with occasional bus days). It's going ok for me, but I'm not following an exact plan for weights, I just like to lift. I would say compound lifts are important though, it's all about the bicep curls 😉

Any idea of how much cv or running I should be doing/ enduring!! I can ride mtb fine, push up at the bikepark fine. When I went to the bmx track I was out of breath after one lap.

So you want to bulk up, loose weight and get aerobicly fitter all at the same time!

That's quite a tall order...

I would say compound lifts are important though, it’s all about the bicep curls 😉

Certainly more efficient in terms of metabolic load per rep; but also more fatiguing eg heavy deadlifts are notorious for CNS fatigue.

Any idea of how much cv or running I should be doing/ enduring!!

What's your CV goal? Better vo2 max, fat burning etc?

have not got a clue. Never used a heartrate monitor or anything. Probably start running on the treadmill and just try to slowly increase the time run.

I just ride for fun ( and the fitness benefits )

Any idea of how much cv or running I should be doing/ enduring!! I can ride mtb fine, push up at the bikepark fine. When I went to the bmx track I was out of breath after one lap.

For a start don't push up the bike park, ride up. Also, if you're short on CV fitness then 1 lap will feel hard. Thankfully in time you'll go faster on that 1 and/or go for a 2nd lap.

But to echo the above, run. It's really hard to begin with but the weight loss and fitness gain is better then anything IMO. It's also a really efficient use of time, in 30 mins you can have done 5k and feel shattered, much more efficient that riding.

The only negative in running is that as the weight falls you can develop a physique that some may not like. Skinny arms, tiny chest and thin but muscular legs.

Do you get any personalised training advice as part of your gym membership? I'd use that as a starting point, not least because they'll be able to see you, talk to you and have a more realistic idea of your current level and aspirations than random people on the internet.

thanks everyone. Really appreciate the advice. Well done for those that have lost weight.

I am too much of a cheapsake for PT advice, have used programmes in the past and do not really rate them much. It takes too much effort explaining you do not want to follow their plans and prefer some cv work than others. Also I do not want to use stair climbers as they use the same muscle groups cycling does and the PT's love those.

Pretty hard to lose weight and gain muscle mass simultaneously and it will be slow going.
I’d concentrate on getting your routine sorted to start off with and get a realistic program together. Get it written down and take a pen with you to the gym to cross it off and make notes. I’d work on strength rather than weight loss in the gym, I’d also do legs too as it will make a huge difference to your cycling. Single leg or split stance squats will improve your riding not just your strength. Increase the strength of you biggest muscles and you’ll be burning far more calories.
Stick to intervals for you cardio as you’ll still be riding.
Diet is just as important, don’t cut calories to start just improve quality at every meal. Once you’ve got into your routine adjust calories then to suit your needs. Protein shakes are useful, I’m always starving after the gym and a shake will usually keep me going until I can get a meal.

Go here  https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/ fill it out and be as honest as possible with your answers otherwise its a waste of time. Figure out how many calories you need to stay the weight you are now and then drop 400-500 calories off that. Grab myfitnesspal for your smart phone and log every single thing you eat as honestly as possible (beware some of the user inserted estimates on fitness pal are way off!). Go train/run cycle and see how you get on. Sometimes eating slightly more or slightly less than your calorie deficit can help. Its hard going to be honest as you cant out train a bad diet so getting that bit sorted is key. Beware weighing yourself to often as it can fluctuate day to day. Its nearly better to take a starting photo and then a month or so on take another photo and compare.

In my experience it goes back to that simple equation eat less, move more.I started running two years ago and have lost 3 1/2 stone.
I never cycled far or for long enough for cycling to do much for me.
I now run 5 days out of 7 and about 40km a week.
First of all I lost weight by running alone and the excess calories I burned but since last year I’ve been using my fitness pal to keep an eye on the calories and balance of what I eat.
I now find the desire to run further and faster is motivation in itself for keeping the weight off.
Running wasn’t particularly enjoyable when I was at my heaviest but I’ve grown to love it. I ran my first marathon this year.
Joining a local running group massively helped my motivation to go out and doing parkrun every week has given me a barometer for my progress.
This year I’ve supplemented my running with once a week Pilates which has massively helped my flexibility and core and I also have kettle bells which I do a session with once or twice a week.
I haven’t added muscle mass but am much more toned than I was .

I’ve never seen any pro cyclist that look like body builders, weight either has muscle or fat slows you down.

Muscle power and strength would be a different thing

the bmx riders at the olympics are pretty well built and do weights.

I’ve never seen any pro cyclist that look like body builders, weight either has muscle or fat slows you down.

I’ve lost 1.5-2 stone since the start of the year. I haven’t changed my diet, I’ve just upped my exercise. I too hit a plateau where my weight wouldn’t drop below 74kg, so started running in March.

I’ve now lost all the weight I wanted to down to 71kg, and have backed off my exercise a little to about 6-7 hours per weeks. In the 6months I’ve been doing this my muscle mass has consistently increased and my weight decreased. All of this is confirmed via a monthly weigh in on a boditrax scanner.

To keep building muscle, you have to push that little bit harder every week. I never thought I’d say this, but Strava helps with this.

PB 10k today 😉

It's true that for example the tdf riders are very slender and strong. And I image muscle mass may slow you down, but it's great for sprinting, bmx, downhill ( although most dh riders are slender too ) and for pushing up ( no way an i riding up )

In my experience you can lose fat and gain muscle.

I certainly did when I was a keen rock climber. I weighed more too - that old muscle is heavier than fat thing. I don't recall changing my diet, just went to the gym or climbing wall 3 times a week and out climbing carting a sac full of gear to the (sometimes quite distant) crag.

no way an i riding up

Genuine question, but why not?

none of my 4x, mini dh, or dh bikes climb well. I've leave that for the enduro bikes. By the time you start the dh run you are knackered too. Much too painful. I find the push up very theraputic

Check this guy out :

www.jamessmithacademy.com

CFR !

I quite like James Smith, very funny.

I wouldn't hire him as a S&C coach mind, much better people out there.

When I went back to the gym (to do Stronglifts again) I became insanely hungry and gained 1.5kg. Perhaps it was muscle - fat percentage appeared to stay the same - but since my focus is cycling I decided it wasn't worth it.

I stopped, I think I gained fat but maintained weight. Took me a while to lose that fat again.

Pretty hard to lose weight and gain muscle mass simultaneously and it will be slow going.

This is very much true. I took the approach in winter when I realised I weighed more than I ever have before (188cm & 91kg) that I needed to do something about it. Hated turbo training, but needed to get fitter for racing & had suffered (and still do) from a really bad shoulder injury from a bad racing crash.

I joined the local Crossfit w*anker establishment. Thankfully we're really lucky, we have good coaches & some world class athletes in ours, so I haven't experienced the sh*tty side of it that some do. I felt like a weak child when I started, and couldn't really do anything. But 7 months in, i'm slightly less rubbish now.

Strength continues to rise, weight dropped fairly quickly to start with, and has leveled out recently, but seemingly fat is going & being replaced with muscle, as t-shirts which were tight at the bottom are now looser fitting, yet tight around shoulders & arms. Like everything though it's so gradual, you don't notice the change, other than the odd 'oh' moment.

I'm sticking with it. No real goals to be fair, just see where I end up.

I joined the local Crossfit w*anker establishment.

We had an excellent box just round the corner, but sadly it went bust in Jan this year, so now I train at home in the workshop. Been spending my old membership fee slowly buying dumbells and kettlebells...

Highly recommend the Jefit tracking app for gym stuff. Have really progressed using it, saves a lot of buggering around with pen and paper.

thanks for all the replies.

If you want to lose weight, join a boxing gym. It will literally fall off. And it's a whole lot more fun than doing cardio in a gym.

Gaining muscle, I have no idea, but you will certainly get toned.

I have lost 8kg this year with 2 more to go. Just cut out all the rubbish...crisps, pizza, bread in moderation. Snack on organise fruit and veg, small glass of red wine or a beer everyday.

In the gym its cv work, the stepper is good as low impact, rowing machine look at yt vids you soon improve. Pilates classes and swimming.

Also, walking...make it interesting or you soon get bored.

Weigh yourself and log the results it really motivates you.

Good luck

Unless you really like gyms - I don't, they seem to be full of preening, mirror-gazing narcissists - I'd consider buying some free weights or maybe kettlebells and working out at home. The great thing about weights is that they don't wear out, so I'm still using the stuff I bought when I was 18, which was quite a long time ago now.

Free weights used for big, compound movements are light years ahead of the sort of muscle-isolating machines that most gyms are full of and translate far more effectively to actual functional movements in sport and everyday life. When's the last time you did anything that required your to contract your bicep, for example, in isolation?

Don't write off bodyweight exercises either. Pull-ups etc use big groups of muscles and work really effectively. I don't really get the body building thing. I can see why people want improved strength and to be leaner, but just adding muscle bulk to look hench seems miserably misguided and little bit sad. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what people mean by body building though.

Did someone say functional training?

I really like gyms and like the way my clothes fit when doing weight training so I will admit that part of body building is vanity.

Here's my 2p on this subject, I'm not an expert so I probably won't be able to debate or counter any arguments but this is from my personal experience, from doing body building, weight lifting type exercises and going from 90kg to 77kg in 3 months from doing 1 hour of exercise 3 times a week.

Can you loose weight and bulk up, yes but its REALLY hard work. As many people have said the current wisdom is to bulk up and then cut. but it also depends on your make up, eg for me I spent a very sedate 2 years so lost of a lot of strength and fitness and put on a lot of fat, I also had virtually zero weight lifting experience even in my "fit days" I be running, cycling or playing football, no gyms and no weights. So when I started I was able to loose weight by moving more and eating less. But also as my muscles where in such terrible shape they also got bigger too. You need to be a reasonably good shape before the muscle gain starts to weigh more than the fat loss. I still haven't found that equilibrium point yet. Muscle growth has plateaued a little bit but still rising slowing so I'm lifting heavier weights but my weight is dropping and body shape is looking better. Currently at 75.2kg at 182 cm tall.

Can you eat less food to increase the eat less, move more ratio? Well clearly we need to know more about you and what you eat but as a general sweeping comment .. YES! I was amazed and how little food I really needed and was still able to increase performance (lift heavier weights) week on week, and that was with just eating normal food no replacing meals with some scientifically created supplement power to give you perfect balance of nutrients etc... Again I was clearly packing on quite a bit extra fat and no athlete at all so constantly reducing portion sizes as I got fitter worked in my situation. But if you are competing at national level in some sport then possibly the answer isn't as simple as yes you can eat less. Its so easy to eat a naughty snack or bit more pasta than you really need and add on few calories to your daily intake and a lot harder to burn it off.

Can you target a specific part of your body to loose weight? Again currently wisdom and my experience says nope you just have to work your whole body and keep at it till its all in the shape you want it to be and then keep at it to maintain it.

Compound exercises will help use up energy quicker than isolated exercises. Things like Squats, deadlifts, pull ups, press ups and variations on those exercises. Do these first in your routine and then finish off with isolated movements for the smaller muscles like the bicep curls etc ... train for a strict controlled technique, it hurts SO much more and burns way more energy than throwing weights and using momentum to lift. You'll be annoyed at first as the weights will have to drop by 20% by using the strict technique but you'll soon be back to lifting the same weight as before.

Will you end up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger? Nope unless you seriously try to end up looking like a body builder, with the strict diets, supplements (including the naughty ones) and training twice a day etc etc... But eating well and exercising regularly 2-3 times a week by lifting weights plus some other CV work and eating well will most likely see you looking lean and strong and not an overblown muscle head.

thanks. I have got quite a good shape in my upper body already and have no worries about getting a better shape there. The weight loss bit is all new to me as I have never done CV stuff at the gym.

Interesting topic...
I've been playing about with my body weight of late, mainly because i'm an ectomorph at heart, and with all my life crap going on at the moment it's pretty easy for me to lose about 5kg per week (yup... have lost that before!) if I don't eat well... when I get stressed I stop eating...

I purposefully set myself the challenge to try to build muscle bulk and gain some weight (really, so as to force me to eat). In November I gained about 4.5kg and did bulk up a bit, but got bored of eating all the time, and have now dropped to about 2kg above baseline (currently 72kg...my body WANTS to be 70kg whatever I do!).

I think it would be hard to gain muscle without gaining weight, TBH... but you could bulk and then cut i guess..

DrP

My legs are fine for cycling as it keeps them in good shape and I do not want them any bigger or stronger really. – so upper body only.

Why not?

& why ask advice from a bunch of internet strangers but not an actual PT? Is it because they tell you things you don't want to hear? Or do you think you know better than someone with years of experience?

Sorry if it sounds harsh, but a good PT will look at everything from diet to exercise to put you on the right track for your goals.

"The weight loss bit is all new to me as I have never done CV stuff at the gym"

So routine didn't have any conventional CV exercises my PT said to do some on the side a minimum of 20mins couple times a week. But in the early days I was so knackered from my lifting sessions I didn't do any supplementary CV work and even when I was a bit fitter I skipped the CV stuff a lot.

But the weights I was lifting was done at very high intensity 3 sets of 10 reps and usually on the 3rd set I was failing at 6-8. Everytime you reach 3x10 good reps you move the weight up. Only a short break in-between the exercises a little walk around the gym, a little stretch of the muscle catch your breath back and get back to lifting. Wasn't 5 plus minutes of posing in the mirror like some people at my gym seem to do before hitting the set.

This left me very out of breath and I could feel my heart beating much faster. So weights can be CV if done in a particular way. Obviously not as good as things like running or rowing machine on the cardio front but a lot better than some people think.

If you ride just for fun and are happy with your performance I'd say skip the gym CV work and just do weights.

Sorry if it sounds harsh, but a good PT will look at everything from diet to exercise to put you on the right track for your goals.

However, finding a good PT who actually understand any of it is like finding a needle in a haystack. Most PTs have done a few days of training to get their basic Certificate and just fell into it because PE was the only thing they were good at in school.

And much more importantly, is he's happy with his legs that's all that matters. You know what you want not the PT.

Most PTs have done a few days of training to get their basic Certificate and just fell into it because PE was the only thing they were good at in school.

The ones I know are those who have degrees - yes you can become a PT with a 2 year course, & potentially a good one, but like anything, always check to see their qualifications.

It's really funny I've got an old school body building book with loads of solid exercises in it. At the start it mentions cross training and these new things called mountain bikes ( US book ). A no I do not want a new book as this one is very good for results.

Stop eating crap and lift heavy twice a week.
The true definition of fitness is being average at everything, not specificity which is at the core of all sports and specificity equals pain and injury.

IMO spend 2 or 3 months doing the 5x5 program and get to lifting weights you are comfortable at, but doesn't burn you out for other activities. By doing so you will raise your muscle mass slightly and therefore also the background calories you burn every day.

Once you reach that point, just workout with weights twice a week but just look to maintain rather than increase strength and mass any further. Weight loss can then be controlled better by a mix of aerobic activities and diet.

I find lifting weights quite boring, but massively beneficial to my overall health, especially as i get older. so twice a week 30-45 mins max per session is plenty. If I don't lift weights for a few weeks I get far more aches and pains than when I do.

What's happened to bump this topic close to the top of the list? It looks like the last update/comment/reply was 11 months ago? just curious; is the forum having a wobble?

There was probably a spam post deleted by the mods.

There was probably a spam post

Definitely not what the OP needs.

There was probably a spam post deleted by the mods.

There was indeed, I saw it and went to report the post, but the mobile view wouldn't allow me to.