Hi! I'm a teenager looking toloose some weight. I was wondering the best way to go about it. There is so mucch info out there, I don't know where to begin. First, I hear low intensity cardio is best for loosing weight. But I would much rather run for 20 minutes than walk for 60. What about HIIT for a beginner? I gues what I'm doing now is kinda interval. I jog for 15 minutes then catch my breath for about 3 minutes then jog for another 10 minutes or so? Is HIIT really alot better then just jogging for as much as I can? If so, can someone suggest a routine to start with? What about doing HIIT twice a week and distace running 2 days a week, Would that be the best of both worlds. Also, I hear alot of superslow weigh training and the ongoing 1 vs. 3 reps. For a beginner, what do you guys recommend for the best muscle gain? My goals are to be thin but also be in good cardio shape and some muscle mass. SO, can you guys direct me?

thanks
-chris

I will tell you what worked for me. I am 5'8 and weighed 205 at age 18 before I started dieting and running to lose weight. It took me about 6 months of eating roughly 1500 calories a day drinking absolutely no soda, lots of water and jogging at the high school track about 4 to 5 nights a weeek. I started off jogging one mile then after a few weeks I was up to 3 mile jogs. I ended up at 170 and felt great. Now that I have gotten into weight lifting a few months ago I learned the biggest mistake of my diet. I had lost quite a bit of muscle because I was only concerned with calories and nothing else. Eating an appropriate amount of protein would have saved a lot of my muscle and I bet I would be further along lifting today if I had took in enough. If you follow a low cal diet I would recommend you supplement protein to make sure you dont lose muscle. There are quite a few protein powders that have low calories and little sugar.

Originally posted by cmp1223:
Is HIIT really alot better then just jogging for as much as I can? If so, can someone suggest a routine to start with? What about doing HIIT twice a week and distace running 2 days a week, Would that be the best of both worlds. Also, I hear alot of superslow weigh training and the ongoing 1 vs. 3 reps. For a beginner, what do you guys recommend for the best muscle gain? My goals are to be thin but also be in good cardio shape and some muscle mass. SO, can you guys direct me?

thanks
-chris


If you're doing HIIT right, doing it once or twice a week in conjunction with "normal" cardio will work wonders for you. If you're just running for HIIT, be very careful and conscious of your form so you don't hurt your knees. Use a stationary bike or eliptical trainer if they are available to you (at least once in a while). I only do actual sprints for HIIT maybe once every week or two. I prefer the eliptical cross trainer.

As for resistance training, to start, I would recommend staying in the 8-12 rep range until your muscles adjust to being used in that way. 6 weeks is about average to get yourself conditioned before looking to go more advanced. Save the heavy weights and super-slow reps for later. It's a good variaiton and helpful for breaking through plateaus, but won't help a lot to get you in good starting condition. If you keep the diet clean (not too low caloric deficit), stick to the cardio you mentioned above and resistance training maybe 3x a week, you should see results pretty quickly. Good luck.


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Keep your body lean, your blood clean and your mind sharp. -Rollins