Okay, so I have started back on the weights, in hopes of building/keeping my muscle mass, as I diet and lose the weight.
My question is this..
I know that because I have not worked out, or Physically been very active in well over a year, that my muscles are currently smaller than they should be, because of shrinkage.
My 1st question is how much work is needed till my muscles reach there proper size, and can begin growing again?
My 2nd question is, I know the expresion "no pain, no gain" is a corner stone of building your body. When I work out, sometimes I can feel a tightness in the muscles worked out the day before. Its nothing uncomfortable, but I know I have worked that area well. This soreness starts to goes away after 2-3 days of staying off that muscle group, and is gone in about 4 days
Is it wise to go back to that muscle group and work it again, before that soreness disapeers? Or should I be waiting longer?
1) How fast you will regain any muscle mass depends on several factors, diet, sleep, proper lifting technique, adequate rest, supplementation. As well as a genetic predisposition on how quick you can gain lean mass (and how old you are) Bottom Line- no one can really tell you this. I will say that there is a thing called muscle memory - the second time is easier than the first.
2) The muscle soreness that occurs 24-48 hours is DOMS delayed onset muscle soreness. As you know muscle growth occurs outside the gym when you rest. Depending on your intensity and your conditioning level, this will tell you how often you should train a muscle group. Just returning to lifting and assuming you are not following Arnolds 1975 training routine you could go twice a week for a period of time. It is my opinion that it is much better to under train rather than overtrain - i believe that no (non - steroid) using person needs to train a bodypart more than once per week. The true indicator is progress. If you are getting stronger every three weeks (while using good form) then you should keep doing what you are doing if not change.
Thanks Chappyboy, you are allot of help. I was hopin you would ring in on this thread, cause you sound like you have allot of experience in this. So I will pose another question to you.
On my first diet (about 2 years ago) I acheived great results due to walking daily for 1/2 hour to 1hour , and trying to keep my heart rate at an elevated level. When my rate fell, my pace quickened , and when it raised, I slowed down.
But I had a knee injury about 6 months ago, and I am affraid to really walk hard on it. So on this diet I have decided to work on building my muscles up, on my entire body, and hoping that the raised muscle mass will increase the ammount of calories my body burns a day to operate. Combined with a good moderate calorie diet that gives me adequate protein, and a balance of carbs and fats, I am hoping that any weight loss will be true fat loss.
Optimally you would want to do a weight resistance plan along with some cardio. However, the workout will burn a large amount of calories much like the walking you did and the weight training will add lean mass raising your BMR. With the workout try to use the multi muscle exercises (unless injury prevents them) the more muscles reqcruited the more calories burned. I think you will see similar if not better goals. If I had to say I would put diet at about 80% of battle
I train many bodybuilders and I myself compete. In these extreme cases I have to watch cardio very carefully as it can quickly start to catabolize muscle mass. My goal when preping for a show is always as little cardio as possible
Other thought- how about a rower, or some other form of cardio that would take the strain or bodyweight off your knee.
Rowing excersises are done currently on my Bowflex, and my knee is getting stronger daily.
I am thinking about just sticking to the compound movenments for now, and recruiting as much muscle as I can on weights.
I have decided to go "Baby Steps" for a week or so, to gain the flexibility, and learn the proper motions for my excersises. After those 2 weeks, I will start to kick up the weight used, and push for reps of 10-12 just under failure. I think after a few weeks of that, My muscles should be ready to get to work, and I can attempt to put on some muscle mass.
I have to watch and adjust the diet along with that as well.
Sound good?>
I pretty much build my diet to go. I no longer need to stick to a diet that involves measurements like 1/2 cup of cornflakes, 6 strawberrys, 2 egg whites,etc......
I use to be better suited to follow that type of diet, cause I was not ready to commit to it mentally. With my age (30) and my weight, I think I have a really good grasp of how I got this way, and what not to eat.
I generally follow a 40/30/30 diet (40 being the carbs), and I have found it very sucessful in the past when I was walking to lose weight. I dropped aprox. 100 pounds doing this type of diet "by the book" with measuring and adjusting everything. The diet worked well for me, and I was never hungry. I ate 6 times (3 meals, 3 snacks) daily, breakfast being the biggest, and was never really hungry.
However, with this diet being worked around a weights routine, I feel that maybee I should up the protein level when I am ready to up the weights.
I used to eat aprox 130-150 grams of protein daily, to maintain my muscle mass.
With most of the protein comming from Whey protein shakes.
Would you estimate this to be enough?
I currently weigh in at 415 pounds, with aprox 38% of my weight being body fat (tested at my doctors) I am not technically fat all around, as I carry almost all my weight in the "Spare tire" fassion around my waist, as well as lower back. Its kind of funny, because my leg muscles are very well defined as well as my arms (you can see my muscle tone pretty clearly in both)....
So I am targeting getting rid of this horrible spare tire "aka beer belly, lol.. I dont drink!)
Haulin -
Sounds like you have a good grasp of the diet. My number one rule of thumb is if it ain't brokr don't fix it. If this starts to give you sticking points or if you start to lose lean mass you could up the protein a bit and back off the fats a bit. But again if it works stick with it.
This is great! Best of luck in this process and keep me up to date on how its going!
