building muscle to fit into clothes

[Mblova]

eat
lift
repeat.

 

[Matt]

yup. No rocket science to it. Major muscle group lifting. Up your protein. Maybe throwdown a shake every day as well.

 

[shakeandbake]

Look up starting strength by mark rippetoe.

you work out 3 days a week, doing core workouts (bench, squats, deadlfts)
Eat, eat, eat. Try and eat a meal every 2-3 hours. It will be difficult at first but your body will get use to it after a while. Remember to stay consistant and keep up with your work outs and meals. CONSISTENCY is very important

 

[Sartorialiste]

Originally Posted by aizan

the last time i weighed myself was years ago, but today i stepped on a scale and was upset to learn that my weight has gone down. i thought i was 125 lbs, but now i'm 115. i double checked the scale with rusty barbell weights (no kidding) and it checks out. i'm 5'8¾'', so that's way too low! finding clothes small enough to fit me has been difficult, so i'm thinking about fitting my body to the clothes available instead of the other way around. these are my current measurements followed by target measurements (i'm unsure about two of them, but suffice it to say they need to increase): neck: 14'' -> 14.5'' shoulder: 40'' -> 42''? chest: 34'' -> 36'' waist: 28'' -> 30'' hips: 33'' -> 35''? i'm unfamiliar with weight lifting or bodybuilding/sculpting, but these seem like modest goals. how long should something like this take, assuming i exercise 3 days a week? should i join a gym? all i have are some dumbbells and the aforementioned rusty barbells. i guess the most important change in diet is to eat more protein. right now, that's mostly fish, eggs, and poultry. i eat pork about once a week, beef maybe once a month. will eating more of the same be enough, or should i eat more of one thing and less of another? i'm generally disinclined to take supplements and drink anything processed (e.g. protein shakes), though. has anybody else done something like this? i'm hoping somebody can share their experiences and what they learned.
The most important thing in building lean muscle is the exercise, not over eating. You are looking to achieve a better aesthetic...there will be a right path to get there and a wrong path. When you over eat, you're gaining mostly fat. You will also gain a bit more strength, which helps in building muscle. However, this is not recommended because once you gain fat cells, you will not be able to lose them. You can deplete them, but you will gain fat much quicker in the future. There is also no point in over eating, you can achieve the results you want without it much easier. If you can gain 5lbs of lean muscle in the right places on your upper body, you will see a very dramatic difference. When you're working on growing your muscles for aesthetics, focus on gaining controlled muscle hypertrophy...not gaining uncontrolled weight. Beware that different muscles groups grow at different rates. You can gain muscles on your legs and ass much quicker than your upper body. You will need to keep this in mind when working to achieve your goal. You can easily put on 15 pounds of muscles on your legs and butt...but that will look ******, jeans and pants you wear will look like mom jeans. A good ratio to work towards is the golden ration. The ideal waist to shoulder ratio for a man is 1.618. You can do a quick measurement, the ratio between the circumference of the widest shoulder point to the narrowest waist point. I recommend that you don't start with heavy lifting. I recommend that you start with building sarcoplasmic hypertrophy which is the fastest way to increase the size of your muscles. The way to do this is through cumulative fatigue. You do this by lifting lower weights for higher reps. 4 sets of 12 repetition with 30-45 seconds of rest in between sets, no more. You also do multiple exercises on the same muscle group during the same workout. For example, you can do Barbell benchpress, flat bench dumbbell chest flyes, and then incline dumbbell presses back to back. This will really fatigue your muscles. Do a split for your muscle groups. I separate the pulling and pushing muscles. I will do chest, shoulders, triceps on day 1. Back, biceps, wrists on day 2. take a 2 day break and start all over again. I don't even lift weights with my legs in this phase. I do interval training after each workout, this alone is enough to grow the legs in size, strength and keep them ripped. Sarcoplasm is the fluid inside of your muscle cells, cumulative fatigue will make the muscles retain more sarcoplasm. This is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. It is the fastest way to build bigger muscles, however, you will not get much stronger AND the muscles will not look as hard and ripped. You can make good gains from this for the first 2-3 months. After you hit a plateau, you can move onto the next phase. This where you will lift heavier weights to achieve myofribilar hypertrophy. You main lose a bit of muscle mass, but you will build leaner and stronger muscles. Here you can do the popular 5x5. You will lift heavier weights for 5 sets of 5 repetitions. Work towards increasing the weight every week. Here you will only do 1 exercise for a muscle group per workout. Here you can do barbell bench press, pull-ups, deadlifts on one day. Then your other muscle groups on a separate day. You can take slightly longer breaks between repetitions, but keep them close to a minute max. Also, drop the frequency of your work outs per week to 3. Alternate between these 2 phases to get to your desired size. How quickly you will get there is up to your efforts and genetics. Don't over eat, it will not aid towards your specific goal. Eat balanced meals and rest well. Don't consume alcohol on the days you work out. Take creatine if you want a little aid in your path, it is the only supplement that has been scientifically proven to aid in muscle building(besides steroids of course). If you choose to take creatine, don't listen to the people that tell you that it needs to be taken with sugar for it to be absorbed. The added sugar will not do you good. As for loosing fat. 95% of the results will come from the diet you are on, very little has to do with exercise. Your metabolic cost of movement is roughly 1 calorie for every kilogram of bodyweight moved a kilometer. So assuming a 175 lbs man runs 10 km, that is only 800 calories burned. Unless you are running 5 miles every day, it will not have much of an effect throughout the course of your week. For loosing weight, look into the raw food diet. Or learn about selective fasting. Eat Stop Eat is a great book for that. Hope this helps

 

[otter]

^ didnt read

 

[Zenny]

Originally Posted by otter

^ didnt read

I did

 

[Eason]

I heard that if you cross the beams, the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is maximized? confirm/deny?

(this means, don't follow his advice about sets/repetitions/rest)

principle 1 of training: specificity

train with 30-45 seconds of rest in between sets, no more, and you'll have great endurance at... lifting weights, then resting 30 seconds.