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[Wig44.]

Sorry but the whole 'no pain no gain' method is ********. Your body needs 96 hours of full rest and recovery after a hard workout session to fully recover. Yes, you train hard, I sometimes even train to eccentric and isometric failure to maximize my gains, but training hard so hard that you are injuring yourself is pointless. You should know when to stop. I train two days a week because to milk my gains I get a good quality 9-10 hours sleep a night, eat well and workout hard in the gym.

While I disagree slightly with the recommendation of the Stronglift 5x5 program, I've tried it and it wasnt for me, yes I did the exercises correctly and yes I was putting on weight but I am currently putting on more with my own personalised routine rather than one aimed at the masses, everyone is different. Try creating your own workout and dont neglect essiental work for things such as shoulder rotators and your neck. The 5x5 is a good core essential workout to build upon if you are comfortable with those exercises, I was and now include 4 out of 5 of them in my workout.

Also when you are starting to lift, the first 2-4 weeks should be put aside for form. Dont rush into without proper form. You will only rob yourself of the exercise. Here are some basic tips for the core exercises that I do

Overhead Press - Arms parallel, lift up, rotate wrists forward at the front otherwise you'll hurt your wrists, bring it down. Keep the weight as close to your head/neck as possible when coming down. It should just skin the top of your nose when coming down. Bring it to the chest and as soon as it hits your chest, lift it up again. Remember 3 seconds up, 3 seconds down. This way you are in control of the weight and it will work your muscles more than dynamic lifting.

Bench Press - Same as above really except lying down and you are pushing upwards rather than overhead. Try and focus everything when lifting into your core. Arms should be parallel once again.

Squat - A simple mans squat is pecs out, back arched and ass out. 3 seconds up, 3 seconds down. Breathe in when going down, breathe in when going up. This is an orthodox breathing pattern, use it when lifting weights otherwise you'll blackout.

Deadlift - I do the stiff-legged variation because I find the squat and deadlift in the same cycle to be injury provoking. But basically you want your back arched when doing the compound deadlift and then come down as if you were sitting on a toilet, pecs out, keep the bar as close to your legs as possible. Dont deadlift to the ground unless you can, otherwise you'll injure yourself.

Hope this helps. Weightlifting is a real great hobby to get into. I've been doing it seriously now for a good 6-7 weeks. My friends have been doing it for over 2-3 years though and they really enjoy it too.

Deadlift/Squatting in the same workout is not injury provoking. Past 8 hours of sleep you re not making a great deal of difference to muscle reparation and I can dig out a reference if you like. It isn't no pain no gain - there are 2 types of pain. The bad type, and the not so bad type. The difference is that the first one can indicate an injury and the second is muscular fatigue, pain where the bar is resting on your back, DOMS (much less common after a couple of weeks) etc. But you need to man up, squatting 3x per week with OHP, pendlay rows, deadlifts and bench is intense. You do not need 96 hours to recover. Training to failure past the 1st set has been shown to hurt gains - training to failure is not necessarily a good thing. Linear progression - that is increasing weight every single workout - works far better. Your posts are getting dogmatic now, go ahead and do your hammer curls and train to failure with forced negatives. You know that these muscle gaining 'methods' are for people on steroids right? All the best bodybuilders built their physiques from strength training, Schwarzenegger and Coleman being two of them. Schwarzenegger has since admitted that his size may have come almost entirely from the strength training he did and that the bodybuilding isolation/body part split routines may have been a waste of time. Also, remember that he was cycling steroids...

I'd like to point out that the problems with your workout if I may be so bold.
Crunches and planks are nowhere near as good at producing core stability as squatting, deadlifting, power cleans, olympic snatches, hell, even OHP. Shrugs are also inferior to the aforementioned exercises (except squats and ohp) at training the traps. Pulldowns are a poor replacement for pull ups and the strength doesn't transfer to real life, nor will pull downs provoke any real gain. Then there is the 2 times per week thing. That is just too slow progress to me. You are kidding yourself if you think that you need all that time to repair. DOMS are not a sign of progress you know. But I guess if you are eating like a school girl (and it sounds like you are) then maybe you need more time than the rest of the population to repair.

@ Apple: Don't let Paul confuse you - typical bodybuilding dogma (body parts need 96 hours to repair, isolating muscles - it's almost as if he copied and pasted it from a bodybuilding.com article). Do stronglifts or Rippetoe's Starting Strength. Training to failure and training twice per week are not things you need to do. Don't be suckered in by fancy terms, bodybuilding is highly pseudoscientific now.

[PaulMacC]

Deadlift/Squatting in the same workout is not injury provoking. Past 8 hours of sleep you re not making a great deal of difference to muscle reparation and I can dig out a reference if you like. It isn't no pain no gain - there are 2 types of pain. The bad type, and the not so bad type. The difference is that the first one can indicate an injury and the second is muscular fatigue, pain where the bar is resting on your back, DOMS (much less common after a couple of weeks) etc. But you need to man up, squatting 3x per week with OHP, pendlay rows, deadlifts and bench is intense. You do not need 96 hours to recover. Training to failure past the 1st set has been shown to hurt gains - training to failure is not necessarily a good thing. Linear progression - that is increasing weight every single workout - works far better. Your posts are getting dogmatic now, go ahead and do your hammer curls and train to failure with forced negatives. You know that these muscle gaining 'methods' are for people on steroids right? All the best bodybuilders built their physiques from strength training, Schwarzenegger and Coleman being two of them. Schwarzenegger has since admitted that his size may have come almost entirely from the strength training he did and that the bodybuilding isolation/body part split routines may have been a waste of time. Also, remember that he was cycling steroids...

I'd like to point out that the problems with your workout if I may be so bold.
Crunches and planks are nowhere near as good at producing core stability as squatting, deadlifting, power cleans, olympic snatches, hell, even OHP. Shrugs are also inferior to the aforementioned exercises (except squats and ohp) at training the traps. Pulldowns are a poor replacement for pull ups and the strength doesn't transfer to real life, nor will pull downs provoke any real gain. Then there is the 2 times per week thing. That is just too slow progress to me. You are kidding yourself if you think that you need all that time to repair. DOMS are not a sign of progress you know. But I guess if you are eating like a school girl (and it sounds like you are) then maybe you need more time than the rest of the population to repair.

@ Apple: Don't let Paul confuse you - typical bodybuilding dogma (body parts need 96 hours to repair, isolating muscles - it's almost as if he copied and pasted it from a bodybuilding.com article). Do stronglifts or Rippetoe's Starting Strength. Training to failure and training twice per week are not things you need to do. Don't be suckered in by fancy terms, bodybuilding is highly pseudoscientific now.

I dont do forced reps or negatives very often nor do I train to failure, they only should be used a plateaus breaker. I use a progressive poundage method as you've mentioned above. Adding 0.5KG - 2KG to the bar each week. I'm a hardgainer, I wasnt born with good genetics. I have to earn every pound of muscle I put on with hard work. I have the worst body build for weightlifting. Crunches and planks are an accessory exercises. I already Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift and OHP if you managed to read my workout plan. Pulldowns are for lat definining and Shrugs are an accessory exercise. I eat 3.5K cals a day, with 6 meals and 2 supplementary protein shakes and I roughly intake 1.5g of protein per body pound. I dont follow Schwarzenegger at all, he was born with some of the greatest genetics on earth, he could do anything he wanted and still get big. Accessory exercises are needed but the core exercises must be put first.

My entire workout is based upon Stuart McRobert's books and magazines entitled HARDGAINER and Beyond Brawn (www.hardgainer.com). They teach conservatism throughout lifting and progressive poundage. I am completely against the majority of the information on bodybuilding.com, that is dogma not what I am advising. A conservative approach to weightlifting is better. Less than more. You can get away with it now that you are young but I plan to weightlift my entire life, without injury. I respect your view on weightlifting but do not slander my information as dogma. My workouts are based on conservatism, where as the majority of the weightlifting populations are not.

[Wig44.]

I dont do forced reps or negatives very often nor do I train to failure, they only should be used a plateaus breaker. I use a progressive poundage method as you've mentioned above. Adding 0.5KG - 2KG to the bar each week. I'm a hardgainer, I wasnt born with good genetics. I have to earn every pound of muscle I put on with hard work. I have the worst body build for weightlifting. Crunches and planks are an accessory exercises. I already Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift and OHP if you managed to read my workout plan. Pulldowns are for tricep definining and Shrugs are an accessory exercise. I eat 3.5K cals a day, with 6 meals and 2 supplementary protein shakes and I roughly intake 1.5g of protein per body pound.

My entire workout is based upon Stuart McRobert's books and magazines entitled HARDGAINER and Beyond Brawn (www.hardgainer.com). They teach conservatism throughout lifting and progressive poundage. I am completely against the majority of the information on bodybuilding.com, that is dogma not what I am advising. A conservative approach to weightlifting is better. Less than more. You can get away with it now that you are young but I plan to weightlift my entire life, without injury. I respect your view on weightlifting but do not slander my information as dogma. My workouts are based on conservatism, where as the majority of the weightlifting populations are not.

Starting with an empty bar is conservative (e.g stronglifts) in my opinion. Stronglifts has been done by people in their 60's who had no history of working out - a very viable option for someone to workout their whole life. I dislike it when people use the term hardgainer, yeah your genetics may not be as good as some but the difference really isn;t as great as some people would think. As I said, pull downs are pretty damn useless, I noticed the compound exercises, it's just your thursday workout is inundated with useless 'accessory' exercises (synonymous with waste of time imo). Also, 6 meals isn't actually necessary nor beneficial. All it does is raise your fasting insulin and blood glucose levels. Little and often does not speed up metabolism, nor does it affect protein synthesis. If it is just so you can get your calories in (which I doubt when you are only eating 3.5k) then fair enough.

Anyway, we have dragged this off topic and I'd agree that your views are better than most of the conventional bodybuilding views/ideals.

[PaulMacC]

Starting with an empty bar is conservative (e.g stronglifts) in my opinion. Stronglifts has been done by people in their 60's who had no history of working out - a very viable option for someone to workout their whole life. I dislike it when people use the term hardgainer, yeah your genetics may not be as good as some but the difference really isn;t as great as some people would think. As I said, pull downs are pretty damn useless, I noticed the compound exercises, it's just your thursday workout is inundated with useless 'accessory' exercises (synonymous with waste of time imo). Also, 6 meals isn't actually necessary nor beneficial. All it does is raise your fasting insulin and blood glucose levels. Little and often does not speed up metabolism, nor does it affect protein synthesis. If it is just so you can get your calories in (which I doubt when you are only eating 3.5k) then fair enough.

Anyway, we have dragged this off topic and I'd agree that your views are better than most of the conventional bodybuilding views/ideals.

I was a pretty scrawny guy when I started. I couldn't even bench the Olympic bar for 3 sets of 8. I've been going up 2KG a week on my core exercises. I put form before anything though, I dont like robbing myself of the exercise. I personally think genetics play a huge role in weightlifting but again that is my opinion. Yeah it is so that I can get calories in, I have a very small stomach and find it hard eating bulk. I refuse to take weightgain shakes as most are full of sugars and fats and I'm prefer eating quality food than blending a lot of it together and liquidizing it. I do lack severe knowledge in weightlifting so excuse the multiple obvious errors I have made, some areas I'm not so experience in but I do know most the fundamentals.

[PaulMacC]

Also just to add.

I never denied that squats provide immense core strength however there are some deep muscles that the plank and crunches will reach that those examples you've given cannot. Snatches and Power Cleans are for Olympic trainees and is a very specialized kind of training which should be done under full and professional supervision, not as part of a normal programme. If you can pull 5% more than your body weight in pull-downs you can pull-up, right now I cannot. It's a simple fact. 2 times a week is optimum. You need more rest than work. Your muscles need more time to rebuild and over compensate. I am slowly raising your eating habits. To simply rush into new calorie intake level would be down right foolish.