As
a long-time trainer, I've learned a LOT of
lessons about building muscle and losing fat.
But nothing beats the learning curve of my
first year of training. I didn't always make
good progress. In my first year of training,
I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot
of things the hard way. I also did some things
quite right completely by accident! Have a
read through some of the most critical lessons
I learned in the very first year of my training
career.
IN THE BEGINNING...
I
wanted nothing more than to get big and strong.
I had been an endurance athlete all through
high school (cross-country running, speed
skating, skiing) but wanted to make a change.
I was 17 years old and skinny and jumped into
weight training with both feet. I saved up
some money, bought the Cybergenics supplement
program (mistake #1! - basically that was
just an expensive multivitamin) and started
training. It was June of 1991, just heading
into summer.
I
had a good program and I started getting stronger
right away but wasn't really gaining much
muscle. I was, however, getting absolutely
ripped to the bone!
By
the end of the summer, I still weighed about
150 lbs soaking wet (right where I started
4 months earlier) but I swear I was about
4 or 5% bodyfat. When you can see the division
line between your upper pecs and lower pecs
without flexing the chest, you know you're
at low bodyfat!
LESSON
#1
I
wasn't eating NEARLY enough or frequently
enough and wasn't getting enough protein.
I would rollerblade or bike to the gym first
thing in the morning and do my workout, eating
NOTHING immediately after training. I would
rollerblade home then eat a bowl of cereal.
Then I would go to work as a lifeguard the
rest of the day, eating maybe once or twice
more that day with my largest meal being dinner.
THEN IT WAS OFF TO UNIVERSITY...
Having
just graduated from high school, I enrolled
in university that fall. I had learned my
lesson about not eating enough and I was determined
to make up for it.
And
make up for it I did...with cafeteria food!
Some people drink too much their first year
of college - I ate too much.
Not
to knock the food service there, but I'm just
sure they deep-fried the salad. To show you
my knowledge of nutrition at the time, I would
(in the interest of trying to keep fat levels
in my diet down) order fried eggs and cut
out the yolks, eating only the whites (which
were shiny with overused cooking oil). All
this never realizing that I would have been
better off cutting off the whites and eating
the yolks (that's where the fat-emulsifying
lecithin and the majority of the good nutrients
in the egg are!).
Eight
months later, at the end of my first year
of school, I was 70 pounds heavier, probably
about half of which was actually muscle mass.
At one point, I sat down and calculated my
caloric intake on some of my "big eating"
days and found it to be almost 9,000 calories
per day!
LESSON
#2
When
I learned my lesson about eating more to gain
muscle, I didn't learn the lesson that you
can eat WAY too much and you can easily eat
the wrong types of foods. Sure, I got big
and strong, but I probably went from 5% bodyfat
to 15 to 20% bodyfat at the same time. NOT
the results I was looking for! What I needed
to do was eat more, certainly, but also eat
a better quality of food.
That,
plus I'm sure all the "Weight Gain 3000"
type of supplements I was taking didn't help
matters! Looking back on the ingredients,
it was mostly cheap milk protein and maltodextrin
(a high glycemic, cheap carb source).
TRAINING AT UNIVERSITY...
As
I was eating more at University, I also ramped
up my training. I would try and do more and
more sets and use more and more weight. Because
I was eating so much more, I was still making
great progress! Plus, being then 18 years
old, I could beat the tar out of myself in
the gym and still recover from it pretty much
without a problem.
I
was seeing increases in strength and bodyweight
on almost a daily basis. But then something
happened...something that opened up my eyes...one
workout I was in the gym for almost 2 and
a half hours!
LESSON
#3
I
was training WAY too long and with too many
sets. I was still making progress but only
because I was eating so much. Little did I
know, I could actually make BETTER progress
by cutting my training time WAY down. From
that day on, I always stopped my workouts
at the 1 hour mark, no matter where I was
at in the program. And it did wonders for
my results. I think the week after I started
cutting back, my strength shot up and my bodyweight
went up 10 pounds. THAT opened my eyes.
In
the Spring Semester, I tried a program that,
if you've been training awhile, may be familiar
with: Serious Growth by Leo Costa. At that
point, I started training twice a day, six
days a week, but only 45 minutes per session,
at the most. Still eating a ton of food every
day, I made excellent progress with this system
and learned about the benefits of keeping
your eyes on (and cycling) training volume.
BUT I TOTALLY NEGLECTED CARDIO TRAINING...
At
the start of the eight months when I was furiously
trying to increase my bodyweight, I had read
that when trying to gain muscle, you should
reduce cardio training. The aerobic work could
burn up calories that could be used by the
body for building muscle and might interfere
physiologically with the muscle-building process.
Well,
I took that a little too far and cut cardio
training completely out. My thought was, I
was doing cardio in the summer (blading to
the gym and back) and didn't gain any muscle.
When I was endurance training, I didn't gain
any muscle. So maybe cutting it out was necessary.
So I didn't even hardly walk up flights of
stairs unless I had to.
LESSON
#4
Too
much cardio training (especially long-duration
cardio training) CAN interfere with muscle
growth, sure, but as I've learned since that
time, SOME cardio training should always be
a part of any mass-building program. The key
is to do the RIGHT kind of cardio training
(i.e. interval training, which can actually
help the muscle-building process).
Let
me put it this way, it's nice to be big and
strong but when you're big and fat and strong
and lose your breath going up a flight of
stairs, you're not exactly at the pinnacle
of health. Plus, think of it is this way...you
NEED good cardiovascular functioning when
training for muscle mass. What pumps blood
and nutrients to the muscles? What helps you
recover faster in between sets?
Cardio
and muscle-building are not mutually exclusive
concepts. I include it in ALL my muscle-building
programs now.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END OF THE SCHOOL
YEAR?
Well,
at that point, being big and strong but big
and fat, I decided I needed to burn off of
the excess (the old bulk-and-cut concept).
But then I made a HUGE mistake. I went back
to similar habits that got me lean the previous
summer. I didn't eat nearly enough to support
the muscle mass that I had built and I didn't
eat enough protein.
I
also started running again, which at this
point having not done any cardio training
for 8 months, was a HARD lesson to learn.
Imagine going from being a 150 lb cross-country
runner who could do 5 km in about 15 minutes
to being a 220 lb weightlifter who couldn't
even jog slowly for more than 3 minutes straight!
Now,
even though I was TRYING to do long-duration
cardio, it actually resembled interval training
more than anything because I had to stop and
walk every few minutes. As I got in better
cardio shape, I started running longer distances
straight through (I would have been better
off sticking with the intervals - little did
I know!).
And
I did lose weight and did lose some fat but
I lost a LOT of muscle along with it. Nothing
is more depressing than losing what you've
worked so hard to build. I didn't lose all
of my muscle and strength but it was enough
to set me back.
LESSON
#5
What
you should eat and how you should train are
actually fairly similar when you're trying
to build muscle or burn fat. The main differences
lie in how much you're eating and training
variables such as rest periods and cardio
frequency. You still need to eat a lot of
protein regardless of your goals and you still
need to lift heavy, even when on a fat loss
program (it's how you tell your body that
it needs to hold onto muscle).
Increasing
cardio frequency, eating fewer calories and
decreasing rest periods in between sets will
get the fat burning process moving in the
right direction. Don't starve yourself or
go nuts by dramatically increasing your training
workload.
SO WHAT HAPPENED IN MY SECOND YEAR OF TRAINING?
That's
a story for another day...it involves going
so far in the opposite direction of my first
year of training that I actually made my roommate
throw out a pot of water he was boiling for
spaghetti because he added a pinch of salt
(never mind that the sauce we were using had
about 20 times that much salt in it already)!
Look
for Year Two in a future issue of BetterU
News, but in the meantime, check out more
information on fat loss and muscle and strength-building
here:
http://www.fitstep.com/fat-loss/fat-loss.htm
http://www.fitstep.com/muscle-and-strength-building/muscle-and-strength-building.htm
