mack said:
Yeah but I put on weight really easily, dont I need some form of daily cardio to keep fit?
Also, how many situps daily would you recommend? Right now I can manage 100 situps, 100 leg raises, but ive tried a few exercises to work the oblique muscles and they hurt like hell......I need your help.
Well mate, it depends on what muscles you're trying to build. Remember those exercises will only build up your abs and some part of your upper legs.. most guys tend to prefer exercises which target the chest, shoulders, back and arms.. since they're the 'masculine ones'.
Anyway, here's the dilemma of what you said. You said that you put on weight easily so you do cardio to keep fit/keep the fat down. That is CORRECT.. however to build muscle effectively, you need a CALORIE EXCESS. That is, you have to eat more calories than you burn. To lose fat, you have to have a CALORIE DEFICIT. That is, you have to eat less calories than you burn (or to put it another way, burn more calories than you eat).
The simple inevitable point I'm trying to make is: You can't effectively build muscle while keeping your body fat percentages low, unless you have phenomenally good genes. So you either gotta forget about fat, and just build muscle, eat crazily and gain some fat which is unavoidable, or just forget about it. Now you said 'you put weight on easily'.. so chances are your genes aren't suited for muscle building/keeping fat low at the same time. Don't worry about it, it's not something terrible, most people have the same problem.
So if you're serious about building muscle, you've got two choices to make:
- forget about muscle building and just do heaps of cardio etc. etc. to get your body fat percentage down really low and THEN start building muscle (eating alot) and gaining some fat too which is unavoidable.
OR
- start muscle building right now, ignoring cardio and eat crazily (and gaining some fat aswell which is again unavoidable), and when you're satisfied with how muscular you are, THEN start doing cardio, eating less etc. to shed down the fat you gained.
Oh, and in bodybuilding language, the phase where you lift weights, build up heaps of muscle, forgetting cardio.. and just eating crazily is called
'bulking'.. since you're bulking up muscle.
The phase where you're doing heaps of cardio and lowering your calorie intake to lose the fat you gained while bulking is called
'cutting'.
Most gym muscle builder/weight lifters bulk during the winter (because you'll be wearing heaps of clothes anyway so no one can see your fat) and cut during the summer days (to get your beach body out).
