------------------------Introduction (feel free to skip)------------------------
Hello all, I would like to start by saying how grateful I am to have this forum. Every visit I find myself drowning in value.
I made this post to document my fitness journey so far, inspire others to start theirs, and hopefully help some people make progress in their fitness endeavors by showing what worked for me and what might work for you.
I would also like to say that although I believe I have a decent physique, I am far from perfect and I still have a long way to go (not to mention cardio and diet, both of which I still have room to grow in).
------------------------My Story------------------------
Today I am 5' 10" at a lean 157.6 lbs, I get regular compliments from friends and family on my physique, and I am significantly more confident (but again, I still have room to grow). But lets start with about 8 months ago...
I'm 16, 5' 10", 127 lbs. (give or take) I'm borderline underweight and built like a stick. I get called skinny (or anything along those lines) on the daily. I lack confidence, I am perceived as a nerd, and my arms are even thinner than my younger sister's (yikes!). Around this time, I (somehow) get the confidence to ask out a beautiful girl... as we both stand, fidgeting under the tension, she says while staring at the floor: "Sorry, you're a nice friend, but I'm not looking for this right now"...friendzoned. Although I expected it, it still hurt like hell. I went home and sank in a sea of my own remorse and self-pity.
After a few weeks of wallowing in sadness later however, I started thinking I should start working out and improve my appearance. Eventually I started doing 20 minute upper/lower body dumbbell workouts about every other day, guided by a youtube workout video (this gives me nostalgia). A few weeks later, I start seeing some gains. I tell my friends at the lunch table that I started working out, while flexing my arms. A response from one of them: "Do you even workout?" (looking back, this makes me pissed. Although you might think they are, these people are not your friends). I kept going, and after a month or two I had gotten ok gains! I start showing this to my friends, some of them support me, others don't.
However, 2 weeks or so before the end of the school year, I arm wrestle a good friend of mine for fun. It was very close, I ended up losing (lol), and I challenged him and lost again (lol again). Later in that day, I did one of my dumbbell upper body workouts along with the same video tutorial, but during that workout I felt a bit of pain in my wrist, which I ignored and kept going. This was going to come back to bite me very quickly. The next day I woke up and my wrist was almost incapacitated, any time I tried to lift my school bag or something with a little weight, I had searing pain in it. A few weeks later, I get an MRI and find out that I tore my TFCC, doctors say that my recovery is uncertain but that I wouldn't be able to lift. This is the beginning of my down trend.
It's summer now, and I'm bored af. With my wrist in a cast I end up watching youtube videos and pissing my time away. My family and I go on a vacation to India, during which I spend most of the time perpetually sick. I throw up, lose more of my already puny appetite, and am stuck in bed for most of my "vacation". The times that my family and I did go out to meet friends and extended family, I am slapped in the face with "you should eat more", "you're skinnier than I remember", etc. Eventually our vacation ends, and to my dismay, my weight has dropped... down to 122 lbs. Something had to change...
During the remaining time in the summer, my wrist comes back to decent condition (although to this day it still bothers me), and I begin researching for the path I could take to get jacked. I ravenously consume information, fitness influencers, gurus, etc. I pick up tidbits here and there and eventually I find a channel called Hamza (say what you will about him, I will personally say that he has helped me turn around my life, not just in fitness but in other areas as well). He says that I have to start bulking (eating in a calorie surplus, more on this later), and that I have to go to an actual gym and train hard with a program.
Here finally comes the turning point, I am enrolled in an accelerated school program where I get to attend university for 11th and 12th grades. I meet a good friend, Joe, who has been training for a year. He puts me on a PPL (push-pull-legs) program and we hit the gym, hard, 5x a week at minimum, sometimes 6x. I get access to the dining halls on campus, and while my friends stuffed their faces with pizza and ice cream and nonsense garbage, I ate very clean and with intent. I started bulking and tracking my calorie intake, my goal being 3200 calories per day. I probably ate at least a 100 bowls of chicken, rice, and black beans over the course of the academic year. A lot of the time I ate pasta, and I often grabbed salad. After I gained a few lbs., I realized how much potential I had (and around this time I also said to myself: "shit, why didn't I just do this earlier"). Eating 3200 calories a day was not fun, walking back from the dining halls to the dorm was always a struggle. However, I managed to stay extremely consistent in the gym and with my bulking.
I started to reap the great rewards of my efforts. I consistently gained weight (and I still am) and ended the school year at about 153 lbs. lean and with a very decent physique. During the the latter end of the school year, I was consistently getting compliments from my good friends, which did wonders for my confidence. I feel 10x more respected by not only my friends, but people in general. I also earned respect for myself, which some would argue is the hardest respect to earn. Today I am at a lean 157.6 lbs. and I'm very happy with the progress I've made. I've started a gym club at my school program with Joe and we're supporting people in their fitness endeavors (while getting volunteer hours XD).
------------------------My Tips------------------------
Here is what I learned along the way as practical tips you can use to get started and/or make more progress.
You MUST stay consistent: As MJ and many members of the forum have pointed out, your declarations will mean absolutely jackshit until you actually start putting in effort to change your life. You won't get 6 pack abs if you're drinking or eating crap and not putting any actual effort into exercising or eating properly. Me and Joe have had countless friends make empty declarations or even come to the gym with us a few times, only to drop off within a week or two. I recommend using a habit tracker and/or getting an accountability partner (you can use this forum!) or gym bro.
Sleep is very important: Although you feel the burn in the gym, the actual gains are made in your sleep. Not only does getting great sleep give you more energy throughout the day that you can put into the gym or your business, it's also a vital part of the recovery process after hitting the gym.
Have a growth mindset: This doesn't just apply to fitness, but to almost all pursuits in life. Squash your limiting beliefs like: "I can't get jacked because my genetics suck", I see people blathering like this all the time. A much better and more useful (there is no point in holding beliefs that don't serve you) belief to hold is that you can and will improve over time. Your genetics might stop you from becoming the next Arnold, but they certainly won't stop you from putting on muscle and gaining/losing a lifechanging amount of weight.
Train until failure: You will make gains much faster unless you go close to failure (preferably all the way to failure) during your exercises (this is especially true later on).
Train with the proper frequency: A common trap for beginners is the Bro-split. Although you will make gains, training with a split like PPL (push-pull-legs) or Upper-Lower will allow you to target muscle groups with greater frequency, allowing you to give your muscles stimulus more often and ultimately resulting in greater and faster gains.
Don't ego-lift: Ego lifting is lifting much more than you are capable of. We've all seen clips of those guys racking on way too many plates than they are capable of and suffering greatly because they couldn't swallow their egos. Not only will you save yourself from injury, but you will make more gains when working with good form in the 10-15 rep range.
Listen to your body: This is more useful for those who are well into their fitness journeys. If you get pain while working out (NOT soreness or the burn), you should stop, maybe stretch, and then, carefully, try again. If you still get pain, you might need to cut it. It's not worth risking injury, especially are someone who doesn't have trouble taking action and getting in workouts, because we have many years to build our physiques.
(For gaining weight) Utilize liquid calories: I started making and drinking shakes pretty early in my bulking. It's a really easy way to get an extra 800+ calories in very quickly. Here is what I drink right now for breakfast:
1 cup milk
1 banana
1 tbsp greek yogurt
3 tsp peanut butter
1 scoop protein powder
Add some water to make the consistency better
How to start training: First you've got to get access to a gym, many gyms offer free periods or other offers that let you try out their facilities easily. Before you go, you need to download an app called Strong on the app store. This app lets you track exercises, sets, reps, weight used, and add any notes you want.
For the first day or two, feel free to screw around and get used to the gym environment (just please don't get yourself injured).
After one week, we are going to start training with intent using a PPL (push-pull-legs) program (NOTE: if you want to do strength training and move more weight instead of bodybuilding for aesthetics [although you will still gain some strength] which is what I did, you can try a 5x5 program, I encourage you to do your own research; I'm not including this because I don't have experience with it). In this program we will train chest, shoulders, and triceps on push days; back, lats, and biceps on pull days; and quads, hamstrings, and calves on leg days (some other muscles will be hit with compound exercises). I recommend starting with just 3 sets instead of 4 for each exercise during your first week so that you can start getting used to the burn. After 2 weeks, you can add drop sets to each of your exercises, where you don't take a break from your last set and instead decrease the weight and push out one more set. My preferred rep range is 10-15 for bodybuilding. Here's what it will look like (4x12 means 4 sets of 12 reps):
Push Day:
Chest - Bench press 4x8 (Or chest press or other alt.)
Shoulders - Shoulder press 4x12
Triceps - Triceps cable extension 4x12 (Lots of options here)
Mid Deltoid - Lateral raises 3x12 (Do these after a few weeks, You can do these with dumbbells or cables)
Pull Day:
Back - Cable rows 4x12 (Some kind of rows)
Lats - Lat pulldown 4x12 (You can experiment with pullups or other alt.)
Biceps - Bicep curl 4x12 (You can also use cables or machines or even some variations of pullups)
Rear Deltoid - Rear delt 3x12 (Similarly to Mid Deltoid, introduce these after a few weeks, You can do these with dumbbells or cables or machine)
Leg Day:
Compound - Squats 4x8
Compound - Leg press 4x8
Quads - Leg extensions 4x12
Hamstrings - Leg curls 4x12 (do this seated or prone on machine)
Calves - Calf raises 4x12
Some other areas to hit if you really want are: traps, neck (if you want), and obliques. I would recommend hitting abs at least every other day you go to the gym, if not everyday. I may experiment with deadlifts later in the future, this would most probably be for fun but I need to do more research.
How to start gaining/losing weight: Go to this website and put in your info: TDEE Calculator: Learn Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure It will give a number (see picture)
Awesome, this number is roughly the number of calories you need to consume to maintain your current weight at your current activity level. But what we want is the number of calories we need to consume to gain or lose weight. Scroll down to the tabs that read "maintenance", "cutting", and "bulking". If you didn't know already, cutting is the process of losing weight by consuming in a calorie deficit, while bulking is the opposite: gaining weight by eating in a calorie surplus. Choose the appropriate tab and record the number (I highlighted mine for reference, it's gone up by 200 calories since I started and I haven't updated, oops lol). You can also record the amounts of the macronutrients (protein, fats, carbs) if you want, but I don't find that to be necessary.
Cool, now we know how many calories we need to eat to gain/lose weight, what's next? We are going to use an awesome free app called MyFitnessPal to track our calorie intake. Download the app and set your calorie goal as recorded previously (if you want, you can also just put your info into the app, select your weekly goal, and let the app get a number for you).
Bam, now we have a way to easily track our calories and maintain progress to our goal, now what? Well, now's the hard part, staying accountable. You really have to stay consistent (as mentioned above) to make progress, you got this! Also please keep in mind that you won't get jacked just by eating less than your maintenance, you have to go to the gym to gain muscle.
------------------------Conclusion------------------------
Whew! That was quite a lot. This took me about 2 hours or so to write out, I hope you found my story entertaining and/or inspiring and the rest to be valuable. You have the power to change your life. I'm cheering for you!
P.S. If you guys have any questions and/or suggestions for me or others feel free to add them. Cheers!
Hello all, I would like to start by saying how grateful I am to have this forum. Every visit I find myself drowning in value.
I made this post to document my fitness journey so far, inspire others to start theirs, and hopefully help some people make progress in their fitness endeavors by showing what worked for me and what might work for you.
I would also like to say that although I believe I have a decent physique, I am far from perfect and I still have a long way to go (not to mention cardio and diet, both of which I still have room to grow in).
------------------------My Story------------------------
Today I am 5' 10" at a lean 157.6 lbs, I get regular compliments from friends and family on my physique, and I am significantly more confident (but again, I still have room to grow). But lets start with about 8 months ago...
I'm 16, 5' 10", 127 lbs. (give or take) I'm borderline underweight and built like a stick. I get called skinny (or anything along those lines) on the daily. I lack confidence, I am perceived as a nerd, and my arms are even thinner than my younger sister's (yikes!). Around this time, I (somehow) get the confidence to ask out a beautiful girl... as we both stand, fidgeting under the tension, she says while staring at the floor: "Sorry, you're a nice friend, but I'm not looking for this right now"...friendzoned. Although I expected it, it still hurt like hell. I went home and sank in a sea of my own remorse and self-pity.
After a few weeks of wallowing in sadness later however, I started thinking I should start working out and improve my appearance. Eventually I started doing 20 minute upper/lower body dumbbell workouts about every other day, guided by a youtube workout video (this gives me nostalgia). A few weeks later, I start seeing some gains. I tell my friends at the lunch table that I started working out, while flexing my arms. A response from one of them: "Do you even workout?" (looking back, this makes me pissed. Although you might think they are, these people are not your friends). I kept going, and after a month or two I had gotten ok gains! I start showing this to my friends, some of them support me, others don't.
However, 2 weeks or so before the end of the school year, I arm wrestle a good friend of mine for fun. It was very close, I ended up losing (lol), and I challenged him and lost again (lol again). Later in that day, I did one of my dumbbell upper body workouts along with the same video tutorial, but during that workout I felt a bit of pain in my wrist, which I ignored and kept going. This was going to come back to bite me very quickly. The next day I woke up and my wrist was almost incapacitated, any time I tried to lift my school bag or something with a little weight, I had searing pain in it. A few weeks later, I get an MRI and find out that I tore my TFCC, doctors say that my recovery is uncertain but that I wouldn't be able to lift. This is the beginning of my down trend.
It's summer now, and I'm bored af. With my wrist in a cast I end up watching youtube videos and pissing my time away. My family and I go on a vacation to India, during which I spend most of the time perpetually sick. I throw up, lose more of my already puny appetite, and am stuck in bed for most of my "vacation". The times that my family and I did go out to meet friends and extended family, I am slapped in the face with "you should eat more", "you're skinnier than I remember", etc. Eventually our vacation ends, and to my dismay, my weight has dropped... down to 122 lbs. Something had to change...
During the remaining time in the summer, my wrist comes back to decent condition (although to this day it still bothers me), and I begin researching for the path I could take to get jacked. I ravenously consume information, fitness influencers, gurus, etc. I pick up tidbits here and there and eventually I find a channel called Hamza (say what you will about him, I will personally say that he has helped me turn around my life, not just in fitness but in other areas as well). He says that I have to start bulking (eating in a calorie surplus, more on this later), and that I have to go to an actual gym and train hard with a program.
Here finally comes the turning point, I am enrolled in an accelerated school program where I get to attend university for 11th and 12th grades. I meet a good friend, Joe, who has been training for a year. He puts me on a PPL (push-pull-legs) program and we hit the gym, hard, 5x a week at minimum, sometimes 6x. I get access to the dining halls on campus, and while my friends stuffed their faces with pizza and ice cream and nonsense garbage, I ate very clean and with intent. I started bulking and tracking my calorie intake, my goal being 3200 calories per day. I probably ate at least a 100 bowls of chicken, rice, and black beans over the course of the academic year. A lot of the time I ate pasta, and I often grabbed salad. After I gained a few lbs., I realized how much potential I had (and around this time I also said to myself: "shit, why didn't I just do this earlier"). Eating 3200 calories a day was not fun, walking back from the dining halls to the dorm was always a struggle. However, I managed to stay extremely consistent in the gym and with my bulking.
I started to reap the great rewards of my efforts. I consistently gained weight (and I still am) and ended the school year at about 153 lbs. lean and with a very decent physique. During the the latter end of the school year, I was consistently getting compliments from my good friends, which did wonders for my confidence. I feel 10x more respected by not only my friends, but people in general. I also earned respect for myself, which some would argue is the hardest respect to earn. Today I am at a lean 157.6 lbs. and I'm very happy with the progress I've made. I've started a gym club at my school program with Joe and we're supporting people in their fitness endeavors (while getting volunteer hours XD).
------------------------My Tips------------------------
Here is what I learned along the way as practical tips you can use to get started and/or make more progress.
You MUST stay consistent: As MJ and many members of the forum have pointed out, your declarations will mean absolutely jackshit until you actually start putting in effort to change your life. You won't get 6 pack abs if you're drinking or eating crap and not putting any actual effort into exercising or eating properly. Me and Joe have had countless friends make empty declarations or even come to the gym with us a few times, only to drop off within a week or two. I recommend using a habit tracker and/or getting an accountability partner (you can use this forum!) or gym bro.
Sleep is very important: Although you feel the burn in the gym, the actual gains are made in your sleep. Not only does getting great sleep give you more energy throughout the day that you can put into the gym or your business, it's also a vital part of the recovery process after hitting the gym.
Have a growth mindset: This doesn't just apply to fitness, but to almost all pursuits in life. Squash your limiting beliefs like: "I can't get jacked because my genetics suck", I see people blathering like this all the time. A much better and more useful (there is no point in holding beliefs that don't serve you) belief to hold is that you can and will improve over time. Your genetics might stop you from becoming the next Arnold, but they certainly won't stop you from putting on muscle and gaining/losing a lifechanging amount of weight.
Train until failure: You will make gains much faster unless you go close to failure (preferably all the way to failure) during your exercises (this is especially true later on).
Train with the proper frequency: A common trap for beginners is the Bro-split. Although you will make gains, training with a split like PPL (push-pull-legs) or Upper-Lower will allow you to target muscle groups with greater frequency, allowing you to give your muscles stimulus more often and ultimately resulting in greater and faster gains.
Don't ego-lift: Ego lifting is lifting much more than you are capable of. We've all seen clips of those guys racking on way too many plates than they are capable of and suffering greatly because they couldn't swallow their egos. Not only will you save yourself from injury, but you will make more gains when working with good form in the 10-15 rep range.
Listen to your body: This is more useful for those who are well into their fitness journeys. If you get pain while working out (NOT soreness or the burn), you should stop, maybe stretch, and then, carefully, try again. If you still get pain, you might need to cut it. It's not worth risking injury, especially are someone who doesn't have trouble taking action and getting in workouts, because we have many years to build our physiques.
(For gaining weight) Utilize liquid calories: I started making and drinking shakes pretty early in my bulking. It's a really easy way to get an extra 800+ calories in very quickly. Here is what I drink right now for breakfast:
1 cup milk
1 banana
1 tbsp greek yogurt
3 tsp peanut butter
1 scoop protein powder
Add some water to make the consistency better
How to start training: First you've got to get access to a gym, many gyms offer free periods or other offers that let you try out their facilities easily. Before you go, you need to download an app called Strong on the app store. This app lets you track exercises, sets, reps, weight used, and add any notes you want.
For the first day or two, feel free to screw around and get used to the gym environment (just please don't get yourself injured).
After one week, we are going to start training with intent using a PPL (push-pull-legs) program (NOTE: if you want to do strength training and move more weight instead of bodybuilding for aesthetics [although you will still gain some strength] which is what I did, you can try a 5x5 program, I encourage you to do your own research; I'm not including this because I don't have experience with it). In this program we will train chest, shoulders, and triceps on push days; back, lats, and biceps on pull days; and quads, hamstrings, and calves on leg days (some other muscles will be hit with compound exercises). I recommend starting with just 3 sets instead of 4 for each exercise during your first week so that you can start getting used to the burn. After 2 weeks, you can add drop sets to each of your exercises, where you don't take a break from your last set and instead decrease the weight and push out one more set. My preferred rep range is 10-15 for bodybuilding. Here's what it will look like (4x12 means 4 sets of 12 reps):
Push Day:
Chest - Bench press 4x8 (Or chest press or other alt.)
Shoulders - Shoulder press 4x12
Triceps - Triceps cable extension 4x12 (Lots of options here)
Mid Deltoid - Lateral raises 3x12 (Do these after a few weeks, You can do these with dumbbells or cables)
Pull Day:
Back - Cable rows 4x12 (Some kind of rows)
Lats - Lat pulldown 4x12 (You can experiment with pullups or other alt.)
Biceps - Bicep curl 4x12 (You can also use cables or machines or even some variations of pullups)
Rear Deltoid - Rear delt 3x12 (Similarly to Mid Deltoid, introduce these after a few weeks, You can do these with dumbbells or cables or machine)
Leg Day:
Compound - Squats 4x8
Compound - Leg press 4x8
Quads - Leg extensions 4x12
Hamstrings - Leg curls 4x12 (do this seated or prone on machine)
Calves - Calf raises 4x12
Some other areas to hit if you really want are: traps, neck (if you want), and obliques. I would recommend hitting abs at least every other day you go to the gym, if not everyday. I may experiment with deadlifts later in the future, this would most probably be for fun but I need to do more research.
How to start gaining/losing weight: Go to this website and put in your info: TDEE Calculator: Learn Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure It will give a number (see picture)
Awesome, this number is roughly the number of calories you need to consume to maintain your current weight at your current activity level. But what we want is the number of calories we need to consume to gain or lose weight. Scroll down to the tabs that read "maintenance", "cutting", and "bulking". If you didn't know already, cutting is the process of losing weight by consuming in a calorie deficit, while bulking is the opposite: gaining weight by eating in a calorie surplus. Choose the appropriate tab and record the number (I highlighted mine for reference, it's gone up by 200 calories since I started and I haven't updated, oops lol). You can also record the amounts of the macronutrients (protein, fats, carbs) if you want, but I don't find that to be necessary.
Cool, now we know how many calories we need to eat to gain/lose weight, what's next? We are going to use an awesome free app called MyFitnessPal to track our calorie intake. Download the app and set your calorie goal as recorded previously (if you want, you can also just put your info into the app, select your weekly goal, and let the app get a number for you).
Bam, now we have a way to easily track our calories and maintain progress to our goal, now what? Well, now's the hard part, staying accountable. You really have to stay consistent (as mentioned above) to make progress, you got this! Also please keep in mind that you won't get jacked just by eating less than your maintenance, you have to go to the gym to gain muscle.
------------------------Conclusion------------------------
Whew! That was quite a lot. This took me about 2 hours or so to write out, I hope you found my story entertaining and/or inspiring and the rest to be valuable. You have the power to change your life. I'm cheering for you!
P.S. If you guys have any questions and/or suggestions for me or others feel free to add them. Cheers!
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