Is My Bodybuilding Setup Correct?

Training
1

Hey T-Nation,

I was advised to check this place out as a good source of information in regard to building ones body. Below is basically everything I’ve been doing to make myself physically fit for almost 2 years. There’s a brief description of my exercise and my diet with a picture. I am looking for any serious criticism and assistance I can receive from you as I have no coach or serious real life resource.

*Exercise*

I’ve been working on my fitness for about a year and a half. For the first year all I did was strictly cardio, because I was afraid of lifting. I cut out a lot of my bad eating habits and went from weighing around 240lbs to 180. At the time I was happy with my progress, but was more or less skinny fat and wanted to really get to work on my physique and once and for all be proud of what I saw in the mirror.

The first five months of my actual lifting was at Planet Fitness and was basically a setup my friend was using:

Monday: Legs
Tuesday: Chest
Wednesday: Rest Day
Thursday: Shoulders
Friday: Back

After about 5 months of going to PF, I became a lot more into lifting weights. I started researching various things on lifting and decided that I would like to begin squatting and deadlifting (something you can’t really do at PF because there’s no free barbells/power racks.) I started at this other gym and basically have been doing my same workout. I’ve thrown in some assistance exercises (I think that’s what they’re called) like dips, pullups, and some pushups. I can do a somewhat decent amount of these, but don’t feel I’m ready to start doing weighted ones.

*Diet*

So I’ve changed my diet a few times and am basically trying to figure out what I should be eating to get what I want. My goal is basically aesthetics over strength. I’d like to have some display of abs and get that often sought after “ripped” look. It is because of this that I have basically cut down to eating the following:

Greek Yogurt
Chicken
Broccoli
Eggs
Baby Carrots
Banana
Whey protein shakes after workout and in the morning

That’s about it. That’s basically all I’ve eaten for about a month and half/2 months. With the exception of sushi on Fridays with friends and some beef on the weekends for cookouts (No bread, nothing extreme.) Here are my numbers below on my daily intake on this diet

Calories: 1622
Carbs: 119
Fat: 39
Protein: 193

So my logic behind this is that I’m basically cutting and eating high amounts of protein. Am I doing it right?

Height 6’ 1" Weight 168lbs

http://i.imgur.com/61aM5.jpg - Me from the front

I can provide more pictures if you need any to help me out.

So basically my whole point in posting this is to find out what or if I’m doing anything wrong. Is my diet too simplistic? Am I not eating enough? Should I be more patient, will this take more time? My biggest fear is that after a year of sticking with a strict, clean diet and consistent weight/cardio exercise is that I wont progress towards my goal at all. Please help me with anything you can. I have been doing this alone for a long time and honestly need some kind of advice or correction. Anything helpful you can offer is greatly appreciated.

2

Are your goals to get huge? or just have abs? with your current diet and enough exercise, your abs should be revealing themselves in no time. However if your goal is to get huge, your diet may to be lacking in fat sources, as well as complex carbs that would provide you with the nutrients to sustain muscle growth.

3

Trying to lose weight right now would be a stupid decision.

4

[quote]Krantar wrote:
Calories: 1622
Carbs: 119
Fat: 39
Protein: 193

Height 6’ 1" Weight 168lbs

So basically my whole point in posting this is to find out what or if I’m doing anything wrong. Is my diet too simplistic? Am I not eating enough? Should I be more patient, will this take more time? My biggest fear is that after a year of sticking with a strict, clean diet and consistent weight/cardio exercise is that I wont progress towards my goal at all. Please help me with anything you can. I have been doing this alone for a long time and honestly need some kind of advice or correction. Anything helpful you can offer is greatly appreciated.
[/quote]
You wrote the word Bodybuilding in your title but you are still trying to lose weight, correct?

I am also assuming that “after a year of sticking with a strict diet” your progress is minimal at best?

You may also still have phobias of gaining back all the weight so what you really want is a diet that will help you add muscle with little to no fat, Correct?

If I were you I would try one of the IF style programs such as Leangains, Warrior Diet, Fast/Feast. But to get you off on the right foot you can immediately change your macros to something like this:

Calories: 1900-2100 (1622 is TOO LOW, hence the stalled weight loss)
Carbs: 50-100
Fat: 100 (Take a fish oil supp for added Omega 3’s)
Protein: 200

Don’t be afraid of fat and cycle your carbs between 50-100 depending on if you worked out that day. Then after reading about the diets I mentioned you can take this easy carb cycle and stick in in an IF style diet by just eating all of your carbs post workout.

Just my opinion though, plenty of ways to skin this cat.

5

[quote]Krantar wrote:
Hey T-Nation,

I was advised to check this place out as a good source of information in regard to building ones body. Below is basically everything I’ve been doing to make myself physically fit for almost 2 years. There’s a brief description of my exercise and my diet with a picture. I am looking for any serious criticism and assistance I can receive from you as I have no coach or serious real life resource.

*Exercise*

I’ve been working on my fitness for about a year and a half. For the first year all I did was strictly cardio, because I was afraid of lifting. I cut out a lot of my bad eating habits and went from weighing around 240lbs to 180. At the time I was happy with my progress, but was more or less skinny fat and wanted to really get to work on my physique and once and for all be proud of what I saw in the mirror.

The first five months of my actual lifting was at Planet Fitness and was basically a setup my friend was using:

Monday: Legs
Tuesday: Chest
Wednesday: Rest Day
Thursday: Shoulders
Friday: Back

After about 5 months of going to PF, I became a lot more into lifting weights. I started researching various things on lifting and decided that I would like to begin squatting and deadlifting (something you can’t really do at PF because there’s no free barbells/power racks.) I started at this other gym and basically have been doing my same workout. I’ve thrown in some assistance exercises (I think that’s what they’re called) like dips, pullups, and some pushups. I can do a somewhat decent amount of these, but don’t feel I’m ready to start doing weighted ones.

*Diet*

So I’ve changed my diet a few times and am basically trying to figure out what I should be eating to get what I want. My goal is basically aesthetics over strength. I’d like to have some display of abs and get that often sought after “ripped” look. It is because of this that I have basically cut down to eating the following:

Greek Yogurt
Chicken
Broccoli
Eggs
Baby Carrots
Banana
Whey protein shakes after workout and in the morning

That’s about it. That’s basically all I’ve eaten for about a month and half/2 months. With the exception of sushi on Fridays with friends and some beef on the weekends for cookouts (No bread, nothing extreme.) Here are my numbers below on my daily intake on this diet

Calories: 1622
Carbs: 119
Fat: 39
Protein: 193

So my logic behind this is that I’m basically cutting and eating high amounts of protein. Am I doing it right?

Height 6’ 1" Weight 168lbs

http://i.imgur.com/61aM5.jpg - Me from the front

I can provide more pictures if you need any to help me out.

So basically my whole point in posting this is to find out what or if I’m doing anything wrong. Is my diet too simplistic? Am I not eating enough? Should I be more patient, will this take more time? My biggest fear is that after a year of sticking with a strict, clean diet and consistent weight/cardio exercise is that I wont progress towards my goal at all. Please help me with anything you can. I have been doing this alone for a long time and honestly need some kind of advice or correction. Anything helpful you can offer is greatly appreciated.
[/quote]

well bodybuilding is all about physique, not strength. you’re doing strength training (im ignoring the diet part because i dont know much about diets. though that looks like not enough calories IMO). BB is mainly revolving around isolation exercises. heres a super simple beginner BB routine off the top of my head.

monday: chest and triceps
bench press 3x8
dumbbell flys 3x8
skull crushers 3x8
v rope pull downs 3x8

tuesday: shoulders and biceps and back
good mornings 3x5
hammer curls 3x8
deep swimmers press 3x8
military press or OHP 3x8
shoulder shrugs 3x8
wide grip pull ups 3xfailure
chin ups 3xfailure

wednesday: legs
leg press 3x8
leg curl 3x8
calf raises 3x8
lunges with dumbbells 3x8

thursday: repeat monday

friday: repeat monday

do ab/oblique work on monday and thursday… leg raises 3xfailure and leg raise-windshield wiper 3xfailure
and some cardio.

BB splits are lengthy and not very useful. though, generally, you wanna do no more than 8-12 reps and no less than 2 sets. two or more exercises on each muscle. its useless for actual strength, and boring to do.
like i said, thats off the top of my head and i would put a beginner on it. try it out, see if you like it. i wrote that so that you could see what a bodybuilding split looks like. its usually isolation exercises (not always), and usually 8-12 reps with quite a bit of variety.

6

You gave us your split but I’d like to see what exercises and set/rep scheme you’re using. Also, how much are your current lifts? The best way to look at progress is to look at how much your lifts have increased for reps because there is now way, for example, that you’ll be lifting 315x10 on the bench looking the way you do

7

OP,
Don’t listen to people who have less than 50 posts on this site. They can’t help you.

That being said… your goals are vague. You can get better answers with a better question. I will say this though - almost any goal that is not strictly fat loss will require more eating, based on what you told us your diet looks like. I can promise you won’t build significant muscle with a diet like that. I have to assume muscular gains are important to you based on the title of this thread.

My other suggestion would be to read the last 20 or so articles posted on this site, to get a feel for what kind of information can be found here. It’s great stuff, you can learn a lot really quickly.

8

You’re 168 in that picture and you want to be shredded?

You’re gonna be down at like 130-140 to be really shredded (maybe lower I can’t even tell), and you’ll realize you’re a twig and regret it.

Just gain weight but be smarter about it. I would do what JLone said with diet, and can you please be more specific about your routine.

9

[quote]flipcollar wrote:
OP,
Don’t listen to people who have less than 50 posts on this site. They can’t help you.
[/quote]

i didnt realize a 50 post count as a type of certification :wink: …but then again, maybe thats because i dont have 50 posts yet

10

and if you said that because youre arguing with me, then youre also arguing with Mehdi Hadim…
“if you prefer to be a bodybuilder, you’ll also have to do high reps and isolation. Just remember that the best bodybuilders almost always have a strength background because strength equals size.” - Medhi Hadim
if you dont know who he is, then shame on you. but i believe im correct in saying that BB is based around isolation exercises, that its useless, and that is a valid BB routine for a beginner.