What Should I Do (pics)

Training Bodybuilding
41

[quote]atroopan wrote:
Hmm - here’s Julien’s supposed diet and routine
[/quote]
Quit looking at others as goals. You took a picture. Compete against what you are and what you can do today. If you can’t beat that appearance or performance in two weeks, you are doing something wrong. If you are looking better and are able to lift more, compete against the victor in that battle and strive to beat him. If you stop gaining, then switch things up.

What do you weigh today?
How many body weight chins can you do today?
How much are you squatting today? (see a pattern?)

42

[quote]jp_dubya wrote:
atroopan wrote:
Hmm - here’s Julien’s supposed diet and routine

Quit looking at others as goals. You took a picture. Compete against what you are and what you can do today. If you can’t beat that appearance or performance in two weeks, you are doing something wrong. If you are looking better and are able to lift more, compete against the victor in that battle and strive to beat him. If you stop gaining, then switch things up.

What do you weigh today?
How many body weight chins can you do today?
How much are you squatting today? (see a pattern?)

[/quote]

Ummmm? Atroopan is not the original poster, Young69 is.

43

[quote]EmperialChina wrote:
jp_dubya wrote:
atroopan wrote:
Hmm - here’s Julien’s supposed diet and routine

Quit looking at others as goals. You took a picture. Compete against what you are and what you can do today. If you can’t beat that appearance or performance in two weeks, you are doing something wrong. If you are looking better and are able to lift more, compete against the victor in that battle and strive to beat him. If you stop gaining, then switch things up.

What do you weigh today?
How many body weight chins can you do today?
How much are you squatting today? (see a pattern?)

Ummmm? Atroopan is not the original poster, Young69 is.[/quote]

I take it that it was too difficult to actually read the thread no?

My purpose for posting Julien’s supposed workout and diet routine which I assume he uses for maintenence, was to point out how something doesn’t quite add up - judging by his body and his methods. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think not.

I disagree with you though - the OP wants to have a body like Julien and if this is what he uses as a goal to stay motivated or whatever then power to him. As a long term goal - thats fine, but I suggest setting up short term goals to stay motivated - just in case you don’t end up with Julien’s body in a couple years even :wink:

troop

44

Hey man, don’t worry about the grief people are giving you (which you don’t seem to be).

Don’t worry too much about how much fat you will put on while bulking. You can adjust your eating or do more cardio to help keep that under control as you are gaining. The problem is, if you obsess about fat levels you’ll probably stop yourself from making gains.

The good news is that as you put muscle on, the fat you do have won’t look as bad on your body.

On the goal thing, I’ll agree it’s great to have goals, just be careful you don’t set impossible ones and discourage yourself. If you give up you’ll get nowhere fast. Make sure you are working towards smaller goals and enjoying the progress.

As for the man-boobs, make sure you aren’t loading up on xenoestrogens or anything. If you aren’t, then just ignore them until you put some muscle on. Worrying about shit will just impede your progress.

As for the search feature, make sure you enable pop-ups on the site, because it pops up a new window. There aren’t any pop up ads or anything, so there is no reason to restrict them while on this site. The search feature is your friend.

Finally, there is so much damned information, don’t get stuck thinking instead of doing. Pick a decent program and do it… all of it… even if you find something else you want to do. You’ll be reading so much, and so much will sound good, that you have to avoid jumping all over the place and not really completing the things you are starting… or not even starting at all while you try to find some perfect match for you.

Good luck.

45

[quote]Young89 wrote:
btw to the dude who said something about the search function, it’s not working for me…[/quote]

The search button doesn’t work in anything except Internet Explorer. Neither does the store, for that matter. Amyway, to search the site, type “whatever you’re looking for site:T-Nation.com” into Google. For example:

Google “seven habits nutrition site:T-Nation.com”

And you’ll hit gold on the first result.

Googling “scrawny brawny site:T-Nation.com” should give you some good hits, too.

46

[quote]thomas.galvin wrote:
The search button doesn’t work in anything except Internet Explorer.[/quote]

Well thats as wrong as it gets…

It works just fine for me in Safari and Firefox on the Mac and Firefox on the PC.

Check your pop-up settings and make sure you allow pop-ups for T-Nation.com

47

[quote]PGA200X wrote:
thomas.galvin wrote:
The search button doesn’t work in anything except Internet Explorer.

Well thats as wrong as it gets…

It works just fine for me in Safari and Firefox on the Mac and Firefox on the PC.

Check your pop-up settings and make sure you allow pop-ups for T-Nation.com[/quote]

I use Firefox at home and have never had problems with it.

48

[quote]PGA200X wrote:
It works just fine for me in Safari and Firefox on the Mac and Firefox on the PC.

Check your pop-up settings and make sure you allow pop-ups for T-Nation.com[/quote]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
I use Firefox at home and have never had problems with it. [/quote]

I stand corrected. Yeah, I have pop ups blocked… never even thought to enable them here. Thanks for the info.

On the other hand, I stand by my Google statements.

49

[quote]Dedicated wrote:
Young89 wrote:
ay thanks for all these replies, much appreciated. I don’t know why you guys have beef with bodybuilding.com but I’m not gonna get into all that, I go there for the articles and stuff.

Julien Greaux’s physique is definetly what I want. So I suppose I am going to be bulking for a while. I read some John Berardi articles (still reading) and am going to do his mass building program or whatever it is called. Just did the calculations, I am going to have to eat around 3,000 calories a day for the next few years. My question is 2 part:

  1. Will I make any sizeable “beginner gains”?
  2. Should I do any of that carb cycling stuff, I remember reading an article back when I started that when people bulk that they should every few weeks eat a sh!t load of carbs or something. Excuse my ignorance.

Again thanks for the help

btw to the dude who said something about the search function, it’s not working for me…

Bro, read from as many sources as you can. T-Nation is a great site tops for cutting edge training and nutrition. Continue to use it, but don’t be let guys knock you for getting info wherever you want; When you are new to this you just want to soak up info and reading all that stuff is a blast when you have that new eagerness for it.

You are going to make newbie gains so enjoy them all so and don’t get to complicated at this point just continue to soak up info and make sure you are eating plenty of lean protein and healthy carbs and fats and train hard on compound movements and rest and grow. If I can ever be of help shoot me a PM.

Take care,

D[/quote]

Ok, so you’re highly motivated. That’s good. You realize that instant gratification is for crap. That’s even better.

Don’t worry about lean. Eating good nutritious foods takes care of staying relatively lean (as in not fat), just bulk.

I agree that the program that “pro” gave you sucks. Maybe not as bad as it could suck, but it sucks.

T-Nation is google for weights and nutrition. If it’s not at least mentioned in here, there’s a good chance it doesn’t exist :). Only half joking.

Better yet, T-Nation is the closest thing we strength athletes have to a dedicated scientific journal. I used to belong to bodybuilding.com for the first month or so of my training life. Then I found T-Nation and realized why national level coaches and olympic coaches (aka–Charles Poliquin, Charlie Francis, et al) wrote for T-Nation and not the other place. I never went back until recently, and I can say that I’m better for it.

1–Newbie gains will happen, but the first 6-8 weeks will be mostly your nervous system getting more coordinated. After that you’ll start to gain more muscle. Most starting gains are strength oriented.

2–No, don’t worry about carb cycling. Sure you could use it, but basically, don’t pay too much attention to the details until you get the major building blocks planned out and locked in first. Take care of the major stuff and the details generally take care of themselves, for a while anyway.

Besides, IF you decide to do carb cycling, one of the most effective ways, if not THE most effective, is Christian Thibaudeau’s Carb Cycling Codex. I wouldn’t worry about it, just eat everything in sight that’s healthy (all the organic stuff you mentioned you had access to).

3–Read everything. Basically start at the archives of this place, way back when it was started, and read as much as you can, every day.

4–John Berardi is a nutrition GENIUS. His stuff works amazingly well, when following his instructions of course. Best guy around in my opinion, and he explains the science really well too.

Good luck.

50

Good post vroom. Specifically good point about sticking to whatever program you do until it’s completed. There are many paths to take to get to where you want to go, but they’ll only work if you stay on them until they’re completed.

People will give a lot of grief, but in the end they’ll do a lot to help out the people that are serious. It’s a rite of passage. :slight_smile:

As far as you immediate goal of have a great body when you head off to college–I think it’s possible to get a really good base in one year. Doing programs by Waterbury, Thibaudeau, and others here will set you lightyears ahead of where you’d be otherwise. Berardi is the same for diet. But I don’t think you’ll have hit what you qualify as a “kick ass” body in one year. You’ll be on your way though.

As far as being a former fat boy, read some of Chris Shugart’s stuff. He was one once upon a time too, and has some really cool insights. Berardi’s stuff is also great in this regard too, I think–he emphasizes a quality mass diet, and his food combination helps further limit fat gain.

Since you’re bulking, go light on the cardio time. Play any sport/martial art you want as long as you want, just don’t dedicate a lot of time specifically to cardio.

As far as the search function not working, check your pop-up blocker function. Also, try holding the CTRL button when clicking on the search icon. That does the trick with some browsers with built in popup blockers.

51

Ok, looking at your original workout that you posted, I take half my comment back. It sucks because of the extremely ridiculous volume you are most likely doing, and the leg extensions and leg curls. And a few other things, but it does have the squat, two different deadlift variations, bent rows, dips, and skullcrushers. It is too heavy on the upper body.

Look at it–you do upper body work on EVERY DAY that you lift. Even on the “dedicated” lower body day–wed. It looks like the guy that gave it to you was kinda sorta aiming for a

Upper/Lower/Whole body plan, but he’s got the organization diluted with too much stuff.

That being said, I respectfully disagree with keaster’s loading parameters in his workout. For a total newbie, 5x5 might be effective, but he should worry about volume first. As a new lifter, most gains come from a volume oriented workout with more than 5-8 reps per set. Good exercises, but I think it’s too heavy loading for a new guy. After maybe 8 more weeks of higher volume (10+reps/set), your 5x5 program will probably make him explode.

But in my opinion and experience that’s too heavy to hardwire proper form to his brain and if he will get similar results from lower intensity (as MR points out in his new article) and higher reps, he should do that. His tendons and connective tissue will need more remodeling and training before they are ready to hit heavy loads week in and week out.

If you are considering doing keaster’s program (and it’s a good one), I would suggest, with apologies to keaster, that you switch the order of exercises and do good mornings either 2nd or 3rd. General rule of exercise order in a workout: stick the most demanding exercise 1st, then the next most demanding exercise 2nd, then 3rd and so on. Do your isolation work last as it’s least demanding.

Same thing for rack pulls on the last day, switch them to 2nd or 3rd.

My personal recommendation is a program by Waterbury, Big Boy Basics, or Anti-Bodybuilding Hypertrophy 1 (ABBH). No offense to keaster, but I love Waterbury’s stuff.

52

hey wow thanks for all the replies I really appreciate them

I am going on vacation for 2 weeks, and I won’t really have access to a gym there, but I will try to do some body weights

I get back on September 4th, factor in jet lag so this bulk offcially starts Monday September 6th

I will keep everyone posted

53

I’m back from vacation, and ready to rock. I am scheduling my blood shots to determine my insulin sensitvity levels

I was wondering if I should take any creatine?

Right now I will only use Whey Protein Isolate, green tea, Multi vitamins

54

Sounds just fine to me. Use creatine if you want, it’ll help, but if you can’t eat on schedule and eat big, and healthy, creatine isn’t going to be useful. Food first, supps second.

55

I must say, that Julien charecter from BSN does look rather jacked ! Good on you for trying to get into that kinda shape.