bill: i am young almost twenty and work at a nutrition store and think i know a little something about how to train but my question is this i have been going to the gym and have been making up my own routines (with the exception of the mag. big guns workout)and i have been just training (heavy) each muscle group once every week should i follow the workouts that our in all of these magazines every week? and i have been on a GNC meal replacement twice a day and a reasonable dinner much like the slim fast diet to lose weight is that enough or should i do something else? and is it okay to mix effervescent creatine with glutamine and a protein shake right after? thank you in advance your responses are very helpful to beginners.
Your question is unclear, but I will try to give some advice. Read the Diet Manifesto, Massive Eating, everything by John Berardi, the FAQ, supplement roundup, the Missing Ingredient and at least try to read through last years previous issues and then read through the rest. It is quite obvious that you want to make progress, but it will take discipline to keep a food log, workout log, plan your workouts, eat clean but BIG, and read, read, and then read some more about the topic. Two MRPs and a “sensible dinner” is a marketing gimmick designed to target the masses. As someone willing to post on this forum, you obviously recognize that there is good information here. So do what I said and read through all that stuff and you should see that many of your questions regarding training, diet and supplementation will be answered. Good luck!
If you’re only eating three meals a day you don’t know too much about proper nutrition, especially for weight training. Read everything that Jason said, and also the “Dawg School” columns and “The Litle Black Book of Training Methods.” And you are not allowed to ask any more questions until you’ve actually read all the mentioned articles!!! Just kidding…they will help you out immensely. Now go and do your homework, dammit!
Training each muscle group intensively once
per week is certainly a valid approach that
can be made to work very well. I’d suggest
creating training cycles in which the weight
varies from allowing relatively high reps
at the beginning of a cycle, and relatively
low reps by the end.
There’s a lot to be said for not changing
too many variables at a time. One problem
you’ll run into from following a lot of
magazine advice too often is that you’re
changing things so often you can’t tell
what’s happening. Why did you get better
results at one time? Was it this, or was
it that… so many things changed. Perhaps
it was even that the PREVIOUS several weeks
“set you up” for the great results you
got later, and the training program at
the time of the great results actually
would not usually be a good one for you.
So there’s a lot to be said for coming
up with a good plan – but which includes
a planned, consistent cycling method –
and sticking with it for a while, and
then changing it in specific ways, not
too much at one time.
After you feel you understand this system,
you might make a radical change and
start exploring something completely different
again in the same sort of manner.
On the dieting question, a lot of articles
would be much more indepth, but if you’re
eating every few hours, not going without
food for long lengths of time, and each
meal does contain reasonable amounts of
protein, you’re totalling about a gram protien per
lb LBM per day, you’re getting all the vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids
you need, and you’re getting about 12 cal per lb LBM per day, you should be OK. Less than that, you might lose too much muscle, and more than that, you might not be happy with the rate of fat loss.
Sure, it’s fine to mix the creatine and
glutamine with your protein shakes.
Hope all goes well!