GordyR's Beginners Guide to Bodybuilding

What is likely to be my best course of action; am 22 years old, 179 lb, 5'9", got a bit of a gut and a bmi over 25. I want to obviously lose the gut, build the rest of my muscles up, and also improve my woeful stamina in running. Now am wondering should I go for a bulking diet and exercise with weights and major cardio work on bike and running, and cut the weight off afterwards, or focus on losing my excess weight now with a cutting diet, and do majority of my work on cardio and try and lower my 1.5 mile times, and do some light work with weights and bulk up at a later date?

Cheers
 
Cutting is (for many) harder to acheive from a discipline point of view so personally I'd make sure you can do it first before going for a bulk. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be hitting the weights hard as well though - it'll help minimise any muscle mass loss and if you're relatively new to weight training you could even add some while cutting BF.
 
I'm 22, weigh 112lb and I'm 5'8".

I need to put on weight or I wont be allowed to continue skydiving.
I'm trying to get my Cat A licence, but I need an instructor jump to the side of me during free fall to give me hand signals during training. I'm falling too slow because of my weight and size.

I'm a student so don't have a lot of money for food. I'm eating scottish oats 3 times a day on top of my normal 3/4 meals. Any tips on how to put on weight fast?
 
Drag aside....won't everyone fall at an acceleration of 9.8 metres per second per second? And being smaller = less surface area = less drag = faster descent :confused:
 
Volcs said:
Drag aside....won't everyone fall at an acceleration of 9.8 metres per second per second? And being smaller = less surface area = less drag = faster descent :confused:
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Oh we accelerate at the same speed, but my terminal velocity is less than them. We're all wearing jump suits too so pretty much the same size, just I weight a lot less.
We aren't connected in anyway, they are all solo freefall jumps when training on AFF, which is why it's a problem - the instructors can't arch enough to match my falling speed of 90mph-ish. :(
 
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Hmm interesting - I just read a paper on the physics of sky diving; every day's a school day.

Anyway, in terms of advice - what sort of weight will you need to get to, and are you concerned if this is fat or muscle? Putting on weight is not the difficult bit, but it's a hell of a lot slower to put on muscle than fat.
 
Volcs said:
Hmm interesting - I just read a paper on the physics of sky diving; every day's a school day.

Anyway, in terms of advice - what sort of weight will you need to get to, and are you concerned if this is fat or muscle? Putting on weight is not the difficult bit, but it's a hell of a lot slower to put on muscle than fat.
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Well I want everything to be proportional. I don't want to put on weight just on my stomach, but I'm not too bothered if I gain fat or muscle. At the moment I have so little body fat that any muscle I do have shows up really good....along with my bones.

I was hoping for a stone within 6 months. Just something to make me fall a little faster. :)
 
Stone is 6 months is def acheivable. I'd just follow the advice in this sticky and monitor you weight and calories - if you're training and not gaining weight then you're not eating enough, that's about as simple as it gets.

Around 2-3lbs of gain per month is not unreasonable, especially given your starting point and that should be at least half muscle if you're eating well and training hard.
 
I've got myself up to 4 meals + 300g of scottish oats a day and snacking in between. I don't think I'm consuming enough yet though. After my january uni exams are over I'll be joining the gym and trying to keep up with the workout in the first post. ;)
 
OzyOly said:
I've got myself up to 4 meals + 300g of scottish oats a day and snacking in between. I don't think I'm consuming enough yet though. After my january uni exams are over I'll be joining the gym and trying to keep up with the workout in the first post. ;)
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Good lord that's impressive if you're not gaining with that amount of food, wish I was similar :p.
 
Volcs said:
Drag aside....won't everyone fall at an acceleration of 9.8 metres per second per second? And being smaller = less surface area = less drag = faster descent :confused:
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Nope. I fall a lot quicker than light people. I had to use a "slowpo" suit to catch more air to stop me falling fast. Lighter people often wear lead vests too. My speed can vary from 90mph to 130mph "flat", but can nearly hit 200mph if I head head down. :)

Weight is very significant in skydiving. :) Even more so when it comes to the wing loading of the canopy - the higher the wing loading the twitchier and more responsive (and quicker) the canopy is. :)
 
Freefaller said:
Nope. I fall a lot quicker than light people. I had to use a "slowpo" suit to catch more air to stop me falling fast. Lighter people often wear lead vests too. My speed can vary from 90mph to 130mph "flat", but can nearly hit 200mph if I head head down. :)

Weight is very significant in skydiving. :) Even more so when it comes to the wing loading of the canopy - the higher the wing loading the twitchier and more responsive (and quicker) the canopy is. :)
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When I did a bit of googling I was quite amazed by some of the speed variations for guys of different weight adopting the same position - clearly a lot more forces acting during a dive than my noddy A level physics would have me believe. :D
 
OzyOly said:
I've got myself up to 4 meals + 300g of scottish oats a day and snacking in between. I don't think I'm consuming enough yet though. After my january uni exams are over I'll be joining the gym and trying to keep up with the workout in the first post. ;)
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Woah 300g of scottish oats a day? How do you manage that? I probably use a fraction of that in my cereal in the morning. How are you consuming those?
 
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100 grams of oats is roughly 2 heaped 70cc scoops (fine powdered oats). Quite easy to drink and the best part of around 200 calories per scoop, so around 1100 right there!
 
Mansize_tissue said:
I tried this for a month. I had 3 shakes a day each with 100g of oats in to see how my body would react. I put on over a stone!
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How on earth did you digest that? I've given up on putting milled oats in my shake because the taste is disgusting and I just can't get it down.

On another note, I've put on over a stone in under a month, which is an incredible weight gain for me, doing a 5x5 routine and just having one protein shake a day (70g protein, 1 tbsp of nesquik).
 
platypus said:
On another note, I've put on over a stone in under a month, which is an incredible weight gain for me, doing a 5x5 routine and just having one protein shake a day (70g protein, 1 tbsp of nesquik).
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You'd be best splitting that protein pre/post workout ideally.

Or doing something like 25pre, 25post, 25 before bed.

Banging in too much protein at once doesn't do anything extra as it can't be absorbed any quicker and could end up just being pooped straight back out.
 
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