Before any person starts on their road to fitness they have to ask themselves one question-
What do I want to achieve from my new fitness plan?
Below are some of the most common situations on why a person wants to start fitness and the steps they need to take to achieve their fitness goals. Also a quick video explaining 5 different types of exercising to help you understand what type of exercise you should be doing to reach your goals.
1- I am a slim person and I want to start building muscle-
There are a few Workout Choices here-
1- start building muscle by lifting heavy weights to build yourself up, this will build your muscle mass and is called bulking. Bulking is the kind of weight lifting wrestlers do or heavy weight boxers. It is a slow process and will take a couple of years for you to bulk properly. The heavier you lift the more muscle mass you will build. The quickest way to bulk up is to take some kind of steroid drug. I personally have NEVER and will NEVER use or advise anyone else to use steroids. Personally i think they are a road to serious problems, and i have seen this with some people around me.
2- Start building muscle with definition by lifting a medium weight but with more repetitions(reps). This is called Ripping. Ripping will not make your muscles grow as big as when bulking but it will make them more defined. The ultimate person who is ripped is Bruce Lee. A lot of people bulk to get big and when they are at a size they want they then start to rip to add definition to the muscles.
3-Start building muscle with a bit of both. Bulking and Ripping can be done in the same week but leave a 1 or 2 or more days in between workouts for your muscles to heal and repair. So bulk on Monday then Rip on Friday.
So for example-
For ripping/toning (muscle definition) you will do 5 sets of a medium to light weight from 15 to 25 Repetitions (reps). Most women will do this type of training as not to build (Bulk) muscles.
For Bulking (build muscle mass) you will do 5 sets of lifting as heavy as you can mostly below 12 Reps.
Bulking pyramiding is what most will do-
Set 1 – medium weight x15 reps
Set 2 – add more weight x 12 reps
Set 3 – add more weight x 10 reps
Set 4 – add as much weight as you can lift for 8 reps
Set 5 – add as much weight as you can lift for 6 reps
To do a bit of bulking and ripping at the same time you can use a medium to heavy weight and do 5 sets of 10 to 15 pushing your muscles to the max to the last few reps of each set. In other words if you are getting to 15 reps easy and think you can do more then your weight is too low.
Bruce Lee is the Ultimate Ripping example at 5ft7 or 171m
135lbs or 62kg
Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock is a bulking(100% steroid induced) example at 6ft5 260lbs.
2- I am a bit chubby and would like to lose weight and build muscle.
losing weight relies on 2 things- Diet and cardiovascular workouts. Cutting out the fatty foods and an exercise routine which involves about 40% cardio workouts and the rest ripping exercises will be the remedy for this one. The cardio will burn the fat and the ripping will start to build the muscles. Further down the line in this one you can decide if you want to start a bit of bulking once you have lost the desired amount of fat.
3- I am very large(I don’t like to use the word fat) and I just want to lose weight.
Again this 1 relies on 2 things- light cardio to start with because you have to build the muscles up around the bone joints before you start going into harder cardio workouts and a strict diet. If you start walking for 20 minutes a day and change your foods to good foods then the weight will start to fall off. Then after a couple of weeks you can turn the walking into jogging then the jogging into running. You can also do a couple of days in the gym doing ripping exercises if you want but this will take away your days for cardio and cardio is the fasted way to help you lose weight.
4- I am an average build person and want to start training to look good-
This one is probably the most common. Everybody wants to look good because the media makes use feel we have to but in a way that’s not a bad thing. Its good to look after yourself and a healthy body brings a healthy mind. This is the one I built The Full Multi-Gym Workout for. It has a bit of bulking and a bit of ripping in it and also gives you the option to add cardio into the routine. Perfect for the men but for the women you should drop out all the bulking and just change that to the ripping exercises but very light ripping. If you don’t have a multi gym you can always do the workouts with the method you use. Just keep the workout routine but drop out the multi gym, or if you prefer to do your curls with a curling bar then do them with the bar. It also has a progress sheet to help you find the weights to use and keep track of things. Perfect for the beginner.
5- I am a female and want to tone up a bit and lose a bit of weight-
Female training can be different from the males, some men want big muscle by bulking and most women want to just tone up and add definition to the muscles. At the same time burn some fat with some cardio. There are a lot of exercise videos out there for women doing a lot of circuit training, boxercise and light weight lifting. The only thing you have to do is find the one you like and trust. Google “female exercise videos” and see what others are saying about things. Once you find the video you like do that with a healthy diet and you will soon be on your way. Any one of my Full workout videos can be done by women, just stick to doing all ripping exercises so you don’t build muscle mass unless you want to. Zumba, Bokwa and other dance type workouts are great for burning the calories.
6- I have a job where I am sitting down all day and need to do some exercise-
This is a very common one too. A lot of people do not have a physical job but work using their brains all day and this can take a lot of energy too, so when they get home they just flake out because it has been a stressful day. This is not good for the heart 1- it is getting no exercise and 2- Stress is not kind to an unhealthy heart. The solution is to start doing some cardiovascular workouts. (cardiovascular has to do with the heart and blood and vessels and everything pretty much to do with the circulatory system) Build up you heart, if you are very unfit to start with then start lightly. Changing a few things in your every day life can help loads too. walk up the stairs instead of taking the lift or walk to the shops and leave the car at home once a week. If you have stairs in the house make sure you use the toilet upstairs instead of the one on your level( if you have 2 toilets that is) if not then go upstairs then come down to use the toilet. You should have NO excuses. All these little things will add up to a big thing.
7- I am going on holiday in a few months and will have to wear a swimming costume, bikini or shorts-
The clock is ticking on this one so you will have to put the hours in. The problem here is you can NOT do weight lifting on 1 muscle then do the same muscle the next day, your muscle needs to repair itself before you train it again, normally a couple of days later. so when you look at 1 month which is average 30 days- its not 30 days of doing arm curls its about 10 days, the rest is healing time. so your 3 months just turned into 1 month. So again we need to be doing lots of cardio and healthy foods. With cardio training you can do it every day, like jogging, swimming(1 of the best cardio exercises), football, boxersize, some circuit training, skipping or just doing 20 minutes a day on the ski machine, in this case I would recommend you build that 20 minutes a day up to an hour a day.
So the males on this one should be going to the gym and doing the bulking or ripping with fitting in as much cardio as you can. The women should be doing there dvd’s or light ripping at the gym and also fitting in as much cardio as they can.
Training makes you feel good inside which makes a big difference when wearing shorts or a bikini
Have a good holiday!
8- I have just been told I am diabetic and need to lose some weight-
This one is close to my heart because I was told I was a diabetic at the age of 6. My pancreas stopped producing insulin for some reason, I became very skinny and got rushed to hospital. If you have just been told you have diabetes you need to go to your local specialist and talk with them. If you have already spoke to them and they have told you to lose weight and that’s why you are here then you are in the same position as number 3 above. Depending on the shape you are in now you need to be doing light cardio and working your way up to harder cardio. You also need to be doing plenty of blood tests to keep an eye on what the training is doing to your sugar levels. When I changed the insulin I was on I wrote down what I was eating every day for a year, I didn’t need to I just wanted to. Doing this showed me what the foods was doing, what my insulin was doing and what my training was doing to my sugar levels, and that is the key to maintaining your diabetes. If you are on the insulin tablets then that’s a bit different to me because I am on the injections but still a similar situation.
Foods to be careful of are all carbs like rice, pasta’s and potatoes but your doctor should be telling you all this. The main thing here is not to be scared of it and hit it head on and get all the info you can on it because if its controlled then its really not that bad. Steve Redgrave a 5 gold medal Olympian is a diabetic. Good Luck!
Cardiovascular exercises-
Anything that gets the heart pumping for more than 20 minutes really. You could just jog on the spot for 20 minutes and that is a cardio workout. Swimming is the best cardio workout because you are using every muscle you have. Go to your local pool and do lengths for 20 mins or more. Other cardio workouts are walking(light cardio), jogging (medium cardio but the longer you jog the harder the cardio), cycling, football, squash, tennis, badminton, ski machine, treadmill and even running up and down stairs. I think you get the idea.
All exercise is good for the heart along with a steady healthy diet. All of the above is just a guide to help you find what you want to do. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need a little help to start you on your way with your Workout Choices .
