-- Weightlifting & Nutrition Thread -- v9.0 Optimized

Both suck. Go get some ephidrine HCL and then take aspirin and no-doze for a ECA stack. Rapes anything you can buy.

^ where do you get this ephidrine HCL?

i’ve heard of this ECA stack, but is it safe?
any negative side effects?

you can’t have a hot ass body part without building it up first. so to put on slabs of muscle on the aforementioned body parts, you can’t beat compound movements.

there isn’t really much variety in working your chest or shoulders, so the staple excercises are usually the same. the only differences lie in the order you do them.

for shoulders, there are essentially 4-5 excercises you can do, the basis of which is the press:

  1. military press - king of the delt workouts. it’s as simple as getting a barbell and pressing it over your head. now regarding grip, hold the bar just a tad outside shoulder width. any further out and you can quite possibly damage your rotator. if you perform these seated, the stress is put solely on your upper body. if you perform these standing, you can cheat a little which can be handy if you don’t have a spotter. that said, i wouldn’t recommend doing pressing excercises without a spotter. safety first!

  2. **overhead dumbbell presses **- similar to the above. the main difference lies in that there is a bigger range of motion involved and thus forces your delts to work harder to stabilize the weight

  3. **hammer strength (or any other type of machine) press **- the machine locks you into place so all you really have to do is press up and control the downward portion of the movement. it’s a nice change of pace in that you can stack the weights without fear of anything falling on you.

  4. **behind the neck presses **- this one’s quite difficult. i myself have only tried them 2 or 3 times in the span of 2 years. there’s a little more squeeze in the trapezius and the other delt heads.

the next delt staple is a raising movement which you can perform with dumbbells or cables:

  1. **front dumbbell raises **- as the name says, just raise the dumbbells in front of you 'til they’re either right at eye level or just below. they work the front delts. it’s not really a requirement to do these as the presses are primariliy a front delt excercise anyway.

  2. **side dumbbell raises **- these work the middle delt head, aka, the sides. just hold the dumbbells on your side and raise them. you can perform these one side at a time, alternating between sides or work both at once. something that you gotta keep in mind when doing these is to not lift too high because that brings your traps into the equation. remember, it’s an excercise for the side delts. keep it that way.

  3. **rear delt flyes or rear raises **- for this excercise you can either be seated or standing, but either way, you gotta be bent over. keep your arms slightly bent and lock 'em in that position. it’s basically the reverse of a chest flye. don’t ever neglect your rear delts so you can have that full square look.

this brings us to the upright row.

upright rows stress all the delt heads and also work your traps. you can either pre-exhaust with these or do them near or at the end of your shoulder work out. grip a barbell either just at shoulder width or just outside of that or inside of that and use your delts to lift away from your body and towards your chin. hold for a squeeze then lower down with control.

a lot of people also do shrugs at the end of their shoulder workouts. i personally work my traps on back day because your traps are really more a part of your back than they are your shoulders.

chest workouts are basically the same as shoulders in that it’s a pressing excercise along with a flyeing motion. for mass, just stick to presses and maybe put some flyes in at the very end just to fill your muscles with blood. here’s a sample routine for chest:

  1. incline barbell press
  2. flat barbell press
  3. decline barbell press
  4. incline or flat flyes

if you’re wanting to put on some size, the usual recommended rep range is around 4-6. you can’t really pack on muscle if you don’t overload them in the first place. but don’t go so heavy that you can only manage 1 or 2 reps. that can give you strength, but it’s not really deemed a muscle building work out.

if you’re content with your chest and you just wanna shape it and maintain it, you can substitute dumbbells or machines for the barbell and go lighter with higher reps and maybe put cable crossovers in there as well for your inner chest. some guys brag about how much they can bench but their chests don’t look muscular at all. a muscular chest is all about hitting every angle.

the bicep is a pretty small muscle and it does get worked during back day, but as someone mentioned, it’s not enough for growth because during back excercises, the bicep acts merely as a secondary muscle. to strengthen and develop any muscle, you have to make it your target.

bicep excercises usually mean 1 thing: curling. when doing curls though, notice that the angle you hold the dumbbell or whatever it is can affect which side you’ll work out. so learn to listen to your body and feel how it reacts to what you do.

staple bicep excercises are:

  1. standing barbell curl
  2. standing alternating dumbbell curls
  3. **preacher curls **
  4. hammer curls

i usually only use 3 excercises with 3 sets for each excercise. reps depend on what phase of training you’re in. keep in mind though that it is a small muscle, and as such, will not respond the same way your pecs or quads will. so doing a 1 rep max for your biceps isn’t really the way to go.

also, strive for proportion and symmetry. you don’t wanna have a huge chest but no back. or huge arms but no legs. work everything out accordingly.

oh. and one last thing. EAT RIGHT. diet is like, 70% of bodybuilding. you can train as hard as you want and as often as you want, but if you don’t eat right, you will not get results. guaranteed.

:rock:

Are hammer curls better than just doing regular curls?

behind the neck presses are something i wouldn’t recommend, very tough on the rotator cuffs.

not necessarily. it works a different area. hammer curls, while they also hit the bicep, also work the brachialis and your forearms to a certain extent.

standard curls stress just the bicep.

agreed. i was gonna put that in, but i guess i forgot. i did mention though, that even with standard military presses, having a much wider than shoulder width grip can put lots of undue stress on the rotator cuffs as well.

one more important thing:

WARM UP PROPERLY!!!

happy lifting!

:rock:

ya forgot good ol’ pull ups. working on core strength is most important to your work outs, especially if you want to get stronger with that size you’re packing on.

Gotcha.

i’d go for reverse curls instead of hammers…

Is Flax seed good?
How should I take it/ How much should I take?

I disagree somewhat with this statement…4 rep sets will give the “overload” ur talking about but the adaptations will be mostly neural, not mesomorphic…one of the bodybuilders at my gym does all 12 rep sets…he’s 22 years old and stepping on stage at almost 200 lbs.

How many sets do you guys usually do for each bodypart? I.e., kal el’s saying he does 3 sets, 3 exercises for biceps-- what about everyone else, and for the other parts? Thanks guys.

That all depends on what you are working out…for instance…if you are working out back you will do more sets than you would for say shoulders…which are smaller muscles and recieve more ancillary work on every other upper body day…

9 sets for biceps is a little excessive…depending on what else you are working out on that day 4-6 sets is plenty. I work my entire upper body on one day…so I might just superset 1 tricep and 1 bicep exercise after I perform 2 push and 2 pull exercises…

the guy who helps me with my training (and is the guy who’s made my routines) has been a competitive bodybuilder for over 10 years and has been training for over 15 years. so i’d trust his judgment as well as the experienced guys here. he’s a natural bodybuilder, so don’t expect to see him at any of the huge shows. he will be competing at the world’s in Toronto this June.

:rock:

I would classify 4 rep sets as to few. 8-12 is generally considered the best range for bodybuilding purposes. Of course you could lift in a powerlifting regime and just bulk to hell and cut down, but that leaves gaps in musculature. The ratio of slow to fast twitch muscle fibers and good old genetic variance also play a large role here. I’m quite certain there are people for whom 4-6 rep sets are superior to the status quo for muscle hypertrophy purposes.

why there’s no love for swimming ??? @@ ?? i hardly heard body builders like swimming >__>

…

  1. it’s not like it’s limited to 4. 4 is the least amount whereas you can even go up to 6-8 on the initial sets.

  2. it’s a change of pace. if you train using 8-12 all the time, then how are you gonna lift more weight? your body will adapt to that stress and will not grow after getting accustomed to what you’re doing. about 2 weeks ago, i was doing 10-12 rep sets. for the next 8-10 weeks, i will be in the 4-6 rep range.

  3. i agree that genetics plays a HUGE role. but i won’t ever know if 4-6 is good for me 'til i try it, yeah? if after 10 weeks it doesn’t yield me significant results, then i’ll change it up.

i think it varies from person to person. for myself, if i have it below that, i don’t feel that i worked it enough. if i do over that amount, i feel like i can’t do anything. the pro guys are also different in this regard. Lee Priest does something like 4 excercises, 5 sets each, 6-8 reps for every set. Flex Wheeler, on the other hand, does something like what i do. about 3 excercises, 3 sets per.

yes, Flaxseed is good. you can buy a supplement called Udos Oil (not sure if they have that everywhere) but it’s basically essential fats derived from Flaxseed oil, fish oil, etc. they should have serving portions or dosage on the label.

:rock:

I assumed you were in the 4-8 range, thats why I put that in the end of my post. What your taking or not taking (super supplements) would be of great importance here also, but there is no reason a few weeks of high intensity low volume is bad. A couple of sessions like that for each muslce can only help you, certainly if you’ve plateaued I’d go for it.

Well I’m trying to get mad ripped, and so that’s why i was choosing between Hydroxycut and Stacker 3.

I ended up choosing stacker 3 because i read about the side effects of both, and Hydroxycut’s side effects are too risky for me, especialy when you go out on missions with your life on the line. I don’t want to be up in the gun and have blurred vision not being able to spot a threat. Don’t even know if the side effects would effect me, but i’d rather not take the chance.