Comment on my workout schedule.

[Flabbergasped?]

I'm 6' 1'', 180 lbs, started lifting about January

M:
Squats 3x5 at gradually increasing weight, did 205 last week, but I know I can do a lot more because I leg press 400+. I figure it's risky to jump into heavy squat weight, and 205 is difficult enough.

Dips 3x5, body weight.

T:
2 hrs breakdancing in the afternoon, 4 PM or so
2 hrs soccer, 11 PM

W:
Bench Press, 3x5 @ 125 (this is my weakest exercist I think)
Weighted abs, 3xfailure with 45 lbs

Th:
2 hrs breakdancing, 4 PM

F:
SLDL, 3x5 @ 185
2 hrs breakdancing around 4.

Sat:
2 hrs breakdancing around 4.

Sun:
2 hrs breakdancing around 9 PM
2 hrs soccer around 11 PM

Is there too much cardio in there for me to put on mass? So far, I've gained strength (I maxed bench @ 125 in January, now I rep it), but I'm not much bigger.

Also, do you advise eating a meal after soccer at night? If so, should it be protein-rich, carb-rich, etc.?

 

[Kev07]

uhhh, what's your goal?

 

[dopexile]

You're only doing two exercises twice a week so... it would take a while to see results. If you're only going to do a few exercises that you should add rows and pullups to your routine.

And having no rest days is pretty killer... you're not giving your body any time to heal. Doing that much cardio everyday with no rest can't be good for muscle gains.

 

[EFFORT]

like alex says.....if you want to be a break dancer then be a break dancer, if you want to be a soccer player then be a soccer player, if you want to be a bodybuilder then be a bodybuilder


Basically when your in the process of adding muscle mass/sculpting your body (bodybuilding) thats what your focus is. If your looking to make gains then you will have to take time off soccer and break dancing.

 

[Flabbergasped?]

Is the final verdict then that I must cut back the soccer and breakdancing to make gains in the weight room?

That seems illogical to me, since all athletes have to do heavy cardio and still lift to stay strong.

 

[Kev07]

No one can help you unless you tell us your goals.

 

[Flabbergasped?]

Get buff so I can pick up chicks, same goal as the majority of people on a SEDUCTION SITE.

 

[Kev07]

1. this is not a seduction site.
2. this is the health/fitness section, anything goes.

if you want to get buff, you're goign to have to REALLY cut odwn on the cardio. cardio burns calories, which you need an excess of to gain muscle.
if you're going to breakdance/soccer for fun, then go ahead and do it, but that just means you're going to have to rest more and eat more.

post your diet, cause i'm sure that will need work on too.

read guide to bulking up, what you're doing won't really get you buff, so i'd recommend doing what that post says

 

[Warboss Alex]

you will gain nothing and waste money on your gym subscription, food and supplements. decide whether you want to be a soccer player/breakdancer or a bodybuilder as the goals are counter-productive. choose something you want to excel at and stay true to it .. don't try to do everything, because you can't. as for athletes, well, if they didn't have the genetics they did, they wouldn't be athletes. if you want to lift for fun and to keep fit that's fine.. but you won't make any other significant progress

 

[Kev07]

just as a side note, if you're going to bulk, add back excercises, and rows to your routine. also you want to do more than one excercise for a muscle, for example, for chest, not just bench press, throw in some incline/decline, pec flies, dips, etc.

 

[guayaballer]

since we cant do everything at the same thing could i focus on bodybuilding until the summer time and then condition myself for basketball while maintaining the muscle i gained?

 

[Warboss Alex]

That sounds fine but remember having more (muscular) weight may impede your basketball

 

[Flabbergasped?]

I still find it hard to believe that one cannot do cardio and put on weight. I've put on five lbs of muscle doing cardio and weights, sure it's not amazing, but it's over about a month and a half.

If you eat like a monster, the calories burned by cardio should be counteracted, right? And being that the body doesn't burn protein first, a high protein/high carb diet should support both lifting and cardio, right? Or was I asleep in bio class?

Edit: Someone requested my diet. I couldn't say for sure, since I'm in uni and eat in the cafeteria. Most of the food is a little fatty, to be honest. I'll try my best.

Breakfast: I usually sleep through it because I can't function unless I get 8-9 hrs.

Lunch: Two chicken breasts, whatever meat the cafeteria has, and usually a cup of rice or so, I can't really tell since I'm not buying the food.

Dinner: More or less lunch.

I'm sorry for not being specific, but as you can imagine, I have no idea what the quantity and content of the food I eat is, being that it's from a cafeteria. I suppose I could request nutritional facts, but the menu changes so often that it wouldn't be sensible.

About 80-120 oz of water a day, two scoops whey on average every day, workout or not.

If it is in fact true that I must give up cardio to get bulk, I'd rather stay a skinny bastard, lifting isn't nearly enjoyable enough for me to go through f***ing squats for another week

 

[Kev07]

of course it's possible, but you have a holy shiiiet amount of cardio, my cardio session only goesl ike this

rugball 30-40 minutes in the monring(PE) 5 days a week
25 minute HIIT 4 days a week

and i walk almost everywhere, i can drive, but i walk to and from school

 

[Throttle]

If you eat like a monster, the calories burned by cardio should be counteracted, right? And being that the body doesn't burn protein first, a high protein/high carb diet should support both lifting and cardio, right? Or was I asleep in bio class?

to an extent. but more than an hour of moderate cardio per day is going to be counterproductive, and soccer & breakdancing are both quite intense. there's more to this than just calories burned -- you're also taxing your body's recovery systems in triplicate. guessing that you're 16-25, you're at an age when your body is best prepared to recover from such a bruising, but you still have limits.

if you want to gain significant mass, you need to consider dropping one for a time and cutting back on the other. even though most of your cardio is on "off" days from the lifting, you grow during your recovery period, not in the gym. so you're getting barely halfway through each recovery period and then slamming your body with at least 2 hours of very physical activity.

i would also suggest one day a week with no significant activity, to let the body relax and recover. if you just want a 'beach body' you might get a little bit out of the program listed, but don't be disappointed when your gains level off very quickly. eventually you'd also have to worry about risk of injury if you're not giving your body enough time to recover.

 

[Warboss Alex]

Look at it this way:

5 days of the week you're breakdancing and/or playing soccer for 2 hours at a time. This sends your body a signal that it should adapt to a heavy breakdancing/soccer load - your weight training is secondary given there's so little of it, you might as well not bother.

How will the body adapt to you being a breakdancer/soccer player? By refusing to gain any weight because that would make your breakdancing/soccer less efficient. You're giving your body the message that you want to breakdance/player soccer and will function as that sort of organism, NOT as an organism that needs to gain muscular weight. See any soccer players or breakdancers who are 250? 240? 200 even? (barring some very tall people) I haven't.

However if as Throttle said you incorporated 30-60 mins of light cardio (walking) or VERY small amounts of high intensity cardio (definitely not 2 freakin hours of soccer) then this won't impede muscular gains because the cardio isn't intense enough to make your body adapt to it.

 

[EFFORT]

I still find it hard to believe that one cannot do cardio and put on weight. I've put on five lbs of muscle doing cardio and weights, sure it's not amazing, but it's over about a month and a half.

If you eat like a monster, the calories burned by cardio should be counteracted, right? And being that the body doesn't burn protein first, a high protein/high carb diet should support both lifting and cardio, right? Or was I asleep in bio class?

Edit: Someone requested my diet. I couldn't say for sure, since I'm in uni and eat in the cafeteria. Most of the food is a little fatty, to be honest. I'll try my best.

Breakfast: I usually sleep through it because I can't function unless I get 8-9 hrs.

Lunch: Two chicken breasts, whatever meat the cafeteria has, and usually a cup of rice or so, I can't really tell since I'm not buying the food.

Dinner: More or less lunch.

I'm sorry for not being specific, but as you can imagine, I have no idea what the quantity and content of the food I eat is, being that it's from a cafeteria. I suppose I could request nutritional facts, but the menu changes so often that it wouldn't be sensible.

About 80-120 oz of water a day, two scoops whey on average every day, workout or not.

If it is in fact true that I must give up cardio to get bulk, I'd rather stay a skinny bastard, lifting isn't nearly enjoyable enough for me to go through f***ing squats for another week

IMO you should stay with soccer and breakdancing, your diet needs A LOT of work and your attitude needs to change A LOT if you want to make any progress.

 

[John_Galt]

I still find it hard to believe that one cannot do cardio and put on weight. I've put on five lbs of muscle doing cardio and weights, sure it's not amazing, but it's over about a month and a half.

You can do cardio. HiiT is probably the best form of it and most sports are like that for the most part(except long distance running). When you're playing soccer you're not running hard all the time. You're usually shifting between high pace and low pace. You will have to up your food though and maybe cut back(you'll have to cut back 2hrs a day cause you do it to much). And like Warboss Alex said, when you're playing soccer and basketball, you're conditioning your muscles a different way. You're training them for endurance, not hypertrophy(visible growth).

If it is in fact true that I must give up cardio to get bulk, I'd rather stay a skinny bastard, lifting isn't nearly enjoyable enough for me to go through f***ing squats for another week

That's fine. The first step after deciding a goal is figuring out what you're willing to give to reach it, and you obviously don't want to give enough. So move on.

 

[Flabbergasped?]

I think I will slow down with heavy lifting and focus on soccer and bboying, but over the summer I'll probably start lifting again.

As a separate question, if one does lift for a period of time (let's say two-three months) and makes gains, would stopping the heavy lifting and beginning cardio make their muscles immediately atrophy?

I ask this because I've seen some relatively buff people start doing nearly exclusively cardio and keep their muscle definition.

 

[Quagmire911]

Hmmm, it seems as if you could be jumping the gun slightly. If you have seen gains then you should still consider what you have been doing, as it is progress. Remember that although you may not neccasarily put on much mass from this routine, you can still get stronger by a margin that is worth considering. Your gains will not be optimum for bodybuilding, but you could still do movements which could compliment your other activites. I ament any kind of authority on this, far from it, but I would say there are other options to consider here, perhaps someone with a little more experience could elaborate...But as the other guys have said, you arent going to get huge doing this, but that obviously isnt your priority so make that priority clear, perhaps you would like to increase your strength but not put on much mass that would impede your other abilities? There are still ways of doing this but again they might not be optimum, but remember that something is usually better than nothing. Just some thoughts...