“The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver.
Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”
-Henry Rollins
Since I’ve been deadlifting, all my lifts have gone up. I’m now deadlifting 325+ lbs for 6 reps without too much discontent and my form is still on par with “good.” 2-3 months ago I was maxing out at 225 and this has been a great jump forward. One of the biggest factors that lead me to jump up this high in weight has been scheduling in rest days.
I just started a new job and prior to that, I was working from home so I had the luxury of training hard almost every day because I could schedule work around my gym time (How nice, right?). I may have been overtraining slightly too come to think of it. Now, I’m in the cube from 9:30-6:30 M-F and sometimes when I get home, it’s almost 7 and I hate lifting past 8 pm because I’ll never get to sleep.
What I do now is I schedule my heavy lifts for Sat/Sun (Back on Sat and Legs on Sunday) and then I take Monday-Tuesday off from lifting and just do light cardio which includes walking a mile or biking for 20 minutes. I get a lift or two in during the week of smaller muscles and this seems to be working out just fine as I don’t quite need as much energy to shoulder press as I do when I squat or DL. Since I’m able to sleep in and get a few solid meals in before the gym on the weekend, my lifts have all gone up steadily as I’m never really lifting tired or with a lot on my mind.
I also noticed that when I’m able to rest and I make myself take days off, I’m actually growing faster and getting leaner while doing passive cardio as my body has more time to repair and build.
In short:
This is a very cool, motivational clip on how you should be training - with determination and intensity! Nobody got big and ripped up by doing isolation exercises and tricep kickbacks. Stick to basic, heavy lifts for mass and overall growth. Once you have a lean body mass established, then you can start to carve and etch in detail.
I see a lot of guys in my gym every single day lifting hard, but they look the exact same each and every time they come into the gym. If your wondering why that is - the key to bodybuilding and achieving your goals is really dialing in on your diet. You can only lift weights for an hour or so a day, but eating and dieting is basically a 24 hour process, 6-7 days per week.
In order to get lean fast and start building muscle, My friend and I have “invented” a good meal that we just refer to as “Fuel to get to the gun show” and it consists of:
1. 5 Egg whites
2. 1/2 cup oats (No sugar/unsweetened or as plain as you can get it)
3. 1-2 tablespoons of feta cheese
4. 1-2 squirts of Tabasco sauce (To taste)
What you do here is just toss all of the egg whites, cheese, and oats into the frying pan and cook it until the eggs have “glued” everything together. I know this isn’t the most appealing meal on paper, and it’s not one you want to serve to your sweetie over wine, but the sole purpose of this meal is just answering the question of “how to get great abs fast” and how to get lean!
The feta will add some fat (I always use reduced fat anyway so it’s not too much) and give it a little bit of taste and the hot sauce will make the foot editable. While I admit, this dish isn’t going to win any awards on top chef, but it will give you energy and is the best food to eat prior to a hard workout of squatting, deadlifting, or weighted dips.
Building muscle is very difficult, and you need to create the right environment within your body to fuel your muscles. A lot of times people who are new to bodybuilding/fitness create a terrible metabolic environment by starving themselves or not taking in enough protein to support and repair their muscles so feel burned out or tired at times as a result of not taking in enough nutrients.
The debate for protein absorption has been going on since the 1970’s and bodybuilding started to become more popular and more mainstream. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on protein intake, however the general rule of thumb is to consume 1.5 to 2 grams of protein per body weight for intense weight training, so for example if you weighed 175 pounds your “baseline” protein intake would be in the range of 262.5 g on the “low” end and 350 g or protein on the “high” end.
If you are looking for ways in how to get lean, one thing to watch out for is that when consuming 350g of protein in 1 day, it’s easy to go crazy on the calories and an excess of calories can create additional body fat, no matter how much you are lifting. Often times protein powders (And other muscle building supplements) contain simple carbs (Sugar) for weight gain and for flavor, so you want to look for a “clean” supplement to help you reach your goals without a lot of carbs. Simply put, read the labels and consume wisely. How can you get great abs fast if your supplying your body with an extra 200-400 calories a day? In short, you can’t.
The deadlift (Pictured below) is the absolute best exercise for building quality muscle. I like to refer Squatting, Bench Press, and Deadlifting as the “Holy Trinity” of bodybuilding as they are the 3 most powerful exercises in the business. Incorporate these 3 key exercises and you will find yourself making serious gains in the shortest amount of time and building muscle faster than you’ve been able to pile it on before. Another thing that the deadlift does is work secondary muscle groups, including your midsection so that you can get great abs fast and without spending hours crunching away on the ground.
A few tips when doing deadlifts are:
Today is my first post on my site, www.90daystoripped.com, and the reason behind the site is because I believe you can really make a substantial gain in your overall cardiovascular and physical fitness in just 3 short months. I want to talk about a lot of bodybuilding issues, such as: how to get lean, how to get great abs fast, and how to get ripped by fitness training. My model closely follows the “Body for Life” program made popular a number of years ago by nutirtion guru Bill Phillips. Bill promoted fast ways in how to get a lean body and everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
What his company at the time (EAS) did was they offered up a “Real” bodybuilding contest and put up something like $100,000 in cash and a brand new Lamborghini as a first place prize to the biggest transformation. The contest was basically just a clever marketing tool to get the brand mentioned, but it worked, and a lot of people fell in love with the concept of completely revamping and changing your life in just 3 months.
My website is about the same life changing issues;
1. A burning desire and strict adherence to change and better the quality of your life based around a fitness/diet plan
2. Not taking “No” for an answer, being persistant, and not giving up on yourself
3. Kick-ass weight lifting and cardio plan guaranteed to get you lean quickly, safely, and without any excuses
90 Days to Ripped is a webblog dedicated to personal fitness and achieving the best looking beach body and most ripped abs possible in just in 3 months. I really feel that you can make a huge change in your body in only 3 months, and this blog will outline ab exercises, lean body diets, and help formulate workouts so that you can achieve better results in half the amount of time! Email us: 90daystoripped (at) gmail.com