Whirlwind

YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!



I knew this would eventually come up! I love it I love it I love it!!!

I've been lifting now for about four years. About five years ago, I weighed 300 lbs. I had diabetes, I'm a recovering alcoholic, and my cholesterol level was sky-high.

I began doing cardio and I melted away. Then I got too skinny, so I started lifting.

My advice: Take pictures. Now. Take photos of you standing facing the camera at a relaxed position; then arms at sides, all muscles flexed. Same with the right side. Same with the left.

I say take pics, because you have to weigh yourself. The scale will go crazy, believe me. You'll start thinking about cutting out calories, but that might be a bad thing because muscle needs calories to grow. Protein, mainly. If you don't know if you're on the right track, you can take a look at the photos - they can never lie like a scale. Your waistline can be shrinking and your biceps building, but the scale will only tell you that you're gaining weight. That's not all accurate - you're losing fat, gaining muscle. Fat and muscle both have weight, but one is good and one is bad.

Go to Walmart and buy a big can of Creatine (fruit punch flavor is the one I like...you need to take this with some glucose, but the fruit punch already has this in it). They have regular old creatine...but you need to mix that with something like orange juice. Creatine doesn't have a flavor, but it fuels your muscles and can give you a bigger pump.

You're 30. Go to a drug store and get yourself a bottle of DHEA (Dehydroepiandrosterone). This is a natural supplement that is already plentiful in your body. But under dire conditions (burn victims and severe DOMS), you can run low. The substance also decreases in your body with age. DHEA helps your body to produce growth hormones and testosterone.

Protein. Ooops. Run back to Walmart and pick up a big can of whey protein powder. Make sure it's whey. Don't get soy protein! Soy protein contains plant chemicals that can simulate female hormones in your system. Some men have actually grown larger breasts on soy protein protein isolates, so get the whey just to be safe. Boil yourself some eggs and stick them in the fridge. Eat a couple every day. Don't swallow eggs raw like Rocky did - you can get salmonella poisoning, muscle's worst nightmare.

You're going to be doing damage to your body. That's what builds muscle. You're ripping your muscle at the microscopic level. When this damage is repaired, the muscle is larger and can handle more stress (lifting). So you need to feed your body right.

Stay away from hydrogenated oils! Ooooh. They're bad. Anything that is solid at room temperature is probably a hydrogenated oil. What they do is they take normal fats and heat them up to incredible temperatures, and then infuse it with hydrogen. This makes the fat turn solid at room temperature. But it's also a fat that doesn't exist anywhere in nature. Your body doesn't know what to do with it, so it just stores it as fat.

But not all fats are bad! Look for foods that are high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Natural peanut butter (not Jiffy! It contains hydrogenated oils, but declares itself "Natural"). You want the kind of peanut butter that you need to stir, the kind that you can see the oils floating on top. That's the perfect oil for muscle. Guy-fuel. Almonds are also high in this type of fat. So is fish.

Get lots of fiber and veggies. Broccoli provides the ingredients to help you produce testosterone. So does culiflower. Cabbage. Eat them raw when you can.

Try to determine what muscle-types you have. There's slow-twitch muscle fibers and fast-twitch. See a doctor about this, and then try to base your workout activities around this.

Slow twitch takes longer to contract but can keep on going for a very long time. Fast-twitch contracts immediately, but begins to feel fatigued after a short while. If you have more slow-twitch than fast-twitch, there's nothing you can do...these muscle types cannot be converted one from another. If you have mainly slow-twitch, you'll still have them with you when you leave this world.

Lift for three days, then take one day off to give muscle a chance to recover. You don't build muscle by lifting...you build it by resting. This gives your body an adequate amount of time for the damage done by lifting to repair itself.

Never work out a muscle group if you're sore! DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is your body's way of letting you know that there is physical damage inside. Before you lift, do a stretch-test. Flex your muscle to see if you're in DOMS. If you are, skip that muscle for that day and test it again tomorrow. If you work out a sore muscle, you're going to go into overtraining. The damage will not be repaired correctly, and you'll see no growth.

Never work out sick. If you're sick from the neck up, go ahead. If you're sick from the neck-down...it's better to wait. (example: head cold, but no cough or congestion...go ahead.)

Get at least 8 hours of sleep per night. Sleep is how your body repairs itself. Sleep is also the time when a majority of your growth hormones are released into your system. If you don't get enough sleep, you aren't being repaired properly. Force yourself, if you have to, to get to bed on time. Force yourself to stay asleep until you've reached the full 8 hours.

Prepare meals ahead of time. You can make a nice shake by combining: Whey protein, quick oats, cocoa powder (for anti-oxidants), coffee, natural peanut butter in a blender. It might be icky at first, but you'll get used to it and even start craving it. Have this for breakfast - it's quick and easy.

Never skip breakfast. It gets your metabolism up and roaring for the day. If you skip breakfast, your body will think it's going to be a scarce day for food and you'll save calories that you eat as fat. Feed your muscles breakfast and you'll grow.

Antioxidants. Your body is going to be repairing muscle fibers like crazy! For this to happen, your body needs to make new cells. Any time there's a production of new cells, there's a danger of triggering that renegade cell, cancer. Antioxidants fight this.

Green tea is high in antioxidants, like cocoa powder (unsweetened).

In a nutshell, here's my routine:

Monday:
Biceps, triceps, forearms, abs, deltoids, pecs.

Tuesday:
Quads, hammies, calves, obliques, glutes, neck

Wednesday
Upright rows, lateral pulldowns, pushups, shrugs

Thursday
Rest day (no exercise) - cheat day (eat whatever you want for one meal - pizza, cinnamon rolls, etc)

Friday
Biceps, triceps, forearms, abs, deltoids, pecs

ETC

Your body will adapt! So don't give it a chance to know what you're doing. If you always do your curls with a dumbbell, then your body will get used to it. Your body is tricky at taking the easy way out. It'll figure out how to do as many reps as you want it to without exerting itself. So mix things up. For example, do your curls on a balancing board. Use a curling bar. Do your biceps on machines.

Look around on the internet for articles to read. Make sure that whoever wrote those articles knows what they're talking about - I once read a very long book and found, on the last page, a picture of a little "dweeb", the author, smiling back at me. This guy wasn't a bodybuilder, and for most of the book I was confused about his advice.

Buy magazines and read the articles. I like Fitnexx Rx For Men. The articles are short and informative. Men's Health Magazine is starting to turn into a GQ-copy.

Remember: Do this (bodybuilding) for the right reasons. For our God in heaven. For yourself. Never for anybody else. It's His creation, and He loves you enough to give you this ability. Give Him all the glory whenever you look into the mirror. Never take credit for what He has done for you.

God bless you!

__________________
Chapter-by-Chapter, verse-by-verse.
Jesus is the Living Word.