Advice For 18 year old currently joining the Army?

C

calontheinterwebs

0
Hi, i'm kinda new here so sorry if i have posted this in the wrong bit but i was wondering if anyone could give me some advice?

What i am currently doing:
around 5 miles jog on tue, thu, sat, sun- i sometimes have to stop to a walk but not all the time
weights every night, + 30 press-ups, 30 sit ups, i usually do the weights until i get tired.

i am just below 6ft 2inch
around 10 stone in weight so i class as underweight i think
i have a really fast metabolism, so i find it really hard to gain weight (impossible actually) so would really appreciate any help with this
i don't eat or drink any supplements, due to not knowing enough about them and which ones are safe etc. (+ i don't want to fail a drugs test :D)

any recommendations basically guys, what should i start/stop doing to bulk my fitness and upper body strength. any other people joining what fitness state are you guys in or when you joined, that sort of thing. Cheers!
 
OK your training will need to be addressed and obviosly diet too based on not gaining weight.
Don't bother with suppliments, food is cheaper and the body has millions of years experience at dealing with it, so just eat more in proper balance, not massive protein and nothing else, protein is actually easy to come by in today's world.
Gaining weight means eating more energy than you are burning. This is obvious for fat gain but just as crucial when gaining muscle, if there isn't a calorific excess the muscle you build will have to be catabolised to keep you alive.
Being tall with high metabolism and training a lot will mean you need to eat a lot. Personal experience and study tells me high complex carbs, aka starch, found in rice, oats, pasta etc. are great for this. The body digests it fast, and we are literally designed to get most of our energy from this type of food so it's great for training energy. Protein will make you feel full for ages making eating more harder and fats take forever to digest so keep them in proportion. Ideal calorific balance for a human is 60 - 65% carbs (min 95% complex, max 5% sugars), 25% fats, 17% protein. It's not exact but get close to this and you will be doing well.
Other bonus with real food is unless you are eating poppy seeds you are unlikely to fail a drug test, I was shocked to see poppy seeds can cause this, for details see mythbusters TV show.

Training looks very much extreme endurance to failure and that will not promote muscular growth especially well, you'll get some but slowly.
Growth is best when using rep ranges 10 to 6 at rep maximum so 10 is with max you can lift for 10 etc. Now if you are trying to get into the forces and this will interfere with what you need to pass entry tests don't do it, but if not go for it.
There is a really good generic begginers program by Goldfish http://training.fitness.com/weight-...inefficient-split-maybe-read-first-34522.html which will serve you well. He is undoubtedly one of the best guides you can have on weight training.

The other thing to remember is rest times. Muscle grows after recovery, so use the system hit it hard, hit it fast, leave it alone.
 
Thanks a lot, so generally with the training push myself to the limit, but not as often to let the muscle grow back? I'll Give the food program a go, i'll be shopping tonight and i'll load it with pasta etc, and i'll monitor what i intake with the percentages and try and get as close as possible. My dad is a pretty big fella he was saying something about drinking the whites of eggs but not the yolks and mixing it with milk every morning and i can't go wrong. Anybody shine any light on this or is it just a mith?

Thanks for the advice (much appreciated!) - Cheers
 
Protein is one of the fastest degrading foods around, birds know this so lock it down with a natural preserve, the digestive enzyme to enable this to be absorbed raw is in the yolk enabling the hatchling to benefit from the protien in the white without it degrading. What this means for us is we can either eat the eggs raw and whole to get some of the protein value before the enzyme in the yolk is digested or cheat and cook it which denatures the protiens making it digestable.
Your dad wasn't alone in using this, loads of guys I knew did it, reality is the protein in the egg white will have done nothing but bind some of their faeces. The protein your dad will have got from this will have been in the milk. I have eaten raw eggs myself, not seperated as I burned the energy so didn't worry abot fat in the yolk. When I found out how pointless this was I never did it again. The benefit is purely phycological and as such it does work as long as you believe in it, I didn't so it wouldn't.

There is not a person alive who gets diet perfect daily and the body is designed to deal with fluctuations. Get it roughly right and adjust a bit at a time and you will do well.
 
Haha, I'll be sure to tell him that (i'm sure he will deny all of what you have said) anyway i'm glad about that i didn't fancy the old egg white to be honest.

Cheers
 
I am a strange character in that I generally need to be physically or mentally active. Now I do a mentally challenging job so most of my interests are physical, when my job was physical I read anything I could that challenged my mind, obviously some was fitness etc. other books ranged from natural history (hence the bird eggs knowledge) to organic chemistry a boring amount of it has stuck with me, trust me it has made me very boring to most.
True irony. I read a lot of scientific research papers when younger and doing mindless work. My life has meant I have now prepared data for other scientific studies so my name has appeared on some. I have very little real idea what some of the data I prepared really means but it's nice to have given something back to studies I enjoy.
 
For me it's motivation, if i am not motivated to do something then i probably won't do well or i wont put in the effort i should. I'm currently an IT apprentice and i find it very mundane lifestyle and not for me but with the physical demand with the armed forces and all this preparation physically and mentally i have to do - I love it. I never thought i would, i always refused to go to gyms and never thought i would fit in and it wasn't for me. But i was wrong initially, i'm was on a balance at school whether to go down a physical route or mental route with computers. i initially chose the mental one and i was wrong so i'm going down this side of things and it seams better already.
 
Physical demands give the endorphin release no amount of mental strain will match. I like many am in a branch of IT, nothing remotely physical in my job at all, or any chance of there being. I used to do manual work but decided I'd had enough of grafting like hell for next to nothing while others sat at their desks on more money. We spend a lot of our lives at work so you need to enjoy it first and foremost. At least in the forces you will be able to shift direction at their cost not your own.
Always reserve the right to be wrong, especially about yourself, you will be many times in your life. This isn't a bad thing as you are already learning. The only time people find it an issue is if they believe the nonesense that people don't change then realise they have.
We all need motivation. I have some issues that training helps me with and fortunately found things I really enjoy doing that have kept me fit. There are many things in my life I am not motivated to do and our home shows this with numerous DIY projects unfinished etc. I end up doing it but under duress and after a lot of nagging.
Your in my neck of the woods, which is unusual here, normally dealing with people in different continents.
 
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