Am I doing this right?

F

Ferret

0
(not sure if this is the right forum)

I just recently quit smoking and decided to start going to the gym. I'm 5'8 150lbs and I was mainly trying to replace some of the flab I've accumulated since high school with muscle. I've been going Mon-Fri taking sat and sun as rest days. I do 30 mins of cardio every day i work out and spend another 30 minutes doing resistance training (changing up upper body and lower body every other day). Its been two weeks and I'm starting to think I'm doing something wrong with the resistance training, I'll usually do 60-70% of my 1 max rep 10-15 times depending on machine and I'll do 3-4 sets of each machine.

and mainly i just have a nagging feeling that i'm doing something wrong and was wondering if anyone had advice on what to tweak.
 
Hey man, everything you're doing sounds good, obviously you said you goal was to lose some fat and gain some muscle, this is a very difficult thing to do at the same time, so i would focus on one at a time. In order to gain muscle you need a calorie surplus, to lose fat, a calorie deficit, kinda contradictory. But if you aren't seeing any results and that's why you're wondering if somethings going wrong I would be inclined to ask what your diet is like. For losing weight, clean up with a healthy diet, around 500 calories under your maintenance needs, and you'll see fat coming off every week. Consistency is key really in shaping the body, taking off weight, shoot for 1-2 pounds a week, putting on I feel takes a little more time. My advice would be to determine what you want to do(gain muscle or lose fat), and let your diet and exercise reflect that. Losing fat, what you're doing seems to be good, and clean the diet. Gaining muscle, I'd use freeweights personally, dumbbells and barbells, heavy compound lifting promotes hgh release which is good for putting on the muscle. Resistance work is good as well, especially for burning fat, but not as good in my opinion for adding muscle.
 
Do less cardio, and follow a proper free-weight program. Dont waste your time on machines. Read Sisson, look through the stronglifts website. More resources here
 
Weights first, cardio second. And make sure you are doing big compund moves like squats, deadlifts and bench, not just a bunch of curls and stuff.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top