Note: Remeber almost every exercise has a link so you can see how its done.

First let me thanks Scooby, this man changed my preception of i need to go to gym to get a great body, i went 1year but it was so expensive i couldnt buy other things for me since im a student, i end up going by scooby im buying my own things like dumbells, weights and a pull up bar, the results have been as amazing as the gym or even better since i never pulld up on gym because machines were easier to do, i could barely do 5 pull ups now i can do more than 15. This man is one of the best people out there and his website can help milions! Most of things here are from his website, visit and favorite!

http://scoobysworkshop.com/

Second let me thanks to Bar Brothers also, this guy have inspired milions that you dont need a gym or weights to get in shape, although i rather work also with weights and mix both for people who cant this guys showed how you can just with your own bodyweight build great physics and get a great body.

http://www.youtube.com/user/novoic?feature=results_main

Third lets me remind you that if you want to get ready for Summer you should start know, results are not made in days but months/years depending on your Goals.

Im doing this thread to people who want to get in shape and for people who love fitness activities like me, if you dont like dont even comment.

I thought about opening a Fitness discussion here in the Forum, i think many of you enjoy doing sports, going to gym, workout at home or even just run! its amazing what workout can do for you body and health in general and how better you will feel and more confident with yourself!

What you need to get in shape for summer ? Just a set of used dumbells, a pull up a bar and a par of shoes! its that easy!

Bulking Up and Gaining Muscle

There are thousands of products, newsletters, and books out there that promise to show you the secret of how to “gain muscle fast” and they ALL want your money but I’ll give you the secret for free – gaining muscle is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Lift weights with intensity 
2. Get proper nutrition
3. Get enough rest
   
   

   What do you need to buy? A $10 used set of dumbbells from from craigslist or a garage sale is perfect, your muscles don’t know if they are lifting used rusty old dumbbells or new, expensive, shiny, chrome ones! If you cant find a used set then you can buy a new weight set but don’t pay more than $1/lb!. You can make your own pullup bar with $5 of metal toprail from a hardware store or buy a no-mar, door mount pullup bar.

   Please remember, lifting weights without maintaining proper nutrition is a waste of time! If you dont understand my nutrition section then consider the book Bodybuilding Revealed which has the best coverage of bodybuilding nutrition I have seen (Read my review).

   Gaining mass, is really simple but it takes a LOT of work.  Later I will tell you about how to eat right and lifting weights but first, lets talk about expectations.

    

   Expectations:

    

   There is a LOT of bad information out there and people have a very warped view of what are reasonable expectations for putting on muscle thru weightlifting.  Gaining muscle is a very slow process despite what the media and advertisements would have you believe.  Please check out my muscle gain calculator to see what kind of yearly muscle gain you can expect – answer 5 simple questions and get a prediction of your yearly muscle gain.

    

   How To Bulk Up And Gain Muscle

    

   Step 1) Lift Weights With Intensity

   You have to lift weights to get stronger and gain muscle.  Mass follows strength, you cant get bigger without getting stronger.  Here are workout plans for beginner, intermediate or advancedbodybuilders.   Now lets talk about the dedication required.  You muscle gains are roughly proportional to the effort you put into lifting weights – up to a point, and that point is reached when you overtrain.  You cant gain 20lbs of muscle in a year by flitting around the gym now and then.  If you want maximum gains, you need to work really hard - it means 5 days a week of intense lifting.  Just being IN a gym an hour a day does nothing, chatting your buddies while standing near weights doesn’t make your muscles grow – you need intense, focused workout sessions.  Check out my section on “Focus” to see what I mean by that.

   Step 2) Get Good Nutrition

   Believe it or not, lifting weights is the EASY part of gaining muscle, nutrition is the hard part.   The #1 reason  bodybuilders have poor results is not because they don’t work out hard enough but because their nutrition sucks.  Most beginning and intermediate bodybuilders think they have “good nutrition” when they really have horrible nutrition.  ”Taking” a protein shake after a workout does not constitute good nutrition!  It can take up to FIVE days for the muscles to rebuild after a workout and during that time you need a constant intake of protein.  That protein shake after the workout is a good start but you have to keep the good nutrition up for the 5 days after the workout and if you workout 2x a week that means you need good nutrition every single day!  Your body can’t store protein up so just having a huge steak with dinner will not work if you want to maximize gain muscle, you need to take your protein in 4-6 small, even doses spread evenly through out the day to insure your recovering muscles always have the amino acids they need to rebuild.  Nobody said bodybuilding was easy.  If you can’t eat 6 real meals a day then protein powder (or organic protein powder) mixed in milk or water can make a quick and inexpensive meal replacement in a pinch, remember though, real meals are always better! Just to reiterate, nutrition is just as important as lifting weights when it comes to adding muscle mass. Don’t bother tearing your muscles down unless you plan on giving them the constant supply of nutrients they need to rebuild! If my free healthy recipes dont appeal to you then consider buying this bodybuilding cookbook (read my review).

   The first thing you need to know about nutrition are some numbers.  I suggest that you consume 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight per day so if you weigh 180lbs, you eat 180g protein during the day. Next question is how many calories should you eat, my calorie calculator asks you 5 questions to accurately determine your metabolism and give you the precise number of calories you need in each of your 6 meals.

    

   Eating more than this will not make your muscles grow faster, you will just get fat!!!  This is really important so I’m going to say this gain.  Eating more than what this chart shows will NOT make you stronger or give you bigger muscles, it will just make you FAT.  This is the bulking myth – you don’t need to get fat to get strong.   OK, there is one exception to this and its for very advanced or pro bodybuilders.  They need to bulk and cut to continue to make gains but for 95% of people lifting weights, bulking and cutting is more trouble than its worth.  As long as you are getting your six evenly spaced doses of protein as shown my this chart, your muscles will have the building blocks they need to grow bigger and stronger– eating more will not help.

   Lets take a quick look at what happens if you are not careful with your diet and eat junk food.  Our 140 hypothetical BBer needs 23g protein six times a day.  Lets say that for each of his meals he eats a big mac which has 24g protein.  Each burger has 24g protein so his muscles will grow well but man-o-man look at the calories!  Remember I said that this 140lb BBer needs six 350 cal meals, well the Big Mac is 590 calories, almost 200% too much.  What this means is that our 140lb BBer would gain 3lbs fat per week or 12lbs of fat per month!  Can you say sumo wrestler!  You really need to watch what you eat!  Here are the most common nutrition mistakes made by bodybuilders:

   • they get enough protein so their muscles grow but they eat too many calories so they get really fat
   • they eat the proper number of calories but don’t get enough protein so their muscles don’t grow much
   • they get enough protein and the proper number of calories but don’t distribute their protein intake into 6 evenly spaced small doses so their muscles don’t grow optimally

   Don’t let this happen to you!  If you are going to all the work of lifting weighs 5 days a week, make sure you give your nutrition the same effort so your muscles can grow.

   If you have the time and devotion, you can gain muscle AND lose fat at the same time but its REALLY hard!  Your protein requirements remain the same but the number of calories per meal drops so its even harder to find acceptable meals so your nutrition becomes much more strict. If you are losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time it will be very difficult to  buy anything at a fast food restaurant or in TV dinner form which satisfies these requirements – you need to cook your own meals.  Here are some of my favorite quick healthy meals, if those dont appeal to you then consider buying this highly recommended bodybuilding cookbook (read my review).

   Step 3) Get Enough Rest

    

   There are two types of rest you need, lets start with sleep.  Night time is a very important time for building muscle.  Your growth hormone spikes during REM sleep so its really important to get a good nights sleep as you want to maximize that growth hormone production.   Another big reason to get enough sleep relates to dieting.  If you have a caloric deficit, and dont get enough sleep you end up burning muscle instead of fat!  How much sleep is enough?  If you awake naturally without an alarm clock, that is enough sleep.  If an alarm wakes you then you have not gotten enough sleep.  Getting enough sleep can also reduce the chance of overtraining.

   Speaking of overtraining, lets talk about the other kind of rest, the time between workouts.  How much rest you need between workouts depends a lot on your experience level.  Beginners can workout every day or every other day where as an advanced bodybuilder would have to wait 3-6 days between workouts.  Please note that when I say that an advanced bodybuilder needs 3-6 days between workouts, I mean for a particular bodypart.  For example if you are advanced and workout chest on Monday then you shouldnt workout chest again till Thursday at the earliest.  Its fine to do legs on Tuesday, back on Wednesday though!

   Summary

   So remember that to gain muscle requires three things:

   1. Lift weights with intensity
   2. Get proper nutrition
   3. Get enough rest

   To maximize your muscle gains, you need to do research and learn! This website is a great place to start but don’t stop here, I’m just one person with one point of view. Look on the internet, go to your public library (best option) or buy some of the recommended books.

Losing Weight and 6pack abs :

Losing weight is easy, you only need a par of shoes. But first lets clear up some things about abs:

"Lets clear up one huge misconception right now, ab machines and ab exercises will NOT get you 6-pack abs!  95% of the work in getting 6-pack abs is losing bodyfat and no ab exercise will do that.  If you have a beer belly, you could do ab exercises all year long and still never get 6-pack abs. You can have rippling muscular abs but if they are covered with an inner tube of fat then nobody is going see them."

in Order to get abs you need to:

1 - Exercise a little bit more

2 - Eat a bit less

3 - Drink Lots of Water

4 - Sleep!

"It’s not that hard and its not that complicated. The changes you need to make to lose weight and reduce your bodyfat are much smaller than you fear and they are easier to live with than you could possibly imagine! A common sense approach involving exercise and nutrition is all that is required to get ripped, washboard abs.  When most people think about losing weight, what comes to mind is words like “hunger”, “deprivation”, “diet”, and “agony”. No! Losing weight properly will not result in any of these, the key is in the above two words “common sense”. Most of the fad diets out there are unhealthy, dangerous or both and lead to deprivation and hunger which eventually leads to binging and guilt – the typical unhealthy yo-yo weight loss pattern. What we want is permanent weight loss! Yo-yo dieting is way too much work, just learn to make a few simple healty substitutions and and the weight comes off and stays off for good!"

Smart nutritional choices + exercise = ripped abs

Cardio information!

The Importance of Cardio

"Here are some great reasons to do cardio:

• To lose fat and look better! – want 6-pack abs? Only way is to lose fat thru cardio and proper nutrition.
• Cardio can improve your mood and significantly reduce depression.  Its been proven by study after study, cardio can make you happier!
• Perform better at school or work!  Daily cardio reduces mental fatigue and gives you more energy. A recent study from the U of G showed that daily cardio reduces fatigue by 65%
• To live a longer, healthier life.
• To help gain muscle."

"Cardiovascular exercise (“Cardio” for short) is simply exercise that elevates your heartrate for an extended period of time and its more important for your general health than lifting weights. The best part is that cardio helps you lose fat, feel better, and look better! The quickest way to look like you have packed on 10lbs muscle is to lose 10lbs of fat, its a really cool bodybuilding illusion. It can take a years to add muscle but in a month you can look more muscular just by losing fat, it’s because bodyfat makes the body round and shapeless which hides the muscles."

Adding Muscle Workout Plan!

Beginning Workout Plan

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, & Sunday

Intermediate Workout Plan

Day 1 – Push

Day 2 – Pull

Day 3 – Legs

 
Day 4: Rest day.  Cardio: 20 minutes – jog, brisk walk or bike
Day 5: Back to day 1 push workout.

Advanced Workout Plan

Monday – Chest

Tuesday – Lats

Wednesday – Legs

Thursday – Shoulders

Friday – Arms

Saturday

Sunday

No Pain, No Gain:

Remember most pain isnt good yet:

"

Good Muscular Pain

Now lets talk about some kinds of good pain that can be indicators of a successful workout. Before we go into the kinds of good pain, I need to clarify here. There has never been research which proves these types of pain cause muscle growth, in fact, many people have gotten stronger and bigger without ever getting sore. So if you cant get sore while working out, don’t despair. Having said that, in my experience the most intense workouts produce the most soreness and workout intensity seems to correlate with strength and mass gains.

OK, lets talk about the good kinds of pain that we are striving for. The first good pain is the one that occurs at the end of a set. It starts as a slow burn when you are about 3/4 done with your set and the pain slowly increases with each subsequent rep till at the end the pain is quite intense.. This is good pain caused by the lactic acid buildup in your muscles. The reason this pain is good is that its a good indicator that you are pushing yourself hard enough to cause muscle growth.

The other good kind of pain is Delayed Onset Muscular Soreness (DOMS). This delayed muscular soreness is very good and sought after, its what makes bodybuilders take the elevator rather than the stairway for many days after a leg workout – if you have had a killer leg workout you know exactly what I’m talking about.  If you workout with sufficient intensity, you get micro-tears in muscles which the body then has to repair.  During the healing process, these muscles can get very sore.  This soreness is delayed (DOMS) and can take 1-2 days after the workout to appear and can take up to a week to go away depending on the intensity of the workout. DOMS appears to be a good indication of the effectiveness of the workout. That wonderful soreness you feel is your muscles being rebuilt – bigger, faster, stronger! By the way, that soreness should be a constant reminder that you need to pay strict attention to your nutrition to insure that your muscles have a constant supply of all the nutrients and amino acids they need to grow. If you workout hard and then eat potatoes chips for 5 days your workout was a complete waste of time.

So, If you have DOMS, its clear you had a very effective workout but the inverse is not true. If you don’t get DOMS, don’t despair, you might have still had a great and effective workout. Some muscles just don’t seem to get sore and it varies from person to person.  For me, I always can get sore when doing arms, chest, lats, and legs but shoulders and calves never get sore.  By the way, I strongly suggest that you wait till all muscle soreness is gone before you workout that muscle again. The soreness is a sign that the muscle is still being repaired and made stronger, If you workout before the repairs are complete you wont be able to lift with sufficient intensity. If you want to hurry the healing and make the soreness go away so you can work out again, DONT take ibuprofen – that just masks the pain. Studies have shown that stretching does not seem to help the swelling and pain associated with DOMS so that wont work either. Studies HAVE shown that massage does help speed the healing process so if your in a big rush to get rid of the soreness and have lots of money, go for sports massages.

Overtraining

What I’m about to tell you is completely counter intuitive. Most people I know who are disappointed with their bodybuilding results are suffering from over-training rather than under-training.  Its a hard concept to grasp that sometimes you can increase your strength and gain more muscle by working out less!   The “work ethic” is so ingrained in us. We are so used to hearing things like:

“You get what you pay for” or “You get out what you put in”

but its not true in bodybuilding! Or it is but only up to a point. If you workout too much, you will get weaker and smaller rather than stronger and bigger! Its called overtraining and its a very common problem with bodybuilders. Here is a chart of strength and mass gains vs number of hours lifting weights.

At first, you do get out of it what you put into it – you see the curve is a straight line upward. For every additional hour pumping iron you get gains proportional to your effort. Then look what happens, its no longer a bargain as you near the top of the curve. You still are making gains but they are incrementally very small and require lots of additional time to get them. Then at the top of the curve, you have maxed out. If you workout less or more then you will have worse gains. If your workout less, its called undertraining and that’s not a bad thing. If you workout more than this, its called overtraining and its really bad. Overtraining not only means you are wasting time but also that you are getting worse results and subjecting yourself to the following problems:

• Fatigue
• Aches and pains
• Irritability
• Depression
• Pain in the joints
• Lack of energy
• Performance decrease
• Trouble sleeping
• Headaches
• Catching lots of colds
• Drop in intensity
• Moodiness
• Loss of enthusiasm
• Decreased appetite
• Lots of injuries
• Fanatic about exercising

The above are all signs of overtraining. You want to be on the left side of the above graph, not the right side!

Strength gains and muscle mass gains don’t happen at the gym, they happen the 2-7 days after your workout as your body slowly works to repair the damaged muscles. If you do another weight workout before you body has fully repaired the muscles, you are cheating yourself out of gains. The amount of time it takes to rebuild the muscles depends most on the experience level of the bodybuilder. Advanced bodybuilders can workout so intensely and cause so much damage that it takes 5-7 days to rebuild the muscles. Beginning bodybuilders who are unable to workout with this destructive efficiency can recuperate much faster, maybe 2-3 days. This difference explains why beginning bodybuilding workouts look so different that the workouts of advanced bodybuilders! Because of their faster recuperation time, beginners can workout each muscle group multiple times a week without causing overtraining – a typical beginning workout plan is a complete body workout 3 times a week, that would cause severe overtraining for an advanced bodybuilder.

One very, very important point that people get confused with all the time. They look at my advanced workout plan which has an intense workout every day and wonder why that doesn’t cause overtrainig – after all, I said that it takes 5-7 days for the advanced bodybuilder to recuperate. The answer is that each muscle group is independent. Yes, if you just did legs yesterday you cant do them again for another 5 days but there is no reason you cant do another bodypart like chest. With advanced bodybuilding workouts, typically each day is a separate bodypart so that each is only worked once per week.

With all the people I know who are suffering from overtraining its exactly the same. They wanna make gains in the worst possible way and they are willing to do anything to get bigger and stronger. They workout like fiends and overtrain. They are absolutely petrified that if they workout less, they will shrivel up into a proverbial 70 pound weakling. They suffer from overtraining for years on end wondering why they can never make any gains but they just cant workout less, they cant. The intense fear of losing your strength/mass is a good sign that you are overtraining and all the more reason to cut your workout time in half!

So how do you know if you are overtraining. Well we have the symptoms above but here are some rules of thumb. If you are lifting weights more than 10 hours a week, you are most likely overtraining. If you are lifting weights more than 6 hours a week, you might be overtraining. To find out if you are, try cutting your weekly workout time in half for two months and compare the gains, if you do make more gains with less working out then you were overtraining. The easiest way is to use a standard workout plan rather than inventing your own, the free custom workout plan generator on my website will help make an optimal workout plan for your specific goals."

You dont need multiple sets. Also, more sleep - tell that to my son, he is making me fat.

i know its difficult my brother when was younger he didnt let me sleep either.

I use to go to the gym a lot but stopped and been just jogging a lot to stay a little in shape (talking about energy and stamina). I have a high metabolism so it's hard to gain weight. My routined schedual used to be:

Monday: Chest, Triceps

Tuesday: Legs (all muscles from ass down but calves)

Wednesday: Recovery day

Thursday: Shoulders, Abs, Calves

Friday: Back, Biceps

Nothing on Saturday and Sunday.

I did a 5 mins warm up jog before and after workout, most excersizes consisted of 4 or 3 sets and I usually aimed for 15 to 12 reps for the first and a little less for every other one (upping the weights per set).

I did this for 4 months straight pretty hardcore and put on 25 lb, I was also talking supplements, I took Mutant Mass (gave me horrible shits and the smelliest farts ever, even I couldn't handle them). I never had that defined 6 pack but I did a lot wrong that you mentioned, after every workout we'd go drink about a dozen beer and eat fast food so that didn't help lol But on the right day if I didn't eat much, like in the mornings you can see a clear 6 pack.

Anyway I'm pretty use to that routine and I know it works I don't care to much about the defined 6 pack, it would be nice to have but I'm pretty sure I'll always have a tiny gut my dads the same he said it runs in the family, so I would rather gain weight I'm at 155 I'd like to be around 170 or 175. Anyways Arghe, do you have any tips or anything to add? 

But... drunk chicks are my priorities... it's much easier to pick up drunk chicks then fit chicks...

It also appears to help ones libido.

i like your routine but i cant do that now, i used a routine like that before, not exactly but almost. here´s my old routine and i will post my new routine since now i can only workout on weekends.

Old :

Mondays : Back, Triceps

Tuesdays : Abs, Cardio

Wednesdays : Legs, Shoulders

Thursdays : Abs, Cardio

Fridays: Chest, Biceps

Saturday: Cardio

Sunday : Abs, Low Cardio

i add tons of muscle mas in 1 year. 11kg of muscle and 4.5kg of Fat by a calculator.

My New workout since im in College and time is limited and i dont want to spend money on a gym anymorei bought weights, pull ups bar etc...

New:

Monday : Cardio

Tuedays : Abs, Push Ups - Tons of Variations to Work Chest and Triceps

Wedenesdays : Cardio (Class)

Thursdays : Cardio (Pool), Abs if not sore.

Fridays : Chest, Back, Biceps

Saturday : Legs, Abs

Sunday: Shoulders, Triceps

Note: Sometimes i cant workout on Saturday so i change legs to Sunday and skip abs.

As you can see my older workout was much better and the results were better, i keep seeing amazing results and pump, as long as you workout results will show up even if you dont do weights and just push ups, pull ups results will show. 

Push Ups and Pull Ups are the best exercises you can do for me i love them, i use them on my Chest and Back Workout and they give such an amazing pump. Sure Dumbell Rows or Dumbell flies for Chest are also great mass builders but i think the Kings are Pull Ups and Push Ups.

Good for you man. Glad to see other people on vgchartz besides me concerned about health and wanting to work out :)

As far as Scooby the guy knows what he is talking about but from what I've noticed about him is he targets more bodybuilder type guys. I may be wrong, just what i've watched from him. Personally I like the lean muscular build than the bulky muscular build.

Everybody has different goals