Considering my first cycle

Hi everyone,

I'm 28 and started lifting September last year. I'm 1.83m tall and weigh 78kg.

Before I started lifting, I was 72kg and had a muscle mass of 33kg. I'm now at a muscle mass of 41kg. I had been obese for most of my life until over a year ago when I had lost a lot of weight, and had reached a body fat of 6% by September. I have always been strict on my diet and cardio discipline (1 hour daily-6 days a week) as I had been and still am afraid of becoming overweight again. My workouts are generally 1.5 hours six days a week. So my first three months of lifting had given my rapid gains, but then I think my low body fat started catching up with me and its started slowing. So I have been gradually plateauing in muscle gain, while I have been slowly increasing in calories (Im at 3500 cal a day now). However, my body fat has been increasing, and is now at 11%, but without the accompanying muscle gains. I don't want to go all out with a 4000-5000cal dirty bulk because gaining the extra fat is like a phobia for me.

I'm considering a 250mg test and/or anavar cycle. Any advice will be appreciated for a newbie like me.
By the way, I'm also on Concerta for ADD so I'm not sure what effects that might have

Thanks

How long have you been lifting? Only 3 months? I wouldn't be doing cardio at the moment, and lifting 6 days a week isn't going to be helping recovery.

The cardio is going to burning through energy for no reason at this stage. I would cut the cardio to 20mins just to drive hunger up. Stick to 3200 calories, that will put you in a surplus even with the 20mins cardio. Ride that out for a year before even considering juice.

If your body fat is going up fast then slow down with the surplus. But doing too much cardio isn't going to help muscle growth..

so what i would do if i was working with you is this :

cut training back to 4 days a week, upper body and lower body 2x a week. focussing on progressive overload of increasing reps and then reps and working within a rep range of 8-12 where you are hitting failure within that hypertrophy range.

come down to 3200 calories, cardio is there to boost hunger up because the concerta is going to blunten hunger somewhat.

focussing on your sleep and recovery, making sure that you are making continual progress with reps and weight.

after doing this for a year, then consider gear. you are still early in the game, you are still learning big time.

Thanks for the advice.

So I've been doing full body 2x a week, through a push, pull, legs routine, bringing me to a total of six days. Four days would be helpful, especially as time is becoming a bit tight with work and studies. How long would you recommend the 4x weekly workout session be?

Cardio has been helpful to me because when I sit in front of the computer with work all day I find myself getting quite agitated, so I have my 30min morning cardio, and 30min after work cardio to relieve some tension, both at the gym (Incline treadmill, elliptical or row). Its that aspect of discipline in the cardio that I'm clinging to, especially as I was quite sedentary in my early years. But it has become a bit overkill though, with 2.5 hours a day total exercise really cutting into things

Part of why I'm weary about the fat gain, is that my body tends to concentrate the fat around my love handle area, while there's barely fat on my legs, arms and chest.

ok so now that i have a little more time to sit and construct things correctly here we go.

the reason you are gaining too much body fat is that your calorie surplus is too high.

at 78kgs you need to be roughly 200-300 kcal above maintenance, so even being at 2800-2900 calories is a good place, but at 3500 you are trying to over compensate for your calorie surplus by doing an hour of cardio work to allow for this increase in food, which means you are going to be busting your ass off instead of just eating less which is going to cost you less in the long term too at this stage. so you are going to be paying money to be exhausted pretty much.

next thing is that you need to time your macronutrients a bit better for what you are doing, this can aid your body recomp quite well. think about what you are about to do for the next 3 hours. is it going to be strenuous and glycogen burning? if not, then stick to protein and fats for that meal. 3 hours before your workout, you should have your first carb meal, then a 1-hour pre-workout meal, intra work out carbs, and post-work-out carbs. so 3 hours after your work out you should be driving the recovery, hence why you would need carbs then.

you may have insulin sensitivity issues, which may be just in your genetic makeup. by timing your carbs to be utilized during a workout and drive recovery, you have more of a time where you are eating protein fat, and veggies throughout the day keeping insulin lower and allowing for a better improvement in insulin sensitivity which would help you gain more muscle vs fat.

use cardio as a tool to drive your metabolism at this stage, 20mins a day first thing will fire things up to prime you to digest food better, improve blood circulation, and drive hunger up.

muscles grow when you recover, so training 20+ sets 6x a week isn't going to allow for optimum recovery. focus on hitting a body part 2x a week with a decent level of intensity, making sure you make progress with weights or reps within the hypertrophy rep range, and you will grow.

for your training : structure 3 different upper body workouts, and 3 lower body workouts with 1 major compound movement for each body part, apart from back you can split this into thickness(usually rowing) and width (lateral pulling). train biceps with legs as there is more growth hormone released in the body when hitting legs so will aid bicep growth.
follow the sequence
upper 1
lower 1
rest
upper 2
lower 2
2 days rest
upper 3
lower 3
rest
upper 1
lower 1
etc etc.

focus on training with a decent level of intensity, and log your workouts with a logbook so you know exactly what last upper body 1 session when you come back to that in the rotation, and make sure you are getting more reps or using more weight than last time.

make sure you lift with perfect form. 3 seconds negative, 1 second positive. go to mechanical failure between 8-12 reps. which means use a weight light enough you can get 8 reps with but so heavy you can't get more than 12 reps, and you should hit failure in between those 8-12 reps.

once you have progressed from only getting 8 reps to finally get 12 reps for that set, then increase the weight by 2kgs or so.

make sure you arent using a weight that you can get 20 reps with, but stop at 10 cos you hit the number. you need to train with a level of intensity and give the muscle the right stimulus to grow.

matt1993 wrote: Thanks for the advice.

So I've been doing full body 2x a week, through a push, pull, legs routine, bringing me to a total of six days. Four days would be helpful, especially as time is becoming a bit tight with work and studies. How long would you recommend the 4x weekly workout session be?

Cardio has been helpful to me because when I sit in front of the computer with work all day I find myself getting quite agitated, so I have my 30min morning cardio, and 30min after work cardio to relieve some tension, both at the gym (Incline treadmill, elliptical or row). Its that aspect of discipline in the cardio that I'm clinging to, especially as I was quite sedentary in my early years. But it has become a bit overkill though, with 2.5 hours a day total exercise really cutting into things

Part of why I'm weary about the fat gain, is that my body tends to concentrate the fat around my love handle area, while there's barely fat on my legs, arms and chest.

i would just suggest getting your step count up really apart from cardio 5000-6000 steps a day at this stage should be perfect. so every hour take a 5 minute walk around. if you get a phone call walk around whilst on the phone. that is just easier and less intense vs doing cardio in the gym etc.

you would be doing compound movements so 5-6 exercises a session 2-3 working sets, shouldn't really take you more than an hour to complete.

eg
chest incline smith press 3 sets.
shoulder press dumbells 3 sets
skull crushers 3 sets
close grip pull downs 3 sets
bent over rows 3 sets

done.

Ez bar curls 3 sets(biceps)
hammer curls 3 sets (forearms)
standing calve raises 3 sets
squats 3 sets
seated ham curls 3 sets.

done.

as you can see, doing compound movements will allow for more muscles to be hit with 1 exercise.

Thanks for the routine suggestion. Yeah, I suppose I really need this overhaul now in my training and diet. So my gym workout will be more intensity as to volume focused, as also in the back of my mind during my workouts I always held that I needed to make sure its exactly 1.5 hours to burn more calorie, rather than hust reduce he oof and save time. So my carb and protein pattern pre and post workout is currently this:

Breakfast 7:30am
Option 1: 80g banana, 50g oats, 50g peanut better, 4 egg whites, 175g fat free yoghurt, 1 tsp honey
Option 2: 80g banana, 2 slices wholewheat bread, 4 egg whites, 2 whole eggs, 30g avo, 1 tsp honey, 175g yoghurt

Workout : 9am (500ml Energade intra-workout)

Post Workout: 100g Jungle Plus, 175g yoghurt, 35g biltong snapsticks, 1 serving fruit

i would pull the 50g of peanut butter and the avo out of those meals, have less fat in them, an have those fats later on in the day. the fat is going to slow down digestion of those carbs, and you want them digested before you train. i personally use instant maize meal pre workout with whey protein, as i wake up at 4:00, have a meal at 4:!5, inject my pre workout goodies at 4:45, at the gym by 5:00am. and that has been sufficient for me to have digested food in my system and i don't feel heavy and sluggish during my workouts and feel like I'm going to puke.

post-workout I would rather see a faster-digesting carb source eg ace instant mealie meal, coco pops/rice crispies/ gummy sweets, or marshmallows with a faster-digesting protein source like whey protein mixed with water.

rather move your biltong later on in the day.

you can use energade intra workout no issues.

Ah yeah, also try to raise the GI of the food. I suppose the omission of the peanut butter can also be a saving on the daily calories (285cal) then as I cut down my daily intake
Haven't started using protein powder yet in my diet, but maybe I should. I've, always been averaging above 200g protein daily, which is perhaps too much. But the protein powder can be a good economical substitute for the biltong.

Going back to my question about anabolics, I was also considering it in light of being quite chubby most of my life, and never having really, at least from my view, been as manly as I had wanted when I shad reached puberty and in the years after. My voice is kind of high pitched, and nearly everyone at first sight thinks that I'm 20-22 while I am 28. S I'm wondering if my test levels have been low or suppressed as well.

You can push that protein up to 3g a kg when you start cutting down and pulling carbs and fats, but it's currently at 2.5g which is perfect actually. If you are feeling you are insulin resistant i would set your fat intake to 30% of your calories and keep your carbs in and around training times.

Protein powder has its place and shouldn't substitute real food but I am inclined to say having protein powder post workout is really valuable..

As to going back to your test levels. Get bloods done. That simple. I doubt that this is the case and sometimes we just have that genetic make up. Testosterone can age you yes, but at this stage it's to soon to make that call and I would suggest getting bloods done if you are really that worried.

You are Still very new to training, 12-18 months of natural training, calorie surplus, creatine and good protein powder will allow for you to grow and that will make you look more masculine as such.

So come down to 2800 calories, which is a small surplus have 90g if fat daily, 200g protein and 290g of carbs a day. That will be more than enough to grow on.

Thanks for the considerable effort given in your advice man. Really appreciate it. It good then to review one's programme and routine every now and then. Still really enjoying doing the weights and seeing the gradual progress especially on the powerlifts.