I really need some help page 2

[Ayla2010]

OK cool, I wasn't sure, I had read it, but never had the need to look deeper into it.

[MightyMouse]

If you enjoy spending time in the gym as a hobby, than I would definitely recommend starting strength. Forever Young offers a good way too, again depending on your recovery abilities. 5/3/1 can be a pretty low volume program if you skip the assistance exercises. As a beginner I wouldn't recommend more than 3 lifting days a week though. There's more than one way to skin a cat, but those two programs are pretty basic and proven to work extremely well.

[rockstareddy]

ONCE a week? Alright, if that's really the best option But am I supposed to feel tired after working out? Because whenever I workout I always push myself to the limit until I really can't lift anymore but after 1-2 minutes I don't notice any tiredness in my muscles. (Of course I wouldn't be able to perform the same exercises again immediately after working out)

Once a week is just one approach, recently made popular by 4 hour body. You dont actually have to feel tired, tiredness comes with exhaustion and glycogen depletion. If you want to build muscle, glycogen depleption is not your goal and can be detrimental, you just want to exert the muscle as much as physically possible without depleting too much glycogen. If you do this properly, you wont feel too tired after the workout, but hte next day you will have DOMS from hell. I recomend the 4 hour body to understand a little more about why this works, but starting strength and other ways recomended are also great options.

I just tend to keep it simple with the big compound movements, Im not a body builder, just looking to get bigger.

[Misabi]

Starting strength or other beginner strength workouts are good.
Even doing a full body workout using the basic compound lifts (squats, dead lift, bench press and press) twice a week would be good. I'd also throw in some pull Ups too.

But if you really want to add some muscle, at your age and build you really need to knock the cycling 4 - 5 hours a week on the head and get over your issues with eating. You are going to need to eat a crap load of calories for your body to fuel your body's production of muscle after you have given it the stimulation to grow by trying to lift heavy weights.

I was a very skinny teen and even 20 something, who could never add muscle no matter how I hit the weights because I was running running 50+ miles per week. Within a few weeks of dropping the running I really noticed the difference and the muscles almost appeared over night.

[missblue]

Check out "The New Rules of Lifting" by Lou Cosgrove and after that, start shopping for a good gym and a trainer who actually knows something.

It really gives you a solid foundation in six basic "multi-muscle" movements and when / how much to lift.

Being an "informed shopper" is always helpful.

[Gadsie]

Starting strength or other beginner strength workouts are good.
Even doing a full body workout using the basic compound lifts (squats, dead lift, bench press and press) twice a week would be good. I'd also throw in some pull Ups too.

But if you really want to add some muscle, at your age and build you really need to knock the cycling 4 - 5 hours a week on the head and get over your issues with eating. You are going to need to eat a crap load of calories for your body to fuel your body's production of muscle after you have given it the stimulation to grow by trying to lift heavy weights.

I would still like to know some guideline for calories. Not exact but that way i know I'm not eating horribly wrong. I'm currently eating about 2500

[billp]

I would still like to know some guideline for calories. Not exact but that way i know I'm not eating horribly wrong. I'm currently eating about 2500

Your calorie guideline is when you can't eat any more. Calories aren't real, you know. You can't catch one in your bed and crush it between finger and thumb. They are an entirely imaginary measure of the explosive power of bombs that some loony applied to human nutrition (because we are just like explosives). Are you an only child or something? Normally one's older brother would never stop teasing you about such faddishness, and if you didn't eat up all your food as quickly as possible it would be whipped off your plate and eaten before you had time to think about how many imaginary calories might be there.

[Gadsie]

Your calorie guideline is when you can't eat any more. Calories aren't real, you know. You can't catch one in your bed and crush it between finger and thumb. They are an entirely imaginary measure of the explosive power of bombs that some loony applied to human nutrition (because we are just like explosives). Are you an only child or something? Normally one's older brother would never stop teasing you about such faddishness, and if you didn't eat up all your food as quickly as possible it would be whipped off your plate and eaten before you had time to think about how many imaginary calories might be there.

But fat, carbs and protein are real

[billp]

But fat, carbs and protein are real

Sort of. I think protein is defined as egg white and maybe fat is lard. Carbohydrate I don't know. It looks the same same word as "Hydrocarbon", which is what we are made out of, along with all living things, and non-living things like mineral oil and coal. People says "carbs" when they talk about starchy foods, and we all know starch comes from potatoes and is used for ironing shirts. Things we mostly metabolise to sugars seems to be a good working definition.

It seems to me that a sweet potato is a materially different thing than a bowl or rice or sucrose. But they are all "carbs". So I tend to try to think in terms of food only.