Q&A for: 30-Aug-05
442. Q:
What is a suitable dietry guidline for a power athlete such as a weight lifter?
A:
Power and strength atheletes most often compete grouped by weight classes where all competitors weigh in the same range. Therefore a typical power athlete will first of all want to keep in the range, preferably at or near the top of it since extra weight equals extra muscle and strength. For athletes such wrestlers, especially, it's common to be slightly above their competition weight and then in the last few days go on a very intensive cardio program and even intentionally dehydrate themselves to make the competition weight.
A power athlete's diet and training program would typically be structured around the competitions. If, say, the athlete has only one competition a year then his training program will go through hypertrophy, strength, and power phases of several months each with power peaking right before the competition. During the hypertrophy phase the athelete's objective will be to gain new muscle and his diet will be a bulking diet, not dissimilar to the sample muscle-building diets given here. During the other two phases, the athlete will have a maintenance diet (aimed at keeping the weight constant) or possibly a slight fat-loss diet if too much weight was gained during the hypertrophy phase.
A maintenance diet for a power athlete need not be as strict as muscle-building or fat-burning phases in the number of meals and the types of foods since their body composition is not expected to change during the maintenance periods anyway. They will most likely structure the meals of the maintenance phases around their training sessions and eat such foods and at such times as to give them the most energy for their training without weighing them down.
443. Q:
How do u get ur chest shoulders and back really bulky in the matter of 2 months
A:
You can't do too much in just 2 months, though you can certainly start making progress. If you're lean now, you need to start bulking -- overeating to gain weight and lifting heavy at the same time. Your weight gain should be pretty slow (no more than 1 pound per week and ideally even slower) because otherwise you'll just end up gaining a ton of fat -- see Q&A #94 for how much muscle a new trainee can expect to gain with a good diet and exercise program.
If you don't gain weight, then you can forget about ever being bulky and if you gain weight too fast then you'll just end up with extra fat, so you need to be diligent with your diet to be gaining weight gradually. Besides eating right, you obviously need to lift weights. Check out the essential back, chest, and shoulder exercises here. Those exercises will be the core of your training.
What you do next is fill out the Fitness Guide questionnaire to get your recommended training and diet program. Then you adjust the training program to emphasize back, chest, and shoulder exercises more -- that means do them first in your routine and do an extra few sets compared to what the program prescribes. And scale down on leg and arm exercises since you're less concerned with their appearence.
On the whole, you have to be dedicated and patient. You will see some good progress in 2 months, but you won't yet be bulky. You'll have to keep at it longer than that. After 1 year if you do everything right you have a good chance to start looking truly bulky. Good luck!
444. Q:
iam 18 6'3 and weight 230 my bmi is 25 i use nitro tech protien shaks and wanan try using cell tech with it.. I wanna turn my fat into mucle but not become a carzy body builder look.. is creatine good for me or willit just make me fatter
A:
You can't turn fat into muscle directly, the only way to do it is to first lose the fat and then build the muscle. I normally would not recommend trying to lose weight for an 18-year old, but in your case you are probably mostly done with your growing and could potentially lose 15 or even 25 pounds without jeopardizing your health in any way. That would be my recommendation --change to a fat-burning diet while continue to weighttraing. You can get the complete prescription by filling out the Fitness Guide and specifying 'Lose Fat' as your goal.
By the time you've lost that weight (in 4-6 months time or so) you should start getting some good muscle tone since you'll be fairly lean. Then you can decide whether you want to build some more muscle. If you decide to, then you can fill out the Fitness Guide again, specifying 'Build Muscle' as your goal, to get a new diet prescription.
As to nitro tech and cell tech, they're perfectly good (though grossly overpriced) products. Nitro tech or any other whey protein powder can be a good dietary supplement if you're having trouble getting enough protein from 'real' foods. Cell tech is less appropriate when trying to lose fat -- it has a TON of sugars which make creatine more effective but are the last thing you want when trying to burn fat. I would not use cell tech while trying to lose weight. It is appropriate for a muscle-building phase which you may choose to embark on after you've lose some fat. You could get a pure creatine monohydrate powder without all the sugar and take that during the fat-loss phase -- it won't be as effective as sugar+creatine, but it will come close and won't interfere with burning the fat. A good time to take plain creatine without sugar dissolved in water is right after your workouts before your post-workout meal.
Finally, don't worry about becoming like the pro bodybuilders in cell tech ads -- they didn't get that way due to cell tech and it certainly didn't happen overnight. If at any point you start feeling that you have too much muscle you can always stop eating to gain weight -- without weight gain your muscles will not grow at any significant pace after your first 1-2 years of training.
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