Very confused as how to continue training

[sarahjane20]

Hay everyone,

I am 20 years old and I have been training 5 days a week for about 4,5 months now. I do hiit cardio on the crosstrainer 5 days a week followed by weight training. My schedule looks like this:

Mon: 25 hiit cardio crosstrainer, 1,5 hour weight training legs/glutes
Tues: 25 hiit cardio crosstrainer, 1 hour weight training biceps/triceps
Wed: rest day
Thur: 25 hiit cardio crosstrainer, 1 hour weight training back/shoulders
Frid: 25 hiit cardio crosstrainer, 1,5 hour weight training legs/glutes
Sat: 25 hiit cardio crosstrainer, 1 hour weight training biceps/triceps
Sun: rest day

Since starting my training I've lost about 4 kilos, I now weigh 57 kilos and I'm 1,67.

I have also adjusted my diet. I eat about 1300 calories a day, about 120 grams protein, 110-120 grams carbs, 30 grams good fats. And I also take a pws (whey isolate).

Unfortunately I have also lost a lot of my curves. I very much enjoy working out and doing cardio, however I really don't want to lose anymore weight. Right now my goal is to increase the size of my glutes, because i find that very attractive on a woman.

I don't know whether continuing with this frequency of cardio and weight training will get me the results that I want, I don't know how big glute muscles can get without a layer of fat. Or should I be doing less cardio in order to preserve some fat and at the same time increase my glute muscles?

I have also been doing a lot of heavy squats ( 35 kilo barbell 3 sets of 8 reps) to increase to the size of my glutes, however I noticed that my thighs were getting bigger as well, and I already have powerful thighs and would prefer for them to not grow as much. So now I have started experimenting with 2 min squats without any weights, I do squats 2 min long without a break, I really feel the burn, but I don't know whether that actually helps in reaching my goal.

I would love to continue toning and tightening my body, especially my abs, my arms and my legs. And I really want to increase the size of my glutes. So am I on the right track or should I be changing my training?

 

[Goldfish]

First things first, let's talk diet. You've probably been taught all your life "eat less." You're currently consuming 1,300kcal per day, which is fine for someone trying to lose weight, but that's no longer your goal, so you shouldn't be eating like that. You should be eating a bit more to maintain weight, and possibly even allow for some weight gain to build the size in your glutes that you're after. I'd say somewhere in the 1,500-2,000kcal/day range would be more fitting for your goals. You're consuming about the right amount of protein for your weight (~2g/kg bodyweight/day), but you'd do well to actually increase the amount of fat you're consuming each day (I know, first he tells you to eat more, than he tells you to eat more fat?! This guy must be yanking your chain!). The recommendation I always give is 1g/kg bodyweight/day in fat (or half your protein consumption), so you should be consuming 120g protein and 60g healthy fat/day.

Whether or not you keep up with the cardio is up to you. If it's what you enjoy doing, I say keep doing it. Just make sure that your calorie consumption each day is the sme as your calorie expenditure, if not more to help you build your curves.

As far as squats go, I don't know whether or not 2min rounds of BW squats will be doing you much good, but it wouldn't be my first recommendation.

One way in which you can both use your squats to build your glutes and take the focus off the rest of your legs is to pre-fatigue your glutes first. By pre-fatiguing the isolated target muscle, it becomes the point of failure in the following compound lift, so your sets of squats will end because your glutes are burnt out, not because of your legs. Try this on for size:

Pre-fatigue: Glute bridges or hip thrusts, 5x10. Start with bodyweight, and then progress by putting a padded barbell across your hips. Glutes get the most activation during hip hyperextension (not to be confused with lower back hyperextension), so try to really drive with your glutes throughout the movement and push their ROM. At the end of your 5x10, your glutes should be fatigued. If not, then prolong the last set, doing as many reps as you can with good technique until your glutes are fatigued.

Then, after you've done your 5x10 bridges or hip thrusts, do 2x10 full squats. You'll be using less weight than you're used to because your target muscles are already fatigued, but that's okay. You should still be pushing hard here, just focus on driving with the glutes, and stop when your glutes say it's time to stop.

 

[sarahjane20]

First things first, let's talk diet. You've probably been taught all your life "eat less." You're currently consuming 1,300kcal per day, which is fine for someone trying to lose weight, but that's no longer your goal, so you shouldn't be eating like that. You should be eating a bit more to maintain weight, and possibly even allow for some weight gain to build the size in your glutes that you're after. I'd say somewhere in the 1,500-2,000kcal/day range would be more fitting for your goals. You're consuming about the right amount of protein for your weight (~2g/kg bodyweight/day), but you'd do well to actually increase the amount of fat you're consuming each day (I know, first he tells you to eat more, than he tells you to eat more fat?! This guy must be yanking your chain!). The recommendation I always give is 1g/kg bodyweight/day in fat (or half your protein consumption), so you should be consuming 120g protein and 60g healthy fat/day.

Whether or not you keep up with the cardio is up to you. If it's what you enjoy doing, I say keep doing it. Just make sure that your calorie consumption each day is the sme as your calorie expenditure, if not more to help you build your curves.

As far as squats go, I don't know whether or not 2min rounds of BW squats will be doing you much good, but it wouldn't be my first recommendation.

One way in which you can both use your squats to build your glutes and take the focus off the rest of your legs is to pre-fatigue your glutes first. By pre-fatiguing the isolated target muscle, it becomes the point of failure in the following compound lift, so your sets of squats will end because your glutes are burnt out, not because of your legs. Try this on for size:

Pre-fatigue: Glute bridges or hip thrusts, 5x10. Start with bodyweight, and then progress by putting a padded barbell across your hips. Glutes get the most activation during hip hyperextension (not to be confused with lower back hyperextension), so try to really drive with your glutes throughout the movement and push their ROM. At the end of your 5x10, your glutes should be fatigued. If not, then prolong the last set, doing as many reps as you can with good technique until your glutes are fatigued.

Then, after you've done your 5x10 bridges or hip thrusts, do 2x10 full squats. You'll be using less weight than you're used to because your target muscles are already fatigued, but that's okay. You should still be pushing hard here, just focus on driving with the glutes, and stop when your glutes say it's time to stop.

Wow thank you so much for the advice, I was really confused as how to continue from here. But I'll definitely start trying the pre-fatigue workout. After all this training, and with all the cardio I do, i still however have a small layer of fat left on my abs and arms. If I were to increase my fat and calorie intake, would that stop me in toning my abs and arms? Because basically the only place I would like to increase muscle mass is in my glutes.

Also I would like to have lean long arm muscles, should I be training with higher reps and lower weights in order to achieve my goals? Because up until now I have been increasing the weight I use for my arms over time, but I feel like they are getting a little bit too muscular for my taste. My body has an hourglass shape, so my arms are already a little bit fuller looking due to my small waist. But also because there is still a layer of fat on my arms, I can't really judge accurately whether they will look leaner and slimmer if the fat goes away.

 

[Goldfish]

"Toned" = visible muscle, which is the product of first having the right amount of muscle, and then having the right amount of fat on top of it. By the sounds of things, to get closer to that goal on your arms and abs, you'll need to maintain muscle mass in those areas and lose bodyfat. That being the case, you can get your "toned" arms and abs plus your round bum, but probably only one (ie arms+abs OR bum) at a time. I'd focus on the butt first, since you'll likely have to increase bodyfat to some degree in the making of the butt, and then once it's built up a bit, start losing fat again to get your arms to where you want them to be.

All things being equal, higher reps = more volume. For a lot of people, one of the biggest things that drives muscular hypertrophy (growth) is volume. If you don't want your arms to get any bigger, then maybe isolating them for an hour twice a week shouldn't be in your plan, regardless of the weight used in each set or the rep range used.

I don't know exactly what you're currently doing with your upper body, but the following twice a week would probably suffice just fine:

- A horizontal push (eg flat bench press, incline bench press, dumbbell bench press, push ups, dips)
- A horizontal pull (some form of weighted row, either seated or bent over)
- A vertical push (some form of overhead press)
- A vertical pull (eg lat pull downs, chin ups, pull ups)

Do a movement for each of the above, for 2x10, after 1-2 warm up sets.

If you want to do resistance training 5 days a week, here's a simple split for you using the recommendations I've already given:

Mon: Glutes/legs
Tue: Upper body
Wed: Off
Thur: Glutes/legs
Fri: Upper body
Sat: Core
Sun: Off

For core work, here's 3 exercises I like to recommend. I'd suggest doing them all for 2x15:

- Stiff-legged Sit Ups (keep your legs tight throughout the ROM and focus on posture with the upper body -- the abs are contracted isometrically in supporting the trunk in normal extension rather than concentrically in taking the trunk out of extension/into flexion)
- Cable Woodchops (arms stay straight, torso stays in solid posture, the movement is in the hips, not the trunk)
- Hyperextensions (some trunk flexion is allowed if under strict control, think of pushing your hips into the hyperextension bench, which will bring your glutes into it, so they get worked one more time in the week)

 

[sarahjane20]

"Toned" = visible muscle, which is the product of first having the right amount of muscle, and then having the right amount of fat on top of it. By the sounds of things, to get closer to that goal on your arms and abs, you'll need to maintain muscle mass in those areas and lose bodyfat. That being the case, you can get your "toned" arms and abs plus your round bum, but probably only one (ie arms+abs OR bum) at a time. I'd focus on the butt first, since you'll likely have to increase bodyfat to some degree in the making of the butt, and then once it's built up a bit, start losing fat again to get your arms to where you want them to be.

All things being equal, higher reps = more volume. For a lot of people, one of the biggest things that drives muscular hypertrophy (growth) is volume. If you don't want your arms to get any bigger, then maybe isolating them for an hour twice a week shouldn't be in your plan, regardless of the weight used in each set or the rep range used.

I don't know exactly what you're currently doing with your upper body, but the following twice a week would probably suffice just fine:

- A horizontal push (eg flat bench press, incline bench press, dumbbell bench press, push ups, dips)
- A horizontal pull (some form of weighted row, either seated or bent over)
- A vertical push (some form of overhead press)
- A vertical pull (eg lat pull downs, chin ups, pull ups)

Do a movement for each of the above, for 2x10, after 1-2 warm up sets.

If you want to do resistance training 5 days a week, here's a simple split for you using the recommendations I've already given:

Mon: Glutes/legs
Tue: Upper body
Wed: Off
Thur: Glutes/legs
Fri: Upper body
Sat: Core
Sun: Off

For core work, here's 3 exercises I like to recommend. I'd suggest doing them all for 2x15:

- Stiff-legged Sit Ups (keep your legs tight throughout the ROM and focus on posture with the upper body -- the abs are contracted isometrically in supporting the trunk in normal extension rather than concentrically in taking the trunk out of extension/into flexion)
- Cable Woodchops (arms stay straight, torso stays in solid posture, the movement is in the hips, not the trunk)
- Hyperextensions (some trunk flexion is allowed if under strict control, think of pushing your hips into the hyperextension bench, which will bring your glutes into it, so they get worked one more time in the week)

I really can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions. Thank you so much. There are so many questions I have, I really feel like I want to sit down and talk to you for hours haha. The problem is, that I have tried finding all of this information on the net, but I can't really find the answers I'm looking for. And usually I end up finding so many different general answers that it just confuses me more than anything.

Okay so in a nutshell I should be focusing on my glutes first by pre-fatigue workouts and increasing my fat intake to about 60 grams a day. Then once I have reached that goal, I can start focusing on my abs and arms.

I focus so much on my arms because I read that for example Jennifer Aniston who I find has beautiful arms, trains her arms with weights up to about 4 kilo's and does so regularly. She does high reps with low weights.

Also won't it cause muscle imbalance if i train my legs more intensely than my upper body? Because then I will only be performing very few exercises for my upper body (biceps triceps mostly). And the vertical push, can that also be the triceps machine?

And I find it very important not to make my back/shoulders broad, should I keep the weight down when I'm performing back exercises?

Thanks again Goldfish!

 

[sarahjane20]

One more question:

What would be a good split if I were to train 4 days? Because I feel I need to do a bit less cardio to gain a bit more weight and to reach my goal.

 

[Goldfish]

The joy and dilemma of the information age: more information than you could ever absorb at your finger tips, some of it from reliable resources, some of it not. Fitness in particular is a great big bundle of mind-numbing stuff, since there's so many different approaches that will work (provided a few basic principles are adhered to).

Okay so in a nutshell I should be focusing on my glutes first by pre-fatigue workouts and increasing my fat intake to about 60 grams a day. Then once I have reached that goal, I can start focusing on my abs and arms.

Right on the first part. The part about focusing on abs and arms later...not entirely. More, focus on building the muscle you want to build first, and then focus on getting rid of excess fat until you've reached the level of "toned"ness you're after.

I focus so much on my arms because I read that for example Jennifer Aniston who I find has beautiful arms, trains her arms with weights up to about 4 kilo's and does so regularly. She does high reps with low weights.

That's probably true, but I doubt she does an hour of arm isolation exercises twice a week. Even if she does, it doesn't take a lot of work to maintain the amount of muscle that's already there (which sounds like it's what you'll want to be doing with your arms), so just a couple sets of exercises that use the arms (which all the upper body pushes and pulls I mentioned earlier do, along with balancing out the shoulder girdle) taken to about a 6-9/10 rating of perceived exertion should be sufficient.

Also won't it cause muscle imbalance if i train my legs more intensely than my upper body? Because then I will only be performing very few exercises for my upper body (biceps triceps mostly). And the vertical push, can that also be the triceps machine?

If you only do what I've recommended thus far, then you shouldn't run into much trouble with muscle imbalances. If you take what I've suggested and then add another 10 leg exercises onto it, then you might be in for some strife.

As for the vertical push, I don't know what triceps machine you're working with, so I can't say for sure. But, unless you have any shoulder injuries or mechanical issues to the contrary, the vertical push should be a compound lift (just as the horizontal push, horizontal pull and vertical pull should be). Most vertical pushes will have a lot of triceps involvement, though, along with shoulders, upper chest and upper back. If you want to do any triceps isolation exercises, do them after the four pushes and pulls, and do a bicep isolation exercise for every triceps isolation exercise you do. You probably won't need any upper body isolation exercises, though.

And I find it very important not to make my back/shoulders broad, should I keep the weight down when I'm performing back exercises?

I'd just focus on scapular depression and retraction (ie pulling the shoulder blades down and together) during back exercises. Emphasise the muscles involved in that rather than the lats (which add the most width to the back) and you'll probably be right. If you do find that even in doing that your lats still get too big, then back off the weight. Once again, for each of the upper body pushes and pulls, I'd focus on a 6-9/10 RPE. That, with a relatively low volume (just a couple sets of 10 for each) should be sufficient to provide musculoskeletal benefits without putting too much mass on there. Of course, only time will tell what works for you and what doesn't.

What would be a good split if I were to train 4 days? Because I feel I need to do a bit less cardio to gain a bit more weight and to reach my goal.

I'd remove the core training day, and either put hyperextensions on one lower body day and sit-ups + woodchops on the other, or do all the core exercises on both lower body training days. I think I said earlier that cardio is optional when it comes to body composition goals, so cut out (or leave in) as much of it as you feel is fitting to your goals.

 

[sarahjane20]

Right on the first part. The part about focusing on abs and arms later...not entirely. More, focus on building the muscle you want to build first, and then focus on getting rid of excess fat until you've reached the level of "toned"ness you're after."

true, but I find it hard to judge when I've reached a certain leved of toned'ness. I keep doubting whether it's still a layer of fat or whether its muscle mass.

so just a couple sets of exercises that use the arms (which all the upper body pushes and pulls I mentioned earlier do, along with balancing out the shoulder girdle) taken to about a 6-9/10 rating of perceived exertion should be sufficient.

So I have to stop doing isolated body part training, and instead do a couple sets of the exercises you recommended. But the part about the shoulder girdle..? Or was that just a general comment, nothing specific.

If you only do what I've recommended thus far, then you shouldn't run into much trouble with muscle imbalances. If you take what I've suggested and then add another 10 leg exercises onto it, then you might be in for some strife.

What I now do on both leg days:

butt bridge about 3 x 15 with 12 kg, then 2 x 10 squats 30 kg on barbell
butt bridge 1 x 15 12 kg, then lunges 3 x 12 (per leg) around 7 kg
butt bridge 1 x 15 12 kg, then step up&down bench 3 x 16 around 7 kg

On one of the leg days I also include:

inner thigh machine 3 x 12
outer thigh machine 3 x 12
leg curl machine 3 x 10

Would this be an alright amount of exercises?

As for the vertical push, I don't know what triceps machine you're working with, so I can't say for sure. But, unless you have any shoulder injuries or mechanical issues to the contrary, the vertical push should be a compound lift (just as the horizontal push, horizontal pull and vertical pull should be). Most vertical pushes will have a lot of triceps involvement, though, along with shoulders, upper chest and upper back. If you want to do any triceps isolation exercises, do them after the four pushes and pulls, and do a bicep isolation exercise for every triceps isolation exercise you do. You probably won't need any upper body isolation exercises, though.

Okay I need to start looking up some compound lifting exercises then, cause up until now I've mostly been doing isolation exercises.


Basically my training schedule will look like this:

Mon: Hiit cardio 25 min, Glutes/legs
Tue: Hiit cardio 25 min, Upper body/hyperextensions
Wed: Off
Thur: Hiit cardio 25 min, Glutes/legs
Fri: Hiit cardio 25 min, Upper body/ sit-ups + woodchops
Sat: off
Sun: Off

My diet should change to: about 1600 kcal, 120gr protein, 60gr fat, 140 gr carbs

And then in about 6 weeks I should start changing my exercises again right?

Again thank you soooo much goldfish. Where do you live actually?

 

[Goldfish]

true, but I find it hard to judge when I've reached a certain leved of toned'ness. I keep doubting whether it's still a layer of fat or whether its muscle mass.

How about go by how it looks?

So I have to stop doing isolated body part training, and instead do a couple sets of the exercises you recommended. But the part about the shoulder girdle..? Or was that just a general comment, nothing specific.

You don't have to stop doing isolated body part training, but it's a lot more than what you'll probably need for your goals. Shoulder girdle is just a general comment.

What I now do on both leg days:

butt bridge about 3 x 15 with 12 kg, then 2 x 10 squats 30 kg on barbell
butt bridge 1 x 15 12 kg, then lunges 3 x 12 (per leg) around 7 kg
butt bridge 1 x 15 12 kg, then step up&down bench 3 x 16 around 7 kg

On one of the leg days I also include:

inner thigh machine 3 x 12
outer thigh machine 3 x 12
leg curl machine 3 x 10

Would this be an alright amount of exercises?

Only time will tell. There does appear to be an appropriate balance there between quad-dominant and glute/hamstring-dominant exercises, so in that aspect you should be fine, however you probably don't need that many exercises.

Okay I need to start looking up some compound lifting exercises then, cause up until now I've mostly been doing isolation exercises.


Basically my training schedule will look like this:

Mon: Hiit cardio 25 min, Glutes/legs
Tue: Hiit cardio 25 min, Upper body/hyperextensions
Wed: Off
Thur: Hiit cardio 25 min, Glutes/legs
Fri: Hiit cardio 25 min, Upper body/ sit-ups + woodchops
Sat: off
Sun: Off

My diet should change to: about 1600 kcal, 120gr protein, 60gr fat, 140 gr carbs

That all looks good to me.

And then in about 6 weeks I should start changing my exercises again right?

Only if the exercises you're using aren't working -- and it's not because of intensity, volume, frequency, nutrition, etc -- or you're sick of them. There's no arbitrary need to change your exercise selection every X amount of weeks, for the most part that's just something fitness magazines came up with to sell more copies/issues.

Again thank you soooo much goldfish. Where do you live actually?

I live in Brisbane, Australia. :animal: