Another one of these summer workout questions

[chilaxin12 2]

I've been working out now for the past month and a half pretty seriously, 6 days a week with a rest day, never working the same group without having at least 72 hours rest. Here is my question, I took about a month off after hockey and I put on excess weight in my stomach, however I am a rather thin kid and I am taking whey protein to help further grow my muscles, I have been doing at least 3 miles a day on the bike and doing a few hundred ab exercises a day, should i just keep at it and eventually my stomach area will flatten out and I'll lose some of the excess weight or should I ditch the whey protein in favor of something else or nothing, I'm not getting large, I only have like a 35" waist I'm just wondering if my taking of the whey is kinda prohibiting me from losing weight in that area and gaining it in my muscles where I want it.

[crazylegs_9 0]

I use whey when I go through my workout cycles, but use OJ instead of milk to cut down on fat. With that I eat a ton of bagels, multigrain bread...etc. Simply cutting mayo off sandwiches, and avoiding using butter on anything I eat seems to work best for me for cutting my stomach down. Along with putting yourself into situations where you sweat ALOT. I eat more than anyone I know and seem to stay fit by following those guidelines. Now my legs are getting huge with my stomach going down at the same time. I only weight train each muscle group once a week, but do biking/skating 5 days a week. Peter Twist's conditioning book did a ton for me. Its a good read.

[jmiro 55]

try upping your cardio. you can do all the ab exercises you want if you dont do cardio you just build muscle under your fat. You have to be close to single digit body fat for you abs to "pop"

[Jarick 5]

Biggest impact I've seen in my weight loss is fat. Since it has so many calories per gram, it's huge in contributing to weight gain. It takes something like three burritos with lots of cheese and calorie-dense tortillas to fill me up like a sandwich with whole wheat bread topped with lots of veggies and lean meats. The more I watch my fat intake, the more weight I lose. Just keep the protein intake high so you don't lose muscle.

I also recommend checking out Bodybuilding.com. The website is free, has thousands of articles, and helpful calorie calculators to help figure out how much food you should eat every day. Did I mention it's 100% free and it has all the info you ever need?

[ThePurpleCobra 0]

is running and a low calorie diet really the key to loosing weight and getting in shape?

[Jarick 5]

The key to getting in shape is eating the proper amount of food spread out over several meals and creating a calorie deficit through exercise. And unless you want to lose muscle and strength, it would also include strength/weight training and increased protein consumption.

Bodybuilding.com

[usahockey22 0]

Lose the "hundreds of ab exercises". There's no need to do any more than maybe a few sets of crunches for your abs during a workout. If you want fat to come off, you either have to burn more calories, or reduce your caloric intake. So, lower your carbs and/or increase your cardio. Doing the cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach will help.

[tomh7 2]

Try limiting or eliminating your carb intake in the evenings. Carbs are an important source of lasting energy but get stored as fat when not completly burned. Also, stay away from sugars (i.e. candy, soda, fruits, etc.). Don't starve yourself because your you body will automatically conserve fat stores for future energy needs while burning muscle in order to provide current energy needs.

A perfect example - especially this time of year - is when you hear about NHL player in the playoffs loosing body weight over the course of the long playoffs. Their energy requirements for playing night after night over short spans are so high that they cannot take in enough calories to maintain their body weight. A top athlete has little body fat to begin with so there is not extra store of energy to feed off of so the body burns muscle instead.

[Pats 0]

Lose the "hundreds of ab exercises". There's no need to do any more than maybe a few sets of crunches for your abs during a workout. If you want fat to come off, you either have to burn more calories, or reduce your caloric intake. So, lower your carbs and/or increase your cardio. Doing the cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach will help.

Doing things in the morning on an empty stomach might not be the best idea for losing weight. As ironic as this sounds, one of the best things you can do to boost your metabolism is eat breakfast as soon as you wake up.

[GoHawks 0]

I agree with Pats. You should never exercise on an empty stomach, it can cause you to burn muscle faster, because it's easier to burn muscle than to dip into the fat. If you have some food in you, your body won't go straight for the muscle to get it's energy.

On another note, if you're looking to burn some excess fat, caloric deficit is really the only good way to do it, like they said above. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is a good way to burn extra calories, because although you burn less during your workout (since it's shorter than a long run), you tend to keep more fast-twitch muscle fiber (good for hockey) and it raises your metabolism a lot, so you burn a lot more calories later in the day.

[B Neal 0]

I have a question along the same lines. (Not trying to Hi-jack your thread) I also put on a few pounds in the month I took off after the hockey season. I've been back on the weights now. I want to run and do cardio and lose the extra fat, but I'm worried about gaining no strength and muscle mass if I'm running along with weightlifting. Should I still be able to gain muscle and strength and cut fat at the same time?

[GoHawks 0]

It's very hard, if not impossible to drop fat and build muscle at the same time. Your best bet is probably High intensity cardio, as long runs will break down the muscle fiber you've spent building up at the gym... Look into HIIT, a very simple workout is to run maybe 5 minutes warmup, stretch, then do 30-45 second sprint, then 1:00-1:15 slow jog or walk. Start doing 5-7 cycles, then cooldown 5-10 minutes, and stretch. Like I said above, it'll burn more calories later in the day, and is less catabolic than distance running. Hope that helps, there are other sources on the internet that can explain it better (try www.AskMen.com)

[usahockey22 0]

Doing things in the morning on an empty stomach might not be the best idea for losing weight. As ironic as this sounds, one of the best things you can do to boost your metabolism is eat breakfast as soon as you wake up.

This method has been used by many to lose weight...high intensity cardio in the morning will jack your metabolism way more than eating a breakfast first thing. You wake up, do the cardio, then have a big meal. You can find the studies if you look...

I want to run and do cardio and lose the extra fat, but I'm worried about gaining no strength and muscle mass if I'm running along with weightlifting. Should I still be able to gain muscle and strength and cut fat at the same time?

Gaining strength you can certainly do while cutting fat. Strength, power, and endurance are what you should mainly be training for as a hockey player. Muscle mass and size are not something to shoot for, unless you think that you aren't big enough to hold your own on the ice.

Anyway, no it's not hard to gain muscle while losing fat, if you look at the percentages. Saying that you would like lose 15 pounds of fat while putting on 10 pounds of muscle is ridiculous, and won't happen. But you can do something like put on 10 pounds of muscle, along with maybe 2 pounds of fat. Therefore, your bodyfat percentage has dropped, while you weigh more. You have more actual fat mass, but less percent fat total.

You should really still eat a good amount, lift hard at least 3 days a week (compound lifts that will actually improve your performance, not just trying to add an inch to your biceps for the summer or something, though if you lift hard for strength your muscle mass and looks will improve too). As long as you are doing a good amount of cardio in addition to lifting and eating, you should be ok, unless you are older with a slower metabolism, or generally put on fat easily. If this starts to happen, then lower your carbs slightly until you see that you are gaining mostly muscle and not fat. If you haven't been seriously lifting or working out for any significant amount of time (sounds likely), then it is possible that you really could gain some muscle while losing fat, as your body will respond well to the exercise.

[Fixxer 0]

The secret to speed and goal scoring is coke. Lots and lots of coke.

http://www.ovechkinfans.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=30

[AnthonyJTa 0]

Lose the "hundreds of ab exercises". There's no need to do any more than maybe a few sets of crunches for your abs during a workout. If you want fat to come off, you either have to burn more calories, or reduce your caloric intake. So, lower your carbs and/or increase your cardio. Doing the cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach will help.

Doing things in the morning on an empty stomach might not be the best idea for losing weight. As ironic as this sounds, one of the best things you can do to boost your metabolism is eat breakfast as soon as you wake up.

I try to get in some fast-diesting protein, and fast-digesting carbs first thing in the morning, before the gym. I drink a MetRX RTD (ready to drink) protein shake with about 30g of protein, and 20-30 grams of dextrose.. I'll sip it on my ride to the gym... then after the workout, I try to have slow-digesting carbs (multi-grain waffles, or breads/bagels) and a peice of fruit to give me a kickstart through the rest of my morning until it's time to fuel up pre-lunch.

[WSjo22 1]

Check out the protien your using..... Alot of drinks like that are loaded with sugars and crap... Enough to make you gain a couple pounds on its own if your drinking a couple shakes a day..So if your not already using one find one with low carbs... I suprisingly found a cheap one at Wal-Mart for like 10 bucks that had a 23g of protein to 2g of carbs ratio and its worked better than any of the $50-60 big name stuff

[GSHL99 0]

Would you do hundreds of bench presses every day? I really don't know why this is, but for some reason quite a few people think the abs are super special muscles that cannot be over trained. The reality is you're over training your abs. When your body cannot rebuild the muscle that's certainly a factor in why your gut looks like mush. Train the abs just like every other muscle group allowing sufficent rest.

[usahockey22 0]

Crunches are pretty much worthless for an athlete, or anyone who is really trying to improve their fitness. You will strengthen your core muscles doing exercises like squats, deadlifts, and olympic lifts, as well as playing your sport. Crunches are incomparable to these for core strength and athletic performance.

I train just for strength and power while I'm in the gym, though I'm not skinny either...for extra abs, I just hit one set of declined, weighted crunches at the end of my workout, so only 3 sets of real ab work each week. I also have a six pack and a very strong core. It just depends on body fat percentage, and genetics whether or not you will have fat there, not how many crunches you do.

[Jim A 4]

you have to run a lot, more than any just about any MSH'er and for long enough for your body to secrete the hormone that stunts muscle development...

running a couple miles per day will not make you look like a kenyan, i think the biggest thing we see nowadays is that people cannot wait for their body to develop, when its ready its ready...and oftentimes what it needs most is some rest for change to occur, adaptation traditionally is found after 6 weeks of training and then takes up to another 6 weeks for it to fully take hold...by then most of us have begun looking for the next big thing..

if you want to lose lbs around the middle you need to just run at a small caloric deficit but not starve your body post work out or it will hold back and slow down

[chilaxin12 2]

Wow I didn't expect these kinda results, I plan on using this thread as hopefully a jump start to being in top condition both physically and nutritionally so that way I can perform at top level.