Sean's Answers For Stanley Soon
Question For Sean Toh? How To Get Muscular?
Hi Mr. Sean Toh,
I heard about you b4 from the news, you have a great body. I'm 34 yrs old 172cm and 64kg, this year Aug I started to pick up gym. I tried to go gym 2 per wk and gym for 1 hour but until now I hardly can see the result. I'm not sure is it 1 hour too short or is it due to my age and having long time to see the result. I’m not sure which type of supplement is suitable for me. Do I need to increase the hour in gym and how long do I gym per each time? What are the supplements and how do I do to burn my fat at my stomach and build up my shoulder, chest and 6 packs. Hope to hear from you. Please advice. Thank you
Regards
Stanley Soon
Here Is The Answers Specially For Your Questions, Stanley! Sincerely From Sean Toh.
Dear Stanley,
It's my pleasure meeting you. Thanks for disclosing your problems to me. After reading your e-mail and trying to understand the problems that you face. I understand your difficulties in trying to build some muscles and seeing some results after going through all the sessions in the gym.
First of all, I must say that you are a very hardworking person compared to most people. You are actually training well, you are training twice a week and working out for an hour for each gym session.
What I'm going to do is to advise you and guide you to a total approach to your problems by changing the different elements in your training routine and approach it with a solid total approach to achieve a healthier and a better body through proper eating habits of choosing the right food. I'm also going to guide you to the process of building muscles as well as how you can use proper supplementation to aid your muscular growth.
You are the same age as me and I can tell you I share the same experience as I age. I build up fat easily as I age because my metabolism becomes slower when I hit 30 years old. Before 30 years old, I can eat all I want and I will never put on the weight. My first lesson for you is as we age, our metabolism will slow down. Hence, how are we going to boost up our metabolism rate in our body?
Hence, you have to increase your metabolism rate by doing your cardiovascular training. What is cardiovascular training? My second lesson for you is to understand cardiovascular training.
Cardiovascular training is a key piece of the puzzle in achieving the body of your dreams. It is the catalyst in our fitness programs that helps melt away that fat, and at the same time strengthens the most important muscle of them all THE HEART! Improved moods and stress relief are some emotional benefits that can be added to the list. Now gyms are equipped with every cardio machine you can think of, treadmills, stair climbers, gauntlets, rowing machines, bikes, elliptical machines, the list goes on.
Benefits Of A Sound Cardiovascular Routine:
You will burn off excess calories.
Increases the body's ability to burn fat efficiently
Lowers your body fat set point. ( ex. Going from 12% to 9%)
Allows you to increase your present caloric intake to allow the body to BURN FAT while at the same time have enough food and nutrients to BUILD MUSCLE! (Big plus!)
Increases the mitochondria (Energy Factories in our cells) to allow greater endurance and blood flow in our weight training sessions.
Helps improve overall circulation to the whole body
Will increase recuperation by help ridding the body of the waste products of exercise (lactic acid) and allowing for the proper blood flow of vital nutrients and building materials to repair the muscles.
How Many Times & How Long? How many times a week? How long?
This is where, depending on your fitness goals, people will differ. For the person looking to get all the unwanted body fat off, 4-6 days a week at 30-60 minutes will do wonders. If you are not used to cardio, start off slowly with maybe 20 minutes 3 times a week and then slowly build up the frequency and the duration at your own pace.
What Intensity Do I Use?
The best way to burn fat through cardiovascular exercise it to do it at a moderate intensity in your fat burning heart rate zone (60%-75% of Target Heart Rate), for a longer duration (30-60 min).
I do my cardiovascular exercise on my treadmill at home for 45 minutes every day to keep myself lean. Hence, you can plan your at least 3-4 times a week. After dealing with your fat level, I am going to recommend some supplements for aiding your fat burning process as you mentioned that you like to get rid of your fat around your stomach area. These are products use by me, competitive bodybuilders and fitness models to get them in top shape for showing those sexy and beautiful abdominal muscles for cover shot for magazines.
Click here to see my recommended Products For Fat Loss!
Now, I'm going to guide you to the process of building muscles. Weight training and bodybuilding is a totally different form of training. Bodybuilding is different from cardiovascular training, bodybuilding is a form of anabolic training. However, a lots of people overdo it. They are training all the body parts everyday. My third lesson for you is to understand the process of building muscles.
I'm sure that most people who have performed some form of resistance training have wanted to increase their muscle mass at one time or another. But the body is just naturally lazy and will only develop enough muscle to deal with the loads placed upon it. So, if you want to develop more muscle, then you better get ready to do some hard work and prepare for slow gains, for the body will only respond to a combination of resistance training, diet and rest.
The process of muscle growth is based on the idea that lifting breaks down the muscle, and growth results from over-compensating to protect the body from future stress. The human body breaks down and rebuilds all of the muscles every 15 to 30 days. Lifting speeds up the process due to an increased need for fuel. Rebuilding peaks 24 to 36 hours after training and continues at increased rates for as much as 72 hours. Hence, the muscle has a certain amount of energy at any given time, for growth, repair, and movement. The mistakes most people made are they are training too often in the gym. Stanley, you may increase your frequency to 3 times for week for weight training and that is the maximum for you. However, you can do your cardiovascular training 5 times per week. You must break down the muscles cells by training and the next process the muscles will go through is recovering from your workout. Before you make the mistakes most people made is to hit the gym again, you have to give that muscles a time to grow. Understanding muscle growth is the key knowledge to building your muscles.
Click here to see my recommended resources for Understanding Muscles Growth!
The Importance Of Stress On The Body & How Much To Do For Your Weight Training?
Research has shown that in order to increase muscle mass, stress must be put on the body, leading to increased hormone release, and increased flow of nutrients into the muscle, and with rest, muscles will grow. If someone asked me what they should do to add some serious amounts of muscle, I would recommend three sets of 8 to 12 reps with all the weight that you can handle.
Having understood the process of building your muscles. Now, my fourth lesson is to guide you to plan a training program for yourself so that you have a total systematic approach to training your body.
Sean's Training Plan Specially For Stanley!
Those in green are the body parts that you ask me to guide you in your e-mail !
Monday:
Body Parts To be Trained : Chest, Shoulder, Triceps
Exercises for Chest : ( 3 sets of 12 repetitions for each exercise )
1. Incline Bench Press
2. Dumbbell Flye
3. Bench Press
Exercises for Shoulder : ( 3 sets of 12 repetitions for each exercise )
1. Dumbbell Side Raise
2. Barbell Press
Exercises for Triceps : ( 3 sets of 12 repetitions for each exercise )
1. Triceps Pushdown
2. Dipping
Tuesday:
Cardiovascular Training For Keeping Body lean ( 45 mins)
Wednesday:
Body Parts To be Trained : Legs (Quadriceps & Hamstring), Abdominal
Exercises for Legs : ( 3 sets of 12 repetitions for each exercise )
1. Leg Extension
2. Lunges
3. Lying Leg Curls
Exercises for Abdominal : ( 3 sets of 12 repetitions for each exercise )
1. Crunches
2. Lying Leg Raises
3. Twisting With Stick
Thursday:
Cardiovascular Training For Keeping Body lean ( 45 mins)
Friday:
Body Parts To be Trained : Back, Biceps
Exercises for Back : ( 3 sets of 12 repetitions for each exercise )
1. Lat Machine Pulldown
2. Seated Machine Row
3. Upright Row
Exercises for Biceps : ( 3 sets of 12 repetitions for each exercise )
1. Alternating Dumbbell Curl
2. Hammer Curl
Saturday:
Cardiovascular Training For Keeping Body lean ( 45 mins)
Sunday:
Rest & Enjoy Your Favorite food
Stanley, this is a very comprehensive training plan that I planned for you if you want to have an overall beautiful body that is nice to look at as you train every single body parts. This might be just a sample plan that you can follow through. I do not know if you know all the exercises that I have planned for you in this plan? You have to know how to execute all the different exercises before you can get started. Just in case, you do not know the exercises and need to see more training plans.
Click here to see my recommended list of resources for Executing All The Exercises!
As for supplements, I don’t recommend using all the supplements in the market. What is the purpose of supplements? My fifth lesson for you is to educate you how you can use supplements to help you gain and maintain those muscles.
I am often asked the following two questions: a) What do you take and how is it working? and b) But can't you build a better physique from whole food? These two questions go hand in hand. Right now I'm taking protein powder, meal replacement powders and multi vitamins. The answer to both questions is yes. You can build a better body on a real good diet just like the guys back in the 50's did, but to do so can take so much time, energy, and trips to the supermarket.
Supplements make it much easier to get the necessary nutrients to build muscle and can even give you an advantage and enhance your training when taken right and combined with a good diet. In this following article, I'm going to talk about the importance of supplements, their rank of importance (in my opinion), and supplements that can be added to give you the advantage over the guy who refuses to use creatine, but thinks he'll get big from eating frosted flakes after he works out.
Ok, let me first say that the most important aspect of diet is whole foods. You must eat 6 - 7 meals per day and each one should contain protein and carbs. 3 - 4 of these meals should consist of whole foods like chicken, rice and salad. The other 3 - 4 should consist of liquid protein like protein shakes and mrp's. Usually when I pick out an mrp, I try to get the most inexpensive, as most contain about the same ratio of macro-nutrients (carbs/pro/fat) 24/42/2, but still one that is from a reputable company. Right now I am taking EAS Myoplex ($1.60/serving when bought from Bodybuilding.com, $2.74 per serving when bought elsewhere), but I will probably switch to Nutriforce by Sportpharma ($1.44/serving from Bodybuilding.com). As you can easily see it is much cheaper and much better for you than eating at a fast food restaraunt and about the same price as 10 eggwhites and a serving of oatmeal, but much easier to eat and better tasting. Usually I take a packet between classes (I eat breakfast at 7:30, and lunch at 2:30).
Equally important are whey protein powders as they are absorbed faster than mrp's and therefore desirable after working out and before bed. This is exactly when I take them. A scoop after working out, then a scoop and a half before bed. Like mrp's, I try to find one that is inexpensive, has low sodium (under 100mg), low-carbs (under 5-6gm), and from a reputable company. Right now I am taking Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey, but Prolab's 5 lb. Pure Whey and EAS's 100% Whey Protein 5 lb. are high quality and inexpensive also.
I believe that along with the top two, multi-vitamins rank in the top 3 (between protein and multi's it is impossible to distinguish which is more important... they are both essential). Currently I take a generic one-a-day multi four times per day (2 with breakfast and 2 before bed). Make sure you are getting at least 500 mg's of vitamin c and 400 iu's from vitamin E. The other nutrients should be over 100%, remember people that exercise intensely need more nutrients than those who don't. EAS and Prolab make good multi blends.
When you're diet is good and the above three are being used properly, then and only then (considering you have the money, that's why I gave what I thought to be the most inexpensive solutions) should you move on to the next set of supplements. I think the next most important supplement is creatine. While it has never really worked well for me (I'm in the unlucky 10 percentile), almost everyone else I know has gotten phenominal results from this supplement.
When buying creatine it is important to find a reputable brand. This means no GNC blowout sale creatine as it can be very low quality. Personally I think the best creatine products out there (pure creatine, flavored ones are a waste of money in my opinion, as you are paying for dextrose which costs about 30 cents a pound) are Prolab's, AST's, and EAS's.
Stanley, I hope you have a better education on the purpose of supplements for bodybuilding. Learning how to eat properly is also a key contributing factor to how successful you build your body. From my many years of experience of bodybuilding, I advocate you eat 6-7 regular smalls meals spread throughout an interval of 3 hours to supply the body with the essential nutrients for optimum growth. If you find that you need further education on how to plan a proper nutrition for building your body, do not hesitate to find out more information from the library or you can
Click here for my recommended list of resources for Understanding How To Eat Well For Bodybuilding!
Although I have recommended and advise you on lots of matters, it takes more than education, resources and advice for you to be successful. You need to be patience and committed to your plan to achieve a bit of results. When you see your body changing. It’s that bit of results that will motivate you even more to train harder. Just in case, if you have been waiting the whole day for all the answers. I will like to apologize for the delay to your answers because I believe in giving my best advice to you personally and sincerely from my heart. I needed the time to understand the problems you faced, understanding them and finding the right resources for your education so that you have a higher success rate when you implement your plan.
Last but not least, may I wish you all the success implementing the plan and achieving some results that you can see for yourself. Do consult a proper physician before consuming any supplements that you are not sure. It’s has been my pleasure providing consultancy service to you, Stanley!
Your Sincerely
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