Hey guys, I want to slim down so I can look all ripped up like Zac Efron. Can anyone give me advice????

I think you misunderstood what he was saying.

I don't know the exact article the guy is talking about, but I know Chad Waterbury from T-Nation was a big proportion of this system - Don't focus on how many sets of how many reps, instead get a total number of reps (25) and do as many sets as you need with a certain weight to achieve 25 reps and you will definitely grow. For example, you pick 50kg to bench press and your sets might go like this:

Set 1: 5 reps
Set 2: 4 reps
Set 3: 4 reps
Set 4: 2 reps
Set 5: 2 reps
Set 6: 2 reps
Set 7: 1 rep
Set 8: 2 reps
Set 9: 3 reps

Just saying this might be what was referred to.

Also on a side note, not a personal attack at you, but training until you're "friggin sore 3 times a week" is not the most optimum way to increase strength on the bench press, or most compound exercises for that matter.

But all that aside, I have to agree with you, while slightly elaborating. Pick a program, stick with it for 12 weeks, don't miss a workout, work your a$$ off, eat properly and sleep well. The results you'll see in 12 weeks will be astonishing.

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Added on October 28, 2009, 10:41 pmFor breakfast:

Eat 1 slice of bread, no butter

For lunch:

Skip

For dinner:

Repeat breakfast or lunch, up to you

As for workout routine, go to gym, spend 15 minutes on stairclimber while watching Ellen Degeneres, walk to free weights area, do 3 sets of 10 bicep curls, then go to the elliptical machine for another 15 minutes. Staring at cardio bunnies is optional.

You're welcome.

*Sorry you should have picked a better role model. Zac Efron? Come on man.*

This post has been edited by Desvaro: Oct 28 2009, 10:41 PM

You need to eat 3 slices of tomatoes, 1 bowl of lettuce , and a 50g of chicken breast. Too much protein will spoil your kidneys. Only eat 2 times a day. Do as much cardio as you can.

further ur grip width.. also do squat and deadlift, it really helps in gaining strength for everything including bench press

haaahha desvaro...

chad has does many things that the others like nate , tate, defraanco do not do......

besides... i was referring to a beginer....it would be hardly fair to tell him to start body splits, muscle groups, nutrition, carb cycling etc etc...he just wouldnt get it....if he is really interested, he would definitely come across these terms and asked specificly here...

from the exercise that he is most worried about we should already hazard a guess.....bench presses....main focus is the pectorals....one of the most useless muscles to train ( almost 60% of the benefits are purely aesthetics ).... and better stabilization...... other than then...unless u are a swimming beside phelps or something...

so yea.. ..if he can go through 3 good workouts per week...its MORE than sufficient to increase is strength and lean muscle mass because he is a beginer...if u are already benching 50 -70kgs...then a more refined program will definitely benefit you...but remembering my early days starting out and fumbling......all i really needed was to shut up and lift consistently......the rest is just bullshit and self justification

ps..im just explaining my notions of why id say 3 times a week...most guys who "claim" to gym....dont really make that mark.... i know i didnt.. before...

i dont want to be a skinny freak. just from what i read in this bodybuilding forum, i forgot who wrote that, to start bulk up, it is better to low body fat less than 10%..

that is what im trying to do now.

if i want to slim down, i can just buy fatbuner and cardio till die. im trying to improve my strength and at the same time lower my bodyfat.

First of all, my mistake. I didn't realise that he was a beginner, which was why I went into such detail. My apologies.

In this case, I can't agree with you more, shut up and lift consistently. The beginner period is when you're supposed to maximise your 'newbie gains'. You can literally put a new plate on the bar every workout when you're still in a beginner level, or at the very least, add weight to the bar every week.

p.s. I'm a daily reader of T-Nation, but I never really realised that what Chad Waterburry does, people like Dave Tate or Joe Defranco do not. Can you please expand on that if you don't mind? Cause that is really interesting.

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Added on October 28, 2009, 11:24 pmThe problem with you is that you're doing what some people would say 'majoring in the minors'. You're too focused on the small things. You appear to be a beginner, yet you keep focusing on small little details.

I still remember when I was a beginner. I logged on to bb.com, somehow read through the AnimalPak series of workouts. I was a pure beginner that time, and here I was doing 'advanced' bodybuilding routines. The difference was, I poured my heart and soul into the routine, and yes I made decent progress. Could I have made better progress? Hell Yes. But I made progress because I worked my a$$ off. There were times when I could barely put on my school uniform after chest training the day before.

If you can do 4x12 with 20kgs, then what are you waiting for? Increase the weight. See you're too focused on 4 SETS OF 12 REPS. Throw that out of the window. The keyword for you is PROGRESS. To be more specific, progressive overload.

In every workout, you must have done something BETTER than the previous workout. Say now you go to 25kg. You get 4x8. Next workout, aim higher, 4x10 perhaps. See where I'm getting at. FOCUS ON PUTTING YOUR EFFORT INTO MAKING PROGRESS.

You don't want to be a skinny freak, but you want to start at 10% bodyfat? Dude just get your protein in, and the rest will take care of itself. Unless you are already very fat to begin with.

And by the way, slimming down is not about fatburners and cardio till die. If it was so easy, everyone would have 8 pack abs. Including Sean Kingston

This post has been edited by Desvaro: Oct 28 2009, 11:24 PM

hmmm..yea..i read tnation also.. ive even messged nate green and TC luomo and they replied..pretty awesome guys but honestly....its not easy to get to their level.... a beginer ( i consider myself at this level..although a bit more educated than most if i could claim anything at all... ).....should be able to see decent results AFTER 2.5- 3 YEARS of consistent training...

this single piece of information is what most muscle mags, fitness mags...and sometimes even bodybuilding sites fail to enlighten noobs with...and thus results in ppl loosing interest and dropping weightlifting as their activity.

nothing to apologiez bro...if we say anything ..especially here...we have to be prepared to back it up because most of the time...someone WILL put u to task .... forum habits...

with regards to the authors/trainers in Tnation.....defranco is a performance sport trainer, tate is more towards strength sports ( powerlifters, etc etc...)... i feel chad is much more commercialized towards aesthetics...... this is my own personal opinion after reading what they write..... its up to you to pick who to listen to.....

if there were few things that i can share is...

-nothing beats working your ass off.... there is just no substitute...
-ppl who mince technicalities mostly just sit around doing nothing...
-not everything bodybuilders/coaches in bb mags and webs say applies to u... because their examples are ppl with insane genes..and nothing else better to do than to spen 7 hours in the gym, 3 hours eating then 12 hours sleeping and 2 hours wanking.... then repeat....most of us just CANT do that because...we have a life...no?...so be realistic.......u probably will never look like arnie..but who said u cant be better off than zack efron.....?...


just my two cents...feel free to nitpick

Do you guys know this guy?



No?
Okay I know him and his coach. His name's Pat Mendez and his coach's John Broz. They live in Las Vegas.
He trains 14x a week. 2x a day, daily. His routine? Snatch and CNJ to maximum single. Drop and do sets and reps at maybe 95% or 80% or something. Then squat, till your legs fall off.

I wonder if that's why he's not ripped?

Wow you actually messaged them and they replied! To me that would be the equivalent of an 11 year old girl getting a letter from the Backstreet Boys!!

Well Waterbury does train MMA fighters also, this was mentioned in his most recent article on T-Nation. Yes the T-Nation authors do have different 'expertise', but many have said (including myself) that if you look closely, you'll find more similarities than differences.

But what you said is true, especially the last point. Everyone looks at Arnold, or Ronnie Coleman, or Jay Cutler and go HEY IF I DO HIS PROGRAM THEN I WILL BE JUST LIKE HIM.

One great lesson I have learned is that at the end of the day, while it is good (and even informative) to read articles written by different people on different methods, you must ultimately pick the one that is most suitable to yourself.

When you're a true beginner, just starting out, do something established such as Rippetoes. When you stall on that, then it's time to branch out. You have to know your body, and this takes time. Most people love to jump straight onto a bodybuilding routine of 3x8-12 reps with bodypart splits. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but it might not be optimal for you.

I myself found that I respond best to lower rep workouts, such as 5x5 5/3/1 and things like that. I found that when I focused on strength, size came along as well.

I guess at the end of the day, the focus is on being the best you can be.

And well these days, everyone wants everything fast. They think that by lifting weights for 2 weeks BOOM they'll be the next Arnold. If only it were that simple.

Oh well.

This post has been edited by Desvaro: Oct 28 2009, 11:53 PM

yea...thats usually the case...heck it was even my case about 1 years and 9 months back...so cant begrudge ppl too much also...

another factor to take into account is your goals....if u train for a specific goal..dont let people crap on ur training just cause they think they know better ( cept when they really do..... hahah....oh the irony)......

most people in this forum will laugh if i say im still doing 50kg squats.....but its true....im still doing 50 kg squats for about 6 months now...only diff is i do 10 x 5 sets....and each set i clean the bar up...

my goal is explosive strength coz i play basketball... if my legs get huge, its gonna eat into my speed and flexibility and put more strain on my ankles while i play.

well..we all learn the hard way that we not arnie.... TC luomo is not exactly a trainer..he is a writer..i just love the way he writes.ahahhaa.....nate green is a monster.....and if u chk his blog...he's trained with bigger monsters...

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Added on October 28, 2009, 11:56 pmpizza boy : .... dude...that 300++kg squat just look painful.. AHAHAHHAH!!.... imagine what tom platz does....hmmmm

This post has been edited by braindead_fr3ak: Oct 28 2009, 11:56 PM

Nice. Tried 1RM for all my major lifts today. Squat is still at 120kg, benchpress at 100kg, deadlift 120kg too. Gotta work more on deadlifts gah.

bro..u squat 1 rm then deadlift 1 rm same day.. ahhah ...thats gotta suck....
nice bench though...highest i can go is 70kg x3

i dunno why. my bench press sucks to the max. =.=
haha... squat 150kg or so, deadlift 180kg, but bench press? =.= i think around 90kg. WTF!

10 capsules of fat burner a day, dance to high school musical twice a day for cardio, stay in the sauna for 4 hours to lose all those weight, you are only allowed to drink water when you want to swallow your fat burners. Don't lift weights and don't take protein, it'll turn you into those ugly and scary pro bodybuilders in 2 weeks, according to the advertisement I read just now on Men's Health.

BTW, people want to slim down after a bulking phase, which is when they have built a decent amount of muscle and together with that, fat. So that's why they cut after that. After that they bulk again. No bulk, no muscle. You talk as if it's so easy for a beginner to cut fat with those fat burners and cardio. If your diet is horrible, no fat burner or cardio is going to help at all...Now you don't have any muscle yet and you want to cut sommore...aiyo I dunno how to explain liao...

Someone please banish him into the reading room.

I think this whole BB forum is turning into a "I want to be skinny" forum.

People believe the advertisements they see on the mags rather than an article on the magazine next to the advertisement about proper training and nutrition.

This post has been edited by Florian: Oct 29 2009, 12:11 AM

Mine is the other way round!
Squat=100kgs
Deads-Dunno
BP-130kgsX3

I lift like 20 kg x 30 reps on the Smith machine and I like do a hundred curls in the squat rack...but I'm afraid of getting too muscular like Jay Cutler, do you guys have any advice on getting nice big muscles without getting too big while also staying lean and ripped????

hahhaha nice one....

nice vid. those weights are insane!

somehow when people think about heading to the gym, they think about getting ripped and toned. they dont really care about functional strength/power. all of my friends just keep on nagging that my efforts of training in the gym are useless because i aint getting ripped. i dont really care. after months of serious training i'm able to bench 52.5kg, squat 70kg n deadlift 65kg. they aint big numbers, but i'm slowly progressing and not bothered if i'm "ripped"

Seriously, get a proper routine or tweak your nutrition. Your development could be faster with the right help.