Training & Nutrition - Building Muscle

Hey,

I want to work on my upper body during the summer and I plan on riding about 5 days a week. Now to gain muscle I need to intake more calories than is required, but with so much riding I will probably barely go over my daily intake (I count my calories rigorously as I've been trying to lose weight up until now so I know exactly how much I'm eating daily). Is it useless to do strength training if you aren't consuming more calories than required? Or should I just leave the weight training till the winter? Thanks.

Hi,
damn, an easy question. Got a blender? Make a protein shake just before you head out ot the gym.

You will likely end up overtraining definately not what you want.As you seem aware of muscle strength gain and weight loss require totally different training/nutritional strategies so a good idea is to prioritize one or the other for a period of time .Say you want to prioritize continued weight loss this summer cycling 5 times a week with a slight to moderate deficit you could still mix in an ocassional week or two where you change the focus to strength and cut back on the cycling and create a calorie surplus.Now that is not to say you have to totally eliminate weight training while focusing on weight loss you could either change it to a higher rep/less rest routine compatable with weight loss and work it in with the cycling on a schedule to avoid overtraining or do limited heavier strength training sessions again worked in with cycling .I usually attempt the later approach but often have to greatly reduce or eliminate heavy lifting on weeks/period of multiple long bike rides.

Is it useless to do strength training if you aren't consuming more calories than required? Or should I just leave the weight training till the winter? Thanks.

There is a difference between strength training and putting on size. Strength training will require lower reps with higher weights.

Size will come from your genetics and the routines used are designed to tear the muscles down so when they heal the cells come back larger making the muscle larger. (this is a very basic way of putting it.)

To give you an idea, the bodybuilders you see in mags, although strong, are not as strong proportionally as a power lifter. If you take a bodybuilder and a power lifter with the same max lift, the body builder may have a 450lb max and weigh 275lbs where as a power lifter with the same max may weigh less then half that.

Both are strong in terms of the amount of weight they can push but not proportionally. The bodybuilder might have 20” arms and the power lifter’s arms may only be 15”.

As for when you should lift, year round.

:beer:

I have a nephew that you need to talk too. Hes helping me to lose weight and keep muscle. He has bodybuilding down to a science. Ill try to get him to post here later. You can find alot of info on "Building Muscle" on bodybuilding.com forums.

putting on 'size' will matter alot on your genetics, both your metabolism and your body-type. however (as long as you avoid over-training) you can always get stronger without adding much size or weight. the muscle you build weight-training will increase you r metabolism and hopefully cause you to burn more fat mass and replace it with lean mass. this way, you may actually lose weight at the same time as growing stronger. however, my advice would be to focus on one primary goal at a time. if you want to improve your upper-body strength, go to the gym and perhaps spend either less time or less effort on the bike. the bike workouts will be there to maintain skill and cardiovascular fitness, but dont do alot of intensity work to try and improve speed/endurance etc while you are trying to put on strength as well. my recommendation would be to rotate your focus thru they year (off-season: more lifting and mainly long, easy rides. then as races approach, focus on your bike-specific cpeed work and use the gym as more of a maintenance workout, at a lesser intensity than before.)

I personally love to eat so would have no problem fulfilling my daily calorie requirement and then some. Even if I rode 100 miles a day. Eating is great!!

There is a difference between strength training and putting on size. Strength training will require lower reps with higher weights.

Size will come from your genetics and the routines used are designed to tear the muscles down so when they heal the cells come back larger making the muscle larger. (this is a very basic way of putting it.)

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I was talking about gaining size. It just seems that everyone has a different opinion about workout routines and I get soooo confused. I don't want to commit to a program that will get me no where in the end. Thanks for the replies!

Just go to bodybuilding.com they can help you.

To simplify there are two types of muscle fiber white/fast twitch that are your speed /strength muscles and gain size but not as much as the red/slow twitch endurance muscles.With weights you train the white with reps of 3-6.You also develop the white doing anaerobic sprinting activities.How much size you develop training these muscles is dependant on your genetic percentage of white fiber.Moving to the red fiber the percentage of which also varies genetically rep ranges of 8-12 with weights best develop these fibers size.There are two drawbacks to this though first much of the size comes from development of so called satellite cells which provide bulk but no real functional use (at least that was known a few years ago when I use to read up on all this)second bulking up the red cells reduces their aerobic capasity and they are the primary endurance muscles(so there is a tradeoff between bulking them or building endurance in them).
Having said all that I think your focus should be on developing the white strength fibers with a few effective compound exercises.The "big three" squats,deadlifts and bench provide a total body workout with just three exercises.If you want to drop the legs and focus on upper body I would replace squats with clean and presses.You could work a few sets of these three exercises into your overall routine in ways I mentioned in the previous post but the idea here is to reduce the volume to a few heavy intense sets of highly effective exercises thateach work multiple bodyparts.

From my nephew:
Get a good weight gainer like N large from Prolab drink 2 shakes a day and eat 3 or 4 good meals a day consisted of beef chicken fish potatoes rice oatmeal etc. Stick to heavy basic exercises like squats, bench press, deadlifts, barbell, nose breakers, barbell row, chins try to increase weight or reps each week. Don't bother with isolation movements like cable cross over, leg extensions, concentration curls etc.. stick to heavy basics might better cut back on the length of your bike riding and do short intense sessions so you won't be burning as many calories but only after weight workouts. hope this help go to bodybuilding.com they have plenty of info there as well I'm "bloodandguts02" on there, do this and you'll be putting on tha beef in no time