singling out muscles and working them out till they are absolutely dead will make you get big. you also have to give them proper rest so they can rebuild. If you take protein shakes and eat well with lots of water you will get a lot better than 5 lbs in the past month and a half.
True. Depending on how much training you've done previously, I think you could easily be at 8-12 lbs in that same period of time.
I use Whey post workout, too. I've tried the animal pump stack and it made me feel really sick. I had this weird taste in the back of my throat. It's safe to say I'll never take animal pump and its 6-pills-per-stack again. I now am back on my L-Arginine drink for my pre-workout.
What are your goals...to cut fat or gain muscle...you can't do both at the same time effectively. You don't need to swap out the bike for the treadmill; for aerobic workouts like that, where the goal is to burn calories, you don't hit the plateau. The plateau is when you stop seeing increases in your ability to improve the amount of weight you lift. If you're doing something like Tricep Curls, switch to Weighted Dips. Most muscle groups have several exercises you can do to effectively work them. It's a matter of switching from one motion to the other, while still hitting the same body part, so that your body doesn't get too used to the same routine week after week. But that's more for weightlifting, not cardio. The more important this to identify is what are your goals. If I'm trying to bulk up, I try to run very little...maybe a half-mile as a warm up when I first get to the gym. Don't need to go and waste those calories.
Thats weird I've never had a problem with Animal Pump. I've tried many other pre-workout supplements and Animal Pump is by far the best that I've used. You might have been using Animal Stak instead of Animal Pump. They look the same and their containers are almost identical, but Animal Pump is the newest product by Universal. I also use Torrent post workout. I've noticed getting the results you want has as much to do with eating the right foods and drinking ample amounts of water as it does with the actual lifting of the weights.
Have you tried L-Arginine? It's a potent HGH releaser. The drink tastes very good, too. I get mine at GNC for $35. It was the Animal Stack. With this, you take 6 pills that come in packets twice a day. I only took one and that was the end of that. Horrible feeling. Superpump is also a very good pre-workout supplement. But right now I'm just on my Arginine, Creatine, and Gold Standard Whey.
I think I have different goals than most others in here. I focus on mostly strength-to-weight ratio exercises--pullups, dips, various push-ups, incline sit-ups, leg lifts. I'm also heavy on the aerobics, alternating among an erg, a bike and the pool. My ruined knees won't allow any impact workouts. I use machines a little, to target specific muscle groups, although I do have a weight belt and a weight vest that allows me to increase the difficulty of my exercises. Finally, I do a TON of stretching, both before and after I work out. When I played football, I was really into free weights. However, carrying that much muscle just isn't useful for me anymore. I've been much more focused on being lean than being big; it's easier on my joints. Yep, I'm officially old.
