Gain Muscle Lose Fat

by Zohair Khan
(Toronto, ON, Canada)

For the majority of my life I have been a pretty skinny guy (about 5'10" and around 124 lbs). I ate a lot but my high metabolism would just 'wash' everything away. This left me with a skinny frame an a relatively big belly!

At age 22 I decided that enough was enough and I needed change. I spent days reading a plethora of articles, books, reviews, opinions on resistance training, cardio, nutrition and human anatomy.

After nearly 6 months of research, I decided to draft up my own 'schedule' to reach my goals.

My goal was to gain considerable muscle mass, while losing fat at the same time.

Most people know that this isn't easy, or advisable, and so most people bulk up and then lean down. But I didn't really have THAT much fat to lose, so I decided to do it simultaneously.

My regimen involved 5 days of intense workout followed by two days of cardio only. During the five days of workout I worked on two muscle groups a day; lets call them Group A and Group B.

Group A muscle groups for five days were: Chest, Biceps, Back, Triceps, Shoulder -- one group each day. For each of these I picked 4 different exercises and for each exercise I did 4 sets of 10, 8, 6, 15 reps.

With every set, I increased the weight, except for the last set (of 15 reps). This was a 'power' set and involved me dropping to my initial starting weight on that particular exercise.

Group B muscle group included: Abs, Legs. These were alternated throughout the five days. I picked 4 different exercises for each.

The Legs workout followed the same pattern as Group A.

The Abs workout was 3 sets of 25 reps and one last set until failure for each of the exercises chosen.

After the 5 days were done, the last two days involved doing any kind of cardio workout to help lose that fat.

There were no 'rules' set on this and I could do whatever I wanted until I felt tired. It could be 20 minutes of intense interval training or 2 hours of intense squash.

After almost 1.5 years of following this workout strictly I have been able to normalize my weight at about 160 lbs with little body fat.

I am in the best shape of my life both physically and mentally.

The workout has taught me to be disciplined in whatever I do. This is something I will probably follow for the rest of my life to continue to grow and maintain my body.