Desperate for nitty-gritty advice

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Hello. I really want to develop a regular workout routine. I want to build bigger muscles and I am having trouble finding the little nitty gritty steps I need to take during a workout. I'm male BTW and I have been pushed by family members for a long time, but I still can't get past the planning part. I know if I did I'd already be doing it three days every week. I need to know from base for someone who rarely ever worked out with only weight/bench (every angle) what exact exercises I need to execute. Oh yeah and I have a guilty desire for a specific body part which is a more shaped and muscular butt. I want to emphasize that. What can I do, especially if I also have such poor control as an aspie to begin with?

Once you get started, the power of routine will work in your favor, and it will be hard not to exercise. So that's one benefit of AS. I find that being stronger generally helps my motor control. The military has tons of material on exercise and fitness, and since taxpayers paid for it, it's usually online for free. Look for the Marines' "daily dozen" exercises (up to 16 the last I looked) and start doing some of them, and get into a routine. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Get in the best shape you can before you get older!

If you want to ease into it, you can try the various weight machines. They have machines for squats/thrusts at my gym. That's the type of exercise that targets your glutes. I think you should work out your core muscles (anything on the circumefence of your chest/back/abdomen), if you start working one group without working the other, you have those muscles pulling at their insertion points while others don't and your body allignment can get disruppted. I don't follow a strict routine at the gym, I just gauge what isn't sore and work that group.

I know that isn't nitty gritty, but you definitely want to spread the burn, and you'll be better off than half the lifters you find in your gym if you work the core muscles.

Squats.

Squats will make all your dreams come true. That and deadlifts. Squats will give you a huge butt. I had a huge butt before squatting, and it got huger after squatting. I personally thought it was a negative effect, but if it's what I need to be more strong and athletic, so be it. In my case, I wear 34-36 jeans and then medium shirts. So huge legs, smaller upper body. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwQTeFD0OKQ That's how Olympic lifters look. Basically, squats and deadlifts are the king of exercises. They'll work everything up to your shoulders. If you want a big butt, then you need to do them. They work so well, Vince Gironda, a bodybuilding coach wouldn't allow his clients to do squats, as he didn't think big butts looked good, and would make your butt big. Basically, they have a cumulative effect of widening the waist, and bodybuilders are all weird and focused on their "V-Taper" and whatnot, but basically, this is what happens if you do only upper body exercises.


Anyway, you're best off doing a routine with the "big lifts" ie, squat, bench press and/or overhead press, and deadlifts. You can do variations, ie, I'd say do front squats first to get your form good, then do back squats later. For deadlifts if you don't want to deadlift really heavy, you can change it to like, a clean pull, sumo deadlift or Romanian deadlift, but the basics are that. If you wanna throw in isolation exercises, ie, like bicep curls or something, then do a "big lift" in the workout, too, because the "big lifts" stimulate your hormones.

Your hormones are what causes muscles to grow, not "pump" or "burn" or whatever. That's how steroids work, they're synthetic hormones. There's been studies done that showed more muscle growth from testosterone injections and just sitting vs exercise without them. Not to encourage you to do roids (don't), but that's how important hormonal response is. The big lifts make your body release a lot of hormones, as they stress the whole body. The whole body is being used to lift the weight, rather than individual parts in isolation exercises. As some proof hormones are what build the muscle, think about this. Look at endurance runners. They're tiny. Yet, anyone who's run ever knows how their legs feel like jelly after a long run. That's quite a lot of "pump" and "burn," right? So why aren't their legs huge then? It's because the endurance running puts their bodies' hormones in a place not conducive to muscle building, and the body's hormonal response isn't being triggered to create more muscle from the activity.

As far as a routine, there's pretty much an infinite number of routines out there. One recommended a lot is Mark Rippetoe's "Starting Strength" but SS has some things I disagree with, ie, lowbar squatting instead of high bar, but it wouldn't be a terrible place to start. Overrated and basically a copy of Bill Starr's "The Strongest Shall Survive" routine from the 1970s, but not bad. The basic jist of it is 5 reps, 5 sets, increase weight every workout if possible (I think that's how it goes,) and it's usually 3-4 days a week. So google "5x5" and you'll find lots of stuff regarding those routines. Usually 5x5 routines are recommended for beginners. There's other things, like maybe you'd like Sheiko programs, which are Russian, but yeah. I personally never went with a routine, I pretty much just squatted and deadlifted as I felt like it, usually 4-5 days a week.

Lastly, for diet, pretty much don't worry about getting protein, etc. Don't stress it, if you lift enough, you'll be hungrier and eat more. Don't eat garbage processed food, but be prepared to be eating more. Like today, for example, my "protein" consisted of 2 chicken thighs. I had a total of about 7-8 homemade chicken fajitas in small corn tortillas. No need to go nuts over it all. That was a mistake of mine, trying out all kinds of weird diets, especially low carb, screw low carb. But weight training isn't conducive to weight loss, really. I mean, I'm sure someone here knows more about how to get leaner while lifting, but for me I find it hard to make it work as I get freaked out when my strength is less in a caloric deficit. I know for example, Dimitri Klokov doesn't lift for 4 months out of the year and just swims, so he might be one of the people like me who has that problem when trying to cut weight, but yeah. But if your goal is just being lean, then you might be better off just doing P90x or something like that instead of lifting, as it's easier to chase one goal than two at once, if you get what I mean.

Well, good luck.