Vitamins and Minerals: How much is too much?

Ok. Here's my first and primary suggestion. Go get yourself over to forum.bodybuilding.com/index.php

There you will find a wealth of people who often times have good suggestions or experiences to relate (good for you, maybe not for them), as long as you don't go near the teens forum and the misc forum.

Now for my own suggestions. Take protein and multi-vitamin. It's great if you can get it through the food that you eat, but really I see it as just about an impossible task to do daily. So they really help out. For protein, ON 100% whey is the way to go. It's pretty cheap, has good taste, and it works really well. For multivitamin, Now Adam multi-vitamin for men. It's well priced and has everything you need. If you have money to burn you can take Universal Animal Pack. I say don't bother with the weight gainers until you find yourself making no gains for a while and you have everything else perfect (exercise routine and frequency, diet, etc.).

For recommended protein intake 2 grams per pound LBM is good.

About cardio. It is very true that cardio starts burning off muscle if done in a variety of bad ways. If you go too long, like more than an hour, you'll start burning off muscle. If you run too hard for too long, like sprinting for 5 minutes, you'll probably be burning off muscle. On the other hand I would recommend high intensity interval training. What you do is alternate 30 second bursts of running and sprinting. You do that for 15 minutes at maximum capacity (you should feel like falling over after 15 minutes) and this will increase your metabolism for close to 24 hours. Over this time you will burn off quite a bit of the extra energy your body may have so that you don't get fat, it will also burn off little to no muscle. The best thing, for me at least, is that it takes a third the time to accomplish either the same thing or something better. I'm short on time most of the time, so this stuff is great.

BTW, a little note. 6'1" and 125??? That's pretty low by all standards. You need to eat truck loads and work out like crazy.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Gumby

:/ I think you are looking at the extremes of what distance running can be. Just something to consider is that many boxers run (really jog) for long amounts of time to increase their endurance in the ring. Endurance is just as important to strength and agility when it comes to physical fitness, but like any thing it needs to be a balance. While doing sprints is a good work out and has it benefits, it is not the same for your body as it would be if you ran for 30 - 45 minutes. I don't think it is accurate to say that you can do that work out and be BAM done with it and get the same benefits you would if you had ran for an extended period of time.

There is a big distance between steady state cardio and high intensity interval training. I believe that they both do the same thing as far as using up calories, one of the primary uses of cardio. However, I believe everyone should do both. HIIT does not build up much endurance, and low intensity steady state cardio does not build up anaerobic capacity much. Bottom line is to do both.

There's nowhere I can't reach.