Yo H&F'ers,

My 1st post here ever.
I'm 30 yrs old, 5'9" tall and weigh 145lbs so clearly it's 'bout time to start gaining some weight and get strong.

SS and lotsa food, rite?

I have a couple of questions.

1.) Would it be advisable to drop biking while doing SS or just eat more respectively? I currently bike ~20kms/60mins, 5 days a week.

2.) For a novice like me trying to bulk up ASAP, what should my daily cals look like? What about protein intake? I'm guessing a 1000 kcal surplus and 200 grams of protein?

Wud appreciate any answers. Cheers.

Start with a smaller surplus imo. There's no need for that big a surplus to begin with while you are still learning the movements and your CNS is adjusting. It will only lead to excess fat. In you "surplus"-calc I'm assuming you have included your expenditure from biking. You can always increase the surplus if you feel you can't make gains.

It seems you bike to work, right? Imo you should continue to do that (for a number of reasons unrelated to marginal strength gains), but obviously if you get to a point where you feel it's severely ruining your ability to recover, you could think about biking less (or at least squatting before you bike on training days). Although I don't think biking 20km is that much - more like active recovery. It's worth noting that you can't compensate recovery-wise for all psycial activities simply by eating more.

200g prot is fine, yeah.

Agree with Hardgrove. Spend the first 2-3 months eating a lot of protein but still a normal level of calories. At the beginning stages, you are not lifting enough weight to cause much muscle gain. However, as your strength progresses and you become more efficient in the movements, your body will start to put on more muscle.

I was about your size when I started lifting seriously and I didn't gain much weight in taking my squat from 115 to 245. Then from 245 to 300 I gained about 20 lbs.

On 1), I'd say it depends on how intense the biking is. Riding back and forth to work 5 days/week is prob fine if it's mostly flat, not so fine if it's intensely hilly etc. Anyway like Hardgrove says, you can dial back on the biking if you feel it affecting your recovery. Should be fine to start out anyway.

Nitpick, but you can't compensate everything by eating lots, obv there's a limit where the level of activity will affect your recovery despite tons of nom nom'ing.

Yup, I meant basic energy consumption + biking and then + 1000 kcals.
Prolly something like 2100 + 400 + 1000 = 3500 kcals/day.
Anyhoo, maybe I'll start by targeting something around 3000-3300 kcals / 200g of protein then?

I just recently returned to work (physically light office job as a construction engineer) after playing cards professionally for quite some time.
I simply hate taking a bus or driving my own car to work, makes me feel so stupid just sitting there in the traffic jam polluting air, surrounded by a gazillion lard-asses behind their own wheels. FWIW, the route is quite flat and avg.speed ~20km/h isn't too intensive.
So biking is the way to go and I'd rather keep it that way if it looks like it doesn't affect recovering from SS too badly.

Thx for answers.

You should be fine doing that sort of biking and I commend you for it. You don't need to go above 3k for sure. I'd be happy to hit between 2500 and 3000, that way you won't have to obsess too much about it. 150 g protein should be fine to start - 1-1.5 g/lbs of LBM is the commonly advised protein amount. Aim for 200 and don't fuss about it if you miss it by a bit and don't go below 150 if you can help it. The occasional 120g day won't matter either.

(As you prob can tell, I'm a huge fan of flexibility and not being a huge nit)

^cool, thx.

I'm dying to get SS started.

However, there's a couple of things I need to take care of first:

1.) Finish building my home gym - almost done.
Only need to assembly my power rack and do a bit of cleaning and then I'm good to go.

2.) Take care of my sciatica - have had it for ~10 months now and it's got much better since the beginning. However I've got no idea if I'm able to do any srs lifting as is.

Apparently there's no magical cure for sciatica. Haven't even seen a doctor about it though so if someone has any experience/knowledge about it, pls share.
I suspect I got it from playing lotsa ice hockey last winter when it was -30 celsius (-22 F) on a regular basis.
After playing hockey, being sweaty as a pig and changing skates to shoes in -30C, sitting on a frozen bench doesn't do much good to one's sciatic nerve(s) I guess.
Sitting on my ass playing 8-16 hr sessions of online poker didn't help either I assume.

http://startingstrength.com/resource...earchid=700215 might be a start. Note: I have no clue personally.

For beginners... is it better do more reps with less weight, or less reps with more weight?

Beginners need to get stronger. The more efficient way to get stronger is to lift heavy weights at low volumes, and progressively increase the load.

If you're interested in the why, you should keep reading. Links in the FAQ/resources will help.

tyty

Biking is not helping your sciatica.

You're right about sitting in a chair too - that is also bad for it.

Read the book Low Back Disorders by Stuart McGill imo. It might not have magic cures, but it has the best info available on problems like that and it tells you the best things to do about it.

You could probably make a case for doing a lot of reps the first couple of weeks just to get the form down of the movement.

I went to the gym for about 5 months, after that, I quitted because it was summer (I know this is not an excuse), and I resume just two weeks ago.
Right now, I am a bit stronger than before training, but not great improvements.
I guess it was and it is a matter of the 2 main things: poor training exercises and VERY unhealthy diet.
I will try to improve for sure ; right now I'm reading the FAQs that provide me a lot of good infos, so I'm avoiding asking stupid questions...

Yea, it appears there's some discussion(s) about the topic, will check out more thoroughly later.

Is it that black'n'white? I mean, I swear the pain actually goes totally away while biking and it also stays away for a bit after biking.

Will check out.

When you are seated on a bike your low back is likely going into flexion, which is wearing the discs out. It might not hurt while you're doing it, but its not doing your back any good. Fast walking is much better for your back if you are looking to do back-healthy cardio.

A'it, I see how it could do no good.
FWIW I'm not looking to do any cardio really but I'm sorta forced to bike to work since walking there would take 2 hours.
Going by bus/car is obv an option but I have to sit in a chair in those as well, don't I?
Luckily enuf I nowadays have one of those sit down / stand up -desks at work. Also got one of those for home computer usage.

http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...9969093&page=0

***Thermic Effect of Food: Anytime you eat you burn more calories, this keeps your metabolic rate high. Go longer between meals and your metabolism slows down.


while here (Meal frequency chapeter)
http://body-improvements.com/resources/eat/

the author is telling that what previous stated is a myth...

Need more infos here

It doesnt really matter.

All sitting isnt good for your back, but its obviously necessary sometimes.

for an obese beginner doing SS on a deficit, will eaa be worth it for me?

I usually eat a small meal 1 hour or so before my workout consisting of ~30g of protein and usually eat a very large meal around 1 hour after (doing intermittent fasting).

They're crazy expensive where i'm from, but seems like a lot of people use them.

What is 'eaa'? essential amino acids?

yep thats it

Thermic effect of food (TEF) is a real thing. The misunderstanding/myth part is the claim that going longer between meals will slow one's metabolism down.

Yes, fair point.