Workout tips/advice?

[copulatingduck]

unless your benching 300 and deadlifting 450ish dont worry about creatine

Tim!! How are you? I miss you. Nice sig btw

[Tricks]

unless your benching 300 and deadlifting 450ish dont worry about creatine

agree^

[Totla]

[quote author=Tortilla link=topic=4342.msg141835#msg141835 date=1268849979]
= God-like cardio

Well, if you do your workouts right, anyways. Form is really easy to get. Another great thing is that it has little to no impact on joints, and works every major muscle in your body.

These things are godly.
I swear my heart still hurts from yesterday. lol
[/quote]I do this six days a week, and I'm more in shape than 99% of my school. Combining this with weights and running is amazing.

[Radio Raheem]

i miss u too dave. install skype on your laptop or something man

[ThunderStain]

Ive been running every second-day for 20 min and play ball hockey for 2 hours every tuesday. Ive cut soda out of my diet completely and ive been drinking water instead kool-aid and shit now. Ive lost about 20 pounds in 30 days and only just implemented the running into my day.

Post your "routines" and feel free to suggest anything to me you think might help in anyway!

[Darklink]

hey dude p90x is pretty damn good but if you've nerded it your whole life and sat around it will fuck your ass like a 40 year old man on his neighbors kid

[JoKeRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR]

did drunk p90x plyometrics yesterday, was fun

[copulatingduck]

Post your "routines" and feel free to suggest anything to me you think might help in anyway!

Well since I'm looking to lose a bit of weight and bulk up, I've been doing weightlifting and cardio for a little over a week. The weightlifting for myself is incredibly gratifying. Between the endorphin rush and the pleasure that comes from watching your numbers go up week after week as you get your muscle up, the only thing I really enjoy more is sex. Anyways, I've finally picked a routine this week, hopefully it won't need much more tweaking.

For me, I'm trying to do it as cheap as possible. The place I'm bumming in and around actually has a very small gym in the basement, but there's not much room at all. So I had a couple of problems with most general weightlifting routines.

• I didn't have the equipment for a lot of the more commonly suggested lifts (squats being the big one that came up time and time again)
  
• The ceiling is incredibly low (I'm about 5'7" and if I jumped I'd definitely bust my skull on the ceiling), so no overhead presses, at least from a standing position

What the place does have are some bikes, a treadmill, a bench, plenty of plates, and a metric-fuckton of dumbells. After finding this thread on reddit, I ended up googling "dumbell workout plans" or something similar, and came across this, which seemed doable for a beginner.With some advice, I ended up adapting it to incorporate a barbell whenever I could, so long as I felt comfortable performing said lift. Here's the plan I ended up with:

[b]Monday (chest and abs)

• 3x6 Bench Press (barbell)
  
• 3x6 Incline Bench Press (dumbell)
  
• 3xn Decline Bench Sit Ups with a plate on my chest, where n is 6 atm (I'm fat), working on getting it up

---

[b]Tuesday (back)

• 3x6 Deadlifts (bb)
  
• 3x6 Single Arm Rows (db)

---

[b]Wednesday (legs)

• 3x6's Lunges superset with Good Mornings (db, bb)
  
• 3x6's Squat superset with Calf Rise (db, bb)

---

[b]Thursday (shoulders and triceps)

• 3x6 Arnold Presses (db)
  
• 3x6 Skull Crushers (db to start, bb if I get a little more confident about doing a lift called the skull crusher )
  
• 3x6 One Arm Triceps Extension (db)
  
• 3x6 Shoulder Shrugs if I'm feeling up to it (bb)

---

[b]Friday (biceps)

• 3x6 Normal Curls and Concentration Curls (db)
  
• 3x6 Shoulder Shrugs if I couldn't manage Thursday.
  
• 3xn Decline Bench Sit Ups with a plate on my chest, where n is 6 atm (I'm fat), working on getting it up

Beyond that, I shoot for 20-30 minutes on the bike (running has started to give me splints, one of a plethora of health worries I've got right now) 4 days out of the week. I skip the bike on leg day. I preferred shorter workouts occurring more frequently, simply because you really start feeling MUCH better on days that you lift and I'd like to rely on something other than alcohol for my moods. I've seen a lot of suggestions for things like 5x5, 3x8, and other even crazier stuff like 4x20, but while I really do enjoy lifting, I don't want to spend over 2 hours a day doing it, 5 days a week. I've opted for fewer reps at higher weight because supposedly it's more effective if you want to lose weight anyways. At the behest of friends that have started and/or have been lifting for a long time, I've decided to go ahead and do the protein shake because, while it's certainly viable to get my entire day's worth of protein off of nothing but cheeseburgers, it is probably not the healthiest diet to have or maintain. And I assure you, you have no idea how much I love cheeseburgers. It's the only food I've never grown tired of eating everyday, twice a day, for months on end, which may be part of the reason I'm in my current predicament.

Beyond that, I've cut soda from the diet. French fries were pretty easy to kick (they taste like shit from the majority of places I've had them in Boston), and the only alcohol I consume is straight hard liquor, no mixers (generally bad mood makes it a lot easier to swallow). Beer is apparently loaded with calories so no more of that, who knew!

I'm probably forgetting something, so feel free to ask. And if anyone else has suggestions on how I can improve the routine while still abiding by my current set of limitting parameters (equipment, ceiling height), feel free to speak up

Sorry for the long post btw, but hopefully there's some useful info, zero dangerous advice, and no glaringly stupid instances of me being misinformed (though that happens frequently when one tries to take up a new hobby)

edit: oh, and this site is fantastic for browsing and learning new lifts. Youtube is also pretty good, and reddit.com/r/fitness has a lot of traffic, so those are all pretty good resources for learning new stuff. And if you do decide to lift, make sure you keep a notebook or spreadsheet up to date with what you lifted each week. It's nice to watch yourself improve, and I have an impossible time remembering what I lifted week to week

[exanimo2]

I started playing football (soccer) on Sundays!

I'll also roller blade around a track every now and again and I try to play badminton and table tennis as much as possible.

[rumsfald]

I've been begged to join a Krav Maga class. My usual slothfulness has not been strong enough to resist.

[Turtle]

I've been begged to join a Krav Maga class. My usual slothfulness has not been strong enough to resist.

Next thing you know you're doing the Kit Fisto Workout

[Surf314]

I'm going to try and get back into shape and then start either kung fu or tai chi up again. I'm going to start going with my wife to the gym regularly but my motivation sucks. I need to work on cardio though because I get the feints and shit when I work out hard when I'm out of shape. Go all weak and my vision starts blacking out. Not fun.

[rumsfald]

I've been begged to join a Krav Maga class. My usual slothfulness has not been strong enough to resist.

Oh, who's idea was this? I needed two 15-minute breaks in a 60 minute class. Oy vey.

[Professor Funbucks]

I'm going to try and get back into shape and then start either kung fu or tai chi up again. I'm going to start going with my wife to the gym regularly but my motivation sucks. I need to work on cardio though because I get the feints and shit when I work out hard when I'm out of shape. Go all weak and my vision starts blacking out. Not fun.

Start with lower weights too.
You don't need to bulk up, just tone and do lots of reps at low weight.

Also my roommate and I have forced ourselves into a 3 day workout week for the summer.
GET RIPPED SON

[Totla]

[quote author=Surf314 link=topic=4342.msg150169#msg150169 date=1272814128]
I'm going to try and get back into shape and then start either kung fu or tai chi up again. I'm going to start going with my wife to the gym regularly but my motivation sucks. I need to work on cardio though because I get the feints and shit when I work out hard when I'm out of shape. Go all weak and my vision starts blacking out. Not fun.

Start with lower weights too.
You don't need to bulk up, just tone and do lots of reps at low weight.

Also my roommate and I have forced ourselves into a 3 day workout week for the summer.
GET RIPPED SON
[/quote]6 day workout week for summer.
get raped

[Radio Raheem]

tone isnt real in any way. how tone you look is solely on body fat % vs the amount of muscle youre holding. there is some truth to low weight high reps (body building) building more muscle mass where as high weight low reps (power lifting) also works your central nervous system therefore needing less actual muscle but being stronger but 95% of people out there it doesnt really matter since youre not going to put the effort in to reach maximum potential. do what you enjoy

with that said low reps / high weight while being more fun has a higher risk of injury if you dont know the proper form so if youre just starting that might not be the best idea. but dont be afraid of bulk youre not gonna turn into ronnie coleman in a week that takes your entire life dedicated

[Surf314]

tone isnt real in any way. how tone you look is solely on body fat % vs the amount of muscle youre holding. there is some truth to low weight high reps (body building) building more muscle mass where as high weight low reps (power lifting) also works your central nervous system therefore needing less actual muscle but being stronger but 95% of people out there it doesnt really matter since youre not going to put the effort in to reach maximum potential. do what you enjoy

with that said low reps / high weight while being more fun has a higher risk of injury if you dont know the proper form so if youre just starting that might not be the best idea. but dont be afraid of bulk youre not gonna turn into ronnie coleman in a week that takes your entire life dedicated

Low weight higher reps is better for me because doing martial arts and shit needs endurance. Plus endurance helps with the other sports I used to enjoy. My dad took some college football player friends surfing once when he was in college and they gave up after a couple waves because they were so worn out. Depends on what you want to lift for I guess. If it's to look good you do whatever gets you cut quickest but if you like to do something specific you gotta do what gets you in the right kind of shape.

[HeK]

[quote author=rumsfald link=topic=4342.msg150064#msg150064 date=1272750789]
I've been begged to join a Krav Maga class. My usual slothfulness has not been strong enough to resist.

Oh, who's idea was this? I needed two 15-minute breaks in a 60 minute class. Oy vey.
[/quote]

If I could find some more spare time, I would love to try out Krav Maga. Pending availability of an instructor, of course.

+1 for the related Yiddish.

[copulatingduck]

doing starting strength for the summer, but lack the flexibility for power cleans so I'm doing pullups/chin ups instead. Hopefully squats every workout isn't as bad as I'm thinking it'll be

[Darklink]

squats every day sounds really bad for leg muscles