Fitocracy Catch-All

edosan wrote:

So, since I don't know where else to ask this...

I've been using dumbbells for a few weeks now but would like to get a barbell -- what do I need to look for?

A barbell looks a lot like a dumbbell, but you use two hands and it is a bit longer in the middle.

Spoiler:

The barbell is my penis.

Yeah, I've pretty much totally fallen off the boat with logging. Since all my workouts are basically home workouts/p90x stuff, and will be for the foreseeable future, my motivation is really low to translate those into fitocracy language. Hopefully the functionality will be added, at which point I'll be back, but I'm pretty much done for now.

edosan wrote:

So, since I don't know where else to ask this...

I've been using dumbbells for a few weeks now but would like to get a barbell -- what do I need to look for?

I think a lot of the answer depends on what you're going to do and how much you lift. If I were buying for myself (squats, bench press, dead lift, rows, overhead press) I'd want a good set. I regularly squat 350 pounds so an Olympic set is a must. For me, I'd get the following:

I'd start with a 6 foot olympic bar. My workout area is 9' x12' and the area I would use for the weights is 9x6 (the other half is taken up by an elliptical and treadmill). If I had room I'd get a 7' bar.

For weights I'd get at least on 45, 25, 2 10s, a 5, and a 2.5. Usually you can get them all in a set.

I would get a power rack and a separate bench. Nothing fancy for the bench but something that can incline and decline.

I'd look for a set of rubberized 45s for dead lifts but wouldn't worry too much about it. I'd put pads down for dead lifts.

I'd start with craigslist. There are almost always weight sets on there. Getting an olympic bar and weights puts you at a minimum quality level and ensures that weights you buy fit. With non-olympic sets you may be able to get additional weight easily or you may not.

Specifically, I'd get the body solid ppr200x rack, something like this bench and the first set of olympic weights in good shape at a decent price I could find on Craigslist. This is tailored to what I do with weights, though.

If money were an object and you won't lift too much you can get away with a standard weight set from Cap barbell. They make pretty good stuff for the price.

In general, you want something made solidly. One piece. The weights should be smooth without visible cracks or blemishes. The inside of the weights should be smooth to the touch (rough ones won't slide very well). They should be flat on the sides. Some bars have a heavy diamond texture to them that's a little rough. I don't like those. They tear your shins up if you do dead lifts. I like some texture but not a rough texture. That cap set mentions rubber grommets on the barbell and dumbbells. Little things like that will make for a nicer set that's less noisy.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

If money were an object and you won't lift too much you can get away with a standard weight set from Cap barbell. They make pretty good stuff for the price.

Well, that's me in a nutshell so that gives me a good starting point. Thanks!

There are a lot of decent sets that use weights filled with sand. You won't get nearly the max weight, but that doesn't sound like a problem. The weights are also softer plastic so if you drop one it won't mar the floor as easily. These bars also sometimes come with plastic jackets, so they won't abrade your shins (as)much.

If you can play with them in person, assure yourself the bar is of a comfortable diameter to grab. Too wide or too narrow becomes a serious annoyance.

Similarly, pay special attention to the bench width if you get one. It should be comfortable, and you should be able to get your shoulders close to or between the primary supports. It should be wide enough that you feel stable. Err on the side of synthetic coverings if you can because they're easier to clean.

I just started week 2 of P90X 2. Goodbye, Fitocracy. Virtually every single exercise is impossible to describe or catalog. You want to do tricep kickbacks....in Warrior 3 from yoga? Cool. You want to do falling burpees with a stability ball? Awesome. How about standing crunches from Warrior 3? Great.

I think that unless a P90X rep helps Fitocracy, it ain't gonna happen. I've already done like 120 new, bizarre exercises.

I haven't been using Fitocracy since I moved into my house but I have recently bought a weight bench and some new dumbbells. Also I bought a treadmill:

IMAGE(http://images.iconcdn.com/NordicTrack/images/catalog/NTL61011.jpg)

It's a NordicTrack T5.7 Treadmill and seems pretty well constructed with a few really nice bells and whistles. It may not be a $5,000 beast and can only go a maximum of 10 miles an hour (so no sprinting for me), but after running on it a few times, I don't notice any shaking or bouncing when going max speed.

InspectorFowler wrote:

I just started week 2 of P90X 2. Goodbye, Fitocracy. Virtually every single exercise is impossible to describe or catalog. You want to do tricep kickbacks....in Warrior 3 from yoga? Cool. You want to do falling burpees with a stability ball? Awesome. How about standing crunches from Warrior 3? Great.

I think that unless a P90X rep helps Fitocracy, it ain't gonna happen. I've already done like 120 new, bizarre exercises.

Exercise videos, classes, and related stuff are supposed to be logged under "Boot Camp" with a duration attached.

AndrewA wrote:

Exercise videos, classes, and related stuff are supposed to be logged under "Boot Camp" with a duration attached.

Laaaaaaaaaaaame. (You're supposed to read that in the Homer Simpson mocking voice, like how he yells "Neeeeerrrddss!")

New year, new me and all that. If anyone has any invites left I'd like to give it a try.

Cheers!

Nightstorm wrote:

New year, new me and all that. If anyone has any invites left I'd like to give it a try.

Cheers!

PM me your email and I'll send you an invite..\

Messaged you now, thanks very much!

InspectorFowler wrote:
AndrewA wrote:

Exercise videos, classes, and related stuff are supposed to be logged under "Boot Camp" with a duration attached.

Laaaaaaaaaaaame. (You're supposed to read that in the Homer Simpson mocking voice, like how he yells "Neeeeerrrddss!")

I'm with you man. I read a moderator post that said that Exercise videos and classes like P90x are all supposed to be logged under "Boot Camp" or "Cardio" because P90X is trademarked and they can't use the name of it in their exercise descriptions. I'm sorry, I call total BS. Yes, the name is trademarked, but what's stopping them from putting in generic descriptions like "Exercise Video - Core" or "Plyometrics Workout", or at a minimum add the moves included in the workouts, which aren't trademarked. Instead they just shrug and say "log it as boot camp!", which, aside from having substantially less points than it should given the workout, defeats the purpose of sharing and talking about what you're doing with your friends.
"Hi guys! Did another "boot camp" today, same as yesterday, and the day before, and the month before...isn't boot camp awesome!"

Anyways, whatever, it's their site so they can do what they want, but it just seems to want people to fit into their model of how they see workouts as working rather than trying to accommodate various ways of working out. And while they are technically still in beta, the fact that they've responded to the exercise video/P90X issue by saying "sorry, trademark!" instead of "we know this is a problem and we know these workouts are popular, so we're looking into an alternative solution" is enough to turn me off the site.

Dysplastic wrote:

Instead they just shrug and say "log it as boot camp!", which, aside from having substantially less points than it should given the workout, defeats the purpose of sharing and talking about what you're doing with your friends. "Hi guys! Did another "boot camp" today, same as yesterday, and the day before, and the month before...isn't boot camp awesome!"

So use the two different comment mechanisms on a workout to explicitly say what you did. I'm working through hundredpushups.com, and yeah, I log pushups - but I also comment on the activity to say why (the site), the amount of rest between sets, and my progress through the program (week X, day Y). Sure, it's not all automated for me.... but the typing won't kill you and it allows you to personalize far more than ""p90x - 30 minutes".

Ach ach. My Zoloft is giving me massive sugar cravings at night just before bed. How can I resist or fool myself, use the force, use coercion, etc... to prevent snacking and later calorie storage while I sleep.

Your friend, Strangeblades' Belly

PS: My wife poked me in the belly and said I needed to lose it. I like my belly. Food goes in there.

Strangeblades wrote:

Ach ach. My Zoloft is giving me massive sugar cravings at night just before bed. How can I resist or fool myself, use the force, use coercion, etc... to prevent snacking and later calorie storage while I sleep.

First up... the timing of meals/snacks is irrelevant to weight gain/loss.

But assuming the real problem is that the snacking is bringing you over the number of calories you've burned during a day, then it's tough to control. A few things I (try) to do:

- Avoid bringing unhealthy snacks into the house.
- Keep a supply of chewing gum ready to trick my brain into thinking you're eating
- If you must stack, stock the cupboards with healthy options. A favorite of mine is Orville Reddenbocker's Light & Buttery Popcorn. You can eat half a bag and it's not too bad, calorie-wise.

AndrewA wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:

Ach ach. My Zoloft is giving me massive sugar cravings at night just before bed. How can I resist or fool myself, use the force, use coercion, etc... to prevent snacking and later calorie storage while I sleep.

First up... the timing of meals/snacks is irrelevant to weight gain/loss.

But assuming the real problem is that the snacking is bringing you over the number of calories you've burned during a day, then it's tough to control. A few things I (try) to do:

- Avoid bringing unhealthy snacks into the house.
- Keep a supply of chewing gum ready to trick my brain into thinking you're eating
- If you must stack, stock the cupboards with healthy options. A favorite of mine is Orville Reddenbocker's Light & Buttery Popcorn. You can eat half a bag and it's not too bad, calorie-wise.

Though popcorn shell bits between your teeth are a deadly menace.

Well, my point was sort of that the exercises in P90X2 are so bizarre that unless they specifically enter each one, there isn't much point in tracking them. I ran cross country for years, I love weightlifting, I used to do martial arts - I understand high-intensity exercise, and P90X is up there at the very top for me in terms of "things that destroy muscle tissue in a good way". Why would I even bother logging it if I have to log it as "GENERIC EXERCISE"?

I understand that "Dumbell Curls from Yoga Warrior Three Position" is a bit specific, and weird. But the whole point of Fitocracy is to track what you've done and see where you're improving, right? Well, I can't do that with P90X, hence why I won't be using it much anymore.

To be fair to them, when you do the P90X2 videos, they advertise their own online gym where you can track your progress. I haven't checked it out, but if it does let you log your workouts in any kind of detail I can see why they might get a bit testy.

In my mind, a way around it would be to require people to log their workouts on the "official" P90X site/app online, but create integration with Fitocracy so that people who use other fitness routines can track their overall progress. They'd still get the traffic to Beachbody.com and create a more "overall fitness friendly" image for themselves.

Just rewarded myself with a purchase of a belt and lifting straps.

I want to go heavy.

InspectorFowler wrote:

Why would I even bother logging it if I have to log it as "GENERIC EXERCISE"?

From what little I've used it, the point of Fitocracy is more focused on when/what you're working on, and the whole "social" aspect of it, getting encouraged and all that. Just because an exercise you do is not specifically in there shouldn't be a deal-breaker. But writing down notes on what you do as "bootcamp" is probably the best you're going to get right now...

If you just want to log your exercise and progress, you don't need Fitocracy at all, a simple notepad will do (and that's how I logged my progress for years... )

Since I do all gym exercises and they're all in there, except for a couple of modified exercises that I just name in the notes, it's a great logging tool for me.

edit:

AndrewA wrote:

First up... the timing of meals/snacks is irrelevant to weight gain/loss.

I'd like to respectfully disagree with this comment because there's a whole science behind optimizing your meals/snack times during the day to maximize nutrition and energy and minimize calories ingested, and supposedly speeding up your metabolism. In my very personal experience, it's a bad idea to snack right before bed because the calories give you some energy and you can't sleep and all that.

Supposedly you get fatter if you eat right before bed, but not sure if that's true. However for me it interrupts my sleep so I try to avoid it. =)

Strangeblades wrote:

Ach ach. My Zoloft is giving me massive sugar cravings at night just before bed.

The easiest thing I've found for this kind of craving is removing the bad and replacing with the good/better/not as bad.

Oh, and I'm on fitocracy now as well. user saxtus.

I guess I should clarify.

I'm into tracking progress in a visual way, and I also like calculated stats. I do write down my workouts, and that is obviously of use.

But for some reason, seeing, for example, a chart indicating how many more reps I can do from when I started is appealing. I will sometimes just spend 5 minutes appreciating a run I did in RunKeeper, tracing the route, looking at my vertical climb, my fastest speed, my pace. If you are doing the exercises it tracks, Fitocracy is great for this, because it gives you a sense of achievement not just for each exercise, but overall.

I'm not saying it's a bad program - not at all. I would just like to see more integration with other things - for example, if you have "official" RunKeeper integration, you need to include all of RunKeeper's activities, or I'll just stop using Fitocracy and just use RunKeeper. The other good benefit that Fitocracy potentially has is to track all your workouts in one place, creating a fitness hub for your life. But they need to start including more stuff.

Hike two 14ers in one day? Log it. Get all 6 days of training in this week? Log it. Finally break the 10:00 minute mile mark? Log it. Go snowboarding all day? Log it.

It's a great program for traditional workouts. I'd just like to see it (or something similar) become a more complete fitness hub so that I have one central place to track all that stuff.

Mex wrote:

Supposedly you get fatter if you eat right before bed, but not sure if that's true. However for me it interrupts my sleep so I try to avoid it. =)

I've recently read that that's a myth, and that there's no variability on weight gain/loss depending on when you eat.

Could be wrong, I'm certainly not an expert, but I'm good at parotting back what I've read

Jonman wrote:
Mex wrote:

Supposedly you get fatter if you eat right before bed, but not sure if that's true. However for me it interrupts my sleep so I try to avoid it. =)

I've recently read that that's a myth, and that there's no variability on weight gain/loss depending on when you eat.

Could be wrong, I'm certainly not an expert, but I'm good at parotting back what I've read :)

I'm not an expert either, however like Jonman I've recently read (on the Fitocracy boards, with references provided) that "food before bed = weight gain" is a myth in need of busting. I'll try to dig up the info.

I tend to get horrible reflux if I eat right before bed.

Paleocon wrote:

I tend to get horrible reflux if I eat right before bed.

I wouldn't say mine is horrible, but tummy doesn't like being filled and then smashed. Pretty sizzling heartburn results.

Hi guys,

Damn, I'm an admin in our group and I missed this catch-all. I need to hang out on the GwJ forums a bit more. To all my Fitocracy peeps, thanks for filling out our group. As of this writing, the average group level is 7.31. That's pretty damned good, especially when you account for people that joined but aren't really doing anything.

In the interest of further conversations, I'd like to share some observations about Fitocracy, my own evolving habits, and moving forward. Some of this might be old news, so apologies (in advance) if I'm beating recently deceased equines.

First Things First
I just posted our first challenge! It starts on Saturday, Jan 14th and goes through the end of the month. It's the Post NYE Lazy-Blaster. I thought it might be nice to have a tiny carrot to help get us out of the post-holiday doldrums so we can appreciate 2012 with a more healthy attitude. Those of us paying attention will know that Evilhomer will whip us good, but hey - there are ten spots at the top.

Fitocracy Forums
They're helpful, but erratic in their function as a community discussion center. I've seen some polite convos and some back and forths that I swear are fueled by roid rage. What's more, the search function doesn't work. Even using a targeted Google search renders pretty bad results. I don't know what the deal is, but they're going to be answering the same question over and over if they don't fix this.

Cryptic Fields
Those of you who run or use Ellipticals and Rowers and what not know that there are Advanced Options that are supposed to help you add more data into the point-scoring calculations. Some make sense, others are a complete mystery. For instance: I have taken a liking to the Rowing Machine. I'm happily entering data, as I should, but there's this "Resistance:" field that is asking for a % value. That'd be fine, but every rower I've seen has a 1-10 range. How do you convert that to %? I have no idea. I've done what feels like a million searches, and poured over manuals, but nothin'. Nada. Zip. This is just one example. There are other data-fields that perplex me, but I thought I'd share the one that always gets me.

Friends!
If we aren't friends in Fitocracy yet, then tell me. I love to give props to people doing just about anything, because even small steps eventually lead to bigger steps, and I feel that my job is to help motivate us. I'm a full blown gym-addict now, minus to sleazy tough-guy demeanor, and I want to share the experience, virtually, with all of you.

That's it, for now. I've added this thread into my favorites so I can keep better tabs. I hope to be a bit more involved in this thread now.

docbadwrench wrote:

Cryptic Fields
Those of you who run or use Ellipticals and Rowers and what not know that there are Advanced Options that are supposed to help you add more data into the point-scoring calculations. Some make sense, others are a complete mystery. For instance: I have taken a liking to the Rowing Machine. I'm happily entering data, as I should, but there's this "Resistance:" field that is asking for a % value. That'd be fine, but every rower I've seen has a 1-10 range. How do you convert that to %? I have no idea. I've done what feels like a million searches, and poured over manuals, but nothin'. Nada. Zip. This is just one example. There are other data-fields that perplex me, but I thought I'd share the one that always gets me.

These can be misleading. For the rowing machines in particular, the % field isn't designed for Concept 2 rowers that my gym has (which have the big dial that goes from 1-10). I made the mistake of thinking that having that dial set to 10 equated to 100% resistance, but that led to simply ludicrous points for it. After some digging on the forums, it turned out that that % resistance was designed for some other type of machine. I've since been leaving it blank.

Guess this post is more appropriate here than in the other thread...

I have been feeling down lately about my lack of strength. When I worked construction, I was taunted and looked down upon for being the weakest guy in the crew. I went to the gym today kind of angry and depressed about it. It was squat and bench press day, so I went about it as I normally do. I loaded up 225 at the power rack and squatted it four times. I then thought that if I was going to be weak, I might as well fail at being strong spectacularly, so I decided to load the bar up to 275. I shocked myself when I managed to squat it three times, although the third was a dramatic effort. After I did that a couple times, I went to bench press. I normally do about 185 for three incredibly difficult reps. Today, I knocked out 5 easy reps with aplomb. And I managed to do this despite being on a grueling diet!

I have a lot of things in this world to be ashamed of and many regrets, but at least one thing is improving in my life.