Fitness Catch-All

Paleocon wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:
Elycion wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:

I'm on this thread. Can you feel it?

Looking for body weight exercises that utilize the whole body. I already do front press barbell squats, planking, barbell overhead press.

Any suggestions? I also do push-ups.

Burpees are the obvious one. They work everything and send your heart rate through the roof if you do them fast.

Burpees. Check.

Wide grip pullups and narrow, underhand curl ups are very different. Do both.

Also, if you can managed to do archer pullups, you are the man.

Uneven pushups are pretty good.

If you are looking at ideas for home gyms on the super cheap, try looking at http://rosstraining.com/blog/

That dude is awesome.

Pair those with archer push-ups (and eventually one-arm push-ups) and be prepared for greatness.

Nicholaas wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:
Elycion wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:

I'm on this thread. Can you feel it?

Looking for body weight exercises that utilize the whole body. I already do front press barbell squats, planking, barbell overhead press.

Any suggestions? I also do push-ups.

Burpees are the obvious one. They work everything and send your heart rate through the roof if you do them fast.

Burpees. Check.

Wide grip pullups and narrow, underhand curl ups are very different. Do both.

Also, if you can managed to do archer pullups, you are the man.

Uneven pushups are pretty good.

If you are looking at ideas for home gyms on the super cheap, try looking at http://rosstraining.com/blog/

That dude is awesome.

Pair those with archer push-ups (and eventually one-arm push-ups) and be prepared for greatness.

If you can manage to do 1/4 of the stuff Ross does, you will be superhuman.

Dive bomber push-ups
Diamond push-ups.
Push-up to side plank (do a push-up, raise one arm, do a push up, raise the other arm up to side plank)
Inverted push-ups (put your feet on a chair)

Chair dips

Hand-stand push-ups (with back against the wall)

Inverted rows (lie under a table or desk, grab the edge of the table, keep your body straight and pull yourself up - looks like an upside down push-up)
You can also do rows with a door. Grab the door handles, put your feet behind the handles and pull yourself to the door.

Pistol Squats
Bulgarian Split Squats
Side-to-side squats

Similar to burpees:
Jump tucks
Sit-outs

Take a look at alkavadlo.com and the book You are Your Own Gym by Mark Lauren.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

Dive bomber push-ups
Diamond push-ups.
Push-up to side plank (do a push-up, raise one arm, do a push up, raise the other arm up to side plank)
Inverted push-ups (put your feet on a chair)

Chair dips

Hand-stand push-ups (with back against the wall)

Inverted rows (lie under a table or desk, grab the edge of the table, keep your body straight and pull yourself up - looks like an upside down push-up)
You can also do rows with a door. Grab the door handles, put your feet behind the handles and pull yourself to the door.

Pistol Squats
Bulgarian Split Squats
Side-to-side squats

Similar to burpees:
Jump tucks
Sit-outs

Take a look at alkavadlo.com and the book You are Your Own Gym by Mark Lauren.

Nice stuff. Thanks.

Anything that falls under plyometrics will likely fit your bill. Anythign that involves squatting and jumping will get your blood pumping and legs screaming. One of my favorites is the in-place lunge. Start in a lunge position with your right leg forward, then jump straight up from the lunge, switching your feet in the air to land with your left leg forward. They're the burpee kind of fun.

Everything everyone else said is good stuff as well.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Is it weird to see people using bad form, or common? I don't really know anything about weight training, but I did research the excercises I'm doing, and I asked the trainers when I still wasn't sure how to do an exercise. I see fit people doing those excercises in really bad form. It makes me feel weird, like shouldn't they know better. They are all muscley and stuff.

Also, the number of people who do not rack their weights is TOO DAMN HIGH.

Everyone already chimed in but a good 80% of the people doing squats are just plain wasting their time. I've seen every variation of horrible - the quarter squat, sticking their hands into the plates section (like they're on the cross), facing backwards so you have to step back to rack weights.

And some of them are muscley, but a lot of them also have spent years and go to the gym like 5x-6x a week and spend 50% longer than other people. A lot are also very beach muscle oriented, and lack strength in legs, core, back.

doing straight bodyweight exercises, if you do them right and with good form, will do incredible things for your core and balance. If you can perform pistol squats with perfect form all the way to the ground and back up, your balance is a whole lot better than mine.

I knew a girl who could pistol squat on uneven surfaces and the stabilizer muscles in her legs were outrageous.

Uh oh. I should really do some empty front barbell presses for practice BEFORE I do lifts. Had to stop at fourth set because of a twinge in my lower back. It feels OK right now but tomorrow I could be laid up for a week.

EDIT: And I will stop all exercises today. Lower back feels twitchy. Time to relax.

And thus, the importance of allowing for ample warmup time is proved again.

Seriously, good call on stopping. It's the right call. If I feel something funky, first thing I double check that I've got my form squared away. If that's all good and I'm still feeling a twinge, I ease off and take a rest, then drop weight, and try another round with my form still squared away. Still feeling funky, stop. An extra set and a half isn't worth messing yourself up for a few weeks. That's a few weeks of NONE GAINS. Not good.

Chaz wrote:

And thus, the importance of allowing for ample warmup time is proved again.

Seriously, good call on stopping. It's the right call. If I feel something funky, first thing I double check that I've got my form squared away. If that's all good and I'm still feeling a twinge, I ease off and take a rest, then drop weight, and try another round with my form still squared away. Still feeling funky, stop. An extra set and a half isn't worth messing yourself up for a few weeks. That's a few weeks of NONE GAINS. Not good.

Warm up, warm up, warm up. I gotta get into my head. For some reason I think warm ups are a waste of time. Weird huh? Warm ups are a form of exercise but my brain is dumb.

And yup. Stopping entirely for today. I'll see where I am tomorrow before I go running.

This is the warmup routine we do at my gym. It takes about 10 minutes, and covers most of the major muscle groups:

1) 400m run (just a few minutes around the block or so to get the blood moving and things initially loosened up)

2) 30m each of:
-high knees
-lateral shuffle
-grapevine
-straight leg kick
-buttkickers
-power skip
-bear crawl

3) 3 rounds of:
PVC/band overhead pass through x8
PVC/overhead squat x8
pushup x8

You can sub in any number of other mobility things in the second set, and can vary up the third set, but that should cover you. If you're doing any heavy barbell lifts, you'll also want to do some warmup sets of those movements with light weight too. When I'm doing a deadlift day, I'll do warmup sets with the empty bar, then 135x5, then 185x5, and then start my first "real" set.

Warmup time is not wasted time.

Paleocon wrote:

doing straight bodyweight exercises, if you do them right and with good form, will do incredible things for your core and balance. If you can perform pistol squats with perfect form all the way to the ground and back up, your balance is a whole lot better than mine.

I knew a girl who could pistol squat on uneven surfaces and the stabilizer muscles in her legs were outrageous.

Funny you mention pistols; I just finished my 40-day cycle of double kettlebell work, and am returning to a bodyweight-focused routine that includes pistols. 6 sets of 6 reps with 120 seconds of rest? Yeah, I have to type this standing. =P

Very new to all this, but hoping you all can give me a more specific answer than I got from both the trainer at the gym where I started, and the doctor at the gym where I started.

So there I am on the stationary bike for 20 minutes. It's got all kinds of readouts.
I realize that I can maintain a speed/resistance that keeps my heart rate at 125 bpm,
or go somewhat faster and still maintain speed and keep my heart rate closer to 135 bpm.

I'm 43, *just started exercising regularly for the first time in a long time*, and am trying to lose weight.

All I got from the trainer was some formula. All I got from the doc was "glad you're here, keep it under 150."

Any more info you all could give me? I don't have much to occupy my mind as I sit there for 20 minutes, biking around 8.something km....

Do you have a personal physician who knows you a bit better? If so, check with him/her first.

Not really looking for what's safe as much as, what's ideal for burning off my belly, so to speak.

It depends on your body weight. For my age, 29, I need to keep my bpm around 125. I weigh around 220.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

It depends on your body weight. For my age, 29, I need to keep my bpm around 125. I weigh around 220.

And where do you find this out exactly?
I weighed in this morning, at 259, and would like that to head down to your current weight over the next several months.

Roo wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

It depends on your body weight. For my age, 29, I need to keep my bpm around 125. I weigh around 220.

And where do you find this out exactly?
I weighed in this morning, at 259, and would like that to head down to your current weight over the next several months. :)

That's what the trainer at my gym told me. For my weight and age, to burn fat, I need to be around 125 bpm.

That could be BS, though. A quick Google search found this on livestrong.com.

Your target heart rate for fat burning is approximately 55 percent to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. Multiply your MHR by 0.55 to get your lower level threshold, and multiply your MHR by 0.70 to get your upper level threshold. So, if you are 40 years old, your lower level threshold would be 180 x 0.55 = 99 beats per minute, and your upper level threshold would be 180 x 0.70 = 126 beats per minute. This would make your fat burning zone 99 to 126 beats per minute.

I'm very overweight, dangerously so. Still stuck at the same weight I grew to after my accident. I'm off of gluten (because my gut feels rotten when I eat food that contains it), I don't eat red meat, I don't really eat pork, I don't snack outside of a soda habit (a couple a day) and a couple pieces of dark chocolate a day. Otherwise my diet largely consists of protein (turkey meat, chicken breast, fish), veggies, sweet potatoes, fruit (a bowl of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries at breakfast), rice and eggs. My diet is fairly clean, although I should probably journal intake and portions for a while. But I don't eat things that are crazy bad for me outside of the soda and probably an overuse of condiments.

I'm pre-diabetic, so I'm sure that doesn't help with my overall metabolism. I'm dealing with a good doctor who is engaged in other things right now (taking me off a couple of medications I no longer need slowly), so we haven't talked a ton about my weight. I think the hope was that it would start to drop once I got active (I now bike about 5 miles a day) and once I started eating better. But I haven't budged so much as a pound.

I'm not expecting that right now I'd be losing tons of weight. Not without more rigorous exercise, but I just can't do that right now. My body can't take it. That's why I'm focusing more on diet. I wish I could unlock what's off about my diet.

DSGamer wrote:

I wish I could unlock what's off about my diet.

Probably the exact same thing that's wrong with the diet of the majority of Americans: your portions are way too large. Get a good digital scale and weigh and document everything you eat using something like MyFitnessPal for at least a week and I bet you'll find that your intake is far above your metabolic requirement. ( I've been there and done this!)

The other thing that pops up is that in your description of your diet there's a lot of sugar. The "couple of sodas" a day is somewhere in the range of 280 calories assuming you mean 12 ounce cans, so there's about 14% of a 2000 calorie daily allotment used just on soda (keeping in mind that you're unlikely to lose weight at 2k/cal daily). It's also a fallacy to assume that sugar in the form of fruit is healthy, those bowls of berries for breakfast are packing some fairly massive amounts of fructose and for the purposes of losing weight you'd be way better off ditching them in favor of some nice steel-cut oatmeal.

It sucks, but there's no way around being hungry if you truly want to lose weight.

DSGamer wrote:

I'm not expecting that right now I'd be losing tons of weight. Not without more rigorous exercise, but I just can't do that right now. My body can't take it. That's why I'm focusing more on diet. I wish I could unlock what's off about my diet.

Dollars to donuts, it's a quantity not a quality issue. Aside from the soda, it looks pretty clean, so the only culprit left is the amount. Keep a food journal for a couple of weeks, or a month if you can. Analyze that, and I bet that you'll find that your caloric intake is right on your BMR .

That said, how easy would it be to drop the sodas? A couple of sodas a day (assuming you're not drinking diet-X) is nearly 300 calories - assuming your BMR is going to be somewhere in the low 2000's, that's one change that results in >10% fewer calories every day. It's a significant impact.

One other thing to note - you say "rice". You mean white rice? 'cos that sh*t is whack,yo. Spikes your blood sugar like no-one's business, which as a pre-diabetic, should be on your not-to-do list. What about brown rice, wild rice, spelt, farro, or quinoa as alternatives?

Elycion wrote:

It sucks, but there's no way around being hungry if you truly want to lose weight.

Disagree with this, but the way that exists involves burning a metric buttload of calories through activity/exercise, which DS has already ruled out, so is moot in this case. I lost a bunch of weight training for triathlons, and was never hungry. But I was eating nearly 3000 calories most days and *still* running a significant caloric deficit, so there's that.

It's been white rice for about 5 years now. In large part because of gut issues. I've been in a nasty catch-22 since my accident of having gut issues where complex carbohydrates were rough on my digestive tract. It's gotten better since then, though, and I've been able to choose brown rice instead lately. That's a fairly recent development, though. And even at that it's something where I'm not in "great" shape in that regard. I'm good enough to be able to add more fiber to my diet.

It's also a fallacy to assume that sugar in the form of fruit is healthy, those bowls of berries for breakfast are packing some fairly massive amounts of fructose and for the purposes of losing weight you'd be way better off ditching them in favor of some nice steel-cut oatmeal.

As far as the fruit goes the main reason it's in there is because I assume some amount of fruit is healthy to a well-rounded diet. If that's a fallacy and I could skip it then I would probably begrudgingly do so. I googled what you mentioned about oatmeal. My initial reaction was that it contains gluten so I probably can't eat it. But further digging seems to say that only people who are truly celiac need to worry about oats. I'll have to look into this. I'm not celiac, but once again I'm eating around a half decade of pretty terrible gut issues.

The thing that really sucks is that I've been here before. I lost 170lbs.+ back in 1999 - 2001. I did it by quitting soda (back on it, but less), dairy (back on it, but less), alcohol (still don't drink it really), red meat (haven't eaten it since) and basically going vegetarian. Eventually I mixed back in chicken, fish and eventually eggs. But even then I was still at roughly my goal weight until my accident. Since then I've been juggling a fun mixture of medications, side effects from those medications, gut issues and body pain when exercising.

I figured the easiest thing to do was to cut back on medications and hope that my gut health would improve so I could improve my diet. This has indeed made things better, but not enough. Exercise is in check to some degree until I get healthier overall. So basically that leaves diet, which is why I'm asking here. I'll try both of these suggestions out (cutting out the berries and hopefully soda as well as journaling) for a bit and see how it goes. I still welcome other advice, though. I feel like I'm caught an infinite loop here, so other ways to break out of it are welcome.

Jonman wrote:
Elycion wrote:

It sucks, but there's no way around being hungry if you truly want to lose weight.

Disagree with this, but the way that exists involves burning a metric buttload of calories through activity/exercise, which DS has already ruled out, so is moot in this case. I lost a bunch of weight training for triathlons, and was never hungry. But I was eating nearly 3000 calories most days and *still* running a significant caloric deficit, so there's that.

This is basically how I did it the first time. Yes, I changed my diet radically, but I also started biking, eventually ramping up to a daily commute of 35 miles round trip. It's been a harsh reality check that not only can my body not do that, but brute-forcing it just doesn't work for me now. I tried that for a bit and got nowhere except injured.

DSGamer wrote:

As far as the fruit goes the main reason it's in there is because I assume some amount of fruit is healthy to a well-rounded diet. If that's a fallacy and I could skip it then I would probably begrudgingly do so. I googled what you mentioned about oatmeal. My initial reaction was that it contains gluten so I probably can't eat it. But further digging seems to say that only people who are truly celiac need to worry about oats. I'll have to look into this. I'm not celiac, but once again I'm eating around a half decade of pretty terrible gut issues.

Don't skip the fruit completely, just watch the quantity. Fruit is healthy, but it's loaded with simple sugars that digest very quickly and don't contribute much to satiety. Use some of those calories on complex carbs and you'll have an easier overall time of it.

As for the steel-cut oats one of the reasons I highly recommend them is that it's an incredible source of both soluble and insoluble fiber. If you have digestive issues I strongly recommend giving oatmeal breakfasts a 30 day trial. I have what I call a "finicky" lower GI tract and proper diet keeps it happy, but if I lay off the fiber (my main source is the oats) then it goes downhill quickly.

I get wicked awesome poops with steel cut oats.

I'm going to build my own squat rack. Out of wood, concrete, nails and two buckets. Boo yah.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/xKICwRP.png)

I used to do Stronglifts 5x5 back in Ontario before my gym closed and the new gym had no power or squat rack (bastards).

I'm doing front squats now and I'm up to 70 pounds but I want to get back to squatting with a big bar on my back, with the bar just at or below my shoulders.

I've decided to go the DIY route as I can build for the space in the spare bedroom of my apartment and it should cost less than $70 Canadian. I can use saw horses as a safety measure.

There's lots of guides online for a DIY squat rack but does anyone here have tips? To be clear I'm not building a power rack or a cage as I don't have room.

If you really want to lose weight, the first step really needs to be to keep a diet log and be ruthless about your honesty on it. Seriously. Get a notebook and a pen. Keep it with you always. And anytime anything passes your lips, write that fccker down. If you need to, keep a ruler with you as well so you can measure the portions roughly and estimate weights later.

The reason I say this is because the biggest load of crap I hear ALL THE FCKING TIME is "I don't eat anything and I gain weight anyway". It defies the law of thermodynamics as well as just about the entirety of human biological history. And without destroying that self deception, any effort one makes is just effort in vain.

Write it down. Then review it. Only then will you know what is killing you.

More often than not, it is not the portion of salad or egg white omelet that is the problem despite our tendency to fixate on that. It is the slice of cake you had at the company birthday party you weren't going to count or the mints off Deborah's desk or the Mountain Dew and french fries you didn't pay for so they really don't count.

Count it all.

Strangeblades wrote:

I'm going to build my own squat rack. Out of wood, concrete, nails and two buckets. Boo yah.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/xKICwRP.png)

To start with, this picture does not depict a squat rack, it is however an accurate depiction of attempted suicide via free weights and lumber.

What you've pictured is a barbell holder/rest, and one that is of incredibly unsafe design (mofo will tip over the first time you sneeze at it).

You need an actual squat rack/power rack and if you have room for the above pictured atrocity + room to actually do the squats in then you have room for a proper rack! The key here is that there must be bars in position that can arrest the descent of the barbell if it goes lower than 3-4 inches below your maximum squat depth. This is what keeps you alive when you pass out/cramp/fall over while squatting.

You can certainly make it yourself, but it would look more like this:
IMAGE(http://www.home-gym-bodybuilding.com/image-files/homemade-power-rack-shawn-2.jpg)

Hmmm. *goes back to drawing board*

Yup. That squat apparatus in the first picture looks like something right out of Crossfit. And considering the plates are bumper plates, I am probably right.