Tips for a work-out regime.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Me and my brother are looking to get a bit fitter. We eat a healthy pescetarian diet, but we laze about too much, and I think that this doesn't do wonders for the mind and obviously doesn't do anything for the physique. Really we want to get the best health benefits from our diet as possible - we don't eat crappy food, so why not maximize the protein and carbs that we get?

The initial plan is to start by jogging three times a week, starting at 20 minutes per day and moving up a bit as the weeks go by. Along with this, I am thinking of doing a number of push ups and sit ups on a daily basis, with the aim of getting a bit more toned and maybe even building a bit of muscle. I'm unsure of how many of these it takes. So jogging to lose weight and pushing/sitting up to gain a bit of tone.

Is this a good starting point?We are poor and can't afford the gym or even to buy weights. I smoke personally but I am aiming to cut down, will this interfere greatly? Any other pointers/recommendations?

Cheers comrades.

[PhoenixAsh]

If you stop smoking your longue volume will increase aswell as the oxygen to blood swap and it will increase your cardio-vascular fitness. So thats definately a good idea if you are looking to get fit and healthy.

Situps will not increase muscle size much after an initial increase. It will definately strengthen your muscles and it will definately tighten your stomach. If you have low fat it will definately increase tone. Do crunches, bend legs sit ups, twists and also play with up-hold and down times, leg raises etc. Variety is key here.....10-15 minutes a day is a very good start alternating between exercises without rest. After you get bored you can increase the exercise by holding something a bit heavier. Search the internet for some good exercises.

Same with pushups....only then for the shoulders and chest...do them on the floor, leaning your legs on the bed and leaning with your hands on the bed....to hit al the different muscle angles of the chest. Also vary the width of the arms.

Chinups are very good for the flyes, back of the shoulders, best muscle increase for biceps, and upper back.

Dips are very good for the triceps.

For legs you can do sqauts with something heavy in a backpack. Or you can do farmers walk...basically that means you hold sometyhing fucking heavy in both hands and walk.

Also...search youtube for something called ghetto workout.
Here is the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDCxH88-9X8

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Thanks for the tips dude. I'll have to search a lot of those work-out terms as I don't know how you do them, but I'm sure there will be vids and diagrams online.

[PhoenixAsh]

Absolutely. If I get back I'll try to find you some exercises that you can do wo weights & a gym.

[PhoenixAsh]

http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html

THis is a general link to exercises mostly with weights but also without weights.

Just click on the body part you want to exercise in the left column and you get all the exercises for te body part. Or...if you want to specialise more...click on the specific muscle in the right column.

When you have clicked on the body part you will get a new screen. Usually in the left column are the exercises which require equipment. In the right column there are exercises which do not or do not require specialised equipment...meaning you can improvise. Whenever it says body weight (top right column) it means the exercises below are not using machines or weights...

The directory for the abdomen is here...listed under waist: http://www.exrx.net/Lists/ExList/WaistWt.html in the right column..(whenever it says bodyweight it means without machines or weights...just natural exercises.)

Below is a very general muscle chart...its a bit stupid...but it gives you a general idea where what muscle is. It may help you find the exercises you want.

http://www.thblack.com/fitness/muscle1.jpg


I have no idea if the psoas are covered in the link I gave you... basically these are muscles that run from your spine to the front of your hip...and are also called the hip flexor muscles. And they are important. You train them with normal abdominem training but there are exercises which you can do that target them more specifically. You can always train these wherever you are....whatever you do...

- pull in your naval towards your back util you feel some strain and hold as long as possible. Release and repeat.
- make a table of yourself. (On hands and knees)...do the above.

Its that simple. do not overdo it though. Training these muscles help prevent lower back injuries and such....and they are essential for walking and lifting your legs....and they also help in maintaining balance.

Also google the term: core exercises.

As I said....you will probably benefit a whole lot by doing chin-ups, dips and pull-ups. These three exercise a whole lot of muscles at once: chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, brachialis, under arm muscles, abdomen (just keep them tight). Don't worry if you can't do a lot. Somebody can assist by helping you get up if needed...or you can train on body weight. You will improve really fast... Break your exercise in sets. Every sets contain reps...or the number of repetitions. So if you manage to get 3 chin ups done...try to repeat that 4 times. Between each set you have a short rest.

Another great tip I can give you...which is important. While doing abdominal muscles...
-alway look up. Your chin needs to NOT lean on your chest...
-Breath in while releasing and breath out when applying strength. KEEP breathing.
-always try to suck in your naval...the term is six pack...but the entire abdomen is just one big muscle. You get the six pack because of the "tendons" that run across your abdomen. Sucking in your naval somewhat helps maintain equal resistance over your entire abdomen.
- always use a mat or blanket to protect your spine and hips.

Do not forget your obliques. These are the side muscles.

I hope this gives you a good start!

O yeah...
During your training: drink lots of water.
After your training: eat...the sooner the better.

[bezdomni]

Long live the work-out regime!

[Niccolò Rossi]

The initial plan is to start by jogging three times a week, starting at 20 minutes per day and moving up a bit as the weeks go by.

Jogging is the epitome of mediocrity. There is no reason to want to jog. If your primary goal is to improve your fitness, high-intensity, short-duration conditioning work is what you want. I can send you a great e-book of 50 conditioning workouts through email if you like. Cost me $30. Anyone else wanna check it out, PM me. And no, it's not from some gimmicky fucking sidebar ad you seen on facebook or google or whatever. The e-book was put out by the Greyskull Barbell Club.


Along with this, I am thinking of doing a number of push ups and sit ups on a daily basis, with the aim of getting a bit more toned and maybe even building a bit of muscle. I'm unsure of how many of these it takes. So jogging to lose weight and pushing/sitting up to gain a bit of tone. "There is no such thing as “firming and toning.” There is only stronger and weaker." - Mark Rippeote.

Of course, Mark is being facetious, but the point is no less important. Don't forget this. You don't 'gain tone', 'tone' is an absolutely meaningless word. When people generally talk about wanting to get 'toned' what they really mean is that they want to gain muscle and have sufficiently low body fat to make said muscle visible.

Some more constructive comments - sit ups and push ups won't cut it. That is not to say body weight stuff in general will not be useful or is not recommended, but we need to look a little further than the dumb fitness testing you did in gym class.

Sit ups have very limited use in my opinion. Novices, performing a basic, intelligently designed barbell strength training program do not really need any kind of direct, ab isolation work. As part of an exclusively bodyweight centred program, this may be more useful. Even then however, the usefulness of traditional sit ups can be debated. In western societies where a large portion of the population is so heavily conditioned to sitting in chairs slouched over infront of computer screens, tight hip flexors and rounded shoulders and upper backs, sit ups reinforce this bad positioning.

Push ups, parallel bar dips, chin ups, pull ups, inverted rows are all ideas for body weight stuff you can do pretty easily. Pull ups and chin ups are in my opinion a must in order to balance musculature around the chest and back to make for healthy shoulders. Looking like quasimodo from too much pressing and not enough pulling is not a healthy look.


We are poor and can't afford the gym or even to buy weights. I smoke personally but I am aiming to cut down... Any other pointers/recommendations?Yeah, in my experience, people who quit smoking usually magically end up with alot more money on hand than they did while they smoked.

Nic.

[Sun at Eight]

Quitting smoking would be the first place to start, especially with regards to stamina and the health of your heart and lungs.

For cheap exercising, check out pull-up bars (install one around the home) and using your bodyweight. One pretty interesting book with regards to bodyweight is "Convict Conditioning" by Paul Wade. It has several aspects to recommend it. The idea is to be able to perform six core exercises. These are exercises like one-armed pushups, one-armed pullups and one-armed handstand pushups. They sound pretty crazy, but the book has ten steps to each goal, and doesn't expect you to get to the final exercises for a while. The first step of the exercises (and even the second and third) seem ridiculously easy, but doing them helps get you started without feeling discouraged and gradually builds some muscle. For example, the first exercise for the pull-ups is simply holding a vertical doorframe and simply pulling yourself to it. The first exercise for a push-up is placing your arms on a wall and letting yourself lean into it and pushing yourself back. All the exercises are well-described and it even has alternate exercises to do after the final ones. The other big factor is that it's geared to lower-rep high-intensity bodyweight exercise as the goal, not ridiculous numbers of reps. The book is $40 in the US, but PM me for a copy if you're interested. :D (It sounds like you're skinny or average in weight. If that's not the case, bodyweight programs don't work very well)


As for running, Couch to 5k is an amazing program (Google for it). Get a cheap mp3 player, get Couch to 5k specific tracks that tell you when to walk and when to run, and you will get up to 5k through interval training. Interval training means that you start out by doing a lot of walking and not much jogging, but by the end you will be able to jog/run 5k. Just remember to stretch afterwards and realize that although the program is gradual, it's not not that gradual and you need to pay attention to how your body is feeling. Don't feel embarrassed to repeat a week or rest a week or even two if the running injures you (e.g. groin pulls, shin splints, etc.). The earlier you notice something's wrong, the shorter the recovery time. This goes for all exercise.


Edited to add:
Yeah, don't worry about sit-ups. They can be bad for the back and you can get those muscles worked other ways.

[miltonwasfried...man]

quit smoking, run a lot, go vegan

[Niccolò Rossi]

run a lot, go vegan

LOL, fuck off. I thought we were trying to improve the guys fitness here not turn him into a concentration camp victim.


shin splints

Man, this!

I had to run the other day, and yes it doesn't happen that often for me, to class to get an assessment in on time. I had the worst stitch right at the bottom of my rib cage and the worst shin splints for days.

I need to improve my conditioning...

Nic.

[Die Rote Fahne]

P90-x fool.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Thanks for the tips people. Went for a jog with my brother today. Came back and did as many push-ups and pull-ups as we could as well as some crunches - we couldn't do a hell of a lot which was embarrassing but did about 20 reps of each. I found some old weights too, did 20 reps in different ways, don't know the names of the lifts but my shoulders, biceps, triceps and upper back muscles are burning.

@Nicc - what do you recommend as a way to lose fat around the stomach and build muscle here? I've been doing crunches and sit ups as I said, and I jog beforehand to burn off fat. Is there a better way of doing this? I can feel my upper body burning after the work out and I guess that's a good thing, what can me and my brother do about our puppy fat around the stomach? My brother is bigger than me and has a bit of trouble doing sit ups, surely the more difficult they are, the more point there is to doing them?

Oh yeah, I can't afford to smoke either. I haven't been able to buy tobacco for about a week or two now, and just tend to pinch it off my Dad. Still, giving up would be better and being the weak willed smoker I am, if I had the money, I'd probably buy tobacco rather than go to the gym :(.

[Niccolò Rossi]

what do you recommend as a way to lose fat around the stomach and build muscle here?

Loosing fat and gaining muscle is not realistically possible. To synthesise muscle tissue, you need a caloric surplus. To mobilise fat you need a caloric deficit. In other words, to build muscle you need to eat more energy than your body burns off, some of this excess energy will go toward building new muscle. To loose fat you need to eat less energy than your body demands, so the 'energy gap' is filled by breaking down stored fat and using it as energy.

It's worthwhile asking: How old are you? How tall are you? How much do you weigh?


I've been doing crunches and sit ups as I said, and I jog beforehand to burn off fat.

To clarify, jogging with not, in and of itself, allow you to loose bodyfat. You can jog all you like, but so long as your taking in excess calories, you will put on fat (and in the rght circumstances, muscle).

Again, personally, I don't reccomend anyone to jog. Jogging is a meaningless activity, not to mention the pinnacle the mediocrity. Low-intensity cardio such as walking or stair climbing has a purpose. Short duration, high intensity conditioning such as sprinting or hill sprinting has a purpose. Which you do depends on your goals, but neither involved jogging. Yuck.


I can feel my upper body burning after the work out and I guess that's a good thing

The burning sensation may be a couple of things. The most likely in your case is probably a build up of lactic acid. In this case the burning sensation will be immediate. Lactic acid build up commonly occurs at high repition schemes (12-20 and above). Another common cause of burning sensation is 'delayed onset muscle soreness' commonly called DOMS. As the name implies this sensation's onset occurs usually 24-48 hours after excercise and is caused by the small tears excercise has caused to the muscle and the bodies attempt to repair it (this is how muscles grow - they are damaged and are repaired along with supercompensation, ie. new muscle)

Neither is inherently a good thing. I very rarely suffer from DOMS or lactic acid accumulation. In my case, it's pretty easy to explain - I consistently use relatively low reps (generally not over 5) and use relatively quick eccentrics*. The lesson to take away is, don't rely on 'the burn' to determine if you had a good session. Furthermore, don't case 'the burn' or 'the pump' in order to make you feel like you've accomplished something. These are not good indictators of progress.


what can me and my brother do about our puppy fat around the stomach?

The best advice is to build muscle and fill his frame out.


My brother is bigger than me and has a bit of trouble doing sit ups, surely the more difficult they are, the more point there is to doing them?

Lots of things in life are hard. Doesn't make them worth doing. Doing squats on a swiss ball is a fuck load harder than doing them on flat ground, but you don't see me trying to 'fix' this. As I said before, sit ups in my opinion have a very limited usefulness. The better question is, what do you hope to achieve by doing sit ups? Don't know, don't do them. Everything needs to have a purpose.

Nic.

*Concentric contraction refers to a positive movement, isometric contraction refers to a static position and eccentric contraction refers to a resisted negative movement. Eg. in a bicep barbell curl, the concentric portion would be raising the weight, and isometric contraction would take place if we stopped the motion mid range and held it there, while the eccentric portion involves lowering the weight. Isometric and slow eccentric contractions can cause more muscular stress than concentric contractions. As such, the use of slow eccentrics and forced reps will cause more 'pump' and more muscle soreness.

[Niccolò Rossi]

P90-x fool.

I'd rather jog

Nic.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Okay I only have a minute to ask a brief question, thanks for the reply.

As for what we want to achieve from the sit ups is to lose stomach fat and build muscle in the abdomen - can you recommend a work out for this?

EDIT: I got the books, I'll have a look in them. I'm sure they will give me answers to my questions. Thanks for the help anyway people :)

[Niccolò Rossi]

As for what we want to achieve from the sit ups is to lose stomach fat and build muscle in the abdomen - can you recommend a work out for this?

Good answer, now let's take a look.

Firstly, your wrong to say that sit ups will help you loose stomach fat. In so far as they require energy to perform and insofar as that energy is sourced from body fat reserves, then yeah sit ups burn bodyfat, sure. But this is essentially no different than doing a deadlift or jogging or sleeping. The body requires energy to perform any of these.
It is a commonly held myth that doing sit ups will help you loose fat of your stomach by some magic that turns fat into muscle. This idea more generally is referred to as 'spot reduction' - the idea you can loose body fat from a specific area of the body by targetting that body part with excercise. However, the body doesn't work that way.
The body will mobilise stored body fat to be used as energy when there is a caloric deficit*, regardless of whether this is achieved by increased physical excertion, by restricting calorie intake from food or some combination of both. The body will also dictat from where that body fat is sourced. This is something we can't redily change. The truth is very boring, sorry.

Secondly, whilst sit ups do provide a stress on the abdominals, that, provided adequate rest and a sufficient caloric surplus will yield muscle growth, bigger abs insn't going to give you the 'six-pack' look, assuming that's what you are after. Case in point, I have very thick, large, distended abs. I also have a thick layer of body fat covering them. They show through, but this is a very different look... If the 'six pack' look is what you are after (which is not something I find desirable personally), sit ups are not essential. Correct diet to keep body fat sufficiently low so that they are visible is.

Now, please, don't read any of the above as a value judgement. I am presenting facts only. Opinion and decision making is up to you.

A disclaimer I will add though, whilst I don't believe sit ups are the most well suited or effective form of ab training, if you are solely doing bodyweight stuff and not basic compound barbell movements such as squats, deadlifts and overhead pressing (movements which recruit the abs heavily in an essential isometric, stabilising function), specific, targetted ab work definitely has more value.

*Just to make sure I haven't lost you, the word 'caloric' is derived from the word calorie. A calorie (or more correctly kilocalorie) is a unit of energy commonly used in reference to food and physical excertion. So the phrase 'caloric surplus' means a net excess in calories ie. energy measured in calories consumed from food > energy burned in calories for physical excertion and vice versa for a deficit.

Nic.

[Ele'ill]

LOL, fuck off. I thought we were trying to improve the guys fitness here not turn him into a concentration camp victim.


You can be extremely fit while maintaining a vegan diet.

[Niccolò Rossi]

You can be extremely fit while maintaining a vegan diet.

I suppose it's only fair you reply to my one liner with a one liner.

I suppose it depends what you call 'extremely fit'. I don't think vegan diets are sensible or suitable for anyone.

Nic.

[Тачанка]

Nicc, nobody "burns" fat. It gets turned into energy.

Also, you can lose body fat % and gain muscle at the same time. It's just that some lazy wannabe bodybuilders don't count their calories but rather stuff their faces with all they can find for 6 months and then go diet for some months (they call this shit bulking&cutting cycles)

get here http://www.scoobysworkshop.com/index.htm

Also do this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training (Others mentioned it already)

[Niccolò Rossi]

Nicc, nobody "burns" fat. It gets turned into energy.

Well yes, quite obviously the fat is not literally combusted. The metaphor of a combustion engine and 'burning' fuel is quite easy to understand though. I probably should avoid using the term in the future though I suppose.


Also, you can lose body fat % and gain muscle at the same time. It's just that some lazy wannabe bodybuilders don't count their calories but rather stuff their faces with all they can find for 6 months and then go diet for some months (they call this shit bulking&cutting cycles)

As I've stated before. To build muscle, a caloric surplus must exist. To loose fat, a caloric deficit must exist. Following from these premises, we must deduce that the state of a net synthesis of new muscle and a net metabolism stored body fat are mutually exclusive.

As far as I can see, either my deduction is incorrect or my premises are incorrect. Which is it?


get here http://www.scoobysworkshop.com/index.htm

Fuck Scooby. The guy is the biggest joker on the internet.

Nic.

[Тачанка]

As I've stated before. To build muscle, a caloric surplus must exist. To loose fat, a caloric deficit must exist. Following from these premises, we must deduce that the state of a net synthesis of new muscle and a net metabolism stored body fat are mutually exclusive.


According to that logic, I can easily build muscle by going to McDonald's 5 times a day stuffing my face with burgers.

That just doesn't work.

To build fat, a caloric surplus must exist. To loose fat, a caloric deficit must exist.

To build muscle, the body needs the neccessary proteins gained from a proper nutrition and, of course, energy. Both are not mutually excluse, but the body will and must heal damaged muscle fibres if it has the neccessary ingredients to do so.

As long as one's workout methods don't go beyond the anaerobic border (lactic acid building up <= lactic acid transformed by the body) the body will use the energy stored in body fat.

It's just up to one's own gains if he wants to eat more than the body needs (Effectively building fat, but also letting the muscle fibres recover) or if one wants to count his own calories, take care of a proper nutrition and gain muscle mass + lose body fat % or keep ones body fat %.

Really, if you measure your progress by weight, chances are that one does not really measure muscle mass but fat.

No sources, sorry. Just sports class at school, lulz

[Ele'ill]

I suppose it's only fair you reply to my one liner with a one liner.

I suppose it depends what you call 'extremely fit'. I don't think vegan diets are sensible or suitable for anyone.

Nic.

That's quite a bit of supposing but on a serious note, and not to derail this thread, I wanted to present the fact that there are people on this forum who disagree with the church of 'mmmmmeat'. Other than this minor hang-up I don't have a problem here. Don't feel the need to respond to this because you know, there are already ten recent threads on the topic.

[Niccolò Rossi]

According to that logic, I can easily build muscle by going to McDonald's 5 times a day stuffing my face with burgers.

Of course you can. In fact it works very well.


To build fat, a caloric surplus must exist. To loose fat, a caloric deficit must exist. This is true.


As long as one's workout methods don't go beyond the anaerobic border (lactic acid building up <= lactic acid transformed by the body) the body will use the energy stored in body fat.I'd be curious about the supposed link between lactic acid accumulation and muscle protein synthesis. This is something I've not heard before and can't understand how it would work. If you ahave any sources I'd be curious to see them.

The main claim here though, that the energy necessary to fuel muscle protein synthesis can be provided from the liberation of free fatty acids from stored body fat. Although this is a lovely idea, human metabolic systems aren't so kind. Put simply, the body is not willing to sacrifice vital body fat stores to build new muscle. Our bodies don't care about us looking buff, they care about keeping us alive, and that means storing body fat to safe guard us in the event of food scarcity. Our metabolic systems have evolved over tens of thousands of years in conditions very different to modern western society where energy dense food is readily avaliable. Unfortunately we just have to work with that we got.

In the case of very obese people, it is a more immediate possibility to build muscle in conditions of a net caloric deficit. This situation however is a result of the excessively large quantities of body fat avaliable for utilisation. The leaner you get the less of a possibility this is.


It's just up to one's own gains if he wants to eat more than the body needs (Effectively building fat, but also letting the muscle fibres recover) or if one wants to count his own calories, take care of a proper nutrition and gain muscle mass + lose body fat % or keep ones body fat %.It sort of begs the question though, as to why professional bodybuilders - who's job revolves around maximising muscular size and minimising body fat to the extremes of what is humanly possible - bother 'bulking' in the off-season. Not to forget the chemical enhancement these men and women have the privilege of recievingnwhich makes things like retaining just large quantities of muscle mass in very large caloric deficits and in very severly net catabolic environments come contest time possible.

Nic.