Exercise and Fitness: bro science debunked

[Iskaral Pust]

2 hours ago, aceluby said:

You should pick up some of this and keep some in your bag at all times since you travel often:

https://www.amazon.com/Zarbees-Naturals-Daytime-B-Complex-Elderberry/dp/B01M3URAP2/ref=sr_1_8?crid=1TQQPJCO3GG35&keywords=zarbees+cough+and+mucus&qid=1552307330&s=gateway&sprefix=zarb%2Caps%2C304&sr=8-8

I just mix it in some cold water and chug it down whenever I have a tickle in my throat or a bit of the sniffles.  Since I've gotten it early I haven't had a full on cold or flu in over two years.  Before I started doing that I'd use it after getting sick and would feel better in a day or two.  There's also a nighttime version.  

Thanks.  I just bought a pack to try. 

[Conflicting Thought]

On 3/10/2019 at 3:34 PM, Triskele said:

This one is definitely in the repertoire.

I forget if I complained on the board when this happened, but perhaps the most egregious breach of gym etiquette that's happened to me was related to a Romanian deadlift.  I was mid-rep with headphones on once, this girl tapped me on the shoulder to ask if I was using an adjacent machine.  Mid-rep on Romanian deadlift.  

Thanks!

@Conflicting Thought

Your post is quite vague...any greater specificity about what you're hoping to achieve might help some of these folks give you better feedback.  

ETA:  I tried a new leg lift yesterday which is the Bulgarian slit squat.  All kinds of sore but excited to have added this.  The gym I go to has only two proper squat racks, and they're tough to get on week nights when it's packed, so this seems like a really nice alternative.  

Sorry fo the lack of info. 

Im really really skinny and hate my body. I want to build muscle and strenght. In short i want to change my body as much as i can. And i would like to do that trough calisthenics alone if possible (i DO have some weights to that i could incorporate). 

[Kalbear]

Hate to say it, but the first thing you're going to have to do is change the way you eat and what you eat. 

In addition to that, calisthenics is going to be a bad choice as far as building muscle mass. You'll likely get stronger, but you aren't going to change your body that much, as you'll be essentially doing a whole lot of reps at low weight for most things. If you want to gain muscle mass (which it sounds like you do) you need to be doing things that you can only do a couple times before failing, and you need to be doing big exercises that work a lot of your body. And a lot of that is weights of some kind. 

There are other things you can do - modified pushups, pullups, situps, that sort of thing - but the key for you is to do exercises that kick your ass, hard, and you can't do too many of them. Otherwise you'll just be getting definition, but not changing your mass that much. 

[Iskaral Pust]

1 hour ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Sorry fo the lack of info. 

Im really really skinny and hate my body. I want to build muscle and strenght. In short i want to change my body as much as i can. And i would like to do that trough calisthenics alone if possible (i DO have some weights to that i could incorporate). 

The good news is that any website on gaining muscle or body building can give you the basic pointers to stimulate hypertrophy (muscle growth):

- eat a ton of food consistently.  Probably 3000+ calories per day.  Get a good balance of carbs/fats/protein, including a minimum of 100g of protein a day.  

- get good sleep, like 8+ hours a night consistently.  Try to reduce cortisol (stress) too.

- lift heavy weights with good form in compound movements, e.g. squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull-ups (or pull-downs until you can do a pull-up), shoulder press and some sort of row.  Choose the heaviest weight you can lift 8-10 times in a set of slow, controlled reps. Keep increasing the weight in small increments for progressive overload. (Shorter, heavier sets build more strength, while longer, lighter sets build endurance; but 8-10 reps per set is the sweet spot for stimulating growth).  Do at least three sets at a time of a given muscle group.  Try to train every muscle group twice a week for at least the first year or more.  Rest a muscle group for 48 hours (or more) between workouts.

The bad news is that calisthenics is very unlikely to challenge your muscles enough to trigger hypertrophy, unless you are training like a serious gymnast.

If you do all of that, you will definitely gain muscle mass.  As you fall short of that, e.g. insufficient food, sleep or workload, it will slow your muscle growth but you’ll still make progress unless you fall catastrophically short.  In the early months your strength will improve faster than your actual muscles are growing (because your central nervous system is improving first), but the muscle growth will follow.

Everything else is icing on the cake that’s probably irrelevant for a beginner.  You don’t need to worry about any of the detailed variations for steroid-enhanced advanced body builders.  So it doesn’t really matter if you mix your muscle groups in a PPL or follow the strong lifts program.  Once you’re eating, sleeping and lifting enough you will grow muscle, and you’ll get noticeable gains in your first year by following any program that includes the lifts I listed.

Best of luck.  Don’t put pressure on yourself with “hate my body”.  Enjoy the process and be patient.  Exercise your muscles rather than your ego (don’t use bad form to lift heavier weights just because it sounds more impressive), and be consistent.

[aceluby]

Baby was up at 4am again this morning, so figured I'd hit up a 6am class since I was up.  Gonna see if my wife wants to take a kid break this evening so she can go if she wants to.  Bought some keto strips too to see how I've been doing.  Not super accurate, but tells me I'm in about a medium ketogenic state.  Room for improvement, but overall pretty happy with the progress so far and prioritizing 3-4 workouts a week while adding a walk or two during the day.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Been slacking a bit lately, but I put in a great workout yesterday, Played pickup basketball for 15-20 minutes, then did three super sets. The first was 4x12 DB bench with chest flies right after and then followed by 4x15 of leg lifts. The second was 4x8 on the squat rack followed by 4x12 DB row. Never been a big fan of DB rows, but it was the only way to make it work. The last one was 4x12 single leg standing calf raises followed by a 4x8 shoulder circuit (one set was 8 shoulder presses, 8 flies and 8 shrugs with varying weights). Afterwards I got a nice three mile run in. I sure am feeling it today, but it's a good soreness. I've got an incredibly fancy wedding to go to in five months and I'm one of the groomsmen, so I'm going to do everything in my ability to look like I did in college (I'll never get the shredded abs again because, like Kavanaugh, I like beer, but I can get this V more cut and maybe get a four pack).

Here's to an intense stretch of dedication.  

[lessthanluke]

 

Little 4 minute mini documentary on myself and other half talking about what Strength is to us. 

[Impmk2]

I've started getting my old running fitness back. At a guess I'm in 20-20:30 5k shape, A little way off the 19:30 I was pushing 6 months ago, but a solid start to the season.

First half marathon of the year coming up in about about 6 weeks, going to try to go below a 1:35. Haven't pushed the pace over that distance in a long while. Will be interesting to see how the body reacts.

Climbing not going so well, plateaued around a 21-22 (5.10d / 5.11a) grade in the gym. And I can really feel the running starting to take it out of me as I ramp up the mileage, the 2 sports do not mix so well. But going to get outdoors for the first time in a while this weekend which should be fun

 

[aceluby]

Got 4 workouts in last week, which felt really good, but somehow I managed to put on a pound instead of the opposite.  Been sticking to my diet really well, though I haven't resorted to counting calories yet.  I think I may need to up my fat intake and cut the little bit of alcohol I do drink out for a while.

[Iskaral Pust]

22 hours ago, Triskele said:

Heh, so when I was saying I was excited to be able to do a few pullups again I should have clarified that it was the close grip ones the employ the biceps quite a bit.  Maybe it would have been more accurate to say that these were chin-ups rather than pull-ups?   I can probably get five of those right now on my first set.  But if I go to the wide grip I can apparently only do two max.  Still happy that I can at least get one of those as I guarantee I couldn't do one several months ago, but I've still got a ways to go to really rep any of those out.  And yeah, they seem to isolate the lats more than the ones where you biceps give you an assist.  

tut, tut   Chin-ups are not pull-ups.  Keep trying the pull-ups.  If you can do five chin-ups, then your progress will hit critical mass soon.

 

No workout for me over the past weekend either.  Still feeling under the weather from this lingering cold.  Hopefully back to the gym later this week.

[Proudfeet]

Don't know if this is the right place to ask but the heel part of the sole of my jogging shoe is coming out. Its not really noticeable now even when I'm jogging so I don't want to risk further damage for now, but is it repairable? Can I just glue it back or would that make it worse? There is only a slight gap so I would only be able to glue the edges.

[Jo498]

It is probably repairable, the question is if you have the glue to do it or if it might require something usually only cobblers have. And maybe also some kind of vise to fix the shoe until the glue hardens?

[Impmk2]

4 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

Don't know if this is the right place to ask but the heel part of the sole of my jogging shoe is coming out. Its not really noticeable now even when I'm jogging so I don't want to risk further damage for now, but is it repairable? Can I just glue it back or would that make it worse? There is only a slight gap so I would only be able to glue the edges.

Personally I wouldn't screw around even light jogging in shoes which are falling apart, the injury risk from running is high as it is.

Otoh if you're not doing high volume, and are tight on cash atm you could give it a go.

[Proudfeet]

20 hours ago, Jo498 said:

It is probably repairable, the question is if you have the glue to do it or if it might require something usually only cobblers have. And maybe also some kind of vise to fix the shoe until the glue hardens?

Its apparently readily available and inexpensive. I'll give it a try.

19 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Personally I wouldn't screw around even light jogging in shoes which are falling apart, the injury risk from running is high as it is.

Otoh if you're not doing high volume, and are tight on cash atm you could give it a go.

I can afford a new pair without much trouble, but I'd rather not have to spend and more importantly, I hate shopping, especially for shoes. I don't even really like my current pair, its just acceptable and I was really tired of trying them out. 

The injury thing is a good point though. I figured that I could stop if it started flapping but it might just split apart suddenly. I'll see how it goes after I try the glue.

[ljkeane]

I signed up to do a tough mudder with a couple of my friends at the end of the summer. It looks like fun.

The thing is I've not gone on any runs over about 6km for a while because I've been struggling a bit with my knee so, thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure I can even run 10 miles. With that in mind I went for a longer run today of about 6 miles which went ok. I'll probably build the distance up a bit over the summer after the rugby season ends.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Sunday yoga. Always my least favorite workout of the week. Ace, how do you make this shit fun?

[baxus]

I hurt my left wrist somehow. It's one of the tendons on my thumb. Had to skip some workouts last week.

Will go to the doctor's today or tomorrow. Need to have it sorted before my vacation starts on Thursday.

[aceluby]

20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sunday yoga. Always my least favorite workout of the week. Ace, how do you make this shit fun?

In flow I add a lot of arm balances into my practice.  Side crow, hurdlers, crow, 1 legged crow, chin stands.... I also really like the people that go to the studio, so I'm taking class with a bunch of friends; over the weekends we have the owner who leads class and has a great music selection; and I'm a huge fan of the hot room.  I just really enjoy the 95 degree room and getting ridiculously sweaty and not worrying about it.

Not sure where you're taking your yoga classes, but might want to look into trying some new places to see if you have more fun at a different one.

[Iskaral Pust]

Back!  At last.  I missed the prior two weekends because of that cold, which effectively meant a three week gap since my last workout. 

We’ve been visiting my wife’s parents for the past few days, which means I cannot get decent sleep and I’m using an unfamiliar gym.  But it still went reasonably well.  

Saturday was bench press and rowing.  I limited myself to only 175lbs without a spotter but did extra sets of incline press at the end.  And rowing went very well.  Good workout but lots of DOMS in the days following. 

Sunday I was exhausted after a terrible night of (not) sleep so legs day got pushed to Monday.  Leg press at 700lbs went well, and dead lifts were all good.

Today was shoulder press and pull-ups.  I ran out of energy quickly so only did six sets of each.

We fly home tomorrow.  I am so looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again.  And should have time available to get another cycle of workouts in before the end of week but it will depend on how sore are my muscles.  More DOMS ahead, I fear.

[Scott_N]

On 3/21/2019 at 10:49 AM, Triskele said:

I was commenting / complaining upthread at how much more I seem to be able to deadlift than squat, and with this new form that seems to be even more true?  I went with 185 lbs today on these deadlifts and easily could do 10 reps and wondered if I should have put more weight on.  Actually, I was more fatigued in a cardiovascular sense than I was in a muscle fatigue on reps sense.  But on my last squat day I only put 155 up like 6-7 times.  Is this weird?  On the squats I'm really trying to go deep like parallel or slightly lower.

Another observation is that I felt great after this set of deadlifts, like endorphin high or something, beyond any sets I'd done in the squat the bar up fashion.

Finally, while I do think that I totally changed my approach from the squat the bar up style it still felt like a really overall body lift and not a pure back lift.  Not sure if that's how I should be feeling or not.  

 

Most people deadlift more than any other lift so not weird  Not surprised you felt great - in my experience deadlift is often a persons favorite lift (myself included, though Luke's numbers have put my own into perspective!).

Deadlift is probably the single best whole body lift there is; it is not a pure back lift.