Exercise & Fitness III

[Stego]

I'd like to make a public service announcement.

You will NOT 'bulk up' by mistake! You will not lift too heavy one day and wake up the next with 20 extra pounds of muscle. This is not going to happen! You can do ANY sort of resistance training and you WILL NOT get 'too bulky!'

Vestrit, none of your kids are going to 'bulk up.' It isn't going to happen.

Firstly, though, there is no such thing as 'too bulky' for ANYONE not on steroids. Certainly not for children. ABSOLUTELY not for children who are running a lot. There is too fat. But for some reason I do not think you are insinuating that weight lifting will make the kids fat. The worlds most developed natural bodybuilders worked so fucking hard for each and every pound of muscle on their bodies that if you had any clear picture in the matter, you would not make such statements.

Your kids are NOT going to wake up one day and be Brock Lesnar if you have them doing squats. And you SHOULD have them doing squats.

[Xray the Enforcer]

To answer your question Stego -- I don't so much train for self-defense killing, I train because someday I fully expect to harvest the heads of my enemies. I certainly don't plan on wrasslin' bears (not real ones and certainly not YoungBull) -- that's what elephant guns are for. :ninja:

Seastarr -- as lockesnow (I think it was ls) whoops, it was Liffguard mentioned, leafy greens are your friend when it comes to calcium. The best thing is that you can put them in just about anything (stews, soups, with grains, with legumes, by themselves, in maki sushi, etc). I cook at least one large pot of dal (usually toor dal, but sometimes mung dal, channa dal or masoor dal) every week for lunches, and I'll frequently put chopped greens (spinach, kale, vitamin greens -- basically whatever I run across at the market) in there to add another texture element plus increase the nutritional value of the meal.

[Stego]

Martha, women are not delicate, fragile, and weak. They are strong in mind, body, and heart if they want to be. You epitomize this. I fully believe you will be squatting like a pro and culling your enemy in no time! :D

[seastarr]

Spinach and kale, and lots of it. Dark green leafy vegetables in general, but those two in particular.

Thank you so much! Do you know if it is important to cook them or not? I eat both at least once a week but I am thinking I need to probably do it more like once a day. I eat lots of cabbage, too. I think I'm going to turn into a sprout.

Chataya

I do have calcium supplements, I'm running to go check what kind they are. Says they are 100% elemental calcium. I don't even know what that means. I guess I'll start taking them. Can you believe it recommends I take 6 (!) every night before bed? I hate pills.

Xray:

Thanks for the ideas. I like dal and I could easily sneak in some greens. Perhaps you could stew some enemy heads and make a tonic to sell. I imagine skulls are a good source of calcium.

Wait, exercise, not healthy eating, I know! I used to feel bad-ass and more assertive when I took kick-boxing. Didn't get back into it when I came back to California because I have no time.

[zollo]

I'd like to make a public service announcement.

You will NOT 'bulk up' by mistake! You will not lift too heavy one day and wake up the next with 20 extra pounds of muscle. This is not going to happen! You can do ANY sort of resistance training and you WILL NOT get 'too bulky!'

Vestrit, none of your kids are going to 'bulk up.' It isn't going to happen.

Firstly, though, there is no such thing as 'too bulky' for ANYONE not on steroids. Certainly not for children. ABSOLUTELY not for children who are running a lot. There is too fat. But for some reason I do not think you are insinuating that weight lifting will make the kids fat. The worlds most developed natural bodybuilders worked so fucking hard for each and every pound of muscle on their bodies that if you had any clear picture in the matter, you would not make such statements.

Your kids are NOT going to wake up one day and be Brock Lesnar if you have them doing squats. And you SHOULD have them doing squats.

Don't rouse the Vestrit. I repeat, don't rouse the Vestrit. That is, unless you want a 16 page epistle on rugby, touch rugby, training techniques and how to be all around awesome. And that'd be the short version.*

Something else, how is hiking or marathon endurance not testosterone related? I find it to be a massive boost to make it up a mountain with a ton of equipment or to run a distance so fast as to almost burst with the stuff after - more so when you know you are inches away from the running equivalent of the weights failure you and others have referred to. To go all out, regardless of distance, to the edge of what you can do and to then make it, that is amazing, exhilarating, top of the world stuff. It might not involve muscles with which you throw around weights, but surely it is all about the feeling?

*In all seriousness, the man awes me. I didn't even realise there was that much to just... know about training. That, and he makes it sounds damn interesting.

Also, I am signing up for a gym as we speak. :P

[Xray the Enforcer]

I just got back from the farmer's market -- bought 2 huge bunches of vitamin greens (a type of mizuna/Brassica rapa) and 1 bunch of chicory (and a bunch of other stuff) in honor of this thread. :)

[Liffguard]

Do you know if it is important to cook them or not?

Spinach is good raw or cooked. I love spinach in a salad instead of letuce. You can eat kale raw but I wouldn't recommend it. It's a very tough, bitter vegetable if you don't cook it.

[OctopusArms]

In fact, bulking up would just make hiking, which I enjoy, much more difficult. I'm often in bear country (saw a mama bear with a cub last year!), so that is my biggest worry, but muscles would be meaningless against a bear. For now, I'm just sticking to body weight exercises like pull ups and pushups. I'd rather stay lean.

Personally, I think everyone should figure out what works for them and do that. But I'm also an avid hiker and have seen a very evident improvement between my hikes at the end of last year and my hikes this year. In between, I started doing HIIT cardio instead of steady state cardio and I started lifting again, particularly the big money makers (squats, deads, etc). I've also dropped 10 - 20 lbs in between, by eating more calories and working out more.

This past weekend, I went hiking with a bunch of friends. They're all of respectable weights and fitness. Half the guys that went lift weights (though they tend to be the KFC variety), the other two don't. The girls were in good shape too. A big difference is that I outweigh them all by very close to 100lbs. And I didn't struggle at all. No soreness. Not out of breath. My muscles didn't even fatigue. I definitely attribute that to my workouts.

But, I'm not here to convince anyone to get big and bulky. Just to offer my opinion.

[OctopusArms]

Spinach is good raw or cooked. I love spinach in a salad instead of letuce.

This.

[Vethnar]

Oh, I'm sorry. I think he meant good sprinters.

Look at Mr. Bolt. You know, the world record holder in the 100. Mr. Xiang would be faster is Mr. Xiang had more muscle. Fact.

There is more than one good sprinter in the world. "Good sprinter" is a relative term, but any definition that excludes a reigning world champion (outdoor and indoor) and former Olympic champion and world record holder is just too silly to be taken seriously. And before somebody asks: Yes, hurdlers are sprinters. There is no way you can set a world record on 110 meter hurdles without being a phenomenal sprinter.

It is not very fruitful to compare Usain Bolt and Liu Xiang directly. It's quite obvious that Bolt would easily win on 100 meter flat, and even more obvious that an injury-free Liu would win on 110 meter hurdles.

It's not "Mr. Xiang", but "Mr. Liu". Chinese surnames (like Japanese or Hungarian surnames) are written before the given names, so in "Liu Xiang", "Liu" is the surname and "Xiang" the given name. As to whether he would be faster with more muscle: Possibly by a tiny bit, everything else being equal. But everything else wouldn't be equal. If he spent more time lifting weights, he would have less time for other parts of his training. Without a doubt, Liu and his coaches know what they are doing, and have found the right balance. His results speak for themselves. Of course, what works for him wouldn't work for everybody else. He is obviously a freak of nature, as is Usain Bolt, and all other athletes at a comparable level.

[Xray the Enforcer]

[mod] Guys, please take any further discussion of Olympic sprinters to PM. Or to another thread. But this discussion is derailing a thread that is supposed to be about boarders supporting each other and giving each other feedback about their exercise regimens. Thank you. [/mod]

[Kat]

It's calcium carbonate, NOT the oyster shell calcium that you may also find out there.

I hate to break it to you, but oyster shell calcium is calcium carbonate. I realize that nutritionists might make some distinction between the two, but it's the same mineral. </grumpy scientist--now I know how Xray feels>

I have access to lots of free limestone. Sometimes I wonder if I could get away with just grinding it up and adding it to my food. :P

[Xray the Enforcer]

calcium carbonate = calcium carbonate. I would be skeptical of anyone claiming one form of calcium carbonate was "more absorbable" than another because your body simply does not work that way. As far as I can tell (after reading around a bit in the literature), it depends on the quality of the pill and how it was prepared, not the initial source of the calcium carbonate.

Here's an interesting study from 2001 in the Journal of Nutrition (article is a summary of the published journal article):

Dr. Heaney questions manufacturers' pursuit of enhanced bioavailability for poorly absorbed nutrients like calcium. Focusing on bioavailability, according to Dr. Heaney, "seems inappropriate and misdirected from both cost benefit and nutritional considerations." He sees little point in buying a supplement that is absorbed at 40% efficiency that costs twice as much as one absorbed at 30% efficiency. Dr. Heaney, who is considered an expert on calcium, has not found a calcium supplement that meets manufacturer's claims of superiority that justify significantly higher prices.

While no calcium supplement is notably superior to any other, some supplements contain harmful metals. A study by E. A. Ross, N. J. Szabo, and I. R. Tabbett (JAMA, September 20, 2000) reports that some over-the-counter natural and refined calcium carbonate products, as well as bone-meal and dolomite, contain high amounts of lead. The authors recommend using supplements from reputable manufacturers that test for lead content.

Interesting article here, too

Many medical doctors recommend calcium carbonate because it requires the fewest pills to reach a given level of calcium and it is readily available and inexpensive. For people concerned about cost and only willing to swallow two to three calcium pills per day, calcium carbonate is a sensible choice. Even for these people, however, low-quality calcium carbonate supplements are less than ideal. Depending on how the tablet is manufactured, some calcium carbonate pills have been found to disintegrate and dissolve improperly, which could interfere with absorption.5 The disintegration of calcium carbonate pills can be easily evaluated by putting a tablet in a half cup of vinegar and stirring occasionally. After half an hour, no undissolved chunks of tablet should remain at the bottom.6

[Jon Targaryen]

I did 20 minutes of treadmill this morning. I'm following a program where I do two minutes of warm-up, go up to a minute at a relatively slow pace, go up some the next minute, go up again next minute and nearly max out the last minute then go back down. This lasts for 18 minutes until I go even further for the 19th minute, then cool down in the last minute. For me, it's pretty tough.

[lokisnow]

I cut my workout short today as I got to the gym late and meant to leave to meet friends to go see Up. I had two heavy sets of bench left and all my pull up sets. and then as I'm walking down to the showers I get a phone call that it's essentially sold out (only front row seats left) so how about later tonight. Oh well, this may end up being good in the long run.

I did turn over/snap a mental barrier between squat sets. my brain occassionally dwells on some unpleasant business in the past and my usual method of banishing it is a mental reflex of saying 'fuck you, locke' cursing myself for remembering such nonsense. All of a sudden today, after a weak first set of heavy squats, I suddenly went, 'no! fuck them. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. Not going to let them or that memory hold me back any more. I'm not underneath that bullshit" and I went back to my heavy sets and hammered out 10 awesome reps over two sets. compared to the weakish first set full of five mediocre reps (which I actually recorded as four as the fifth didn't go all the way down, like it should have) this was a huge difference.

[Stego]

I cut my workout short today as I got to the gym late and meant to leave to meet friends to go see Up. I had two heavy sets of bench left and all my pull up sets. and then as I'm walking down to the showers I get a phone call that it's essentially sold out (only front row seats left) so how about later tonight. Oh well, this may end up being good in the long run.

I did turn over/snap a mental barrier between squat sets. my brain occassionally dwells on some unpleasant business in the past and my usual method of banishing it is a mental reflex of saying 'fuck you, locke' cursing myself for remembering such nonsense. All of a sudden today, after a weak first set of heavy squats, I suddenly went, 'no! fuck them. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. Not going to let them or that memory hold me back any more. I'm not underneath that bullshit" and I went back to my heavy sets and hammered out 10 awesome reps over two sets. compared to the weakish first set full of five mediocre reps (which I actually recorded as four as the fifth didn't go all the way down, like it should have) this was a huge difference.

Good for you, Locke. Weight training builds you up emotionally too. Overcoming those obstacles makes you stronger!

[lokisnow]

Good for you, Locke. Weight training builds you up emotionally too. Overcoming those obstacles makes you stronger!

thanks, it certainly does. I wish I had finished my workout, but I'm as satisfied with the emotional gains of the day as I was with the physical ones (the squats were my heaviest, 3 sets of 5 at 230.) so overall the day turned out good despite not budgeting enough time for the gym. :-p

[Swordfish]

Having serious lower leg issues.

At first I thought it was a calf strain, but I'm starting to fear it's achilles related.

[cjfshaw]

Do any of you do any bodyweight stuff? I used to run a lot but had to cut down because of knee pain, turns out I have a muscle imbalance from too much running and not enough quadricep training. So I am doing bodyweight squats now to take care of that.

[Liffguard]

Do any of you do any bodyweight stuff? I used to run a lot but had to cut down because of knee pain, turns out I have a muscle imbalance from too much running and not enough quadricep training. So I am doing bodyweight squats now to take care of that.

Bodyweight squats are a good exercise, especially as part of a circuit. However, at the risk of turning this thread into a broken record, you should really be doing weighted squats and deadlifts. Full range of motion squats and deadlifts engage every muscle in your legs and your posterior chain and are perfect for eliminating muscle imbalance.