But yeah, working out is life changing. I've been lifting in some form for over 20 years now, and try to exercise every single day.
Do you want to get big? Then train heavy enough that you can do 10-15 reps with good form.
Do you want explosive strength for sports? Then look for around 15-20 reps but do the pushing part explosively.
Do you want to get strong? Lift heavy. Do 5 sets of a weight you can lift for 5-8 reps.
Going for endurance? Then you're looking for weights that take you to 30-50 reps.
Adjust the weights if you're not in your rep range, and don't cheat. Rest longer between sets if they start dropping off.
1. Squat - 505lbs 2. Bench - 355lbs 3. Deadlift - 540lbs
Also, eat big!
1. Breakfast, a cup of espresso with milk, 6oz NY Strip, 1 cup of grits with butter, 16oz whole milk.
2. Lunch, 6oz NY Strip, 2 eggs, 16 oz whole milk
3. Snack, 2 - 4 pieces of fruit e.g, 3 apples with peanut butter.
4. Dinner, 2 - 3 pieces of fried/grilled chicken, collard greens, sweet potatoes.
5. Desert - a quarter slice of pie with 16oz of milk
I didn't take any supplements, just ate whole foods I cooked at home. Everything was made from scratch. The pies used lard we rendered at home from leaf fat (fat near the kidney).
It's a bit harder for vegans, but still doable. Look up Clarence Kennedy, the vegan Irish weightlifter.
For a deeper dive, I'd recommend this excellent article: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/vegetarian-and-vegan-athle...
I was also supplementing with whey (mainly casein) and creatine.
With the baby I've been eating a lot of crap sugars and put on 5kg of fat. I'm trying to drop 20kg of bodyfat now to get to down to 10-12% body fat. So far I've been able to drop without any real muscle loss as long as I still lift regularly.
I was strictly concerned with being strong, not being cut, so carrying around a little extra wasn't a big deal. The main thing, no one will think you are fat when you are strong, it is quite noticeable. Lastly, the meal I posted was at my strongest, lifting the heaviest. If I wasn't lifting those weights I would have gained quite a bit of fat.
If you are taking a few months off due to a baby, cut back on eating. Always think long-term. Two months off while you adjust to a newborn will do wonders when you get back into it. If you try to do it all, you'll be stressed and not enjoy lifting - or anything for that matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHrysja5lYw
Also another one of his videos
Leucine also spikes the insulin level regardless the source, it is better to take it with fibres and a bit of fat, e.g. avocado.
If you still struggle, you might give a try to a constant glucose monitor (GCM) to see what crosses your efforts.
It's not exactly the same topic, but Mark Rippetoe gets to the spirit of it "My opinion about barbell rows is as follows: fuck barbell rows. Really. Fuck them. Stop wasting time worrying about barbell rows and get your deadlift up to 500. By then you'll have your own opinion and you won't have to worry about mine."
Until you get to the point of at least a 350lb squat and 400lb deadlift, it's far more useful to just stick with a program you can stick with than worry about optimizing it based on what "professional" athlete you want to be like.
It doesn't make sense to perform routines that don't aim to achieve the results you want and the routine you're most likely to stick with is the one that promises the results you want, has people who have done it and achieved the results you want, and is created by a guy who has the results you want.
Explosive strength and strong is more subtle. You basically have two sorts of muscle fiber: one is for short explosive strength the other more endurance. Different training results in a different mix of these fibers (as does genetics!). It's a case of getting the right kind of fiber in the right muscles for your sporting goal.
There are some fantastic youtube videos from people who are experts (for me it's a hobby), I can recommend Shredded Sports Science for the theory and Athlean-X for a mix of both theory and practice.
Within six weeks, I was back to most of my original routine, after almost a year not lifting -- and as you say, my overall pain level has been much reduced and my posture improved
Sadly the extra kilos gained in that time will take longer to vanish.
Besides, since force is a neurological stuff, you « memorize » lifted weight as you memorize playing guitar or riding a bike. It takes a short period of time to get started again, but the neural connections stay for sure.
And you can make it interesting. Reading about how the body works, the biomechanics of the movements, etc. can make it more interesting.
Learning more about a subject tends to make it more interesting, even if you didn't begin with an interest.
When you're 70 with mobility issues and no longer have physical autonomy, you'll be wishing you'd invested the few hours per week of preventative medicine that would have vastly increased the likelihood that you would still have the strength and mobility to live a physically autonomous life with the ability to play with your grandkids. Not to mention the decades of benefits you would have reaped being in better shape than you ever dreamt was possible for you.
My mind gets zapped by working every day at the computer, so for me doing something totally physical (and for bodyweight workouts being outside in the sun) is the perfect antidote. I now start feeling stir crazy if I miss a workout or two for some reason.
That said - there's a lot of ways to describe a heavy squat session, but boring isn't one I'd use.
It may sound like broscience (because it is), but you gotta find what works for you.
Your mind tends to be focused on the task at hand when doing the movements. After each set, when you're resting, you can listen to a podcast or audio book.
Or, you know, just stand there and do nothing and let your mind wander: perhaps not doing something may actually be good for you. Perhaps you may wish to examine the benefits of being bored once in a while.
* https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/hide-and-seek/201407...
After like 6 weeks of doing that and improving a lot, I bought some dumbbells and started throwing some lifting in to mix it up, target weak spots, and work on muscles that the bodyweight stuff doesn't hit as well. I've found that the combination of the two really accelerates progress and improves recovery too by changing up the movements.
This has been working well for me, but of course there are many ways to approach it. Personally, I really don't like the gym vibe, so working out outside in the sun (with bodyweight) made it easier to get started and stick with. You also don't need to buy anything, and you can build up a base level of strength that makes lifting weights feel more approachable.
From there, you have a wealth of options like his Practical Programming, Wendler's 5/3/1 books, and the Tactical Barbell books for combining strength and endurance training. The Barbell Medicine podcast and strongerbyscience.com are also great.
If you find yourself wanting to compete, Juggernaut Training and the Renaissance Training groups are great sources.
If you want something portable you can do at home, Pavel's Simple and Sinister is your best bet for kettlebell work, and Overcoming Gravity will teach you bodyweight work that only requires a pull-up bar.
For clearer writing and simpler programming, I would go for Tactical Barbell and Simple and Sinister over Wendler.
Doug Hepburn's programs (which can be found online with a minute of Googling) are also great for people looking at Wendler, but want something simple that can be run nearly indefinitely.
A beginning book I always recommend is starting strength. But, depending on where your current fitness is at you may need to check with your doctor first and/or find a good body weight program to get started. Burpees, pushups, pull-ups, thrusters for 20 minutes will destroy even the most in shape athletes. It's really not something you need to over complicate.
It's a very stupid name and the accompanying article is kind of meh but the program overall is a solid start. I'm using as a way to reshape my body - I'm fairly overweight with a gut - and it's worked well so far. Pick any beginner plan like this and you'll probably be OK. As a beginner you'll make huge gains in your first year and that makes the day to day a lot easier to deal with while you build the habit.
I modified the plan on a few exercises that I don't like and used bodybuilding.com's alternate exercise lists to pick ones I prefer. At month 6 I plan to switch focus slightly to keep things mixed up and will probably switch to a 5x5 for a month or so then back to a more traditional regiment based on the 6+ month recommendations in the article.
The biggest thing is to choose any of the recommended programs in these responses and then start going. Promise yourself a month, a month of trying really hard each day and see how it goes. After that you can re-evaluate if it is really for you but that month will help build a habit and you'll start seeing some strength gains.
I feel so much better and I'm seeing significant body modifications that I'm really happy with. Getting healthy any which way you choose is worth the effort!
It's straighforward, manageable, and (importantly) it introduces the idea of autoregulation early on. Autoregulation is an important tool for helping to prevent injury due to innappropriate fatigue management. It also contains good information related to nutrition and how to perform the basic barbell movements.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PKNDlcnpUCAhjur_EEmlJp1PNsD...
I've been doing a bodyweight routine I got from Reddit for almost a year and I've seen very little progress. I want to try something different.
What bodyweight routine are you doing? The main thing to look at if you're working out consistently and aren't improving is your diet. Are you getting enough protein and calories? The general advice is to eat ~1 gram of protein per 0.7 lbs or so of bodyweight, and to have at least a 300 calorie surplus if you want to gain muscle.
Not getting enough sleep or being overly stressed out will also kill progress.
As far as my sleep goes, it's very good. I'm also not stressed at all.
I have made some progress, it's just been very disappointing. When I started I couldn't do a single pull up and now, 10 months later, I can do two. I'm almost to the point where I can do a reasonable dip as well.
With pull ups, for example, you won't see much improvement from just doing sets of one or two since it's not enough volume, so it's better to do something easier like negatives (where you just do the lowering down part slowly) or just hangs if negatives are too hard. You can also target some of the supporting muscles that may be "blockers" with dumbbells--for me it was the brachialis and brachioradialis especially (the forearm muscles on both sides of the elbow), and also grip strength. I started out with 2 lousy form pull ups, and it took me over 2 months to get up to 5 fairly clean ones this way, but in just the last couple weeks I've gone from 5 to 8, so it seems like progress accelerates once you pass that threshold, at least in my case.
For dips, I found that first focusing on normal push ups and then on diamond push ups, which heavily target the triceps, was very effective.
Over time maybe a great overstatement depending on context. Context being sensible programming and genetics. Really mostly genetics. The extremely motivating newbie and even intermediate gains exhaust very rapidly. Lifting can become very monotonous and tedious grind after a few years. It helps to have adopt an analytical and zen attitude towards progress after that. Most advanced lifters will go through multi-year plateaus at some point, it takes an entirely different mind set to pursue the hobby then. Injury prevention also becomes significant considerations when you become sufficiently strong (and old), eventually it's about numbers and not health - training then is not a great health prescription for people. That said, a beginning strength regime is absolutely something everyone should pursue for longevity and quality of life improvements. Intermediate+ strength training will help most folks structure many parts of their life from routine to diet to work ethic. Anything more and like every hobby, it becomes a very time intensive pursuit that requires a lot of sacrifice.
All that is to say, strength training for most people will inevitably turn into a job, and like most jobs, make sure it's something you enjoy. For some people the joy is intrinsic and the process is easier, for others it's work, and and the level of fulfillment is correlated to what one makes of it.
One thing that has made it more enjoyable for me and helped me avoid injuries (I initially had some nagging shoulder issues) is to stop caring about the number of reps. Obsessing about hitting a certain number causes form breakdown, injury, a stunted range of motion, and discouragement when you can't reach your goal. It's far better to just do as many as you can on each set with good form and not focus too much on what number you hit. As long as you're pushing yourself on the last few reps, your muscles won't know the difference, and if you're consistent in your workouts and diet, the numbers will take care of themselves over time.