Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Getting in shape

thekev said:
I'm just wondering, do you mean static stretches prior to lifting? I usually don't do those until the end, and I don't stretch as hard if I'm lifting (typically stretch harder on cardio days). I figured the half mile was a warmup.


I stretch for a good 10-15 minutes and target every muscle that I will work out.

Some of this just sounds weird to me, like the gallon of milk a day. I realize that whey protein is practically the gold standard for weight gain, but dairy is quite taxing to digest, and I've never heard of anyone drinking that much milk. It may be different for you, but most people would put too much stress on their knees squatting 300 for it to be truly healthy. You can get a good workout with much less weight than that when it comes to the legs. I realize everyone is different. If you were experiencing pain while exercising, you were doing too much at the time. Even working through that can do real damage. It's better to use 0 weight than do something that causes pain while lifting.

Gallon of milk a day (GOMAD) wasn't their suggestion, instead, I just was looking for alternatives to whey protein mixes since they taste awful, and found it. Really easy to do if you are a milkdrinker like I've always been. I can consume as much dairy as I want without problems, some people's digestive systems can handle different things.

As for the squatting, I do it to see improvement. For gaining weight, less reps + more weight is generally more effective. For toning, it's more reps + less weight. I always want to push harder and see improvement. At first my back muscles were very underdeveloped so I took it extremely slow until I eventually had enough to do a basic squat with good form, and the rest is history.
Click to expand...

Yep.
 
thekev said:
I worry about people who do all muscles at once. You have to consider multiple things here. One would be the tendency to over train or plateau. The other is that if you spend a lot of time at a desk, you need to be very careful regarding ergonomics if you work out a lot. If you're going from working out to a desk, it's fully possible for things like tendons to not receive adequate time to heal. Other than that the work out everything every couple days is a bad idea if dealing with weights. Assuming once again that you're working down hard, your muscles are in somewhat of a broken down state the following day, recovered on the second day, and see any potential growth on the third day. Stressing out the same things too close together can inhibit this. It's also important not to make your workouts last for hours given the potential for elevated cortisol levels. I've read that some people take a waking pulse to try to determine elevations in cortisol levels, but I wouldn't know what to suggest there.
Click to expand...

Please, for the love of god, read and comprehend what I wrote. That's not what I suggested for him! That's my personal workout schedule and it works for me -- just like TSE I do a fullbody workout. I spend little time sitting down at work, and thus ergonomic safety isn't a concern at all.... ironically my workplace has an ergo department too. I'm more liable to get cancer than anything else, but that's just a side effect of the trade. My personal workouts do not last for hours -- I'm not in it for high-toning or massive bulk. As per elevated cortisol levels... I guess I should get somewhat scientific here. Elevated cortisol levels obviously does a variety of things at differing levels for different biochemistries. It's not bad for short periods -- there's a reason it exists as a stress leveler. Case in point, one of the effects of cortisol or cortisol like analogs is the elevation of gluconeogenesis in order to raise glucose levels (because your brain cannot make glucose). Obviously this is important -- this is actually one of the factors of a "second wind". For me personally, I'm actually somewhat hypoglycemic, so this definitely isn't a negative. Other effects? Suppression of the immune system. Again, not an issue for me. Roughly put, my immune system is already too active per Igg immune tests (which is a relative basis for the count of immune activity through an antibody isoform count, yes, I know). So again, not a problem for me. Moreover, yes, it does facilitate fat and protein breakdown, so if you were downing cortisol shots you could lose muscle mass... but that's not going to happen unless you lost fat -- fat is the go to secondary energy storage site for chemical reasons. Simply put, theres a biochemical reason you have cortisol and why it triggers during stress responses. Unless you have abnormally high levels (Cushing's syndrome I think it's called?) it's actually quite helpful from a physical training side of work.

You shouldn't do weights every day. You should have resting days and cardio days. It's not a bad idea to take a week off weights every 6-8 weeks where you only do cardio. P90x doesn't seem to provide for much in the way of variation for a given muscle group.
Click to expand...
Again, read what I said. Not what I recommended for him, bar the p90x. P90x hits different muscle groups different days, and depending upon the revision, builds in cardio and or core with the exercises. It's not meant for bulking up realistically -- while you can use higher weights and lower reps of course, the exercise program is more so meant for toning.
 
This thread has focused on exercise which yes you need but your main focus is DIET. Get this right first or no amount of exercise will set you right. If you want to loose weight, anything. P90x, swimming, running, vigorous sex.

Diet is key as you can spend 1h of exercising and put it all back on again in 3 mouthfuls. Yes you need to keep the heart active but if you want to loose weight, there's an app for that ;) Go get mynfitnesspal

For weight loss purposes, diet can strip it better than exercise..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back