Official Workout/Fitness Thread (Re-born)

[Wizards2Lottery]

Good solid advice, thanks guys. How do you guys feel about early morning workouts? I think the best way I can incorporate regular gym visits is to wake up earlier than I do right now and hit the gym in the morning.

[pancakes3]

in my experience, it depends on how your body responds. my friend in HS decided to do the morning thing (up at 5:30, gym by 6) but i dropped that habit about 4 days in and opted for the after-school lift. he stuck with it, to this day i believe. ideally, on most weekdays i like working out late. real late. like 10pm late. get dog tired, take a shower, and pass the eff out. he gets a pick-me-up from his workout, i get tired as balls.

i am worried that you might have gusto now but 2 weeks down the road, you'll hit the snooze and skip a workout and throw everything off-track. it's super important not to miss a single day when you're just starting out. you need to push your way past the initial soreness and waking up at the buttcrack of dawn (which is a late 6:30 am these days) is not going to help.

[Wizards2Lottery]

That's exactly why my last gym routine stopped. Had exams come up, stayed up late and in the morning was too lazy to go to the gym. I'm gonna switch it up this time, go to the gym around 10 or 11 PM.

[dobrojim]

as I said earlier in the thread, I think the key is to make working out
something you enjoy rather than something you dread. One good way
to do this is to incorporate a social aspect. Makes it a whole lot easier
to keep motivated for. Then it has a much better chance to be a
permanent change in lifestyle.

[Induveca]

as I said earlier in the thread, I think the key is to make working out
something you enjoy rather than something you dread. One good way
to do this is to incorporate a social aspect. Makes it a whole lot easier
to keep motivated for. Then it has a much better chance to be a
permanent change in lifestyle.

Well said. In terms of enjoyment as well, and for me the social aspect is competition. With weightlifting competing can help you tear a muscle if you're going against someone else, but with a solid plan laid out in front of you, you can have goals you want to meet.

Writing down (for me on my iPhone) what I do each day and the max weight/reps I lift has allowed me to ratchet up the weight/reps each time. That way my competitor is my previous 3/4 workouts. If for some reason I can't lift as much on a day, I take the weight down and try to do 20% more reps. If I'm feeling excessively strong I'll add on 5/10 pounds and do 20% less reps.

So in reality the competition should be with yourself if weightlifting. That way you don't look over at the next guy doing 25% more weight than you and fall prey to the male psyche of competing with the other guys in the room.

[dobrojim]

^ running can be much the same, at least for most of us mortals.

you try to improve times, not win races.

[verbal8]

as I said earlier in the thread, I think the key is to make working out
something you enjoy rather than something you dread. One good way
to do this is to incorporate a social aspect. Makes it a whole lot easier
to keep motivated for. Then it has a much better chance to be a
permanent change in lifestyle.

+1

doing at least part of your routine with someone else helps with motivation

as mentioned by others having goals and tracking your workouts can help with motivation

[Kanyewest]

2.5 miles today. Felt good, but drained at the end of it. Looks like I'm close to hitting my limit. Need to increase my endurance.

It's important to take rest days to let muscles and recover- usually helps build your muscles become stronger than before if done correctly.

[mhd]

Update:

Did 2.8, 2.9, and then 3 on my previous 3 runs. Today, I did 3.2. I walked about .2 miles after the run and wasn't really drained. Probably could have ran some more.

[pancakes3]

mhd, you sound about where i am (at least closer than i am to dobro or nate), except i'm not increasing my distances but rather trying to cut my time. i can go 3 miles but i found a good 2 mile route in my neighborhood.

in june it took me darn near 30 minutes to finish but now i can do it in 15-17 depending on how cold it is, and how tired i am after work.

[pancakes3]

played basketball for the first time in a while and i'm all kinds of sore despite having gone running pretty regularly. being "in shape" is a lot of work.

[nate33]

played basketball for the first time in a while and i'm all kinds of sore despite having gone running pretty regularly. being "in shape" is a lot of work.

Work some core exercises into your weekly routine. Once I started doing that, I stopped being sore after basketball.

[pancakes3]

how beefy is your core workout? i just do really quick 20/20/20 crunches after i'm done (to the left/middle/right) running and call it quits. probably about 2-3 minutes worth...

i have been skipping a few lately though. too darn cold. it's also making my lower back seize up. i need yoga in my life.

[nate33]

Crunches really only focus on your upper abs, that's not going to help your lower back, hip flexors, and groin - the areas where I usually feel sore after basketball. You should vary your routine a bit. Instead of straight crunches, do full situps and at the top of each situp, touch each elbow to the opposite knee. Try drawing big circles in the air with your leg while lying on your back. Do reverse leg raises (lie on your stomach and lift your leg off the ground behind you 20 times in a row). Do leg raises while lying on your side. Do some planks. Do "supermans" where you lie on your stomach and hold your arms off the ground in front of you while holding your legs in the air behind you, hold it for as long as you can. Try balancing on one foot with the leg straight and then bending and touching your toe with the opposite hand. Do that 8 times on each foot (the first few, you might not reach all the way to your toes). It really helps with balance, ankle strength and back strength. If you're not doing any leg strength training, I'd mix in some one-legged squats as well.

I usually spend about 15 minutes 3 times a week mixing up these exercises. After a while, they became real easy so I started doing them with ankle weights on.

When I was younger, I never did any core work because I lifted for vanity. Strong hip flexors don't look as good as strong bicepts and pecs. Now that I'm older, I'm realizing that core strength is really the only thing that matters. Core strength keeps you from getting hurt or sore.

[Slava]

Good thread. Skimmed through most of the pages and some valuable info esp. regarding endurance building.

By the way anyone else feel that confining to working out 5 times a week really messes up your social life? I lift 5 times a week and it normally takes 1.5 hrs a day for me to get my workout done. I'm planning to quit drinking altogether, have been gradually giving up bar food and make sure to get atleast 8 hrs sleep on the days I work out. I also try to cook my own food.

All this commitment really wipes out my whole weekdays along with an 8-5 job but once I've started it luckily I do not feel like doing it any other way.

[pancakes3]

i don't like doing lots of different exercises so i tried to combine some of nate's exercises. alternating between flutter kicks, bicycle kicks, and situps in the on-the-back position, and then i do the touch-the-toes exercise while i stretch before i run. it's really beaten up my abs and it hurts to laugh, or even take deep breaths right now. i had no idea how weak my core had gotten in these last few years. i wish i had inherited an erg machine instead of a treadmill from my parents. in fact, people should abolish treadmills and fill the gyms and basements of america with rowing machines. you can run outside! easily! you can't jump into a scull and row as easily.

and @ slava... yeah. working out means no more happy hours for me. however, i just felt like it was better for my health, wallet, and moral center to not be out indulging in $1 beers and $3 sake bombs for 3-4 nights a week.plus going out is the real drain of time. since i've cut out weekday drinking, i've got oodles of hours left to read books, netflix, better my cooking, and post on message boards.

[Slava]

Yeah but that doesn't really sound ideal for a 24 year old single guy.

But I guess I'll be motivated as long as I hit my goals. I wanted to bench my bodyweight (185) and squad/deadlift twice my weight as a goal.

I've been lifting for close to 12 months now. I was very weak when I started out but now I can bench close to 155lbs, deadlift 270 and squat 225.

[Induveca]

Really there is a balance, I'm in the best shape/strength of my life........but I still drink a good amount with my girlfriend and go out to dinner.

It depends what you're going for honestly. Being in great shape is nice, but if the way to accomplish that is abandoning your social life and not enjoying life to its fullest.......being in 85% optimal shape is fine IMO.


At 24........don't bother devoting your life to working out unless you're overweight or are simply completely out of shape. When you get to be older like most of the guys talking in here (think 31+) then you need to become more focused in your exercises as results take twice as long.

[Slava]

Yeah but like I said, I'm kind of addicted to that goal I set for myself. I'm kind of an easily motivated person by nature and lifting weights is such a raw physical challenge that I seem to get easily drawn into.

[Zonkerbl]

So I complained to my chiropractor that I just can't seem to get in shape and he says it's because I'm killing myself in every workout. He said to try targeting 65% of my max bpm for a week and then slowly increase it. When I tried to hit that target on the elliptical it turned itself off thinking I was done. But I get the idea, used to do that when I lifted, back off to 65% of your max and then increase by 5 lbs each week.

So I'm trying to combine that with working on the things that really kill me in aerobics classes: burpees, step-ups, lunges, mountain climbers, anything that involves explosiveness. Then there's this thing where you hold a 4-lb medicine ball between your ankles and do standing broad jumps. Some pushups and situps and you have a nice little workout. I tried doing ten reps of each for two sets and that was too much, so this week I'll warm up with five reps of each, do a full set of ten reps each and be done. Hopefully I can do that without killing myself, then I'll increase the reps in the first set by one each week. When I'm doing ten reps for both sets I'll start increasing the reps of the second set until I get to twenty, so on and so forth until I'm doing a good 40 minutes workout. Hope I don't get bored to tears, but I am motivated to get my explosiveness back.

Had the weirdest experience last week, was at a rec center waiting for my kids to perform in a play and a guy challenged me to some one on one basketball and I kicked his ass... for ten minutes. Then I was totally gassed and had to stop. I haven't played basketball for about six years, it was weird to float to the basket doing dipsy do's like I did when I was twenty. Couldn't hit my little pull-up sky hook but everything else was there. Argh, I miss playing basketball! I gotta find an over-40 basketball league.