I'm going to use this. Thanks Nenjin, I'd been wondering how to work those other upper body muscle groups without weights, though I've been doing some with weights.
*thumbs up*
I've never liked working out, particularly not at gyms... I don't get more energy, I don't feel good, I don't see results in myself because of how my head works, I don't get this cherished endorphin rush everyone's talking about, and I have zero desire to brag about it. So a lot of this is basically just to have something to do that can be classed as "not entirely self-destructive".
The first few weeks are the hardest. You will feel the most wrecked without seeing any real results. This is when most people quit. It's working out past that period, through that period, in spite of all the reasons to just quit, that you start seeing things change. What was hard gets easier, until you make it harder again. Recovery speed goes up. Your total work capacity increases. That takes a good month or so to start hitting that point.
When people say they "have more energy" what they actually mean "I feel motivated to do stuff." A body in motion tends to stay in motion, a body at rest tends to stay at rest. That's really all it is. When you've worked out hard and had time to cool down, in my experience, I'm more willing to knock out small shit like chores. I just moved 2,000 pounds of weight. Doing some dishes ain't shit compared to what I just did. Compared to when I wasn't working out, and getting up the motivation to do simple daily tasks was like UUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
The endorphin rush is really a blood rush. You've been pumping blood all over your body, in to your muscles. Your veins are swollen, your heart is enlarged and you're taking in way more oxygen at once than you do in a normal day. You're high off that effect, somewhat....and you're riding the high of doing hard shit and completing it. Your ego gets a little boost. Depending on your level of sado-masochism, the feeling of being drained, sore, stretched, beaten up kind of gets you off a little bit. It reinforces the feeling that you worked your ass off, and yeah, that does start to lead to a little bit of bragging.
All that comes together in that post workout high. It's not for everyone. I remember seeing an interview with Ryan Reynolds, who has had to get in shape/stay in shape for movies....he hates it. Doesn't see why people chase it when in his words "You spend all your time feeling like crap. When you do get to enjoy it?"
It comes down to the personality and WHY you're doing it in the first place. For me, I felt like I seriously racked disciprine. It felt good to attack a challenge, to throw everything I had into something until I had nothing left to give. I was ready to saddle myself with as much discomfort as I could possibly stand because I knew it was in pursuit of something real, and beneficial. What I *didn't* get in to fitness for was relationships. I didn't get in to it to make myself more attractive to others. In a way I got in to it to make myself more attractive to myself. I have a friend coming off of a divorce who tried to start working out with me, ostensibly for the same reason. He lasted only a couple weeks before he gave up. He says he still works out in his own time at home but if I'm honest I don't see a lot of results from it, and it's the kind of thing it's easy to say you do when you don't really.
Whatever reason you're working out is a good one. But is it a reason that will a) sustain you over time and b) cause you to really push yourself so you get something tangible out of the process.
I wipe the seats and benches down when I'm done
I zero out the elevation on the treadmill before leaving it
I rack my weights after using them
When doing bar exercises I secure the fucking weights jesus what is wrong with you people
I don't pretend to occupy three different machines/stations at the same time.
It's fucking amazing how many people don't do these things. I got some guys at my apartment gym who are in way better shape than me and yet don't rack their fucking weights and put shit back where they found it. I literally grabbed a yoga mat from right in front of some dumbass because he thought the right place to leave it was
hanging up in the fucking squat rack. Christ, I'm probably going to get in a fight one of these days, it annoys me that bad. Oh, you can bench 275 but you're too much of a fucking pussy to put the weights back on the rack when you're done? Putting the weight back is lifting weights, it's part of the exercise! Assholes. I respect circuit training but it is damn annoying to know that one guy is monopolizing the squat rack, the yoga mat, the knee raise/dips platform and a pair of dumbbells for 15 to 20 minutes. Not securing your weights is all about ego and confidence. Most people don't lift heavy enough to actually need weights secured, but for me, I'd rather look weak than look stupid in the event I actually ended up dumping some weights. Also my bar path is often pretty uneven, which is why I clip the fuck up.
Also let me just add: playing your music off your phone. Yeah, just because we all have headphones in does not mean we can't hear your music. I carry a bluetooth speaker with me for when the gym is empty. When people come in, I either turn it off or ask them if they'd like to me to turn it off. (I do that at my work gym since I'm one of about 6 people that regularly use it. My appt gym is almost never empty though.) So goddamn annoying. We use headphones, you should too.
Since I've been primarily looking to increase my Hotness™ quotient, as a dude that generally means trying to beef my upper body up a bit, with focus on the chest and arms (I give zero shits about my weight, so weight loss/gain just isn't something I care enough about to factor in).
Let me give you a wake up call.
If you want to look hotter, care about your body fat. When people say weight, that's what they actually mean.
I don't know you, and you haven't stated what your body weight or body fat % is. But I can tell you, if you're over 15%, unless you're planning on putting 40 pounds of muscle, if you don't get somewhat leaner it's not going to look very impressive. Look at powerlifters. They're BIG guys, they carry a lot of muscle. But they also generally are a good amount above 15%. Because body fat is fuel for really heavy lifting. But they "look like shit" as most people in the fitness industry put it. Because looks aren't their priority. Raw power and setting records is.
When you're leaner, you can actually see your muscle. Get really lean, and even without a lot of muscle, you will easily looked more ripped. Above 15% body fat most men start looking softer, depending on where they carry body fat and how much you can see. If you increase your muscle mass without doing anything about your body fat you will look "bigger" without necessarily looking better. Aesthetics are an individual thing, what people like or want is highly personal. But I can tell you from experience, I didn't really start liking the look of myself in the mirror until I got under 15%. I saw small changes in the places where I carry very little body fat (namely my arms and legs.) But in the big show areas, like chest and abs....I knew I had muscle under there and it was growing, but it was hard to appreciate with even pretty reasonable body fat levels. And as soon as I turned to the side and those nice round love handles showed, the whole effect was kinda ruined. I haven't built a shitload of muscle, I'm cautious about even trying to put a number on it. But 10? pounds of muscle in truth doesn't show under the body fat if it's high enough. What is "high enough" is up to you.
So yeah, unless you're planning to get fucking enormous, if you honestly want to look hotter, you should at least think about your body fat. If nothing else, addressing your body fat teaches you a lot about food and your relationship to it. Along with having the discipline (if not the enthusiasm) for going the gym regularly, trying to reduce your body fat forces you to be more disciplined in the rest of your day, not just when you're in the gym. All of which are good things that build a solid foundation for better gains and more effort down the line, when shit REALLY starts to get hard. I LONG for the days of working out at above 15% body fat, I had much more energy to push myself harder and lift more weight. As I get leaner, despite looking better in my own eyes, I'm getting weaker. It's all a balancing act. If you're comfortable with your body fat, then be comfortable and just lift like you mean it, you'll probably still lose some body fat along the way if you're doing it right.
And I guess one last thing to mention on body fat levels...it's not just your belly or your chest or your arms or your thighs that gets thinner. It's your face. That's where people will notice it first unless they regularly see you sans clothing. If you wanna improve your looks.....the face is a definitely a part of that.
5x5, 3+ minute rest between sets, pretty much the only specific and defined thing I do there. I'll occasionally throw in some dumbbell curls (3x10, somewhere around 30 sec rest) to plump the arms up a bit, but between squats, stretching, and a 15 minute (very) light cardio warmup there's generally not a whole lot of time left in the hour she wants to spend there, and I've lately been toast enough by that point that I'm willing to throw the towel in too.
Some thoughts on time management/other stuff:
- You're timing your rest periods which is great. That alone is one of the biggest time savers, not getting distracted and looking at your phone or texting people and taking 5 minutes between sets. My rest periods are 1 minute for most exercises, and three minutes for big compound movements like squats and deadlifts. I've been doing it for so long I often know exactly how many seconds I have left without looking at my phone or actually counting them....just judging my breathing and how much muscle burn I don't feel anymore. I actually...have kind of learned I don't really like having lifting buddies, or teaching people in the gym that much, because it cuts in to my own workout and timing more than I'd like.
- People vastly over inflate the importance of warm ups, and put way too much time in to it. Grab some exercise bands. Warm up the areas you intend to work that day with 1 or 2 sets of 10 reps. (I do shoulder breakers for my shoulders, band pull aparts for my back and rotator cuff and banded bicep curls for my arms. You can do a banded X-Walk or w/e it's called to warm up your hips, hip flexors, etc and so forth.) Takes about 3 minutes. On leg days I do 45 seconds of mountain climbers, which gets me breathing harder, my heart rate up and blood pumping to my glutes, hamstrings and quads. Burpies will absolutely get your whole body warmed up in under a minute if you even last that long. If you're taking more than 10 minutes to warm up, regardless of what it is, you're probably doing too much.
- Do your cardio on a different day. I don't do enough cardio and there's a lot of broscience around it....but generally speaking, I try to keep my cardio and my lifting separate. Cardiovascular fitness is good, but people's 15 minute on the treadmill with maybe 2 minutes of high intensity running strikes me as a lot of time invested for very little payout. I see this shit in the gym constantly. People do 15 minutes of cardio, 3 to 5 actual minutes of lifting and call it a day. You don't get very far in the lifting department with those kinds of priorities. There's also the philosophy that the body adapts to what you ask it to do. Want to know what the body really doesn't want when it's running? Muscle. It's heavy. It carries a lot of water. It wants lots of calories. It's not aerodynamic and flops around and throws off your gait when your run. Muscle is inefficient from the body's perspective, that's why you don't carry a lot of it naturally unless the demands placed on your body require it. So when you're always including cardio and perhaps cardio is where MOST of your work actually gets done, the bros will tell you just won't grow as much muscle and maybe might even lose some. In extreme cases you can see this with long distance runners who can run for 200 miles...but carry very, very little muscle. Running efficiently and having lots of muscle are kind of opposite goals. Just my 2 cents.
- There's also a bit of broscience on stretching before a work out. The idea being that stretching out muscle fiber and THEN applying heavy tension makes you more likely to tear something in a bad way. I do all my stretching before bed. The rationale being that sleeping is when you're going to get the tightest because you're going to be laying mostly still for 6 to 8 hours. So putting a stretch on your muscles right before that then leaves you in better shape the next day, rather than stretching before a workout and doing no stretching later. I do about 25 minutes of stretching at night on my work days, and try to hit everything I worked plus stuff that just feels good and right to do. (I do 40 seconds of a deep squat and reach, a fully articulated bend over to touch my toes, quads and hamstring stretches, child's pose for the lower back...in addition to all the heads of the shoulder, forearms, pecs, bicep, back, lat stretches and ab stretches.)
- Plan out your workout. Seriously. Know the things you're going to do, keep your rest periods tight and just start accruing volume. When you find that you're just not as tired or sore or drained as you used to be, it's time to add more exercises to the session and make for a longer session, OR increase the intensity by increasing the weight, doing more reps, harder variations, etc.... I go in to the gym on a mission to complete all the lifts I want to get done, so I can get the hell out of the gym, because it's all too easy to just say "I'll do one less exercise" or "I'll just rest another minute." Keeping time in the gym helps you get more done, and after doing it this long, the alternative is almost maddening. Someone caught me right before work was over to talk some stuff out and I was 20 minutes late getting started with my workout, which is 9 sets worth of exercises by how I keep time, and it was agony watching the minutes tick by. I write my workouts in my phone so if I'm ever unclear as to what I still need to do I can reference back to them. Bottomline: don't go to the gym and look around and go "what do I feel like doing." That's inconsistent, and consistently training muscle groups is what makes them grow. "A little bit of this, a little bit of that" doesn't get you really anywhere. Create a plan, even if it's your own amateur stupid one, and adhere to it. Or try someone else's workout plan if you feel up to it.
My cardio's also shit, and I don't want to push myself before the squats because then I gas out like nothing... It's partly because I just don't have an active lifestyle, and partly because I'm also on a constant prescription of beta blockers, which directly restrict blood pressure and heartrate. So, yeah. Gettin' them BPMs is, ah, interesting.
Oof. That sucks. Well, for me, deadlifts blast my heart rate and respiration like nothing else, because I do a lot of breathing deep then bracing my core. I'm gulping air like a fish out of water by my 3rd set of deadlifts, so, get ready for that. But as I said my cardio is not great AND I still smoke. So. Maybe it won't be as bad for you despite beta blockers.
Occasionally do core, which aside from squats basically just means plank (I've done suspended leg lifts a couple times, which gives a decent burn and is therefore apparently working, but again... Time/motivation restraints). I read another thing on the internet, so I'm disinclined to follow my workout buddy in her crunches and Russian twists.
When it comes to what gets said on the internet about a particular exercise.....
my advice is to try it and see how it makes you feel. That's what actually matters. Get educated about the movement, make sure you're doing it right, then try it. Athlean-X goes on and on about shoulder impingement and which exercises you shouldn't do because of the risk, while others say they've done these exercises for years and experience no problems. Try things. Experiment. See what feels good, what doesn't feel good, what just straight up feels wrong or painful. Learn to separate DISCOMFORT from PAIN. Discomfort is part of the process. Literal pain is a warning sign. I've also read plenty about how crunches are bad, full situps are worse, Russian Twists jeopardize your lower back, deadlifts are a guaranteed to leave you crippled....all nonsense for the most part.
Remember, people talking about fitness on the internet want views and clout, so everyone is trying to claim they have secrets, the master tip, the inside knowledge even though exercise science has been a thing for 50+ years and many of these people have been working out at best for 10 years or less. I watched one youtube video claiming bending over to touch your toes leads to back injuries, even though being able to bend over and touch your toes is a marker for health and longevity. And the comments were filled with people going "OMG, I did this for years, no one wonder I have back problems" or "my ballet teachers RUINED MY BODY" even though 99% of these people probably have shitty posture which has way more to do with how your back handles things than what stretches you do.
Try shit. Evaluate. Do what feels right for you, and if it doesn't, don't do it. Do something else a different way for the same muscles. Don't want to do Russian Twists? They don't feel right? Do knee to elbow plank crunches instead, or oblique crunches with a weight in one hand, or Landmine Twisters with a barbell. Biomechanically, due to our height, bone structure, bone density, muscle attachments.....everyone handles exercises a little differently. Doesn't mean the exercise is bad, it means it may just not be optimal for you. Super tall people often struggle with the deadlift because they have a lot further to bring the weight up than a shorter, stockier person. They have more back to deal with, they have sit their hips back further to reach the bar because their legs are longer, which puts a way bigger stretch on their hamstrings. People with long arms can struggle with the bench press sometimes because they have to move the weight further to achieve full extension. Some postural problems built up over a life time may make you more prone to injury and discomfort in certain exercises than someone else. Some things are categorically true I think, but they're sort of the obvious ones, like "eat big get big" or "burn more calories than you eat to lose body fat." For the rest though, you really have to pay attention to the info and your own body when doing these things, and be your own judge. In a world of too much information you have to do your own filtering. And there's just way too much going on in fitness to take almost anything as gospel. I include myself in that.
So, ah... I guess that's it? Trying to hold on to what little I've managed to claw out of this whole ordeal, waiting on whenever it is I line up that PT session to really spread my wings and... Do very slightly more.
Consistency. Consistency of effort. Time. If you have the first two dialed in, and you're patient with the 3rd, you will get results. They will be slower than people with a financial interest in fitness will ever honestly tell you. They talk about these things in terms of weeks, and maybe months. And maybe for people that are genetically gifted and really pushing themselves to the limit both in terms of workouts and nutrition, yeah maybe they can see significant changes in just months. But by and large the three, six and nine month "transformations" are mostly bullshit. Camera angles, lighting, drugs, getting a pump and flexing, and extreme methods, all these things to make them appear like the fitness elite. When you see the photos of just normal people who have put in the hard work going from out of shape to in shape, they're a lot more realistic and often much less impressive because they're honest.
I'm here. I need a beer. Get used to it.
You've earned it.
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Topic: The Fitness Thread - THE RE-SWOLLENING (Read 54689 times)