A friend of mine also started working out. He says he just wants a bit of everything (strength, muscle, toning), and uploaded a video on YouTube recently. Can you please judge his training? Please keep the bashing, laughing to death and flaming to a minimum, he's just starting out! lol
Here's the vid:
I'm currently following StrongLifts 5x5 program in our uni's gym (Thank you AoN.DimSum!) but I'm not quite sure if that would suit him much (equipment-wise), he apparently has only some sort of bar and plates.
(not posting to youtube because I'd get lost in the cacophony of retards sounding off with hatred and bullshit)
Tell him not to swing the weight around during reps. Ex. when he's doing bicep curls, he's using the momentum of the weight to power the weight upwards. He's cheating himself.
Really, he needs to learn proper form from a professional trainer. At some point it becomes a safety issue.
He is benching wayy too fast, needs to slow it down. Like number1gog said, he is using cheating himself by using momentum. It's the same with the benchs as well. He is gaining that momentum by a fast rebound. Yeah also of course same with the biceps. He needs to start at one point, lift up, pause ever so slightly, then back down to the same point. If he can't do it slow that means he needs to go down a weight.
Just tell him to slow down his reps and really focus on the muscle contraction. It's better off to go slow with a low weight and do a proper rep than doing incorrect reps with higher weight.
Edit:
On October 01 2009 13:29 SanguineToss wrote: 'your friend'.
yeah that's why he looks the exact same in the video as in his profile picture -.-
everyone knows to be a ripped sc player you just need to reach 100 pushups and do lots of cardio to get ripped. There's some 100pushup site you can google to do it.
I would reccomend ditching that dumb bench press machine, that's just for ego lifters
I also think a vegetrian diet is optimal for muscle growth as it much more healthy for you.
Your friends bench form could need a little help. Tell him to arch his lower back (you should be able to put a fist under your lower back), and to make sure hes doing the full range of motion (the bar should touch his chest just under the nipples. Also, I'm unsure on what his goals are, but for strength and hypertrophy training he should slow down on his presses (something like 2 seconds down, 1 second up).
He's gonna need more equipment too. or atleast a make shift squat rack, and some type of floor that he can drop the weights on.
tell him ab building is futile unless he plans to drop his body fat to about 10-12%. If he can do that, props on him.
:3. work hard, and get huge like nada mang.
edit:
book suggestion!
Starting Strength my Mark Rippetoe
its easily torrentable, and within a single read of it you can point fingers at 60-70% of people in a gym and see how inefficiently/improperly they're working out...
wouldn't doing 100 pushups just increase your endurance, heart and give you some toning? i'm not quite sure it would buff you up or strengthen you better than if you had started out doing a moderate amount of reps (8-12) with progressively increasing weights?
lol @ those thinking that is me, why would I want to show myself off benching 30lb? XD
I don't even get what the shit is going on in this video. He's "curling" some sort of brick? He's not even using his muscle at all, he's just swinging his arms around. I thought he was stretching when I saw that or something, just windmilling his arms, then I realized that was supposed to be an exercise. Surely he can feel that he isn't actually using his muscle whatsoever to do that. When he's benching, you can see that those weight plates would just fly off if they weren't connected to the bar.
Invest in some actual weights if you don't intend to go to the gym. Holding onto some flat pieces of whatever they are to do curls is not at all optimal.
Slow down. Bench heavier weight, slower rep. Needs a more balanced approach. Look up some workouts you can do with free weights only. Probably want some curls, hammer curls, skull crushers, bent over rows, all that shit.
It's a lot easier to just go to the gym (if you are in school [college], you probably have a free gym you can go to.
Pokepill I don't get it; how is a bench press for "ego lifters?" It's like the most basic compound lift.
On October 01 2009 15:04 NoobsOfWrath wrote: I don't even get what the shit is going on in this video. He's "curling" some sort of brick? He's not even using his muscle at all, he's just swinging his arms around. I thought he was stretching when I saw that or something, just windmilling his arms, then I realized that was supposed to be an exercise.
On October 01 2009 15:01 fEAthEr wrote: post above imho doesnt gym at all.
Your friends bench form could need a little help. Tell him to arch his lower back (you should be able to put a fist under your lower back), and to make sure hes doing the full range of motion (the bar should touch his chest just under the nipples. Also, I'm unsure on what his goals are, but for strength and hypertrophy training he should slow down on his presses (something like 2 seconds down, 1 second up).
He's gonna need more equipment too. or atleast a make shift squat rack, and some type of floor that he can drop the weights on.
tell him ab building is futile unless he plans to drop his body fat to about 10-12%. If he can do that, props on him.
:3. work hard, and get huge like nada mang.
edit:
book suggestion!
Starting Strength my Mark Rippetoe
its easily torrentable, and within a single read of it you can point fingers at 60-70% of people in a gym and see how inefficiently/improperly they're working out...
pick 7 excercises for each body part (bis, tris, legs, chest, shoulders, back)
split days like this 1 - legs 2 - back 3 - off 4 - chest (don't bench the top 15% of the rep otherwise you work your shoulders) 5 - shoulders 6- arms 7 - off etc.
Do 15-20 total sets each day ranging from 7-12 reps per set. You should have 4-5 diff. exercises per bodypart except tris and bis, which should be 3-4 Throw in calves/ abs every other day and do 6-9 sets of 2-3 excercises (if you feel these necessary; i trained calves for a year and a half with very minimal results and now i just skip them entirely) I usually put deadlifts on my back day, but every now and then i'll do stiff legged deadlifts on leg days
Eat 200 calories above your maintenance (what you'd eat to stay the same weight) Pretty simple.
He should learn to do the full range of motion for everything. You know like pushups actually ALL the way down, and bench press all the way down. That'll probably help him slow down, because he must think working out is a race.
He needs to go all the way down to his chest when benching. I cant stress how annoying it is i find people trying to cheat by not going all the way down. fucken...
Common sense would tell you every exercise is wrong. Using common sense or an hour on youtube will show him how to have proper form. There are many resources on the internet showing you sample workouts for what you what to achieve. None of them recommend blasting through a workout in 7 minutes, doing seemingly random single sets in 3-5 seconds. There are specific bodyweight exercises he can do if he doesn't have proper weights. He needs to spend a few hours online reading and watching. If he doesn't want to do that, he needs a friend / trainer / anyone who has ever exercised before to show him proper form.
On October 01 2009 17:21 unSpeake wrote: pick 7 excercises for each body part (bis, tris, legs, chest, shoulders, back)
split days like this 1 - legs 2 - back 3 - off 4 - chest (don't bench the top 15% of the rep otherwise you work your shoulders) 5 - shoulders 6- arms 7 - off etc.
Do 15-20 total sets each day ranging from 7-12 reps per set. You should have 4-5 diff. exercises per bodypart except tris and bis, which should be 3-4 Throw in calves/ abs every other day and do 6-9 sets of 2-3 excercises (if you feel these necessary; i trained calves for a year and a half with very minimal results and now i just skip them entirely) I usually put deadlifts on my back day, but every now and then i'll do stiff legged deadlifts on leg days
Eat 200 calories above your maintenance (what you'd eat to stay the same weight) Pretty simple.
I don't even know where to begin, but i'll try. -You don't cram a bunch of weak weight in as fast as possible in a workout. (should take like an hour total) -You have horrible form: -Swinging arms around on curls with that shit, im laughing as I write this. -Benching like 80 lbs~ super quick, don't be ashamed, bump it up to more weight and do slow controlled movements. -Same with the pushups, you don't fall to the floor, and then push yourself back up. You slowly lower yourself down and wait a half second and slowly push yourself up. breathing for each stroke. -Singing some gay song 'between sets' lol are you asking to be ridiculed? -Same with the terrible skateboarding. -You need to not do half assed crunches and hold them til it hurts. -Just looking at the impatience of you in the video seems like you have ADD or just lack of focus on working out. etc
What are the goals of your workout? Do you wanna lose weight or get buff or what?
If you want to do just upper body strength here is a workout that I used. Tools: Bench Press, Pull up bar, Dumbbells, Chair First start out with jumping jacks and arm windmills and other stupid excersizes and stretches for like 10 minutes. I'd do 20 jacks, 20 big wind forward, back, then 20 small forward and back, then lots of arm stretches, which are hard to describe but can be looked up.
3 sets of benching 5-10 reps of hard weight, try to add weight every week or so. 3 sets of curling 10-15 reps of decent weight, try to add weight every week or so. 3 sets of chin ups (start with a goal number and just try to do a couple more every time) Same with pull ups (should be able to do at least like 3, 2 to 3 times more on chinups) 3 sets of butterflies with dumbells, there are different forms of this, do some research 3 sets of tricep dips, you can use the benchpress but It's safer to use a chair imo. 3 sets of pushups you should be doing at least 15-20
Then I'd add some cardio at the end, either running a mile or just jumping around and hitting a punching bag.
All of these sets with a few minutes in between of each other for rest.
Afterwords a protein shake with lots of fruits. And the next day I'd take off for rest and muscle recovery.
I know this isn't 100% sound advice for body building (in fact some of it is probably bad) but it's still a pretty healthy workout.
Also, it really helps benching if you can get a spotter. It really limits you if you can't push yourself just because of the danger element. I have gotten stuck for a few minutes with some weight on my chest lol. It's also nice to start a workout every time trying to do you max weight bench and you should definitely only try this with a spotter.
But thank you for the extremely high lvl insight Charlie I'm amazed O.O, also had a couple lols reading it, I'm going to give this to him word by word asap. Hell, I'll make him read this post honestly! And don't worry, he's at like 0% (beginning) so I think anything that's sort of organized and consistent will do, then as he gets better, he can go for something more advanced.
Btw, how do you deal with plateaus? I just reached a bench press plateau @ 155lb and can't go up higher for some reason x_X I was thinking of dropping the weight a bit and trying to do 5x5 and THEN increase it again (1 step back, 2 steps forward kind of approach).
Better to stretch using lighter weights than regular stretches, or you can lose a lot of strength for the lifts
And as for what I said about isolationary work most high level body builders agree that it's better to start with compound lifts or at least some of them before moving to heavy isolationary work i.e. 7 groups, 5+ a week workouts. Deadlift, squats, cable shit, bench, military press, etc.
Meh, i use all of those excercises you described as compound on my "isolation" days. I spread out stuff like triceps and bench/ back and bis so that they aren't effecting eachother.
EPT
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