EPTFitness Questions & Answers - Page 89
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
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eshlow
United States5210 Posts
On September 09 2012 00:57 JingleHell wrote: Ok, so I found a place that's affordable with barbells and squat rack and whatnot, that I plan to sign up at. Only think they're missing is bumpers. Any suggestions on a good thing to swap in to an SS type routine in place of power clean? If you're in a home/garage type area you can get stuff for cheap and it pays for itself in a couple years usually like craigslist. Keep the Pclean! Just don't drop on the way down | ||
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
On September 09 2012 07:06 eshlow wrote: If you're in a home/garage type area you can get stuff for cheap and it pays for itself in a couple years usually like craigslist. Keep the Pclean! Just don't drop on the way down I'm in a third floor apartment, in Texas, where lifting in a garage is counterproductive to gaining weight unless you drink at least a gallon of water in the process. Is it safe to not drop the bar on power cleans? | ||
zatic
Zurich15365 Posts
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iloveroo
Canada294 Posts
I just started going to the gym after 3 or 4 years taking it back in high school, I signed up w/ a gym paying basically only $16 a month. Not the point, with signing up w/ them I needed to get an assessment done by a personal trailer in order to determine what part of my body I need to work out the most and where I am at. We did 3 exercises that basically works out my whole body from head to toe. The trainer told me I needed to work out my abs.. my mid section.. my stomach area since everything is connected to it and I'm not in the greatest shape in my stomach area. The trainer did measure how much body fat I had.. I think , which was 5% if people needed to know. Now I'm wondering what workouts can I do at the gym in order to strengthen my stomach area? I plan on going to the gym every other day.. Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a couple weeks and those days I plan on working out my whole body but mostly try to work out my stomach area. Remember I am a gym illiterate? LOL. So showing a video, explaining a workout, or telling me the name of the workout so I can google it will be much appreciated. Also what are easy ways to also burn off fat in my stomach area? I know I gotta watch what I eat, but any other ways. *I would google all this but I would like to see peoples opinions, plus I am off to bed after I write this. | ||
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shawster
Canada2485 Posts
On September 09 2012 14:21 iloveroo wrote: hi, first time posting on Health & Fitness. I just started going to the gym after 3 or 4 years taking it back in high school, I signed up w/ a gym paying basically only $16 a month. Not the point, with signing up w/ them I needed to get an assessment done by a personal trailer in order to determine what part of my body I need to work out the most and where I am at. We did 3 exercises that basically works out my whole body from head to toe. The trainer told me I needed to work out my abs.. my mid section.. my stomach area since everything is connected to it and I'm not in the greatest shape in my stomach area. The trainer did measure how much body fat I had.. I think , which was 5% if people needed to know. Now I'm wondering what workouts can I do at the gym in order to strengthen my stomach area? I plan on going to the gym every other day.. Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a couple weeks and those days I plan on working out my whole body but mostly try to work out my stomach area. Remember I am a gym illiterate? LOL. So showing a video, explaining a workout, or telling me the name of the workout so I can google it will be much appreciated. Also what are easy ways to also burn off fat in my stomach area? I know I gotta watch what I eat, but any other ways. *I would google all this but I would like to see peoples opinions, plus I am off to bed after I write this. if you were 5% bodyfat you'd be a skeleton. check out stickies, read them. reeeeaaaaaadddd. basically you need a goal and a routine that goes along with it. check out training recommendations. | ||
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ieatkids5
United States4628 Posts
welcome! glad to have you here  basically, what shawster said. for any first timers, the stickies are your friend. they'll contain a good amount of information that is VERY relevent to those who are just starting out. however, if you just want the short answer, check out either starting strength or stronglifts 5x5, if you're looking to gain some general strength in your entire body. | ||
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Hanakurena
105 Posts
You can youtube them to see how to do them. Like this one: Gyms have their own huge ab machines. But it's hard to isolate ab muscles on them. I don't like them. There are no ways to burn fat off your stomach. Also, if you are really 5% body fat, don't try to diet and get to an even lower percentage. There's absolutely no reason to do so. If the 5% number is wrong, get it measured accurately. Also, no.1 rule of fitness. Do cardio first. If you have time left, do other stuff. | ||
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
Anyways, nobody seems to have asked the most obvious question. If this gym makes you do this stupid fucking assessment, (5% BF is in the "holy fuck get to a hospital" range, not the "do crunches" range), with one of their "trainers", shouldn't that same trainer be able to tell you appropriate exercises? Sounds to me like they're just trying to give a false impression of competence and targeted training, to make people want to stay with them. I'd suggest talking about your goals and seeing what makes the most sense to meet them. | ||
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Hanakurena
105 Posts
Of course doing exercises that do exactly what you want to improve on works. But the thing is, if you want to be good at football(soccer) then you can play soccer all day. But if you want to be good you have to train&practice specifically. This means getting the most volume of exercise out of your time invested when it comes to technique. And doing specific things to target certain soft points. You want a strong core for football. You won't get the strongest core you could possibly get playing only football. Same with cardio fitness/endurance. Specific training helps. People who compete professionally at running certain distances never run the distance they compete in for training. They either run longer or shorter. If your distance is 400m, you never run 400m except for races. If your distance is 5k you never run 5k except for races. So doing exactly what you want to improve in doesn't work if you apply it on a certain macro level. | ||
Daigomi
South Africa4316 Posts
On September 09 2012 14:21 iloveroo wrote: hi, first time posting on Health & Fitness. I just started going to the gym after 3 or 4 years taking it back in high school, I signed up w/ a gym paying basically only $16 a month. Not the point, with signing up w/ them I needed to get an assessment done by a personal trailer in order to determine what part of my body I need to work out the most and where I am at. We did 3 exercises that basically works out my whole body from head to toe. The trainer told me I needed to work out my abs.. my mid section.. my stomach area since everything is connected to it and I'm not in the greatest shape in my stomach area. The trainer did measure how much body fat I had.. I think , which was 5% if people needed to know. Now I'm wondering what workouts can I do at the gym in order to strengthen my stomach area? I plan on going to the gym every other day.. Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a couple weeks and those days I plan on working out my whole body but mostly try to work out my stomach area. Remember I am a gym illiterate? LOL. So showing a video, explaining a workout, or telling me the name of the workout so I can google it will be much appreciated. Also what are easy ways to also burn off fat in my stomach area? I know I gotta watch what I eat, but any other ways. *I would google all this but I would like to see peoples opinions, plus I am off to bed after I write this. As everyone else has said, read the stickies they'll tell you pretty much everything you need. However, since you say you're gym illiterate, I'll try to give a bit more info on some things that are confusing/probably wrong in your post. Firstly, 5% body fat percentage is almost impossible. Professional bodybuilders can sometimes get down to 5% before bodybuilding meets, but it's only possible to do that with dehydration and a few other pretty unhealthy things. It's pretty much impossible to maintain a 5% body fat percentage for any period of time. Average men are somewhere around 20% bodyfat and at around 10-12% body fat, you can start seeing your abs. Obviously it differs from person to person, but the point is, chances are very good you're nowhere near 5%. + Show Spoiler [some bodyfat pictures] + ![[image loading]](http://team4orce.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/4-percent-body-fat-male.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://team4orce.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/male-body-fat-percentages-pictures.jpg) Secondly, since you're gym illiterate, I assume you're lacking muscle in all departments, not just your abs. Focusing on your abs right now will be fairly ineffective. To make a starcraft analogy, it's like having someone who has never played the game focus on his marine micro the first time he picks up the game. What would be much more effective is to play as many full games as you can, and learn all the skills simultaneously. In exercise terms, that means you want to be doing compound exercises (exercises which train multiple muscles simultaneously) like squats, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press, powercleans and chin-ups. These are also the exercises suggested by starting strength and stronglifts, which is why everyone is recommending you follow those programs. Thirdly, what the trainer probably meant was that you need to work on your core muscles. They're a bunch of small muscles that sit near your stomache which do things like stabilise your other muscles and help you to activate them. He is right in the sense that your core is damn important for overall strength, but I don't necessarily think you should be focusing on your core. Once again with a SC analogy, it's like telling a newbie he needs to focus on improving his general unit control. While it's true that unit control is important, unit control is useless without also knowing how to macro, use buildorders and make strategic decisions. Even more, by just playing the game, unit control naturally improves along with macro, strategic decisions, etc. That's how the core is as well. You don't really have to focus on it unless you're a super advanced lifter with a core deficiency. At your level, doing something like a squat or a deadlift will improve your core muscles almost as much as an exercise specifically targetting your core, and at the same time it will exercise every other muscle in your body. Regarding burning fat off in your stomache, don't think about it. If your body fat is low and you can't see your abs it simply means your abs are too small. My body fat percentage is around 15% and I am starting to see my abs thanks to squats and deadlifts. Also, you can't target areas for fat loss. Doing 100 crunches is as likely to have you lose fat on your arms and legs as it is to help you lose stomache fat. So if you really have excess fat (and it's not just a case of lacking muscle) then a diet will be the best way to lose stomache fat. Hope that clears things up, and READ THE STICKIES. | ||
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
On September 10 2012 01:33 Hanakurena wrote: Yeah if he can't measure your bodyfat, how can you be sure about his competence about related subjects that he should be able to help you with given his profession? Of course doing exercises that do exactly what you want to improve on works. But the thing is, if you want to be good at football(soccer) then you can play soccer all day. But if you want to be good you have to train&practice specifically. This means getting the most volume of exercise out of your time invested when it comes to technique. And doing specific things to target certain soft points. You want a strong core for football. You won't get the strongest core you could possibly get playing only football. Same with cardio fitness/endurance. Specific training helps. People who compete professionally at running certain distances never run the distance they compete in for training. They either run longer or shorter. If your distance is 400m, you never run 400m except for races. If your distance is 5k you never run 5k except for races. So doing exactly what you want to improve in doesn't work if you apply it on a certain macro level. And cardio doesn't give you particularly amazing results outside of cardio results. Which is why if you're not targeting cardio specifically, it's not the one thing you should automatically focus on. I've seen 5'11" 230 pound guys who ran 20+ miles a week. Cardio didn't make them skinnier, or stronger, it just gave them better endurance at their weight. Cardio alone is only particularly good if you're worried about better cardio, just like you don't play soccer to get better at karate. There may be some minor crossover in the training, but if you don't want to run longer distances, or jump rope longer, or swim further, running, jumping rope, and swimming don't make you a whole lot better at anything else on their own. Doing calisthenics doesn't increase your power. I don't do much cardio anymore, but my blood pressure is no worse than it ever was. | ||
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Hanakurena
105 Posts
I don't know how your blood pressure not being bad is an excuse. You say that you know fat people that run 20 miles or more a week and are still fat. So? We know cardio burns way way more calories than any form of exercise by definition. So if you care about exercise burning calories, which apparently you do otherwise you wouldn't have brought it up, how can your point have any reference? These fat people that do tons of cardio are fat because they do the wrong type of exercise? Or because they don't do enough cardio to balance their bad nutrition? People here say read the stickies. But the stickies may be the reason JingleHell is so confused. I don't know what could possibly trump being better at cardio. What 'amazing results' are you talking about? It doesn't make you better at 'what'? How is that 'what' so important you care about it more than having a strong cardio system? If you care about being healthy and fit, which is the name of this forum and the reason people come here, you should start with cardio first because having strong cardio basically means being healthy and fit. It is impossible to be healthy and fit with a weak cardio system. Nothing even gets close to the importance of cardio for your health&fitness except fixing bad nutrition. Seems you don't really know what being better at cardio entails except having more endurance doing team sports, which apparently you don't care about. If you only care about being the guy who can bench the most in the gym or who looks the best at the beach, then you don't care about health and fitness anyway. Because neither have anything to do with being healthy or being fit. Not to mention what use are strong and big muscles if you can't provide the oxygen to use them and walking up several stairs makes you end up winded? I also disagree that you can neglect your core and just lift heavy weights. You are better off first working on your core. If you scan the posts here you get the impression that about half of the people that come here to H&F and take advice from the regulars get injured thanks to their bad advice. So working on core and stability muscles as well as general fitness, cardio and muscle recruitment is a good way to start before getting into heavy lifting and stimulate your major muscle groups. Especially when a professional assessed that your core is already a weak point, assuming he was correct. | ||
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Sneakyz
Sweden2361 Posts
And everything isn't black or white. On September 10 2012 03:58 Hanakurena wrote: If you scan the posts here you get the impression that about half of the people that come here to H&F and take advice from the regulars get injured thanks to their bad advice. Where exactly do you find these posts? I can't recall ever seeing a new guy getting injured. But obviously people on here get injured, if you do any form of exercise at all you're pretty much guaranteed to hurt yourself one day no matter how good your form or whatever is. I hurt my back while rowing 40kg during a warm up set, and I can row 100kg for 10reps and deadlift over 200kg so that's not exactly heavy stuff. | ||
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Hanakurena
105 Posts
When you are 17 or 21, you don't care much for health and you feel invincible anyway. But when you get closer and closer to 30, you know you are gonna slide downhill slowly but surely. Let's talk again then. Even most of the regulars seem to have injuries. Of course Eshow was never injured. He is probably the only one. There's a whole thread dedicated to them. I am sure a sports physiologist would shake his head reading through all that. Every time you get injured, you have made a mistake. Unless of course it is team sport related or a traffic accident. | ||
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Malinor
Germany4735 Posts
On September 10 2012 03:58 Hanakurena wrote: The most likely reason you are gonna die is heart disease/cardiovascular disease. So having a strong cardiovascular system should be on the top of your list for only that reason. This connection does not sound right to me at all. Like the only way to get a strong cardiovascular system is to do cardio? Let's get away from this word for a second, when we are talking about cardio we are normally talking about endurance training. If there is data out there that supports the claim that athletes with strong endurance live longer/ are healthier than athletes focussing on explosive movements/ short heavy exercises, I would like to see it. Sprinters/ Jumpers/ Strength athletes have strong hearts as well, I am pretty certain of that. So basically I believe you just associate a strong heart with cardio just because of the word. Aside from that, this discussion endurance vs strength is not really one I find particularly enlightening. I agree fully that someone who only cares about a big bench and nothing else is not interested in Health & Fitness at all. Basically movement is important, it doesn't really matter if you put strength or endurance first, your body is designed to move so walk, jump, run, lift, swim, climb... whatever floats your boat. It has been brought up several times by eshlow (whom you seem to loath) that the number one thing associated with heart disease is actually sitting, so there is not even a disagreement. And finally, I never have the image that the regulars in here advocate something along the lines "lift heavy 3x a week and besides that don't do anything". Though it is what is most efficient for the Starting Strength programm, but discussing that would take too long now. Truth is, there are very few raw strength athletes in here, most do some other sports besides lifting, and those sports normally include running And last, since you think everyone here is injuried because we do it all wrong... my injuries actually came from a) running and b) jump rube, not from lifting heavy things. And yeah, I did something wrong... out of millions of steps doing running and jump robe during the last year, I landed wrongly a couple of times and two times I hurt myself. I really should be more careful. Truth be told, someone who says Every time you get injured, you have made a mistake. probably does not have any athletic ambitions and that is fine. But everyone who does sports to push their limits and is not just trying to avoid an early death via heart disease is risking injury at some point. | ||
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Ahzz
Finland780 Posts
On September 10 2012 04:31 Hanakurena wrote: Squats really lift your heart rate up high, especially if you do higher reps. So it really amounts for something. But it is really for a short duration. When you are 17 or 21, you don't care much for health and you feel invincible anyway. But when you get closer and closer to 30, you know you are gonna slide downhill slowly but surely. Let's talk again then. Even most of the regulars seem to have injuries. Of course Eshow was never injured. He is probably the only one. There's a whole thread dedicated to them. I am sure a sports physiologist would shake his head reading through all that. Every time you get injured, you have made a mistake. Unless of course it is team sport related or a traffic accident. The regulars over here may have gotten a minor injury because they push themselves to their limits. Of course if you have no plans to do anything except be able to run 10 miles, or bench 60kg etc you may never get injured. However, many over here want to be able to do more than that. And because many of the regulars have been practising with proper form and technique, the injury generally hasn't been any worse than that. Everyone here knows the risks, and understands them. Even if we get a minor injury, we can return even stronger than before because we have taken it seriously. As for cardio, my brother has ran multiple marathons in his lifetime, and his best time was a little bit over 3 hours. Despite honing his running technique, having proper running shoes etc, he got injured eventually. But because he didn't screw around, he got over it and it was only a minor one. Basically everyone who pushes their body to it's limits will get injured at some point. Obviously you care only for cardio and burning fat. Which is fine, but it all depends what the persons goals are. Many coming to this thread want to be stronger. Cardio doesn't give them that. | ||
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Daigomi
South Africa4316 Posts
Let's take the present case as an example. The guy posts that he wants to go to gym to build up total body strength with emphasis on his abs. Your suggestion is to do cardio first and only do strength training if he has time for it. How is that the optimal way for him to reach his goals? It might be optimal to reach your goals (cardiovascual health, although even that is debatable) but it's definitely not the greatest way for him to reach his goals. So in this specific case, your advice is completely inappropriate. If you want to look at it more generally, I still don't think I agree with you. Most people come to the TLHF forum for three reasons (in order of importance): To look better, to be stronger, to get healthier. You can see this very clearly if you look at the first posts of new posters. Almost all of them want to look better (i.e. more muscled), most of them want to be stronger, and a few of them want to be healthier. So, if you want to provide advice in general, it should be advice that satisfies those three goals (preferably in order of importance). Cardio is good for your health and occasionally is OK for your looks (assuming the person is significantly over weight), and does almost nothing for strength. Strength training is also good for your health, is better for your looks and is best for gaining strength. When you look at people on TLHF's priorities, strength training is the optimal plan in general and that's because strength training builds muscle while doing cardio. My girlfriend tracks her heart rate every workout and without fail she averages around 110 heartrate for the full two hours we do strength training. That's very comparable with cardio and that is even though we take very long breaks (like, 5-10 minutes between sets, mostly because I rest a lot). She recently did a session without me and she averaged 125 heart rate for 60 minutes. Added to that, strength training is very similar to HIIT which has been shown to be more beneficial than consistent cardio. For example, during her last workout, my gf's heart rate shot up to 190 during her deadlift set and was 170 during her squat sets. So strength training has cardio benefits that are very similar to those of pure "cardio", but also allows you to build muscle at the same time. Also, as you say, there is a risk of injury. There is a risk of injury with everything though. When I did sport in school, I was injured at least as often as I am with weightlifting. Physical activity always entails some risk of injury. Sure, the injuries with weightlifting are generally caused by people making mistakes, but why is that worse than equally common injuries that occur in sport because of random events? Added to that, injuries aren't the end of the world. Just like every professional athlete deals with regular injuries, so does every serious weightlifter. You get injured, you do the time, you recover, you carry on training. As I said, that's the inherent risk in all physical exercise. Finally, I never said "just lift heavy weights." I said "do squats and deadlifts for your core." As with everything you do, you start at a low weight and work your way up. When you've got a weak core, you start low and allow your core to strengthen as the weights increase. When I started going to gym a year ago, I started off by deadlifting 50kg and that was damn hard. I squatted 35kg. I hadn't exercised at all in about 6 years at the time (and I had never done strength training) so I was weak all over, including my core. Now I'm squatting 150kg and deadlifting 185kg and my strongest muscles by far are either my legs or my core. The point is, these compound exercises exercise your core incredibly well so as long as you follow a reasonable schedule, they'll be more than sufficient for your core. | ||
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
On September 10 2012 03:58 Hanakurena wrote: The most likely reason you are gonna die is heart disease/cardiovascular disease. So having a strong cardiovascular system should be on the top of your list for only that reason. Not to mention the more fit you are, the more energy you have and the less quickly you get tired/winded. Now there are more advantages, but they overlap with other forms of exercise but I'd say cardio also tops the list on those. I don't know how your blood pressure not being bad is an excuse. Snipped a whole lot more, we know what I'm responding to. I'm not confused in the least. Cardio is exercise intended to help your cardiovascular system. Aerobic exercise. Power type exercises are frequently anaerobic. You're talking about cardio like some sort of end-all be-all exercise, but the fact is, all cardio helps you with is cardio. Aerobic exercise improves your ability to perform aerobic exercise. Your likelihood of getting heart disease (which frankly, I see you being entirely too concerned about) is based on a lot of risk factors, just like everything else in health. The people here suggest lifting for things lifting is good for. Don't accuse the stickies (I didn't write them) of influencing what I have to say. If you want to attack the information in those and fail again, you're free to. If you want to discuss with me what I've said, do that instead. It's pretty obvious my anecdotes from the military have less than zero bearing on the content of the stickies. Cardio actually stops being as effective for burning calories the more endurance you build up. It's most effective for burning calories when you first start. To continue burning similar amounts of calories with a jog or calisthenics, you have to find a way to increase intensity, which is harder than weights beyond a certain point. Oh, and I have yet to see you even consider the plausibility of special cases, although I'd love to see your suggestions for diet where something like Crohn's is concerned. By the way, just curiosity: do I get CHD just from looking at red meat and eggs, or is it only transmissable by touch? You sound like those warning labels talking about "X product is known to cause cancer in the state of California" most of the time. | ||
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ieatkids5
United States4628 Posts
On September 10 2012 03:58 Hanakurena wrote: I also disagree that you can neglect your core and just lift heavy weights. You are better off first working on your core. If you scan the posts here you get the impression that about half of the people that come here to H&F and take advice from the regulars get injured thanks to their bad advice. So working on core and stability muscles as well as general fitness, cardio and muscle recruitment is a good way to start before getting into heavy lifting and stimulate your major muscle groups. Especially when a professional assessed that your core is already a weak point, assuming he was correct. How is "lifting heavy weights" neglecting your core? the two main lifts of the programs we recommend are specifically for building core muscles - deadlift and squat. edit - oh, just realized i got ninja'd | ||
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