|
When you get in shape you can burn your whole daily maintenance in a cycling session. That will mean you are hours on the bike, but you can do that.
Usually indeed losing weight is mostly diet. But when you can burn 2000 to 3000 kcal, it is hard not to lose weight even if you eat unrestricted (but healthy).
Also, you can't get injured while cycling unless you crash.
If you put on more muscle, your calories burned in maintenance will go up. But gaining muscle is a slow process and a kg of muscle only burns around 30 kcal. It may take you 2 months to increase your maintenance kcal burned by 30.
You definitely want to increase your lean body mass, but it won't be a miracle solution to burning fat.
Now there's some people here that will tell you to get fat first while doing heavy barbell lifting. They think putting more fat on your body helps you to respond better to strength training because you are a in a calorie surplus. This is not supported by any clinical evidence. Then they want you to go on a super strict diet to lose all that fat. This is both inefficient as well as unhealthy. It leads to the absurdity of so called internet fitness guru's telling people that want to lose weight to eat until they are full and then eat more until they feel sick. Does that sound right?
Doing cardio is so important for your health in general you should always start there. Health goes above aethetics all the way. If you can do nothing else, do cardio. You need to do high intensity cardio to really increase performance. But low intensity cardio has huge health benefits and improves your endurance. What it doesn't do is build muscle. That's where strength training does come in.
As a beginner you can start out with bodyweight training. But unless you have rings you soon will have to move up to heavy weights. And to lift heavy free weights you need to have professional coaching because risk of injury is there when using bad form. This is no joke. You can ruin your back or shoulder ligaments permanently. Don't listen to people that say you can always just depend on the internet. You can't.
Muscle gains are very slow. If you don't see any in 6 months you should try to train differently. Training hard and resting harder is how you build muscle. But it is slow. That's why people who do it while gaining a lot of fat think they gain more muscle that they do. They see the scale move and they see their body bloat.
If you can get your body composition measured. This actually shows you if you made progression. Then aim to lose both fat, if you are overweight, and gain muscle.
Another thing to note, you don't have to have a six pack to be in shape. Especailly if you are older and depending on your genetics, you may store a lot of your fat on your belly.
Don't mirror yourself with fitness models or Hollywood artists that only look the way they do for that movie/photoshoot and have to use unsustainable diets to get so extremely low fat. And then probably still use steroids anyway.
Make sure your aesthetic goals are realistic and healthy.
|
On September 04 2012 01:52 Hanakurena wrote:
When you get in shape you can burn your whole daily maintenance in a cycling session. That will mean you are hours on the bike, but you can do that.
Usually indeed losing weight is mostly diet. But when you can burn 2000 to 3000 kcal, it is hard not to lose weight even if you eat unrestricted (but healthy).
Also, you can't get injured while cycling unless you crash.
If you put on more muscle, your calories burned in maintenance will go up. But gaining muscle is a slow process and a kg of muscle only burns around 30 kcal. It may take you 2 months to increase your maintenance kcal burned by 30.
You definitely want to increase your lean body mass, but it won't be a miracle solution to burning fat.
Now there's some people here that will tell you to get fat first while doing heavy barbell lifting. They think putting more fat on your body helps you to respond better to strength training because you are a in a calorie surplus. This is not supported by any clinical evidence. Then they want you to go on a super strict diet to lose all that fat. This is both inefficient as well as unhealthy. It leads to the absurdity of so called internet fitness guru's telling people that want to lose weight to eat until they are full and then eat more until they feel sick. Does that sound right?
Doing cardio is so important for your health in general you should always start there. Health goes above aethetics all the way. If you can do nothing else, do cardio. You need to do high intensity cardio to really increase performance. But low intensity cardio has huge health benefits and improves your endurance. What it doesn't do is build muscle. That's where strength training does come in.
As a beginner you can start out with bodyweight training. But unless you have rings you soon will have to move up to heavy weights. And to lift heavy free weights you need to have professional coaching because risk of injury is there when using bad form. This is no joke. You can ruin your back or shoulder ligaments permanently. Don't listen to people that say you can always just depend on the internet. You can't.
Muscle gains are very slow. If you don't see any in 6 months you should try to train differently. Training hard and resting harder is how you build muscle. But it is slow. That's why people who do it while gaining a lot of fat think they gain more muscle that they do. They see the scale move and they see their body bloat.
If you can get your body composition measured. This actually shows you if you made progression. Then aim to lose both fat, if you are overweight, and gain muscle.
Another thing to note, you don't have to have a six pack to be in shape. Especailly if you are older and depending on your genetics, you may store a lot of your fat on your belly.
Don't mirror yourself with fitness models or Hollywood artists that only look the way they do for that movie/photoshoot and have to use unsustainable diets to get so extremely low fat. And then probably still use steroids anyway.
Make sure your aesthetic goals are realistic and healthy.
I think you often have some sound points in your posts, but at the same time you have to stop making stuff up. Noone here ever said that you should get fat first and then lose all the weight again to gain muscle, absolutely noone. Unless you consider putting on 5kg (11lb) of mass "getting fat". We are not advocating temporary obesity here. In fact I am one of the guys who encourages people to not be afraid of having some additional mass. But when someone weighs 80kg at 180cm (176@5'11), I only tell them that they don't have to lose weight to get ride of their gut but do strength training (what these guys are always going for is losing 5kg on a crash diet and then wondering why they still don't have abs). I don't tell them to go up to 90kg.
Apart from that, concerning the number of calories a kg of additional muscle burns thorughout the day: I believe by now I have seen around 10 different numbers floating around the internet and I have no idea which one is accurate.So if someone could share a reliable source for that, I would be thankful.
From the top of my head I remember something like 13kcal per lb, which pretty much is ~28-29kcal per kg. But I am not so sure if that is the whole story. I mean, a 90kg guy with the same amount of muscle as a 80kg guy will have to burn more calories everytime he moves around, since he just has to move around more mass. So I don't know if this passive amount of calories is somewhat accounted for.
|
On September 03 2012 12:34 Divinek wrote:
Hmm
I have other friends that are more on the overweight side and are looking to lose weight/get fit and stuff, do you think this is reasonable for people who arent really in shape to start pure BW and acheive good fat/weight loss and what not or would it be too hard for them as a starting point?
To give you a benchmark: I am 109kg at 181cm (240lb@5'11 1/2). I am what most normal people would consider to be pretty strong and I am doing bw/weight/cardio training excessively for 18months. For bodyweight stuff, I can do:
- 22sec L-Sit from parllel bars (not from the ground)
- hold Wall-Handstands for ~30sec
- 7 chin ups
- 4 pull ups
- 13 dips
- 45 push-ups
This is mostly basic exercises and won't impress too many people, but it took a whole lot of work to get to those numbers. So what I am basically saying is, if your friends weigh above 100kg (220lb), and are not in good physical shape, I would not recommend bw-training. They won't be able to do much and the progress is extremely slow. Free weights are just more straight forward.
|
Well, the progress is generally slower, but it's cool when you get stuff. 
|
Ah I see, you have been very helpful so far thank you!
I already have a door frame pull up bar, and I'll probably order those wood rings from rogue fitness as they do look quite nice. Though I'm not too clear on the best way to hang rings from a door frame pull up bar I'm sure that's easy to figure out, I was wondering if there's actually enough room to do everything with a set up like this?
I would assume with move like back lever/front lever having your rings hanging from a door frame is no problem, but wouldnt it be problematic for stuff like iron cross/anything that starts to pull your body more towards the upright/inverted instead of horizontal because of the door frame etc being in the way? And that it doesnt provide enough room where your arms need to stretch outward and so on? (though i imagine i wont have to worry about move like that for a while)
Any particular things you'd recommend to do while I'm waiting for equipment/your book etc and I only have a wall/floor to work with as a completely lost, complete beginner? lol (just want to get started on something productive asap)
I currently intend to just start working on flexibility, maybe a bit of wall-handstand work, as mentioned in your article linked to in the OP, but the more tips the merrier
Thanks!
|
On September 04 2012 05:53 Divinek wrote:
Ah I see, you have been very helpful so far thank you!
I already have a door frame pull up bar, and I'll probably order those wood rings from rogue fitness as they do look quite nice. Though I'm not too clear on the best way to hang rings from a door frame pull up bar I'm sure that's easy to figure out, I was wondering if there's actually enough room to do everything with a set up like this?
I would assume with move like back lever/front lever having your rings hanging from a door frame is no problem, but wouldnt it be problematic for stuff like iron cross/anything that starts to pull your body more towards the upright/inverted instead of horizontal because of the door frame etc being in the way? And that it doesnt provide enough room where your arms need to stretch outward and so on? (though i imagine i wont have to worry about move like that for a while)
Any particular things you'd recommend to do while I'm waiting for equipment/your book etc and I only have a wall/floor to work with as a completely lost, complete beginner? lol (just want to get started on something productive asap)
I currently intend to just start working on flexibility, maybe a bit of wall-handstand work, as mentioned in your article linked to in the OP, but the more tips the merrier
Thanks!
Rings from a pullup bar:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/djschwinn/pullupbarrings.jpg
Yes, it's fine for most things except cross... well, if you're training cross you'll likely have to do it in L-cross if you use a doorway with feet on a block.
Same with muscle ups you can raise the rings a bit and start from seated L-sit position for example.
Have you read through this?
http://www.eatmoveimprove.com/2010/03/the-fundamentals-of-bodyweight-strength-training/
It mentions most of the salient points on how to construct a routine without the tons of details that the book will throw out you for everything. Throw one together and I'll critique if you want.
|
You know somehow i skimmed that article like twice but missed the key points that would actually enable me to figure out a routine lol
anyways i came up with something like this for myself (3 days a week)
-elevated bent leg middle split hold (manna)
-wall handstand work, i can comfortably hold one for a decent amount of time (2 minutes~) and i can almost do a full push up from this position so i figure ill work towards being able to do those more comfortably/doing more than 1
-planche progression starting with frog
-dips on rings
-L sit work
-Front lever 60s
-Back lever 60s
-Squats + Deadlifts for leg exercises (probably follow SS recommendations for how to do this stuff)
And i also want to add in rice bucket + eventually wrist push ups cause i feel like my wrists are unusually weak
+flexibility stuff like working on the splits, wall slides, german hangs, band dislocates
One thing I was wondering is you say this in the article
"As you become more advanced (2-3 more cycles with appropriate rest weeks of the above cycle of 4-8 weeks), the program morphs into:"
Does that mean you'd do around 18~ weeks of this given routine before moving onto to the more advanced form of incorporating more exercises etc?
And for anything that involves progression, like plank or building up to manna what is a good way to gauge when to move onto the next step?
Finally when working on stuff like planche progression, manna, lsit etc how much should one do in any given day, until your body is fatigued and you find it hard to really do it, or only for a minute~ like other exercises?
Thanks
|
On September 05 2012 03:51 Divinek wrote:
You know somehow i skimmed that article like twice but missed the key points that would actually enable me to figure out a routine lol
anyways i came up with something like this for myself (3 days a week)
-elevated bent leg middle split hold (manna)
-wall handstand work, i can comfortably hold one for a decent amount of time (2 minutes~) and i can almost do a full push up from this position so i figure ill work towards being able to do those more comfortably/doing more than 1
-planche progression starting with frog
-dips on rings
-L sit work
-Front lever 60s
-Back lever 60s
-Squats + Deadlifts for leg exercises (probably follow SS recommendations for how to do this stuff)
And i also want to add in rice bucket + eventually wrist push ups cause i feel like my wrists are unusually weak
+flexibility stuff like working on the splits, wall slides, german hangs, band dislocates
One thing I was wondering is you say this in the article
"As you become more advanced (2-3 more cycles with appropriate rest weeks of the above cycle of 4-8 weeks), the program morphs into:"
Does that mean you'd do around 18~ weeks of this given routine before moving onto to the more advanced form of incorporating more exercises etc?
And for anything that involves progression, like plank or building up to manna what is a good way to gauge when to move onto the next step?
Finally when working on stuff like planche progression, manna, lsit etc how much should one do in any given day, until your body is fatigued and you find it hard to really do it, or only for a minute~ like other exercises?
Thanks
Looks pretty solid... if you can hold wall handstand that long I would suggest working towards freestanding handstand too.
No, it means that as you increase reps every session or every other session and are progressing on difficulty of exercises then eventually you'll end up with something that looks like the next routine.
The routine doesn't stay the same even day to day because you will likely improve on it almost every session as you get stronger.
If you have Overcoming Gravity I suggest that once you can do the next progression isometric fo 6s, 3 reps of the next progression, or 3s eccentric you can probably move up. It would be a good idea to grab the book if you haven't already because it has about 120 pages explaining the programming whereas fundamentals is only about 10 I think.
You won't necessarily be doing a minute with isometrics/eccentrics:
http://www.eatmoveimprove.com/2012/05/prilepin-tables-for-bodyweight-strength-isometric-and-eccentric-exercises
Also, 3 sets for each exercise is enough; if you're going for strength do not-to-failure sets so maybe stop 1 rep short of failure, the last rep of the 3rd set will generally end up around failure.
You shouldn't feel the burn on any set, and you might not feel significantly fatigued after the workout which is fine. Although depending on your abilities you might. all depends on your conditioning level going in.
|
Wow that article is very helpful, thanks so much. And your post answered all my questions awesomely, ill for sure be grabbing the book, thanks!
|
I've been doing a beginner routine for about a week or two, and I have some questions:
Is it normal to feel wrist strain when doing things like handstands and frog tucks (planche progression)? I'm not sure if it is a result of poor form or an indicator that my wrists are weak and building strength.
Also, I think I did too many wall handstands or something because my upper back feels sore (usually the only soreness I feel is in the forearms) and it's slightly painful as opposed to sore. Is this a result of trying to do too many and not resting properly? (I pushed myself to do an extra set today so instead of 4x40s I did like 5x45s).
Thank you in advance!
|
On September 21 2012 12:13 slOosh wrote:
I've been doing a beginner routine for about a week or two, and I have some questions:
Is it normal to feel wrist strain when doing things like handstands and frog tucks (planche progression)? I'm not sure if it is a result of poor form or an indicator that my wrists are weak and building strength.
Also, I think I did too many wall handstands or something because my upper back feels sore (usually the only soreness I feel is in the forearms) and it's slightly painful as opposed to sore. Is this a result of trying to do too many and not resting properly? (I pushed myself to do an extra set today so instead of 4x40s I did like 5x45s).
Thank you in advance!
Yes,
Turn your hands sideways for planche work to relieve the strain.
Make sure you are doing some wrist mobility and strength work as well. Back off of the handstands/etc. if it's bothering you too much and focus on mobility and strengthening.
And yes, you can aggravate things if you do too much. Although, try to see if mobility and/or foam rolling can improve your condition and drop handstands for a couple days and see how it turns out.
|
I requested Overcoming Gravity for my birthday, here's hoping
|
On September 21 2012 22:05 mordek wrote:I requested Overcoming Gravity for my birthday, here's hoping
Haha, let me know if you get it and have any questions.
|
You recommend the wooden rings by Rogue Fitness ($80 after shipping), but is there a cheaper, acceptable alternative?
I'm really excited to get into bodyweight training, but I'm a poor college student with a tight budget. Using rings looks very fun/interesting and I don't want to pass them up because they are too expensive.
|
Hey eshlow,
I got your book recently and I just wanted to say I'm ejoying it thoroughly. I haven't started too much body weight training yet, but I hope to be on a better routine soon when I finish more of the book.
Thanks for being awesome!
|
On September 23 2012 13:28 Marimokkori wrote:You recommend the wooden rings by Rogue Fitness ($80 after shipping), but is there a cheaper, acceptable alternative? I'm really excited to get into bodyweight training, but I'm a poor college student with a tight budget. Using rings looks very fun/interesting and I don't want to pass them up because they are too expensive.
how do you mount them?
|
On September 23 2012 14:26 Cambium wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2012 13:28 Marimokkori wrote:You recommend the wooden rings by Rogue Fitness ($80 after shipping), but is there a cheaper, acceptable alternative? I'm really excited to get into bodyweight training, but I'm a poor college student with a tight budget. Using rings looks very fun/interesting and I don't want to pass them up because they are too expensive. how do you mount them?
I'm planning on using my doorway pullup bar.
|
On September 23 2012 13:28 Marimokkori wrote:You recommend the wooden rings by Rogue Fitness ($80 after shipping), but is there a cheaper, acceptable alternative? I'm really excited to get into bodyweight training, but I'm a poor college student with a tight budget. Using rings looks very fun/interesting and I don't want to pass them up because they are too expensive.
Yes, there are cheaper plastic rings probably in the 40-50$ range off Amazon or other suppliers if you want those.
Or you can google some of the DIY -- do it yourself -- guides with rings to make some PVC pipe rings
|
On September 23 2012 13:40 DimmuKlok wrote:
Hey eshlow,
I got your book recently and I just wanted to say I'm ejoying it thoroughly. I haven't started too much body weight training yet, but I hope to be on a better routine soon when I finish more of the book.
Thanks for being awesome!
Haha, sweet. Let me know if you have any questions!
|
So I've read ~half of overcoming gravity so far. I like the way it's laid out, which makes it very easy to read and there's plenty of funny typos to keep you laughing.
I'm starting to formulate a bit of an idea in my head of what I want to do. I'm thinking 3 days a week (Mon/Wed/Fri) centered around these progressions:
- Planche
- Manna
- Handstands
- Pullup variations
This will be in addition to my regular weights workouts that are basically either squatting or deadlifting each day Monday to Friday. Might add barbell rows in 2-3 days a week to give me a horizontal pulling exercise.
So far I've just been experimenting doing wall handstands, frog stance and pullups.
I've been trying to do a tuck L-sit on the floor and can't quite get it. I can do it if my shoulders are slightly in front of my hands, but can't do it with the slight lean back that's shown in the picture in the book. I can just get the slight backwards lean for about a second if I do it off of these parralette/pushup grip things I've got.
Then I guess the main other thing will be to work on my wrist flexibility which completely sucks. I can only get about a 45 degree angle between my wrist and hand with straight fingers (~75-80 with closed fist). I've been starting to work in front squats so hopefully that will help to speed up the process.
Hamstring flexibility also needs a lot of work. I haven't been able to touch my toes since I was about 16 (currently 22) so I guess that's a good goal.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
