10
votes
Fitness Weekly Discussion
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
I am curious what you mean by this. I did SL5x5 several years back and have kept the five lifts as a base workout, adding other exercises on top to round it out. Is your mention of "screwing myself" a concern about squats grinding down your knees?
Thanks. Great answer! And just to be sure, by SS you mean Rippetoe's program? I like retaining the 5 SL lifts as the foundation of my routine because it's fast, and even if I don't have enough time for an elaborate workout, I still feel like these are good coverage.
Sounds like you have the right ideas. When I first started lifting finding "the most optimal" routine was something I was very interested in. I ended up settling on lvysaur's Beginner 4-4-8 Program, which is basically a modified SL5x5 factoring in periodization. I eventually plateaued, but I still stuck with it as I kinda worked myself into a groove with those lifts. Comfortable and complacent, really. I did continue looking into more "optimal" routines, though, and got very interested in reading about exercise science so that I could eventually move on to something that would benefit me more, but I got injured (rotator-cuff/labrum) and laid off on lifting for a while. Still haven't really healed...I imagine this'll be something that follows me...and while waiting I got kinda lazy. Now that I want to get back into it, everything is closed. Convenient!
Anyhow, that was a long-winded way of asking: what's your routine, bro?
Been getting into calisthenics and bodyweight fitness. I much prefer it to weightlifting for a variety of reasons, and frankly I don't understand why it's not more popular.
Not that everyone follows this ideology, but I think weightlifting has a certain "glamour" to it that body weight fitness doesn't. Lifting is kinda mainstream now, but maybe that'll change with everyone being stuck at home!
I'm doing bodyweight myself, at the moment. But you can't beat weightlifting for putting on muscle and building strength in the most efficient way (if that's your goal).
Who told you that?
Classical mechanics and human physiology? Squatting with 100kg on your back is gonna build your leg strength and muscle much faster than doing bodyweight squats, for example.
I'm guessing @CALICO and @Gaywallet can expand on that concept.
If you want to build lower body strength with absolutely no equipment, and you have no problem busting out 20 bodyweight squats, then you really should be doing pistol squats or something similar instead. Granted, it’s hard to make “standing up from a squat” any more challenging than trying it with one leg, so here for squats I will say weights is clearly better. But for plenty of other stuff, it’s not so clear cut. Like compare working your way up to a handstand push-up vs doing overhead presses. Are you 100% sure weightlifting would build strength more quickly? What about bench press vs decline push ups or even planche pushups? Pull downs vs all kinds of different pull-ups?
I dunno, there's calisthenics exercises that I could never hope to perform and would literally require me to possess superhuman strength just because of the shape of my body, so I don't really buy the ceiling argument. As for handstand pushup, it was really just an example, but you don't literally have to know how to do a handstand, you can start with your feet on the wall.
Also, I never said any type of fitness is "better" than another. But I do think that that anyone who wants to get into shape should try calisthenics first before potentially wasting money on a gym membership (like if you can't even get the discipline to work out a little in the privacy of your own home on a regular basis, how are you going to go to a gym?).
I practice decline pushups. You're pushing ~75% of your bodyweight (see fig. 2) doing them. It becomes more efficient to bench-press at a certain point, as your strength gains doing push-ups will stall. And/or you'll have to do many more reps to hit the same volume doing push-ups as you would bench-pressing. Pull-ups are a fantastic workout, too. But once you reach a certain rep range you're going to need to add weight if you want to continue building strength. Mind you, everything I'm saying relates to what I've laid out earlier: it's more efficient to build strength and muscle weightlifting vs. doing bodyweight exercises. If you enjoy a bodyweight workout more than lifting weights, more power* to you! It's a fine way to stay fit, and my choice at the moment. But, you're not gonna build as much muscle as fast as you can practicing weightlifting.
*technically, probably less.
This thing you linked me shows that, according to their calculations, you are pushing roughly 75% of your bodyweight during a standard pushup. Which means we can go waaay above bodyweight just by playing with the angle and going one handed. Now imagine what happens if we require you do pushups in planche position. This is what you are not getting: when you run out of gains from a bodyweight exercise, you aren't supposed to just do more reps, you are supposed to find ways to make the exercise harder, by doing things like increasing lever length, or putting your body into disadvantaged positions while completing the exercise. And you really should not be running out of ways to make the exercises sufficiently difficult. Maybe if you are like a person whose physique keeps an entire team of people employed, weightlifting would be "more efficient" enough for it to actually make a difference for regular people, because these are pretty much the only people where you might actually start running out of ways to make the exercises heavier. For everyone else, you can do just as fine with bodyweight exercises as long as you are actually finding ways to push your body.
Like seriously, there hasn't even been a single person over 6' tall to ever pull off a human flag.
(oh yeah, and if pull ups are too easy, just try them one handed)
Hmm...you seem to be arguing with a ghost, here. I'm not a fanatic of weight lifting. I'm not dismissing body weight exercises. Merely proposing that lifting weights is a much quicker route to build muscle and strength than bodyweight exercises. I understand that you can modify exercises to put your body in a mechanically disadvantaged state in order to put more tension on muscles. I truly get that. I'm doing bodyweight progressions right now! It's a great workout!
But putting more weight on a barbell/dumbell/vest is going to build your muscles faster than the bodyweight-equivalent progression that targets those same muscles.
I am telling you that unless you are like a competitive power lifter or something, you are almost always going to be able to find a way to max out your muscles with a load equivalent to whatever you could have moved around on a bar just with your own body. If you are doing exercises that you struggle to complete 3x5, it literally does not matter if the exercise involved the use of weights. It isn’t like your muscles can tell the difference. And even the most athletic people can find bodyweight exercises they struggle to complete 3x5.
The idea that free weights build strength “faster” than even a well programmed bodyweight fitness routine is a complete myth.
Don't really have much time or space so I'm doing mobility stuff. I'm following the joint mobility program from https://phrakture.github.io/molding-mobility.html which i think i found on reddit.
I want to start adding bodyweight stuff. Would love to get a pull up bar but i'm terrified of my door / wall breaking and falling on my back.
I'm about 200lbs and my pull up bar is doing just fine with me! It's 2 - 3 years old and hasn't let me down yet :D I can send you a link to the model I have if you'd like.
Sure, thanks!
Might get it in the future though, I'm living in Madrid (Spain) and it is a really bad time to need medical attention here.
No prob! This is the one I have, there's tons of different brands on Amazon with the same basic shape as well if you're looking to save a little extra $$.... errr €€.
https://www.irongym.com/products/the-iron-gym-new.html
Lifted for the first time in awhile yesterday. Still having issues with my left arm and tricep exercises really bugging me around the elbow. I suspect its some sort of tendonitis but it's frankly just weird. Time to rest it for a few days and come back much lighter next time.
I've started exercising again! I moved up to my girlfriends place to wait out the "quarantine" with her, and finally got annoyed at not exercising enough to start doing a couple different things.
I bought a high density foam roller and roll out my back twice daily. I tweaked it doing shoulder shrugs like, 2 years ago and it hasn't been the same since (and I'm only 26 0_0). This helps me keep it mobile and my back loose, especially since I have a desk job which doesn't involve moving around a lot.
I've started running with my gf's dog, since she's a Tasmanian devil and needs to get that energy out. I haven't ran to "be healthy" in probably 4 years which means it was great for the first two days, but then my knee's started hurting, and I think I rolled my ankle slightly. so I've been icing those every night after the run for ~ 4 days. The ice helps, and I think I found some stretches to help my knee and some exercises to help my ankle mobility.
I brought my pull up bar with me, and I have it set up in the room that I work out of. I'm "greasing the groove" where I'll do a single pull up every time I pass under it, and I do 3 before I go to bed at night. I've already noticed a marked improvement in my pulling power when playing with the dog and it's only been a week since I started which is great. No tendonitis yet either!