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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   1877 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 4, 2023

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I've done the most clichéd thing ever and bought a gym membership in the first week of the new year, and I'm looking for suggestions for exercises and routines to follow.

My main motivations for working out are to improve my mood, and vanity. I'm not interested in getting "huge" or "shredded", but I would really like to get rid of my beer belly and look generally leaner and more toned. I'm also planning on running a marathon at the end of this year, so any exercises which would assist with that are also welcome.

I don't really know anything about strength training, so currently my only goal is to be able to deadlift my body weight (~83 kg) in a few months' time.

My main motivations for working out are to improve my mood, and vanity. I'm not interested in getting "huge" or "shredded", but I would really like to get rid of my beer belly and look generally leaner and more toned. I'm also planning on running a marathon at the end of this year, so any exercises which would assist with that are also welcome.

If that's your goal, getting to the gym will increase your cardiovascular health but won't do much for that beer belly. To tackle excess fat and weight it's all about calorie intake. I find these steps are great for starting weight loss:

  1. don't eat out

  2. don't drink alcohol

  3. all food is made from scratch - minimize prepared frozen meals/pizzas, etc.

  4. when you make food, portion it out into meals

  5. switch grains for veggies

Thanks. The infuriating thing is that I've lost a load of weight over the last few years via diet, exercise etc., but can't shake the last bit of belly flab.

I don't really know anything about strength training, so currently my only goal is to be able to deadlift my body weight (~83 kg) in a few months' time.

This is extremely unambitious, unless you're 155 cm tall and obese. The first day I tried deadlifting, I worked up to a very easy 80 kg (my weight) and did 100 kg for a few sets of five a few days later. That's not bragging; deadlifting your body weight really is that easy.

Deadlifting a lot of weight is not as hard.

Deadlifting without breaking your lower-back or giving yourself a hernia is harder.

I've been stalled on deadlifts for over a year because I know my form isn't good enough to go heavier, but have no way of knowing how to fix it. It's annoying.

Well, Hex Deadlifts pretty much solve that problem for you, once I switched over to them, it quickly became apparent just how unnatural the standard barbell deadlift is for the human body, whereas people pretty much instinctively know how to hex deadlift with close to perfect form. I strongly recommend them if you're not competing in powerlifting (where they arbitrarily chose the deadlift as once of the 3 core lifts).

That shows you just how much of a novice I am, I really have no idea how easy or hard deadlifting is. I'm relieved to find that it won't be as difficult as I expected!

Only 2 things matter when you're starting out - Fun & ease. Do an easy exercise routine, ie. it should be short, repeatable & form advice should be easy to implement. If it isn't fun, you won't keep doing it, period.

If you are already doing deadlifts, you're probably comfortable with barbells & full body work. Then barbell OHP, Squats, Deadlifts, Curls, Rows & Bench Presses will cover basically everything you need. Maybe add pullups & chinups to round it out. The only negative is that I find these to be a little intimidating in terms of form sometimes and gym squat racks can be a little hard to get for a full 1 hour workout. Standard recommendations of (6-12 reps x 3 sets) per exercise apply. Try to find a weight that lets you fatigue in that range. Early on, go lighter and focus on form & being able to engage the right muscle.

I like working with dumbbells more. So I end up doing all of those barbell exercises but with heavy dumbbells instead. Dumbbells allow me to do home workouts, don't need spotting and are just more fun for me.

A couple of caveats:

  1. I am yet to feel comfortable with heavy deadlifts because I have lower back pain. So I do barbell hip-thrusts (booty builder 2000) or cable-pull throughs (dick thruster 1000) instead. Yes, it does look a bit weird. No, literally no-one cares.

  2. Dead hangs are magic. I do them every single time without fail.

  3. If an exercise feels weird. Stop. There are a 1000 variations for every exercise. You don't have to do this one that feels wierd.

On one of my procrastination rabbit-roles, I ended up creating a hyper-optimized routine that covers every muscle, is effective and I like doing. I used Athleax as my source. Feel free to use it if you're interested.

Thanks a lot.

(booty builder 2000)... (dick thruster 1000)

Can't wait to find out if these are legit bodybuilding terms or if you're just being goofy.

Just being goofy, but they are apt. The Barbell hipthrust is famously the exercise of the decade, as every woman will be seen doing it for butt gains. The cable pull-through is literally a explosive thrust that looks straight out of a porn movie.

They're both excellent for your glutes + lower back. More info on both here. Most importantly, the pull through teaches good hinging mechanics which you can use to transition into a deadlift down the line. The hip-thrust gives you the best bang-for-your-buck as a glutes(butt) exercise.

So yeah, go ahead, make those names mainstream. They fit pretty well.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. Dreading the thought of going to the gym before work but it does make a lot of sense to get it over with first thing so I can't make excuses for myself not to go.

Dreading the thought of going to the gym before work but it does make a lot of sense to get it over with first thing so I can't make excuses for myself not to go.

If you aren't an early bird, don't do this. You need to establish a sustainable habit of working out. If you hate waking up at 6am, you'll hate working out at 7am. Having a gym pal is the best way to ensure both of you show up.

I'm not interested in getting "huge" or "shredded", but I would really like to get rid of my beer belly and look generally leaner and more toned.

Gym won't fix your beer belly, diet will. You'll want to at least count your proteins and total calories.

I don't really know anything about strength training, so currently my only goal is to be able to deadlift my body weight (~83 kg) in a few months' time.

How many times a week do you plan to work out? If the answer is "one", then go gift your membership to someone else. Two is the bare minimum, plus you might want to do something at home.

The basic compound exercises are your best starting point:

  • pull-up (and pulldown and bent-over row)

  • bench press (and push-up)

  • squat (and leg press)

  • deadlift (and sumo deadlift and Romanian deadlift)

For the upper body exercises, listen to your body to see what you need to add:

  • wobble? Train your stabilizers with dumbbells or kettlebells

  • weak arms? Add some pushdowns or curls

  • not enough strength at the beginning or the end of the movement? Flies and pullover might help with a good stretch or a good contraction.

For the lower body you will probably be limited by your technique at first. While you're still learning to stabilize your core, use a Smith machine or a leg extension machine or a hamstring curl machine to tire out your muscles.

Thanks for the detailed advice. Planning to start off going twice a week and work my way up from there.

If you're a complete beginner that doesn't have a lot of time, try high-rep antagonistic supersets:

  • superset means you do two exercises back to back, the only break you get is the time you need to walk from one machine to the other

  • I am not sure if antagonistic is the best term here, but you should target two completely different groups of muscles: chest press, then pulldowns, for example. This lets you take very short breaks between supersets as well, 30s or so

  • high-rep is 15-20 reps, so don't stack these plates. Instead, concentrate on the form, by rep 10-15 you should feel the burn that you will have to power through

In just 20-30 minutes you can do four compound exercises that will leave your whole body fried. Ten minutes for a warmup and a stretch before, and you have 20 minutes left to work on your arms or other muscles you want to target.

For solid endurance training, get a ruck sack and put some miles under tension down. It's somewhat lower impact by virtue of stride and body mechanics, and ruck sacks are just generally useful tools. Obviously you gotta run some to train for a marathon, but incorporate rucking into your routine as a useful training tool.

So far as lifting goes, I swear by powerlifting if you are starting from nothing. This is the routine I'm using at the minute, as somebody somewhat new to lifting myself. Compound lifts have absolutely given me a new lease on life as a desk jockey, and I swear to God they work like a charm.

For those who care for reciepts, I (260lb, 5'11", male) maxxed recently a 330lb squat, a 375lb deadlift, and a 225lb bench, all up from the empty bar in the summer of 2022. I'm up about 20 lbs from about 6 months ago, so I'm overweight to be sure, but I feel way better than I did last summer. More explosive, more flexible, much stronger, I can actually dead-man carry my wife now if need be which I couldn't say a year ago.

The site I linked has a lot of great information and basically guides new lifters through the process. Let me know if you have any questions, this forum has a lot of great knowledge hidden behind the esoteric culture war stuff and I'm sure the rest of the meat heads would gladly pitch in.

Do you have any research info on rucking as an activity as far as calories burned? I've always kind of liked it but my brain demands science.

If rucking worked, fat people would never get fat.

Thanks a lot!

This is probably a really stupid question, but I assume you mean a rucksack full of heavy objects right?

Yes, usually about 40ish pounds or around there. Some back racks exist where you can put plates on, but a normal rucksack with bags of sand or something similarly cheap and heavy are perfectly fine.

And if you've never done something like it, get something that has a hip strap, a regular backpack will eventually cause shoulder and back problems. It's important to get a rucksack specifically.

Thanks again, really appreciate the advice.

https://www.themotte.org/post/269/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/49044?context=8#context

This comment from @JhanicManifold yesterday is a better knowledge dump than I can give you.

https://www.shabu.co/

This is pretty much the rock solid basic beginners lifting program. It's worked for others, it will work for you. You can critique it or try to optimize it, but it works. And once you graduate, you'll be ready for anything else.

The only other thing I'll say personally, is that the number one thing is to believe in the program you're doing and stick to it. There are literally dozens of varieties of good programs out there, high frequency and low frequency, high intensity and lazy bear, work out twice a week for two hours vs work out every day for 30 minutes, One Lift a Day vs ten lifts a day, focus on one lift vs body part splits, bodyweight and barbells and kettlebells. They can all build you a bad-ass body if you stick to it and believe in it. 90% of the value of all the fluff about "scientifically proven" "Soviet sports science secrets" "Ah-nold did this back in the day" "Navy seals workout" whatever the fuck is just to get you to buy in, the effort is what counts.

Also, don't hurt yourself, getting injured is the best way to stall progress. Ask me how I know. At the same time, don't be a weenie and worry forever about every ache and pain and form question. Take your time, it's a marathon not a sprint, I know guys in their 50s still hitting new PRs in powerlifting.

Any workout is a Navy SEAL workout if you fix your hair in the middle and then write a book about it.

"Operation Glute Force: My War in The Squat Rack"

Thanks a lot!

Starting Strength. Has a YouTube channel and a few related books.

Important caveat: Stick to the program, but adjust at the margins based on your own feedback loops. Rippetoe gets dogmatic and I understand why [^1]. Do your thing ... but also be aware of the extent to which you've drifted from the program. Bicep curls are the devil.

I would recommend against the marathon. It occupies this place in western pop-fitness as a great symbol of overall health and fitness when it is, in reality, a hugely specialized performance. For overall fitness, resistance training is the base and cardio should be varied but mostly below 45 minutes in terms of duration. If your 5-mile time falls below 35 minutes, then you can go train for a marathon, which will mostly be a lot of boring long runs.

[^1]: Rippetoe exists as the anti "amazing new fitness routine" anchor of the world. His entire career is "do the basics right and consistently for years." Which is what is appropriate for >95% of people. When Muscle and Fitness publishes an elite bodybuilder's routine, it make no sense for the average lifter because that bodybuilder's routine is designed to move him or her from the top .1% to the top .07% of lifters. They're extreme because they're at the very limits of diminishing returns. Most people will never get there, so using it as a starting point is useless. Where Rippetoe fails, imho, is in letting people who have put in a baseline of work with the basics tweak based on their own feedback loops.

Bicep curls are fun, that's all they need to exist for.

I would recommend against the marathon. It occupies this place in western pop-fitness as a great symbol of overall health and fitness when it is, in reality, a hugely specialized performance.

Ahem...I think being able to travel 26.2 miles is a pretty good measure of something. Where I agree with you is that it's a bad race, I don't think taking a guy with a 4 hour marathon and getting to a 3:30 has the same value as getting that same guy's squat to a higher weight.

Point taken. And I'm not bashing the marathon as a silly goal. I just don't see it as a good measure of general fitness. It's not well-rounded.

Genuine question; What's more impressive; traveling 26.2 miles quickly a la a Marathon, or traveling 26.2 miles with 30% of your bodyweight in a sack on your back?

Answer: it's more impressive to Run a 5:00 mile, squat 500lbs, and then complete a marathon.

I hope to do a bitch-ass junior varsity version of that this year at the anniversary of the Battle of Marathon: do a nutso little workout, like a bodyweight snatch and a 5m KB snatch test to represent the battle of Marathon, then the 26.2 mile distance that the Athenian hoplites marched to get back to Athens to meet the rest of the Persian fleet before it could attack the city. Call it the Athenian Race, eat your heart out Sparta.

Eta: what I'm getting at is that I think a fit person should be able to complete a marathon, or at least a half, with minimal adaptive training. I see very little value in getting an elite marathon time by comparison. I have similar feelings on Spartan and obstacle races: super fun to do once or do with friends, super dumb to compete in.

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll check them out.

This will be my third marathon, but your concern is well-placed and I appreciate it.

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