This gym is for everyone. If you are underweight and want to gain mass, you belong here. If you are over weight and want to lose fat/add muscle. You belong here. If you are already fit. Id appreciate your help.
Now. You will find me in FPH threads being a dick to FP. In the gym I will not. I don't like fat people, but if you want to get fit, while we are here, I won't talk shit and I wont allow others to either.
There are no hardgainers and you aren't big boned. It's your diet. Period. I fell for the hardgainer thing. It's bullshit. I haven't been eating enough of good nutritional food nor working hard enough to turn that into muscle. Period. I can lie to myself and blame my metabolism or I can be honest w myself. I do not eat enough. And if you're fat, sorry, you eat too much and work too little. These are the hard facts we all must face.
I've purchased a food scale and for a little while I'm weighing out everything. I know for a fact that the shake I just drank had 680 calories and 40g Protein. I know exactly how much that chicken, rice, and broccoli my lunch is worth. Eventually Ill be able to look at a chunk of chicken and say ' thats about 100g of chicken' and I won't weigh it anymore.
We'll talk about the work plenty. But we must address how much and what we are eating.
Back when I was sitting at around 235 I dropped my weight down to 201 over about 6 months and I did it entirely with diet changes alone. No excersize no weight lifting or running or nothing, just changed what I was eating. If you are fat, no amount of jogging is going to help, no amount of pushups or pilates will change anything, you can run for 5 hours a day and do 300 reps on the weights and you aren't going to lose shit until you STOP EATING THE FUCKING PIZZA ALREADY.
Diet is 95% of the battle when it comes to losing weight, working out is almost incidental. Remember you're body is designed to hold onto that fat and not let go, it purposely burns as slow as possible, it's easier to just not eat it than to burn it off. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of fat.
Pick stuff up, walk around. It doesn't get much simpler.
Get two things. Two dumbbells, two gallons of milk, whatever. The heaviest things you can manage. Walk upright w good posture, shoulders back, core tight. Now walk around, pace back and forth. Sometimes I walk up the stairs.
This simple exercise will hit your entire body. It won't get you swole. It will hit all the small muscles you don't think about but support the flashy muscles that the girls like. It will aide all those other exercises you do. Cant do pullups? Carrying heavy shit will hit your back.
I have absolutely no affiliation w this guy or his website. I just like his videos and plan on posting more of them. I think he has a lot of good information that is presented clearly. He also covers a lot of body weight and dumbbell exercises which meets my goals and equipment.
Maybe some lifting goats have an idea of what I am talking about and know what to do to mitigate or prevent:
Recently got a smith machine set and got back to lifting for the first time since COVID bullshit shut the gyms down. Long time, but finally able to get the equipment I like. The problem I get (had this happen every time I lift, highschool, college, bachelor days, and now) is I will try a higher weight than I have before and I am able to move the weight, but the next day (sometimes in as little as a couple hours) it seems whatever extremity I was using would have numbness or feels like my nerves would be tight/strained/pulled.
Common case: I'd bench 10 - 15 reps in four sets. If I were to increase weight, my rep count usually would drop by two, but still do all four sets. I am able to complete the sets, but be damn near close to failure. Next day my fingertips go numb occasionally and the tendon/nerves that runs over the elbow (outside, think funny bone) would either go numb or be a dull throb. It usually takes a couple days, but then the numbness goes away.
I'm not lifting that extreme of a weight (yet) and eat right and stay hydrated. I have no idea if this is an actual (common) issue with other lifters, and if so would love to know what its called and how to mitigate or stop it. Hope its not the reason why I see a lot of people using compression sleeves around their joints...
Hard to get swole when your hands and feet are tingling.
IDK, dude has an interesting take and channel. No idea if you should actually crawl around but I don't suppose it'd hurt. Unless maybe your back is fucked up.
I'm a 5'7" guy with a morning weight of 270 lbs (yeah, I know) I don't want to get too specific and dox myself.
I have three questions that I will provide back-round for but for the impatient they are:
1. is hypertrophy important at all; or is strength king and thus the primary aim and I should let the chips fall where they may? Any truth to rep ranges dictating hypertrophy and strength?
2. Is it healthier to get to a proper body weight and then try hitting the weights again? or am I better off to fast while trying to gain strength in the weight room?
3. Caffeine, Creatine, Cardio: how much of each would you recommend?
I got up to damn near 300 lbs and decided to start fixing myself before it was too late. So before the holocough I started lifting weights and trying to lose weight. My weight has yo-yoed back and forth and I am just gonna commit to fasting. By day 2 of a fast I start getting cramps in my rib-cage multiple times a day. I started taking salt which seemed to help but not eliminate the problem. So I may just start alternating my fasting days. I would like to fast 3 days a week but don't know if I should be lifting on those days.
I started lifting again over a year ago now and my numbers are good (I used to lift when I was younger and it seemed to come back pretty quickly) but am having trouble figuring out my next steps in this area. I bench, squat, deadlift and row once per week. I do band assisted pullups twice per week. On the three major lifts I started by doing 5 X 5 and thought I should be aiming from muscle growth to help shed fat and started doing higher reps on everything but feel like crap doing that.
As of now I am taking a week off as I am sore as hell from going to failure on all my lifts the last couple of weeks. I want input on what I should do moving forward in the weight room while trying to lose weight. My current numbers are as follows: Bench: don't know my max but have gotten 3 sets of 5 at 345 and have gotten one set of five at 355 (barely got 5th rep). Squat: disproportionally weak compared to bench but I am built weird. Tried to get 435 for 3 sets of 6 before I decided to take a week off and only got 6 on first set then 5 and finally 4 on the last set. Deadlift: I use a hex-bar with the handles up because I really suck at deadlift. so I just do the weight that I squat with and it feels easier (probably because I am basically doing rack pulls in this set up).
I have only done jump roping for cardio and have been very sporadic with it. Should I do lighter weights for more reps while I try and lose weight while increasing cardio? I feel like I shouldn't be getting over-trained since I am only doing the major lifts once per week but have been fatigued much more than I figured I should be. I am middle age so that might be part of it.
Before I get too old to do it should I be aiming for more hypertrophy than strength in order to serve as a base to build further strength on? If so should I be going to failure with lighter weights at higher reps or is that all bro science bullshit? Should I just focus on trying to maintain strength for the next six months while I focus on losing weight? My weight has gone up and down while I have been trying to accomplish both at the same time, so maybe I need to shift focus instead.
If any of you guys fast, do you do it while lifting on those days? I have tried and it seemed okay but don't know if I am shooting myself in the foot in the long term.
