Lift things up and put them down.

[teck]

as an asian american i can never forsake rice. paine whats your usual diet like?

[odradek]

ugh, back was a little twitchy but i decided i'd go to the gym anyway and just deload on squats. turns out it wasn't enough and i crumbled just before i was done. whoops!

[Prince of Scandinavia]

So I started lifting today. I had my friend who has been lifting for little over half a year and he helped me out with a lot of things. I could barely do 3x5 35kg bench press and always couldn't take the last few reps on each exercise. I did chest, biceps, triceps and lats with him and I can barely lift my glass of water, but it's gonna pay off! It was quite embarassing not being able to take more than 7kg on each arm when doing butterfly's when seeing girls taking atleast 8kg. But I keep telling myself it's a progress for everyone and everyone has to start somewhere. I'm glad I had my friend there to push me, because else I would have done only like half of the exercises.

[thomaspaine]

[thug]

I have my first wrestling tournament of the season tomorrow which will be fun. Have about 3 more pounds to cut, though so it might be a long night.

All in all, it's been fun but i'll be happy when it's over so I can start making gains in the gym again.

[LegallySmelf]

[mofaux]

I'm going to procrastinate going to the gym by writing out my current routine, someone usually asks about once a month in IRC and it'll be nice to be able to just copy/paste.

Typically I do a 3 day split. but I change to a 2 day split when I'm trying to cut weight because I love lifting and I refuse to do cardio. This routine is taken straight from Arnold Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding. All in all it takes about 2 hours to complete including 30 minutes of stretching beforehand, or 1h30m total if I do a lot of supersets.

I change the amount of reps I do a lot, most often it's 4x5 but with the powerlifts I do 5, 3, 1, 1, 1 moving up in weight once or twice a week. If my lifts stop moving up for a month or so I'll do 15, 12, 10, 8 for a week or two and see if that changes things.

Day 1:
bench press
incline press
50 pull ups
bent over row
squat
lunge
leg curl
deadlift
calf raise

Day 2:
clean + press
lateral raise
heavy upright row
push press
straight leg deadlift
good morning
standing barbell curl
seated dumbbell curl
close grip press
standing tricep extension
wrist curl
reverse wrist curl


I do this 6 days a week. I often skip the curls and tricep extensions but don't tell anyone.

Here is a link to the diet I use when cutting:

[anonomous]

teck I do intermittent fasting like T-paine, So i skip breakfast, drink lots of water, eat lunch which usually consists of 1/2 cup of rice, about 200grams of chicken breast and some boiled veggies. I eat the same for dinner. Some people wonder how i can eat such a boring diet but I'm such a lazy student and these are almost effortless to prepare. My cut last year worked for about half the year, then i think my body got used to the calories i put in everyday so my cut plateau'd. I also didn't bother lowering caloric intake to kickstart the cut again, but i'll do so for the new year.


So, i followed one of my new year resolutions, to compete more, so I'm competing in February.. I need to cut a bit more to make up for the weight of my gi. The last comp i was at, i was over the scale by about 0.5kg due to my gi. Luckily the event organisers were nice enough to let me compete and didn't care that much about weight. I'll be following this water cut guide for the competition.

For the new year, i've been thinking of doing a new program. I've got 2 choices, which should i do? 1. 5/3/1 BBB (i'll be making this into a 3 day split) or 2. Tom Mutaffis 3 day split?

[teck]

as part of 2014 im going to start back up with my quasi crossfit stuff. i've never gone to a formal crossfit class because the people kind of scare me and also its super expensive in the city. still, i like the idea of suffering, so i look up workouts to do. i really want to be able to do a muscle up. it just looks so bad ass. any have any tips?

[rjbman]

Ordered some whey today for the first time. Going hard and it feels DOMSful but good.

[bels]

Muscle ups seem so sick.

Still dunno whether to join a gym again or try crossfit. Procrastinating and doing leg press at the work gym till I get my bike back.

[teck]

I did my pseudo crossfit thing and it sucked. i just havent been doing lots of reps of stuff lately, so when i was doing my bench and burpees my pecs and tris just clenched up like crazy. i didnt even manage to get my heart rate up that high. failure overall but i'll give it another go soon.

[Syeknom]

Started swimming again which I'm pleased about - I've been about two months without doing it on the reg and my form and stamina are god-awful. Feel great coming out of the pool though.

Need some super basic advice though - I've noticed that swimming breast-stroke my legs tend to rise out of the water right before each kick. Any ideas on how to correct this?

[teck]

i'd have to see your stroke but perhaps pull your knees up closer to your torso during your pull phase.

[odradek]

one of the tough things with breaststroke is that while prevailing wisdom for the 'best' way to swim changes everywhere, in breast it changes with almost every variable. rebecca soni kind of made the fast turnover the way to go on longer distances which really changes the hips, chest and foot position and timing. generally you're going to want to pay attention to those hips and chest movements when you're thinking about where your legs are, but before that i'd recommend kick drills: two or three kicks per stroke (that would be a nice streamline, no kickboard, while kicking, keeping the body flat), kicks with a kickboard, and kicking on your back, making sure to keep the body position level and not letting the knees break the surface. the things you really want to pay attention to are the range of motions in the feet and knees. once you play around with that and think it's more or less level, switch over to sculling in time with the beats of your kick and watch how your hip motion on the shoot and pull phases of your scull affects the foot and knee position.

[teck]

started working on my overhead squat. one of those exercises that really punishes you if your form starts to slip. couldn't lift up my arms the next day. feels good.

went ice skating the other day and while im not a good skater im comfortable enough on ice. then i ate it hard and now my wrist hurts :(

[Prince of Scandinavia]

I should have gone to the gym a lot more this month, but with exams and a lot of excuses then I've only been to the gym 8-9 times this month. I plan on going atleast 4 times a week next month. I've been doing quite some progress and have added some kilo to my exercises. Since I only started lifting the 6th of January, then I don't lift much. Squats, pull downs and curls are my favorite exercises and the exercises I can take most weight at. I got some problems with bench press since a part of my upper right arm kind of "shuts off" or it's very weak compared to my left. So I can only have like 2.5kg on the right side compared to taking 5kg atleast on the left. At the moment I only do bench without weights until my right arm doesn't act up.

My progress this month is not much but it's something:

Bench: I can do first set with 5kg on each, then my right arm gets too weak and I have to take weights off for the next 2 sets.
Deadlift: 27kg -> 40kg
Barbell rows: 27kg -> 45kg
Pull downs: 20kg -> 30kg
Tricep extensions: 7.5kg -> 10kg.
Squat: 27kg -> 45kg
Preacher bench curl with EZ: 5kg on each side to 12.5kg on each side

[spahdfgo]

[rjbman]

have you considered deloading some and doing a weight you can handle for all your sets?

[nick]

what's a good program where I can work out 5 days a week, get my compound lifts up, but also be loaded with aesthetic accessory lifts? I don't want to do too many squats since I'm pear-shaped already and really really don't want a bigger butt or thighs than I already have (and I'm a dude)

I've done a 3-day a week SS type program before and got a decent strength base but nothing crazy. it's been like a year since I seriously lifted, academics got in the way but now I'll be a working man. also, good cardio to supplement lifting with? perhaps couch to 5k?

[grippers]

There's something about talking to a cute girl that just gives you unfounded motivation to work out.

Anyone here do BJJ/Muay Thai/MMA/martial arts in general? I've ramped up the amount of times I train to 6-8 times per week, as well as trying to hit +3000 calories per day.
My goal has been to hit 62kg by May (im at 57kg. now). Anyone think it's feasible to gain 5kg. in 100 days through just martial arts and diet alone?

[rjbman]

yeah that's doable, you can probably gain about .5kg a week pretty healthy. Make sure to figure out your TDEE and account for calorie burning during martial arts, then eat about 500 calories over it.

[odradek]

oh yeah, dad? if im such a loser, then where did i get THESE????

[teck]

, who started this thread is real into bjj, so is . i used to do that shit back in the day.

i dont think if ur goal is weight gain then martial arts is the way to go. you'll get lean muscle but in order to gain size you need to lift heavy and force muscle growth, then eat a ton.

[LegallySmelf]

@grippers - BJJ black belt here. Don't do it - jiu jitsu will ruin your life and destroy your relationships with normal people.

[teck]

Could i get a form check on snatch.



no, my gym doensn't have round weights. yes, im not very strong at snatch.

[odradek]

caveat emptor: i am not an oly coach or even very good at it, my snatch tops out at 140-145. i'm seeing three things that all kind of bleed into one another, plus what may or may not be my imagination. first thing, i believe you're supposed to start your snatch from full tension, ie, back should be fully flexed, arms should be tight, you shouldn't be dropping down and using momentum to get the bar off the ground. the big thing is that you're not throwing your hips. when my snatch was in its incipient stages, i looked around and spent about two weeks practicing this drill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4YQ58hMBos before going back and trying again. it'll really help throw those hips up into the pull. this works into the second thing which is that you need to drop under the bar. your ass isn't going particularly low (which i think is actually fine) and the result is that you're muscling the bar up to your catch position. this is fine at lower weights but it's not the way to train the snatch movement in particular and it'll bottleneck you down the road. really drop your ass and hips way down after you throw the hips forward and get under the bar; once the bar's above your hips you really shouldn't be pulling it, momentum should be taking it up as you get below it. The catch looks shaky and maybe a little forward, too.

basically i'd supplement heavily with rock and roll drill, snatch grip high pulls and overhead squats.

[bels]

Are round weights a thing?

[odradek]

[bels]

But does it matter?