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[Aeax]

So I've recently taken an interest in weight and strength training (if those are the correct terms). For one, I've been consistently getting less fit over time; I notice I'm weaker and fatter relative to a few years ago. The reasons for this are my less activity in physical activities since I've taken more academic courses in school and lost the time to focus on sports and other things.

Anyway, I've decided to try to get fit, and perhaps build up strength. For one, I've started to do at least 15-30 minutes of aerobic exercises, such as running and biking. However, I'm very confused on how to start a work out routine. I've searched online, and there are thousands of routines. If I'm going to start, I'd like to know if I'm doing it right. So perhaps my first question would be what would be best routine to start out with to build muscle strength?

One problem I have, however, is that my town does not have a local gym. In addition to the fees I'd have to pay, my transit would be costly for me as well. I'd prefer to find cheaper alternatives to getting a gym pass (as well as the travel). I've searched around and some things that came up were using dumbbells or even using a weightless workout routine. How effective are these?

[WillowLuman]

See if you can acquire
1) An old tire
2) A sledgehammer
Repeatedly hitting a tire with overhead swings from a sledgehammer works out a wide range of upper-body muscles. For a lower-body workout, I recommend vigorous biking, running, and walking, since that's what you'll need lower body fitness for anyway.

I too have had less time for this stuff since I went to school, but the tire thing was how I worked out back home.

[Max White]

Pushups + Chinups + Squats will actually cover a surprising amount of muscle groups.
They are all compound workouts, and they all use your own weight as resistance, meaning your muscle will grow in the right proportions. Isolation exercises might be good for getting the most out of any individual muscle, but your body is meant to work as a system, with some parts pulling harder than others rather than everything on high all the time.

[Anvilfolk]

A few friends are doing this and seem happy with it. It's got lots of things for different end results. I get the feeling you can order most things off Amazon for not too expensive.

Good luck!

[Meph]

Good sites for do it yourself, at home, without any (or not much) equipment are http://www.zuzkalight.com/ and http://www.bodyrock.tv/. Both make high intensity intervall training, which will mostly help with core strength, speed and fat burn. Its not the classical weightlifting/bulking that brings you massive muscles, but it makes you fit overall. And most of it are BWE, body weight exercises, which means you use your own body as resistance, instead of weights you have to buy.

They also both do videos of the training, which helps to learn the movements, have half-naked hot women do them, and (this is very, very important) have sections of food. Nutrition is as important as the actual training.

Hope that helps.

[nenjin]

Since your goal is new muscle formation, you should go the maximum weight you can handle 5 times, and do several reps of that to near exhaustion. (3 to 5, so 15 to 25 total reps. If you can do 10 reps of 5, it's probably not your max weight.) When you're done with those reps, go immediately into the next part of your routine. Stop to breathe and drink water if you need, but don't "rest." *

How many days you go is a little trickier. Too many, you're going to hurt yourself. Too few, you're not pushing your muscles hard enough. If you want results, you have to be pretty aggressive. 4 days a week. (Two days on, one day off, two days on, two days off.) It's really up to how much you can tolerate feeling worn out, and how long you can maintain a heavy workout routine.

If after a week at your current max press, if you don't find the weight easier (meaning you could move up your max press), chances are something is off. Maybe you're you're taking too much time between exercises, maybe your form is bad or maybe you're not actually doing as much weight as you could.

Remember, it's about (safely) pushing your body a little past its threshold. Can you get muscle without going that hard? Yes, but it will be slower and you won't reach new peaks so much as tone.

If you don't have access to any weights, be they real weights or rocks/logs, Max's suggestion is good too, although you lack the finer control you get with weights. After about 6 months of pushups/sit ups/crunches, I sort of found the exercise stopped being effective. When I was up to 75 pushups and 120 crunches and still feeling like I could do more, I figured doing more reps wasn't really going to help. I also sort of question how effective squats are without additional weight. Yeah, it'll burn and hurt for a couple weeks, but once your body gets used to the motion, it'll take a lot of squats to get an actual benefit beyond burning calories. Luckily, finding weights to do squats is pretty easy. Just be careful not to fuck up your back using awkward weights.

*all that said, respect your limits. If you can't really finish the 5th rep, it's only going to get harder from there and you should probably consider your max press a little lower than what you just tried.

[Eidolon]

I'll start by linking you to this since I think it cuts through a lot of shit: http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html
I think i've posted that in almost every fitness related thread.

what would be best routine to start out with to build muscle strength?

I'd recommend reading Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe/Lon Kilgore, although that's going to conflict with this next quote. It's the routine i used in the beginning. I'm still in early intermediate territory but it's seen me from a 135lb weakling to a 175lb mediocre lifter over the course of a year and a half. I do a different routine now, but it's definitely tried and proven by lots of people. I'm going to advise you that if you do something like this, eating enough and resting enough is critical to making decent strength progression. I could have chased the linear gains on this program a lot farther than i did.

I've searched around and some things that came up were using dumbbells or even using a weightless workout routine. How effective are these?

Calisthenics will only get you so far IMO. Good to get you out of complete noob territory but i think it's much better to get your hands on a barbell and some plates if you can, whether that's in a gym or by finding an old set on craigslist. I've only got one calisthenics thing saved but I'll post it anyways. It's a large image so you'll have to click through and zoom.

I know the text in the images is impossible to read but it gives you a little bit of an idea of what kind of progression you can do with bodyweight alone.

[nenjin]

Yeah that's also a good point: any rigorous workout regime means you need to keep your caloric intake up. When I was weight lifting I worked very hard, but I didn't balance it with enough calories so I ended up burning more muscle and fat than I was putting on. Got ripcord lean and down to like.....4% body fat. But it left me not seeing the mass increase I wanted.

[Muz]

Check out the 4 Hour Body if you can.

A very important point is not to overwork yourself. Most workout routines don't really work well, so people overdo them. 3 minutes of running does way more than 60 minutes of comfortable walking. A lot of people like me start off really lagging behind in physical health, so what most people advice is just crazy - I couldn't even do 1 push up, much less 20 push ups and a 15 minute jog as was recommended for newbies in some health magazines.

Since you're still starting out, burning yourself out and taking long rests is going to discourage yourself from exercising. I'd recommend you aim for a point where you can exercise daily. Do the heavy duty stuff once exercise becomes a habit.

Tim Ferriss recommends the rule of 10 reps for strength training - limit yourself to 10 reps at most, 3 times a week. That means lift heavier but not hard. This is to maximize strength gain while minimizing recovery time. It's great if you're don't want to be sore at school/office and many athletes follow this because they want to focus on improving strength without recovery interfering with their other training. The Russian National Weightlifting Team does 2 reps.

Go with what nenjin said about finding something to lift 5 times. Then multiply that weight by 1.2x. Lift that weight up to your knee height and drop it. Don't lower it or you'll waste energy recovering from hamstring injuries. Do this only once a day at most, you'll feel the strength boost within a month. I'd almost recommend doing a single lift if you're looking at pure strength (not so much big muscles) because it minimizes recovery time. Different routine if you want to bulk up or be a powerlifter.

For cardio, try powerwalking for 15 minutes on a flat surface. Flat surface minimizes injuries. Walk as fast as possible, don't run or jog, and try to beat your previous time. It's inefficient but that's the point. You'll get a lot of exercise and work the right muscles needed to walk or run fast.

If you want to do something less boring, run at top speed for about 50 meters, 10 reps. Give about 5 minutes between reps. If you start to go to slow, stop, you're done for the day.

If you just plain want to feel better, I'd say 80% of feeling good comes from diet. Basically, cut out high GI stuff like wheat, potatoes, rice. Cut out fructose. Get enough calories without those, but most of our bad modern diets come from too much french fries and soda. It's not even "fast food". Big Macs aren't bad, it's the side dish that's horrible. There are tons of good diets. All of them cut out that stuff.

I'd highly recommend doing some recordkeeping with the exercises you pick. After 1 week, 2 week, or a month, measure your progress. If you haven't made much progress within a month, ditch that routine. It's a good way to sift through all the crap you get from us and the rest of the net

To quote Eidolon's link:

[A sign that someone is trying to rip you off:] Extravagant claims of massive improvement in a short period of time with little or no effort. If it sounds too good to be true, guess what? It is.

I disagree with this. If it claims massive improvement in a short period of time, do it for a week, and record the results. I did sit ups for months with no improvement and a sore back. Then I switched to a 'get-abs-quick' routine and stood straight within a couple weeks. I'd say most of those get fit quick techniques aren't popular because they sound too good to be true.

[nenjin]

Yeah, keeping progress is definitely a way to motivate yourself. Seeing weight gain, measurements, body fat count....can show you the changes despite not necessarily seeing or feeling them yourself.

Although I will say from personal experience......out of shape people have a very low tolerance for pain, and a very low opinion of what they're capable of. So I'm less inclined to support "baby steps" because it's easy to weasel your way out doing more. Going hard has the opposite risk of either hurting you, or mentally scaring you into giving up. But I think you see results faster, which motivates you more, when you go hard. Baby steps produces fewer results slower which doesn't provide the motivation to continue to work out. Without a "pay off", it's hard to rationalize the time, the effort and the pain of working out. So I always advise people to go harder. The ache in your muscles and the feeling of tautness later is a sign you're doing something, whereas simply being tired after working out doesn't give you the same kind of feedback.

[Mullet Master]

I would take a serious look at Scooby's beginner work out routines. The advice given there is very straightforward, not bro-ey, and achievable by almost anyone. The beginner workouts don't require a gym membership. I would say his website has enough advice in there to guide your muscle building quest for at least a year, maybe several more.
http://scoobysworkshop.com/get-boot-camp-ready/

Yeah, keeping progress is definitely a way to motivate yourself. Seeing weight gain, measurements, body fat count....can show you the changes despite not necessarily seeing or feeling them yourself.
...
Without a "pay off", it's hard to rationalize the time, the effort and the pain of working out. So I always advise people to go harder.

Definitely. You don't want to feel like you are just treading water.

[KingBacon]

Man, I was in your position back in high school (8 years ago, wow I am getting old.) Overweight and weak. Now I'm skinny and weak. I bought a Men's Health full body work out book years ago, which has tiered regimes based off of difficulty and has many different exercises illustrated.

The biggest problem with working out is finding time, if you have to travel to work out it give you an excuse to be lazy. Having a benchpress and workout stuff in the garage is great and workouts take 15min-30min. A decent used bench press + weights can run around $200 and a pullup bar for a doorway is about $25 (unless you make one yourself with some brackets and a pipe.) Dumbells, well those are necessary too.

[Pnx]

So I've taken to doing some regular body weight exercises, push-ups, squats, sit-ups. Thing is, when I do sit-ups my back has this tendency to "pop" in a very audible way, something I've been trying to avoid with limited success.

I'm sort of worried that I might be doing damage to my spine with this, is it something I should be worried about? Is there a particular way to avoid it that I don't know about?

[KingBacon]

Pnx, generally that is just fluid moving from your joints. It's normal (or at least what science people I've drank with and my doctor have told me.)

Does it hurt, do you stretch enough? My hip used to pop, it stopped after I picked up jogging. 

[Pnx]

Pnx, generally that is just fluid moving from your joints. It's normal (or at least what science people I've drank with and my doctor have told me.)

Does it hurt, do you stretch enough? My hip used to pop, it stopped after I picked up jogging.

It doesn't hurt, but it does do it quite a lot and I get worried about it.