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[NRDL]

Nice, a genuine fitness thread.

For my part, I'll throw in the Keto diet for people wanting to lose weight, break addiction to sugar, that sort of thing. I haven't eaten bread or sweets in months, absolutely no cravings. Meat, cheese and fat all day.

Also, if you want consistency in physical activity, do a martial art. There's bound to be something in the neighbourhood where you live, and martial arts are just fun, regardless of what your reason for doing it is.

Right now I'm also liking kettle bells. Bought the book Simple and Sinister, which advocates 100 kettle bell swings a day, and 10 Turkish get ups per day, everyday. It's not a very time intensive workout at all, but it's sheer consistency and the fact it hits just about every part of your body, with a nice cardio component to boot, rocks.

I'm sticking mostly to the kettle bell swings, I really want to build explosiveness and full body power more than muscle anyway.

[Reelya]

Edamame (soybean) snacks are also 40% protein. And edamame are nice because they're a portable snack that can substitute for when you feel lke potato chips, or put in a small bowl for snacking at the computer.

There are a lot of anti-soy people however they all seem to fall into "bro-science" if you know what I mean. Basically the argument is that soy contains substances call phytoestrogens, and estrogen is "girly" so eating soy will suck out your testosterone and make you a soft and flabby-titted girly man. While kinda plausible it turns out that more detailed studies than "girly stuff is bad!" show that this has nothing to do with reality. While there might be compounds similar to estrogens in soy they're not there in great amounts and even then, the compounds don't seem to work like they claim to turn you into a girly-man anyway. Hell, if that really worked whatsoever you'd have transgender people swearing by soy products as an aid to transitioning.

https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/can-adding-soy-protein-lead-to-more-growth.html
https://www.livestrong.com/article/360960-is-soy-protein-good-for-building-muscle/

Because the bro-dudes don't want it you can get highly concentrated soy protein powder cheaper than other powders, and mix it with whey and casein (which is the protein in regular milk), and that's shown positive growth results compared to using any one of them alone.

for a while I was getting Savour brand edamame for $1.30 for 100 grams, so 40 grams of protein for $1.30 in a convenient snackable form. But right now everyone's been out of stock of them for months, I guess they might be a seasonal crop and stocks just competely ran out ?!?

[Jimmy]

Does anyone know what evidence says regarding importance of daily vs. weekly total exercise?

I find one of my own biggest barriers to regular exercise is my work schedule, which has three 11 hour shifts. I've found it practically impossible to schedule meaningful exercise on these days. 11 hours work and 8 hours sleep leaves 5 hours remaining in the day, minus 1 hour of commute time round trip to work. Subtract another 1 hour for personal hygiene (showering, shaving, dressing etc.) and 1 hour food preparation time (20 minutes to make and eat breakfast, 40 minutes to make and eat dinner). Take an extra 1 hour away for time with kids (30 minutes homework, 30 minutes bedtime stories) and that's 1 hour left in the day, which will typically be spent in conversation with my wife, or listening to my kids tell me about their day, or overtime at work.

So I try to squeeze in enough activity to keep fit on the days I have more time. Anyone know if there's anything about how effective it is to cram a week's worth of exercise into few days?

[Reelya]

That's where nenjin's advice about resistance training is probably helpful. Resistance training shouldn't be every day. The optimal time for that is about 4-5 days between sessions I've read. So weekly isn't too bad, twice a week is good too, but if you could cycle three per fortnight that would be close to the ideal period for muscle recovery.

(edit) e.g. if you had three set days of work, monday to wednesday, then you could schedule a resitance training / weights session on Thursday and Sunday, which would be alternating 3/4 day gaps so be pretty close to an optimal schedule for that stuff. If your shifts are in fact more broken up than that, then it should in fact be easier to work out an optimal training schedule around that.

Throw in some other types of exercise on the days you're not working in addition to that. Try and actually blend exercise with things you think are fun activities (e.g. games) rather than making it a chore, too. e.g. I have some animes I only watch while working out. So getting to see what happens next is the reward for working out.

[SalmonGod]

Audioshield with wrist weights is fun

[scrdest]

[REMOVED - I accidentally posted just a quote]

[nenjin]

I do resistance training every other day for 20 to 25 minutes a day. (Or would be if I hadn't developed an upper respiratory infection the day I started writing this thread! ><)

Upper body Monday/Wednesday, Legs Friday. Maybe some off work on Sunday.

Doing that I get along just fine. A day is enough to recover from a workout unless you tore yourself to pieces in the previous workout. (I find it's very easy for me to get in a leg workout that is intense enough I feel it for three days.)

D. O. N. T. S. K. I. P. L. E. G. D. A. Y.

Once a week, even for an hour, wouldn't be enough for me. That's why I don't just advocate resistance training, I advocate high intensity resistance training. Because you can fit it in a lot of places you can't reasonably fit an hour long workout. Working out shoudn't take a huge chunk of your week. A quick, intense circuit is something you can fit in right when you get home, do it for 30 minutes, get your shower in, get to bed. (Although working out before bed has been reported to create some insomnia issues due to over-stimulation of the nervous system.)

As for what is "enough" for you, the question I return with "What are your goals?" For some people that are just like "I want to be more active", sure, a day a week is enough. If you want to lose weight through physical activity, build muscle or build strength, then no, I would say one day per week isn't enough if you want to see any results (and get motivated by them) sooner than in a few months. That's what really drove me to up my routine to at least 3 days a week. When I started I was doing an intense 30 minute workout a week for a few weeks and it just wasn't causing that much change. And I spent the other half of the week full of energy and feeling like I should do more.

Be careful about trying to do too much in one day too. If you end up really taxing both your upper and lower body in one workout, well, guess what? The next day you may be functionally crippled as every major muscle group hurts and is tight. You also tend to recruit a lot of different muscles in workouts, which if every major muscle group has been taxed during a workout, you may find finishing your workout is harder toward the end because you've tapped out everything.

The only muscle group I advocate working every single day if you have time is your core. It's built for that kind of stress.

I'm also very in to kettlebell swings right now. Unfortunately I feel like I just can't get the right activation for it. I've watched videos, I've done the research, I practice, I just haven't formed that mind/muscle connection to my ass and hips, so I find the kettle bell swing motion strange and like I'm still doing it wrong. I'm not pulling with my shoulders yet my shoulders are what end up feeling tired. I usually do about 40 in my regular workout routine. Could probably do more but I have to leave energy for squats and lunges, too.

Also planning on trying the Turkish Get Up here soon. Only thing that has stopped me is how technical the exercise looks.

I'm sticking mostly to the kettle bell swings, I really want to build explosiveness and full body power more than muscle anyway.

Do goblet squats with your kettle bell too. Might as well right? You got the necessary equipment and a squat is both a big compound exercise and a natural compliment to the areas worked by the kettlebell swings. Squats will give you plenty of explosive power from the crouched position, and a stronger base of support in a (typically weak for most people) stressed position.

Basically, to everyone doing resistance training: your body adapts. It gets used to, rather quickly, the things it's asked to do. The same weight, the same rep range, the same exercise, your body and you eventually get comfortable with them. And it doesn't have to work as hard to do them. If it's not working hard, it's not being challenged. If it's not being challenged, you're burning fewer calories and building less muscle.

So if you have a favorite exercise, consider alternating to your LEAST favorite exercise. It's probably your least favorite because it makes you feel the most uncomfortable and makes you feel the weakest. That's the exercise you should attack. Not the one you've become "good at." That's not to say don't do your favorite exercises. What I'm saying is: keep your body guessing. Change what's being asked of it regularly with variations in the type of exercise, the weight range, the rep range and particular form it's done in. Part o dat "Muscle confusion" everyone likes talking about.

That's currently one of my big problems, actually, is that I don't have the weights to do solid progression and my body is adapting to the weight ranges I'm throwing at it. Not much to be done there short of buying more weight / getting access to more weights or increasing reps and picking harder forms. Kind of sucks. I feel like I've been stuck in the 30 pound range for dumbbells my whole life. I was doing this back in high school as my near max. I feel like I'm stuck in that no man's land where I'm doing slightly higher than "average lady weight" and the beginnings of actual "man weight." I watch fitness videos of chicks doing 40 pnd dumbbell whatever and look at myself and feelsbadman.

[Reelya]

You're doing split sets then. (note: Split sets is terminology meaning when you work different muscle groups on different days, e.g. upper-back/arm/shoulder-day vs lower-back/leg-day).

The 4/5 days guideline is in fact only for training the same muscle groups. What you described was pretty much how I used to train, however, i was splitting on a two-week cycle. e.g.

sunday  - legs
tuesday - arms
friday - legs
the next week swaps around
sunday - arms
tueday - legs
friday - arms
and then back to legs on sunday

Basically if you check that then it's always maintaining a 4/5 day cycle on each muscle group. The point here however is that you don't in fact need to cram things into exactly a 1-week cycle, if that's not what the medical science is saying.

~~~

BTW I know what you mean by feeling stuck, but for me that's probably because for the 2 years of my degree, my whole routine went out the window. I started benching 10kg per side and was up to the point where I was thinking about buying 10kg plates so that I could ramped the weight per dumbbell to around 25kg per side (the most plates I could fit on were 22 kg per bar), but then college happened and I'm comfortable doing about 18-19 kg now. For that I can do about three sets of 12 reps with 19 kg, which i could probably push higher since I stop at 12 usually.

i probably should in fact start blogging my weights as extra motivation.

[nenjin]

For me I just can't wait that long anymore. Most of the time I make myself take a rest day but spending it feeling like I could do something. Which is why I started doing resistance bands on my "true" off day.

[Reelya]

I do the circuit training on other days. Actually I used to do more, 25 x 25 minutes a day of general training, plus 3 x 45 minute weight sessions a week, and on the days I didn't do that then i'd do more circuit training during the time that i would normally do that. So i was averaging a couple hours a day of training before I went to college. i should ease back up however.

Right now I'm working on fixing my sleep and eating patterns. They went to shit during college too, which all adds up.

[nenjin]

There is such a thing as over training too. I've settled on my routine because it's enough time for muscle fatigue to go away and I can hit every workout pretty much at full steam. Bringing your best is important if you want to get the most out of each workout. The science is not in on what's overtraining versus not. (Short of "I'm getting sick all the time and my muscles are cramping/shit's tearing.) I just know that the human mind and will can easily outstrip the body's ability to perform, so I try to give myself as many dedicated rest cycles as I can.

[Reelya]

Sure, that's why I was doing completely different things in the daily stuff compared to the heavy weights. The daily stuff is more about keeping off the pounds and conditioning. However, the 2 sets of circuit training definitely turned out to be a bit much, so i knocked out the later one. But ... I think i could in fact put that back in, but just by switching it up to a different routine that hits different muscle groups each session

One of the problems with overtraining is in fact training the same thing over and over. Then you could be at the "limit" in one way, but you're not really pushing it at all in other ways. Switching things around lets you get a little more out of it.

[Yoink]

I've been doing a pretty basic routine involving sit-ups/crunches (what's the difference again?) and a variety of dumbell exercises (such as curls, overhead lifts and the aforementioned goblet squats) for quite a while and I've definitely noticed a lot of improvement both in how I feel and how I look, which is pretty awesome.
Since I went vegan and started eating a heap of tofu (along with my usual beans and spinach) I've noticed even greater results.
I thought kidney beans were protein-rich, then I looked at the nutritional info on the tofu I buy, phwoar. It's good stuff, and tasty.

Still really hard to gain weight, though. Judging by how noticeably my mass had increased in certain areas I thought I must have gained quite a bit, but when I weighed myself for the first time in ages recently I was still just 58 kg - an increase of three or four kg or so, though I didn't exactly weigh myself before starting to workout.
I slacked off yesterday due to being terribly hungover (yeah I know boozing isn't conducive to bulking, whatever I'm no fitness freak) but after I post this I'm going to do my little workout and have some breakfast.
Ever since reading some article years ago, I try to do my workouts/exercises immediately before eating. Lately, since I've been serious about it, I generally make a habit of cooking my meal in-between sets. I'll do my sit-ups/crunches and then put on the water for my luxury noodles, then rush back to do the first half of my dumbell workout, then let the noodles cook whilst doing the second half. Having a time limit like that really helps curb my natural tendency to procrastinate, I find.

Reckon this morning I might throw in some push-ups while my tofu cooks.
Haven't been doing many of those for ages, since I was staying with family up north and the room I stayed in has this awful carpet that sets off my asthma if my face gets too close. Also push-ups are very much an exercise of the chest, so there's probably added difficulty for one of the verge of an asthma attack...


Some good info in here! I might try and work in some of those bodyweight exercises into my routine. Going jogging/running/bicycling still sounds awful, but maybe someday I'll somehow overcome my anxiety enough to try such things. Me and bicycles generally don't mix at the best of times, though.   

[JoshuaFH]

I don't mean to interrupt this avid discussion of swole science, but I suppose the largest problem I have is one of motivation. Most days I feel that just living life is just a matter of the wholly selfish reason of getting to personally enjoy it, with no reason otherwise. I feel it would be 'nice' to be fit, at least once in my life, but that's where the "raison d'être" ends, there's otherwise no pragmatic purpose to it. I don't have any face-to-face friends to enjoy in the hardships or achievements, and there's no useful end to being fit, as in my case I have a sedentary job and otherwise no physically difficult tasks that I'm expected to take on, so I'm left with just the vanity of it, but I'm not an especially vain person anyway. The human body is just a tool, but what point is there for a tool with no job to do?

I do make some headway, every now and again, but I can't help but feel that it's hard to maintain the level of motivation that led to those achievements in the first place, that I only accomplished them because "His wheels, spinning uselessly in the mud, finally gained traction for a second, only to get stuck again in the next mud patch."
I have one picture of myself when I was, as close as I could be, "fit", and it was probably the only moment in my life when I was truly motivated, and I accomplished it with almost no effort, but then that motivation dissipated into the cold air again, leaving me with my languor again. I get the feeling it's going to be another cold winter.

[SalmonGod]

The best reason to be fit is just to simply feel better.  You have more energy, and that translates into everything, including steady presence of mind and intellectual energy for the non-physical parts of your day.  Everyday stuff doesn't feel like it weighs on you as much.  It helps stabilize your mood.  And you likely extend how far into old age you can take care of yourself and enjoy a decent quality of life.

Ironically, I think the energy thing is part of the motivational struggle.  When you're out of shape and feel like crap, that's part of the obstacle between you and motivation to do what it takes to feel better.  Even if you decide that it's something you want, actually making the effort is still hard when your body is always telling you the quickest way to feel better is to eat some shit and take a nap.  Once you get over that hill, it's much easier.  Physical activity starts to feel good, and you miss it when you skip out.  Eventually, your body even falls in line and signals to do all the wrong things get weaker.