-Fat loss takes longer than you think it will. I've already talked about this to death above but yeah. Unless you're eating really clean and working really hard, truly getting to 15% or lower can take a lot of time. I thought I was there months ago, ha. It's like peeling an onion, one layer at a time, one pound a time. It's no mystery why people get discouraged along the way. You have every single minute of every single day to doubt the process. But you can't doubt the process or you fall off the wagon. So if you don't like the results you're getting, eat better or do more volume. Be more disciplined.
-You start acquiring a blindness to your own gains the longer and longer you work out. This can play in to the above and really fuck with you. I'm now beginning to understand how people can go overboard. You look in the mirror every day and even though you like what you see more and more, you finish with "it ain't enough." So I've started taking pictures just so I can record it for my own ability to look back and go "you have come some distance."
-Gaming the system with your calorie intake is no joke. Getting the right balance of macronutrients just becomes more and more important, if not to grow or preserve muscle while you're working out, then as the basic fuel you need TO work out. If you're not eating well enough and killing yourself in the gym, you will feel it. You will not have enough energy, your mood will tank, you'll get sick, your hormones go outta whack......I think one reason I have been successful thus far is I'm very much a creature of habit. I'm the guy that has "the usual" at all my favorite restaurants. I stick to the same basic food items or recipes most of the time. So for me I have a fairly reliable way to gauge what is and isn't enough, what is or isn't working. I don't know if that kind of consistency comes as easy to other people (or if they manage to get bored sooner than I do) but it has sort of demystified the calories in vs. calories out thing for me.
-Active recovery. If you're lifting hard, recover like an athlete. Ask just that much more of your body when you're working hard. Don't lay there and pant it out for a minute. Get up. Stand. Breathe. Walk around. Practice this long enough over time and you will start getting your breath back faster, ready to do another set. Done with a big leg day? Go for a walk. You will feel like jelly as you start and then steadily your body will recover while still doing work. When it comes to the moment to moment rest periods, recovering on your feet raises the bar on your body and what you're asking of it, and it will respond. Sitting down or laying down lowers the bar, sends the signal it's time to rest, which it's not. Staying on your feet as much as possible helps you keep your momentum, burn as much fat as possible and get your workout over with. If you sit or lay down after every set, I can guarantee you it will get harder and harder to make yourself get up as you go through it. Post workout, an active recovery of a walk won't spare you the pain of muscle exhaustion and building, but it will keep you looser, which make those aches and pains for the next day or two less intense. You'll be able to walk more or less normally the next day instead of in jerks and spasms. And if you're in the fat loss game, it's more calories you get to burn for what is essentially a cool down.
-Stretching at night. I've heard lots of advice on when to stretch and right before bed has made the most sense to me. I'll be awake 6 to 12? hours after I work out, and in that time I will feel myself tightening up as my muscles lay still. As I heard it said on the Athlean-X channel "When you sleep is going to be the longest period of inactivity for your muscles, the time when they will get the tightest. So you stretch them right before you go to sleep to get as much of a stretch on them as possible before they do that." And I think it's the way to go. Stretching before working out has now fallen out of favor in the fitness industry with some scientific backing. (Although warming up is still advised, something I'm not doing yet.) Stretching immediately after you work out is supposedly good, but you will tighten up a few hours later and then when you sleep. And it can feel deliciously good at the end of the night to get a nice stretch on the muscle groups you worked on that day. Stretching can both improve your recovery in the next 48 hours, and may assist in muscle growth as well.
-Adaptation is real. I would say I've been doing the same general weights and exercises for the last 8 months or so. In some areas (machines) I've been able to progress on the weight slightly. But all my dumbbell work is starting to not give me the feedback it used to, because I can't progress there. I don't know if I necessarily feel any of what I'm doing is easier than it was before, but I definitely can tell that, for example, my biceps aren't really responding to curls anymore, even though I'm doing my 3x10s in the most punishing configuration I can handle, throwing some drop sets in there, etc.... My abs too are starting to not have that crazy two to three day burn anymore, even though I've added more ab work to my routine. The funny thing is, I thought moving up to the next plateau would somehow require the same amount of work and struggle that the previous one did. Not for me, apparently. If I'm going full on at what I can handle now and not feeling "stimulated", how much more effort am I going to have to put out at the next higher level to find it?
-So my programming needs to change. I watched a recent-ish Arnold Schwarzenegger interview about lifting and body building and he basically affirmed the choices I'd made up until now. "Don't go crazy or over think it when you start. Start generally. Do 3x10 sets for a few different body parts when you get into the gym. Train three or four times a week. As you train you'll start to realize what parts of you grow better and which ones don't. Add a few sets to the ones that need help, and keep the regular sets for the parts that grow really well." And I think I've hit that point. When you watch veteran fitness youtuber's talk, they're talking "When you're done with your first 5 sets of bicep curls, go do 5 sets of preacher curls, and then 5 sets of hammer curls...." This kind of dovetails into what I said above. The amount of effort it takes to get "stimulated" becomes exponential with diminishing returns in gains. I know I'm nowhere near that point yet, but it's time I started breaking into more heavy volume work. My whole goal with my workout scheme starting out was to recondition my whole body this first year. I have tried to hit all my major body parts in one week for the last year, because everything need to be woken up. Well, I think I've hit that point. I'm woke AF boi. So my general workout plan, if I want to really put on some growth in key areas, isn't going to cut it anymore.
-I've lived by 3x10, or 2x20 for abs for a year now. 3x10 bicep curls, 3x10 latpull downs, 3x10 side lateral raises, blah blah blah. I know now where my strengths are. My chest has grown a bit over the last year (thanks in part to machines I can continue to up the weight on), as have my lats (also on a machine.) My abs also seem to respond well. But shoulders, forearms and biceps I have not see growth I'm happy with, even though I hit biceps and shoulders more than any other muscle group. Biceps especially I have worked really hard on all year and I dunno, I thought I'd be stronger and bigger but I don't feel much of either, despite friends and family saying they can see it. So I'm going to start adding sets to biceps and shoulders I think, and going to start training my forearms directly which I haven't really up until now. Which leads me to.....
-My grip is kind of fucked. For one I have no callous on either hand beneath my pointer finger, which tells me the outside part of my hands are doing way, way more work than the actual clutch of my inner hand. For two, my grip is significantly weaker on my right hand than my left. Not just because I'm left handed, but for all the shit my right arm has been through the last couple of years. One direct fall on my elbow fucked my whole arm up good for a couple of weeks and it still makes noises today, and of course the shit I did to my finger this year. Doing farmers carries my right hand hurt so bad I couldn't even close my fist around the dumbbell anymore, it was that taxed. Meanwhile my left hand was going strong. I think this plays into a lot of my weaknesses on my right side, where I struggle to curl more than my left. This has become my motivation to work forearms as well, not just for aesthetic reasons but because grip is a large determinate in your strength.
-On that note, I tried some routines from the video
Enter The Kettlebell, a hilarious training video where a Russian guy stands on a sound stage with military props and says "Comrade" a lot, while teaching you kettlebell moves and principles. The video may be lulzy but the dude is very legit. And I totally sucked at some of the exercises with the 35 pnd "male starter" kettlebell. I tried to do get ups with that 35 pound and it was pretty damn scary when my wrist gave out while I had it suspended above me. (Again, why I'm going to start training grip and forearms.) My KB cleans were also painfully NOT CLEAN. It was pretty discouraging at first but I can see it now as another challenge to overcome.
-Although damn, this shit is getting expensive. I just bought a 70pnd kettlebell for deadlifts for $80, and I need heavier dumbbells for my home. Like another $100 worth. I've probably spent close to $400 already just in weights and bands and shit. I think it's time to suck up my embarrassment and just pay for a gym membership here at my apartment. I really have no desire to workout around other people, pretty much ever. They're a distraction. But the gym here has shit like barbells and a bench press and squat rack and dumbbells beyond what I'll ever need. I could start doing some real compound exercises, pushing my dumbbell work further. I've spent the last year pulling my body back from decrepitude and I've re-sanctified the temple. I'm ready to do some real work now.
-I may not always be happy with my gainz but I will say: the vascularity is starting to come in as my body fat continues to drop. Some days I can trace a road map from my wrist all the way to my heart. Starting to get some poppers too. I wasn't really looking for it but I will certainly take it.
-However all my major joints are popping and cracking. (Wrists, knees, elbows, ankles, sometimes my shoulders.) I need to start looking in to what that means, because it's not something a lot of fitness youtubers mention, but it can't be good. It doesn't hurt but it doesn't feel good either. I've had some systemic knee problems in my life and so far nothing "hurts." But if something is going to go wrong, it's probably going to become very noticeable in this second year.
-Lastly: cold showers. You read about them and their benefits and I've been doing them for probably the last two months....and the hype I think is real. I got a front row seat to this when I was vacationing at the lake. The water was not warm but I very quickly adapted to it and got to feeling comfortable while others took a lot longer. I take cold showers after my walks and workouts and it really does revitalize me, gives me back some energy so I can go about my night at home. I think it also helps you burn a few calories because your heart rate goes up and your body has to work to thermal regulate. Like other things, with enough time, the body will adapt to rapid temperature changes much better. I still take hot showers at night because I honestly hate being cold, but it's fucking bracing and I think I like it. I started with just a small thread of warm water in the cold and have been steadily dropping the temperature over the weeks. Even when I come in from a 45 minute walk in 95 degree weather, I'm adapting to colder temperatures faster and faster.
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Topic: The Fitness Thread - THE RE-SWOLLENING (Read 62482 times)