P.S. I have to say that reading this thread over the months has been a good source of motivation
Excellent! That was always my goal. We're all in the same group of people here roughly, and I figured by talking about my process, maybe I could inspire other people to believe that change was possible. And it is!
Question time: Knuckle push ups or open palm?
My answer would be: whatever is the most comfortable. My belief is that open palm pushups are a little harder on the wrists, while knuckle pushups are harder on your actual joints and/or engage your forearms more, since on your knuckles you don't have the same base of support so they have to kick in to keep your arms stabilized while you exert force. That said I don't think there is a substantial benefit/difference between the two. Pushup variations have more to do with the positioning of the hands narrower/wider than anything else.
Here's my alternative to either knuckle or palm pushups: dumbbell pushups.
Find a reasonably heavy set of dumbbells (say ~20 pounds.) Place them on the ground in the proper width for a pushup. You can either have the handles running horizontally or vertically. Personally, I'd start with vertical and see how that feels. Just grasp the dumbbells, get in position and go. You'll probably find it's way less intense on your wrists, and you're not mashing your knuckles into the ground either.
Also if your wrists are seriously bugging you during pushups, you might consider wrist/forearm stretches during your normal stretching routine. Forearms typically don't get the attention they deserve in either the strengthening or stretching side of things, and consistently working on your wrist mobility will get them used to taking stress and ultimately get stronger.
1. If anyone is interested in it I could post my nutrition plan, it's for about 2000 kcal daily intake.
You need to figure out what your daily, non-activity calorie requirements are. 2k is the average most people go with, without really trying to find out. There are various calculators on the internet, based on height, weight, age and activity levels. I'd try plugging your values in to a few of those and take the average result of all of them. None will be exact but you might be surprised what your actual daily calorie needs for maintenance are. Your daily calorie requirements are probably higher, say 2200 to 2400, because you are active several days a week. If you are willing to cut another couple hundred calories out and stick to that for an extended period of time, you're going to lose a lot more than 2kg of body fat. The trick is, eat less calorie dense foods and eat more of the low calorie foods so you stay satiated. You're probably aware since you already tried keto, but, veggies can help you feel full while also not adding a lot of calories in to your daily intake. Fats are pretty calorie dense but also pretty filling, so you can try more fats and fewer carbs.
I love carbs and they're _vital_ for a good lifting workout. But you gotta manage them. I don't care what people say about whole grain versus processed carbs, one may lead to less fat storage than the other. But if you're working yourself hard, at the end of the day, your body is going to use those carbs to refill your muscles. What matters then is making sure you get those muscles empty so there's places to store that energy you get from carbs. By "emptying your muscles out" on a regular basis, combined with limiting (but not eliminating) carbs, you'll likely find you'll lose body fat at a faster rate.
Lastly, I applaud your desire to lift weights so your body doesn't get loose from the fat loss. But really, you should be lifting weights to GROW muscle. And here's why:
As above when I talked about emptying out your muscles of stored fuel so your body has somewhere to stick "new fuel"? Well, bigger muscles = bigger fuel tanks. You can store more in the muscle which means you're storing less as fat. So bigger muscles = the ability to eat more carbs and not have as many of them get stored as fat. It also takes more calories to
maintain said muscles. So bigger muscles = a larger natural calorie deficit = you can eat closer to the same amount of calories as you are now and still continue to lose weight.
The key is making your workouts intense. What is an intense workout? It's a workout where you test your limits every time. If you know you can do X pushups "comfortably" as in the last rep or two is tough, then push yourself for one extra rep. Two extra reps. Push yourself on pushups until you literally can not get your body up off the ground anymore and collapse. Then do that for every set you do. Doesn't matter if you do less reps in the second and third set, what matters is that you challenge your body every time and don't give in when it gets hard. Those last few reps, where you really struggle and have to dig deep, is where the magic happens. If you consistently go to that place on every set, week after week, month after month, you'll be building muscle and most importantly *you won't ever truly adapt to the workout you're doing.* Once your body has adapted (took me about 6 to 8 months of consistent working out before I adapted to a regular workout), muscle growth slows down, fat loss slows down, your body adapts to the metabolic stress and establishes a "new normal." If your "new normal" is exactly where you want to be, then great, just keep that up. But if you want to burn even more fat, or build even more muscle...you gotta continually push your body just outside of its adaptability window.
Anyways, good luck, keep soldiering on.
Might as well give an update for myself.
Non-workout injury! ARGH. Walked knee first in to a coffee table in the dead of night in a hotel room while I got up to use the bathroom. Walked in to hard enough I cut the skin across the knee and it was bleeding. The pain was nearly indescribable, and it was hella swollen for two days afterward at least. It was about a week ago now and it still hurts to flex my knee.
So rather than try to work around the injury, I decided to just compound the last two weeks of no working out due to work trips with just a general hiatus from working out altogether. My reasoning is, if my body is working to heal an injury then it probably won't help to do all my other workouts and place my body under stress while it's also trying to heal an injury. Rather than burning calories on a workout and muscle building, I figured I'd take a complete break and let all those calories get saved for the healing process. Also despite the mobility drills I've been doing, I've started to get pain in the head of my left knee which, despite all my knee issues over the years, is new for me. So when I injured my right knee and had to start compensating more with my left...guess what happened? My left knee started to hurt more too. So now I have two knees that hurt when I stand up. Blech. Despite my best efforts, I'm developing niggling little pains that don't paint a pretty picture of the next three years unless I figure something else out. I'm not going to stress about it too much, but injuring my right knee definitely put my left knee's issues front and center.
And speaking of taking a workout break, it's kinda weird. When I take these little breaks I swear I notice a visible drop in body fat, as well as some better looking muscle growth. Could be a lot of things. Could be the fact I'm retaining more water so I look "fuller." (Although generally water retention makes you look fluffier.) It could be that when I'm not in as big of a calorie deficit, my body's metabolism (which has adapted to the ~1800 to 2000 calorie diet I've been running for the last couple years) also gets a break and is actually willing to burn more fat. Maybe the three+ hours a week I lift ISNT actually enough recovery time to build muscle, and so when I take these workout breaks I'm actually getting the rest I need to grow.
It's hard to say, it's all very subjective and based on the mirror.
I probably won't be "shredded" by the end of July, which is basically my 2 year anniversary of joining the Swole Patrol. But I think I may yet hit my own definition of "lean" by then.
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Topic: The Fitness Thread - THE RE-SWOLLENING (Read 62900 times)