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[Reudh]

Depends what your (ugh, and although i don't like to bring it up) body morph is. I'm mesomorphic, and I'd assume you're ectomorphic. If you're ectomorphic then you're probably going to have to have a full fitness regime, and keep working to build muscle. An all around exercise rather than benchpressing would be ideal

[Heron TSG]

I do other lifts, of course, it's just an example. I could use other lifts as metrics as well, I just picked one. I honestly have no idea, and my Google-fu appears to be weak.

[MaximumZero]

Lifting what I do right now isn't going to make me any fitter than I currently am, methinks.

Sure it will. Just do more reps.

[Heron TSG]

Isn't that more endurance, though? I seem to recall that being the difference between low-weight-high-reps and high-weight-low-reps workouts. Is there overlap somewhere in the middle, then?

[Reudh]

Besides merely lifting weights, endurance is also useful. Ride a bike. Ride a bike everywhere it's humanely possible.

Also, guys, once I get a new bike, I'm going to be riding once a week to and from Melbourne. (about an 80km round trip). Anyone in the south-east want to join me?

[Yoink]

I thought I'd done pretty well today, doing pushups, bicep curls, resistance exercises and a decent run or two, and then I see

an 80km round trip

Holy heck, dude! 80km? Wow. I'll have to get my bike tyres pumped, even though I live two states away I'll be with ya in spirit. Maybe. If I'm not too lazy...

Edit: Although I guess 80km would be easier on a decent bike/road. Not like mine.

[Reudh]

Oh, there's a trail that runs next to the freeway almost the whole way in, and the rest is a floating pontoon along the Yarra River, which is VERY fun to ride on. During floods it becomes !!FUN!! somehow... anyway, it is a fairly easy ride. If anyone from the southeast is up for it, then we could probably do it once a week and meet up in the city for a coffee or summat. I am in relatively good fitness for endurance. I can barely lift myself off the ground for pushups/etc because of my injured shoulders, but bike riding does not aggravate that.

From the suburb I am in to Melbourne is a really easy ride provided I stay on the trail.

One day soon (next year) i'm going to do the Warburton Trail from just outside of Lilydale to Warburton, i think that's 38km single trip.

Before my bike broke and I had no money to fix/replace it, I was more than capable of doing 40km in a day.

[MaximumZero]

Isn't that more endurance, though? I seem to recall that being the difference between low-weight-high-reps and high-weight-low-reps workouts. Is there overlap somewhere in the middle, then?

That falls squarely in the endurance section of the workout. I'm sure you know this, but I'm going to say it anyway: Then again, the layman's term for muscular endurance is "Muscle Tone".  The way my weightlifting teacher (I had to take a "Healthy Living" class for Computer Programming.  ) said to build both at the same time was this: Do as many as you can at your current weight, then add 10 lbs and do it again. The guy probably knows a thing or two about conditioning, considering that most of his baseball players move on to various AA affiliates.

[SalmonGod]

My entire torso is sore from coughing, and I haven't even been sick for a couple weeks.

[Miggy]

Today I found out I can do multiple lifts at my weight in the benchpress. (125lbs/56.82kg) About what is average, proportionally, for that? I know my arms are sticks, so I'm trying to fix that.

According to the link that Kael posted on the first page, lifting 1,5x your own body weight in bench press is a buff man goal. It shouldn't be impossible for anyone to get there, eventually, but you're not going to just lie down on the bench for the first time and then do it.

Also, 56 kg is nothing. You're either very short or just very skinny. Like, extremely skinny. If you start working out for muscle, be prepared to watch that increase. So even though you can take your body weight now, your capacity to do benches should increase alongside with your weight, so you won't be doing a quick sprint to 1,5x body weight reps.

Will again wholeheartedly recommend "Starting Strength".

[MaximumZero]

Barbarossa is the God of Stickmen.

[Heron TSG]

Also, 56 kg is nothing. You're either very short or just very skinny. Like, extremely skinny. If you start working out for muscle, be prepared to watch that increase. So even though you can take your body weight now, your capacity to do benches should increase alongside with your weight, so you won't be doing a quick sprint to 1,5x body weight reps.

Will again wholeheartedly recommend "Starting Strength".

I'm 5'8" (1.73m) tall, so it's the latter. I'll try various workouts for a week and find out where I am, then start moving up.

In other news, I just got back from a 12 mile run in the snow. This 1,000 mile challenge is going to suck once the roads freeze up. (Today it was pretty soft. There hasn't been snow here for more than a week yet.)

[MaximumZero]

Aww, all we got here was freeze. No powder yet.

[Miggy]

Bumping this again.

So the last week I've had some troubles with my squat. Basically, last saturday I was feeling a bit sore but my warmup sets were enough to relieve that. I put 10 pounds onto my last bar and squatted it for my work set. I could take it, although in the last work set my muscles switched from weakness to slight pain. I didn't think much of it, considering I was straining my muscles as hard as I could, I figured it was to be expected. I finished the work set and the pain wore off.

But the next day, and the following monday workout, I had a problem. Whenever I went down to a deep squat position, my left hip would be hit with a piercing pain. It was endurable monday, but it lowered my performance. Saturday I did 3 work sets of 5 reps of 55 kg. Monday I didn't finish one set of 50 kg. Furthermore, I could feel the muscle - sort of - whenever I was walking. Turning too much on my hip would give a small ache.

Today it was even worse. I couldn't even squat 40 kg because I would not be able to pull my muscles into it. Oh damn I thought, I'm in deep trouble.

So what to do? I figured that, in all likelyhood, this was just a sore muscle inside of my hip that is not used to hard loads. But how do you adjust it when it's so painful? Do you stop doing squats at all, to let it rest? Do you do squats with a milder load, to soothe down on the pressure while still maintaining pressure on it, making it adapt? Or do you just "run it off" and bite away the pain, since the muscle will adapt on its own?

Not quite sure how to tackle this, I remembered the article that Kael linked on the first page, and the section it had on how to avoid, and prevent, injuries:



So I did the lefternmost one, without a weight. I took 50 on one side then 50 on the other. And holy mother of god. It absolutely and completely disappeared. Taking just 50 without a weight was tough, and not up to the benchmark of 2 sets with a 5 pound weight, but immediately after taking them the pain was gone. My hip felt worked but not strained, and nowhere near painful. I even tried to stand up and going into the squat position and there was nothing stopping me.

Next time I work out I'm going to go through all of those. I thought I had to cancel or seriously reprogram, but I can just smoothly and easily power through it and continue with the progress I was making. I feel absolutely invincible right now.

[justinlee999]

How realistic is it to aim for 10% body fat?

And how practical is it to maintain 10% body fat?

Also if I'm reading this chart right from the Men's Journal article right:


Is this guy suggesting that bodybuilders train once every week? Because it contradicts with the chart earlier in the article where it says that bodybuilders should train 5 times every week.

The strength and power seems right though, then it goes wrong again at the endurance part.