New Here - Need Some Basic Advice

itcanbedone13

Hi, everyone. I am new here and have a lot of weight to lose. I am not looking for a quick weight loss, but a slow and healthy one.

I am wondering if anyone can give me advice as far as how to exercising meaning that how many times a week to do cardio and how many times a week to strength train. Also anybody wanting to share their workout routines would be great. I am looking for some info to get started and thought this would be a great place to start.'

Thanks in advance. Time to get HEALTHY!!!

itcanbedone13

bump for any help please

MisterDerpington

Strength training with a full body routine 3x a week is pretty good for a beginner. You want to stick with compound exercises (this means the exercise uses multiple muscle groups). This is as opposed to isolation exercises. An example of these two would be a pushup or bench press (compound) as opposed to a bicep curl (isolation). A good way to make a program is using these following types of exercise:

A Lower Body Press. Examples are Squats (you can start from body weight and move to dumbbell then barbell). Leg Press can work too, but some have knee problems with this machine (myself included).

A Lower Body Pull. This means a pulling type of lift that uses your lower body. Specifically your posterior chain (the posterior chain is the backside of your lower body: lower back, glutes, hamstrings, and other smaller muscles). Deadlifts are something many people recommend, but for some people this may not be doable. Google Romanian Deadlift. It's sort of like a Deadlift from the top down, and only going as deep as you can handle with good form.

An Upper Body Horizontal Press. Pushups and Bench Press are the best two exercises for this.

An Upper Body Vertical Press. All the different variations of Overhead Press. There's also Handstand Pushups, but being a big person myself, I get that that's really not an option right now probably.

An Upper Body Horizontal Pull. This means all sorts of Row movements with weights where you're bent over and hitting your middle back.

An Upper Body Vertical Pull. Pullups, Chinups or the Lat Pulldown machine.
If you don't have access to a Lat Pulldown machine, you could try starting with dead hangs from a pull up bar. Once those are easy, try starting from the top of a pullup or chinup, standing on a chair. Slowly lower yourself down to the bottom of the movement, trying to keep controlled and fighting gravity.



This may seem like a lot, but you can break it up into an A and B workout. It would look like this.

Workout A:
Lower Body Push
Lower Body Pull
Upper Body Vertical Push
Upper Body Vertical Pull

Workout B:
Lower Body Push
Lower Body Pull
Upper Body Horizontal Push
Upper Body Horizontal Pull

You would alternate these workouts each day you strength train. You want to start with a weight that you can do with proper form, but isn't too easy. You will increase the resistance as you continue through the weeks. Some people increase weight every day. Some every other day. Just make you're progressing.

For cardio. Find something you enjoy. You don't have to do long bouts of cardio. Intervals work well (I like to do 1 minute of faster walking followed by 2 minutes of slower walking).

I hope this helped. I know it's a lot of information at once.

taso42

Good stuff above ^^^


also below vvv
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819925-the-basics-don-t-complicate-it

itcanbedone13

Thank you for the advice. I will definitely come up with something now that I have enough info to get started.

Thanks and have a great weekend!