NROL Books

newmari12

So I splurged a little a few weeks ago on Amazon and purchased the NROL (men's version), NROL Abs, and NROL for Life books. Yes, I've become slightly obsessed with reading these! I've only managed to get through the NROL (men's) and the NROL Abs books and I highly recommend them to anyone doing the NROLFW or thinking about doing the program. There was a lot more detailed information on each of the excersises and I found both to be filled with information I wish I had known before starting the NROLFW.

I've read on the NROL website forums about women doing the men's program (the 'skinny' guy program) and I'm wondering if there is anyone out there who every did the program because I tried the break-in yesterday and it kicked my butt way more than anyone of the NROLFW workouts ever did. Anyone?

Anyways, I thought I would just share with everyone how helpful these other books have been for me, especially as a newbie to lifting heavy

karensoxfan

I've thought about reading all of them, but I want to work my way through NROLFW first. What kind of things do you wish you'd known before starting NROLFW?

mstawnya

I read the Abs book before NROLFW and thought it was interesting how he said not to focus on any specific ab exercises even though he recommended them in the past. I'd like to read/try the men's version some day, but I've got to finish this one first. Tell us more about the break-in session. What did you have to do?

newmari12

@ Karen - Way better descriptions of the moves, specific workouts within the programs focused on fat loss and strength, better warm-up strategy. After I read NROL I found myself better understanding the concepts that I had read in NROLFW -- its like a light bulb went off.

As for the break-in - its consists of doing two workouts (the number of times you do these two workouts in a week and for how long depend on the program you pick).

Yesterday I did Break-In Workout A and when I first looked at it looked really easy -- almost too easy. It went something like this:

Warm-up:
1) General Warm-up (5-10 minutes of whatever you want - biking, running, rowing etc.)
2) Semi-specific warm-up (I believe it was 5-6 different warmup including t-pushups, walking lunges with twists, inchworms, stability ball twists and one or two more I can't think of right now)
3) Specific Warm-up - Lou says that for every 50lbs of weight you are going to lift you do one warm-up set with half the reps for the first move (in workout A its the squat)

The actual workout consisted of:

Squats (2 sets/ 15 reps/ 60 second rest)
Alternating Set - Push-ups (2 sets/ 15 reps/ 60 second rest) and Swiss Ball Crunch (2 sets/ 20 reps/ 60 second rest)
Alternating Set - Static Lunge with Barbell (2 sets/ 15 reps/ 60 sec rest) and Two-point Dumbell Row with Elbow Out (2 sets/ 15 reps/ 60 sec rest)

Metabolic Conditioning: Essentially you pick whether you want to row, bike, run etc. and you go at a moderate pace for 2 minutes and then 1 minute as hard and as fast as you can. You do this for 19 minutes and as the weeks progress you up the number of times you do it.

I came out of the gym feeling like a complete fool for thinking this workout looked too easy. This morning I woke up and my legs felt like jello in a good way.

newmari12

lol.. like a light bulb went on not off lol... oh dear :P