Yay! New trainer!
caribougal
Posts: 865 Member
I bit the bullet and hired a personal trainer at the gym.
I had talked to her ahead of time and told her I wanted to try the StrongLifts 5x5 workout. She had never heard of it, and her website had a lot of "traditional" weight lifting advice, as well as nutrition calculators clearly geared to the low cal/low fat/high carb crowd. So I was nervous that she would try to talk me out of it.
The 5x5 program is pretty simple but serious stuff. Lift the heaviest weights you can for 5 reps, for 5 sets, with three different moves. Do a slightly modified routine for next time, and then alternate between the two. Each of the moves is a full body move so lots of different muscles engaged together.
Well, my trainer had really done her homework. She had researched the 5x5 program, done the workout herself, and then tried it with some other clients over the weekend. She REALLY liked it, and was totally bought into the idea of lifting to max exertion so that you end up breaking down your muscles, which stimulates them to repair/rebuild/grow. She said she had been a hard-core runner, and always did extreme cardio, and for 15 years coached people with the idea that more cardio = better fitness. She said she was really thin, at times too thin, much less muscle mass, and she felt tired and hungry all the time. In the past few years she slowed down her cardio and moved to weight training, and was amazed at how much better she felt. She put on muscle and started eating clean 2 years ago, and feels better. To me, she looks like one of those women that is one tiny little muscle... no fat to be seen anywhere, muscles rippling when she's standing still, but still very petite. I can't imagine what she looked like thinner.
She's going to email me the exact things we did, but it was HARD. Here's what I remember:
-Squats: 5x5 using the hex bar. I started with 10 lbs on each side. Then we added another 10 for the next set and I couldn't even get it off the ground, so we backed to another 5 on each side. I feel like I could have done better, but had a hard time keeping my grip on the bar. Time to go buy some weight training gloves.
- Bench press 5x5. I just used the bar itself, which I think is 45lbs, with no added weights. I'm such a weakling.
- Barbell rows, 5x5. This is really hard to keep good form and not kill the back. I'm glad she was there. I forget what my weights were, but we increased after the first set, and that really made it harder to do and maintain form.
- Pushups to exertion, 3 sets. This was her addition. It didn't take me long to hit exertion... I think I did maybe 9-10 on the first set, and then less on other two sets. My arms were shaking, and she was forcing me to do them with good form which is a lot harder than when I do them myself.
- reverse ab crunches, 3 sets for 30 secs. Another one of her additions. I really liked these, and could totally feel them in my lower ab. She says these are what creates that "V".
And, the discussion of nutrition was funny. It was more like me educating her on Paleo. I was a little worried that she would be anti-Paleo, but it was the exact opposite. She was really curious. She eats pretty close to Primal already without knowing it. She was funny... she says, "Can you have cheese, because I really don't want to eliminate that." Ha ha. Me too. At least not now.
I'm looking forward to Wednesday morning. But... I know there will be dead lifts. I'm kind of terrified.
I had talked to her ahead of time and told her I wanted to try the StrongLifts 5x5 workout. She had never heard of it, and her website had a lot of "traditional" weight lifting advice, as well as nutrition calculators clearly geared to the low cal/low fat/high carb crowd. So I was nervous that she would try to talk me out of it.
The 5x5 program is pretty simple but serious stuff. Lift the heaviest weights you can for 5 reps, for 5 sets, with three different moves. Do a slightly modified routine for next time, and then alternate between the two. Each of the moves is a full body move so lots of different muscles engaged together.
Well, my trainer had really done her homework. She had researched the 5x5 program, done the workout herself, and then tried it with some other clients over the weekend. She REALLY liked it, and was totally bought into the idea of lifting to max exertion so that you end up breaking down your muscles, which stimulates them to repair/rebuild/grow. She said she had been a hard-core runner, and always did extreme cardio, and for 15 years coached people with the idea that more cardio = better fitness. She said she was really thin, at times too thin, much less muscle mass, and she felt tired and hungry all the time. In the past few years she slowed down her cardio and moved to weight training, and was amazed at how much better she felt. She put on muscle and started eating clean 2 years ago, and feels better. To me, she looks like one of those women that is one tiny little muscle... no fat to be seen anywhere, muscles rippling when she's standing still, but still very petite. I can't imagine what she looked like thinner.
She's going to email me the exact things we did, but it was HARD. Here's what I remember:
-Squats: 5x5 using the hex bar. I started with 10 lbs on each side. Then we added another 10 for the next set and I couldn't even get it off the ground, so we backed to another 5 on each side. I feel like I could have done better, but had a hard time keeping my grip on the bar. Time to go buy some weight training gloves.
- Bench press 5x5. I just used the bar itself, which I think is 45lbs, with no added weights. I'm such a weakling.
- Barbell rows, 5x5. This is really hard to keep good form and not kill the back. I'm glad she was there. I forget what my weights were, but we increased after the first set, and that really made it harder to do and maintain form.
- Pushups to exertion, 3 sets. This was her addition. It didn't take me long to hit exertion... I think I did maybe 9-10 on the first set, and then less on other two sets. My arms were shaking, and she was forcing me to do them with good form which is a lot harder than when I do them myself.
- reverse ab crunches, 3 sets for 30 secs. Another one of her additions. I really liked these, and could totally feel them in my lower ab. She says these are what creates that "V".
And, the discussion of nutrition was funny. It was more like me educating her on Paleo. I was a little worried that she would be anti-Paleo, but it was the exact opposite. She was really curious. She eats pretty close to Primal already without knowing it. She was funny... she says, "Can you have cheese, because I really don't want to eliminate that." Ha ha. Me too. At least not now.
I'm looking forward to Wednesday morning. But... I know there will be dead lifts. I'm kind of terrified.
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Replies
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You are doing the Strong Lifts 5x5 by the sound of it. You can search the net and see the schedules. It's a good starting program, very efficient.0
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Is this for both men and women or are there specific circuits per each?0
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It's unisex, and it is not curcuits. You do 5 sets of 5 for each of the 5 major lifts divided into 2 workouts.
Workout A is SQT, BP and BBR
Workout B is SQT, OHP and DL (DL is only one set after warm up)
Support vary, but iirc it was plank and RC on WA days and pull ups/chin-ups on the WB days.
You add weight every session till you exhaust linear progression (i.e. fail for 3 attempts at the new weight & deload/reload 3 or 4 times). Then you switch to Intermediate programming.
I would recommend reading Starting Strength by Ripletoe before doing it on your own.
A lot of women will have troubles starting upper body portion with an Olympic bar (45 lbs), particularly OHP. Women will likely need to microload at some point (i.e. carry ankle weights and go by 2.5 lbs up, not by 5 lbs like men). Women will likely tsall far faster than men on the UBody and will not see the strength level gain the men would (in other words, 1.5 body weight squat might not be doable). Other than that, nope, not much difference.
By the way, I wouldn't be terrified of the Deadlift, most women do swimmingly with DL'ing. We have lower body to pull huge loads. It's the OHP that is a frigging nightmare, cause our triceps & delts are not exactly our best muscles.0 -
You are doing the Strong Lifts 5x5 by the sound of it. You can search the net and see the schedules. It's a good starting program, very efficient.
Yup, SL 5x5. I considered doing NROLFW, but this seemed better.0 -
That's great that she took time to research the program and even try it out.0
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I think you'll like StrongLifts. I do SL on Tues., Thurs., and Sat. & I run on the alternate days (I started at 30 minutes at 4.5 mph. max. and increase run times by 5 min. per week). I had gotten up to 120 lbs. squats and had intense pain in my left shoulder. I stopped squats for a few weeks and did other exercises and then restarted SL and am now up to 135 lb. squats without problems. For some reason a lot of people avoid the free weights in the gym and will only do cardio or machine exercises causing them to loose out on a great way to get fit.0
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Awesome on both accounts.
Send her a bill.
Yes you will like 5x5, but it takes solid consistency. I really like their iphone/ipad app for recording, makes it even simpler.0 -
I have the iphone app, but didn't use it today. I went in later to enter what I did, and was totally confused by its apparent simplicity. Plus, I think I'm below the minimum weights to start. For my squats, I had 15 lbs on each side of the bar, and the app seems to start at 45 and not let me edit down.
Oh well.0
