I need some exercise guidance

Xellercin wrote: »

The good news is that you don't need to pay anything and you don't even need to lift a single weight to get in shape. You can if you want to, but you absolutely do not need to.

When you have excess weight, you are CONSTANTLY doing weight bearing exercise as long as you are moving. In fact, if you're obese, you're lifting a lot more weight than most people in the gym. All you have to do is move your body as much as you comfortably can.

Seriously, taking a nice long walk if you have excess weight and weak muscles is a significant weight bearing activity that's likely to have more impact on your overall strength and fitness than a 40 minute intense weightlifting workout in the gym.

Now, if you LIKE the gym and really enjoy lifting weights, then do that. Do whatever it is that you enjoy the most and will stick with for hours a week without giving up on it because you've had a tiring day.

Better yet, have a BUNCH of different activities for every energy level and mood you can encounter. Have weight lifting for days you feel motivated to push hard, have a long gentle walk for days you feel stressed and tired, have a pilates video for when you want to lie down for exercise or feel too lazy to leave the house, have an exercise that you can mindlessly do in front of the TV like a smart hula hoop, an exercise that you can do with a friend, a scheduled class that keeps you on a schedule if that would help you, etc, etc.

My husband and I exercise A LOT, not because we have a strict routine, but because we have so many exercise options that there's never a day where we have a reason not to exercise. If I REALLY feel like crap, which happens often because I'm sick and disabled, then I just do my physio exercises, which are very gentle and always make my body feel better. They don't make me ripped, but they're still exercise, I'm still moving my body for an hour that day instead of sitting on my *kitten* for another hour. No matter what, we do *something*, and it's easy, because we're never doing exercise that we don't feel like doing.

If you are out of shape, what you need is to move and to move often. Don't fixate on a prescriptive, specific routine, because that won't always work with your real day to day life, if it did, you probably would have done it by now, and that's why most people do exercise in fits and bursts, and then spend the majority of their time being sedentary.

Identify what normally holds you back from exercise and find creative solutions around it. It doesn't have tp feel hard to be exercise, you just have to keep moving.

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Geekyfatgirl wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

There are a ton of good off the shelf programs out there...none of them are perfect as they have to be catered to the masses rather than individualized like you would get with a trainer, but there are a lot of good programs out there to choose from.

Reps, sets, different splits, etc are all going to be variable depending on what your purpose is. A powerlifter for example is going to have a completely different kind of program than a bodybuilder who is going to have a completely different kind of programming than someone just looking to be fit and obtain a fitness type of physique.

I lift primarily for fitness and my health as I age to preserve muscle mass and bone density, but also for reasonably good aesthetics. I am partial to full body splits that focus largely on compound movements with little in the way of isolation movements. I don't like spending a ton of time in the gym or being there daily as also have other fitness interests. My program looks like this and usually take me around 45 minutes:

Workout A:
Squat - 4 sets x 5-8 reps
Flat Bench - 4 sets x 5-8 reps
Lat pulldown - 4 sets x 10-12 reps
Romanian Deadlift - 4 sets x 10-12 reps
Dumbbell Shoulder Press - 3 sets x 8-10 reps
Face Pull - 3 sets x 10-15 reps

Workout B:
Deadlift - 3 sets x 5-8 reps
Incline Bench - 4 sets x 10-12 reps
Cable Rows - 4 sets 10-12 reps
Hack Squat - 4 sets 10-12 reps
Lateral Raise - 3 sets 10-15 reps
Face Pull - 3 sets x 10-15 reps

I do this 3x per week on non-consecutive days in an A, B, A then B, A, B and so on fashion week to week. I also like this because if I have a busy week and can only make it twice that week, it doesn't really set me back too much. When I am able to do the full number of sets at the highest number of reps I increase the weight which brings me back down to the lower rep range for a particular movement until I work back up to the top again and add more weight, rinse and repeat. This keeps me lifting in different rep ranges and from living in one particular rep range for any movement as I have no reason to specialize.

Typically, lower rep ranges (5-6 reps) triggers more CNS adaptation and strength gains. Middle reps (8-10) are a good combination of strength and hypertrophy. Higher reps (12+) are good for muscular endurance. In regards to general fitness I think they are all important and it is beneficial for the general population to lift in various rep ranges.

This is really helpful! Switching them up from week to week sounds like it’ll help stave off your body getting complacent. My main goal is to yes lose weight, but also to have more lean muscle, which in the end, is going to help raise my metabolism. I’d like to be leaner, and not bulk, so I understand there’s a different way to train for that, but I still need to gain the muscle regardless! I may sound a bit uninformed, but what is CNS adaptation? I’m imagining that’s more for building strength and muscle correct? Or am I completely wrong?

The information here is really insightful! Thank you!

CNS is Central Nervous System. Lower reps with higher weight as a % of your maximum on a particular lift triggers CNS adaptation which is, essentially your nervous system adapting to load and becoming more efficient in recruiting existing muscle fibers to move more weight without necessarily putting on more mass.

You don't really need to worry about "bulking"...it is a very deliberate act both in training protocol and diet (surplus calories which provide for muscle growth, but also fat)...nobody does it accidentally and people who do this go through cycles of bulking and then cutting to cut the fat they inevitably put on.

The program I run, while having elements of both strength and hypertrophy in regards to rep ranges, is neither a strength or hypertrophy (bulking) specific program. A true hypertrophy program would have more movements and volume per muscle group to include more isolation movements, which you can see I have very little of...I don't even really do any specific isolation movements specifically for my arms because they get work elsewhere. My routine is more general fitness...I've run similar over the years, and when I'm leaned out to where I want to be (which I am currently not) it just leaves me with a well proportioned physique that looks strong and fit, but not that of a power lifter or bodybuilder...more "sporty" or athletic.

For the general masses, resistance training is important namely for preservation of muscle mass and bone density (particularly for women) as we lose both as we age if we aren't putting in the work. A really nice bonus is changes in body composition and aesthetics. While it is true that more muscle burns more calories at rest, this is often overstated. For the average person, this is going to be a relatively marginal number of calories...because the average person isn't putting on slabs of muscle like a bodybuilder or powerlifter. The true and measurable health benefits of resistance training are as I stated above. In regards to burning more calories at rest, I would look at it more like "I will continue to burn more calories at rest than my peers as I age because at minimum I'm preserving the muscle mass I have"...outside of just moving less, one of the biggest factors in metabolism slowing as we age is the loss of muscle mass. So really, it's more about maintaining your resting metabolism as well as your capabilities and physique as you age than it is "I'm going to supersize my metabolism by putting on more muscle"...that would take a considerable amount of muscle...as in bulking...a lot.