jhc7324 Member

I did Insanity last year and I think you're on point about how you're thinking about it. I was able to push myself quite a bit more following the video than I would have been doing a cardio routine on my own, and I lost some fat/firmed up a couple of soft spots on my body and my fitness level was through the roof. Since I…

I had a similar issue with my deads (even with mixed grip and chalk), so I started a grip focused deadlift workout. Normally I deadlift once a week, and deadlift and do a handful of assistance exercises. For a couple of months I was using assistance exercises that really hit the grip, and now I'm back at a point where grip…

I'm constantly seeing what weight other guys have on the bar as a way of measuring my own strength. Almost every time I see someone with 200+ lbs on the bar doing squats though, he's doing a half squat with a 3 inch range of motion. There's very few people who squat to depth. So.. .yeah, get some good resources, learn the…

Yeah, definitely take your time to focus on the form. It'll probably feel like you're at the gym and not really doing anything for the first few sessions, but focus on learning the lifts and you'll start progressing in no time. Also, be glad you've started this at your age. I wish I'd done that. I started lifting at 35,…

If you're interested in lifting look into "stronglifts 5x5" (free on the internet) or Starting Strength ($10 for the ebook version). I'd recommend Starting Strength for the detail involved in how to actually do the lifts in it.

The added grip work is definitely helping out my deads. Just got through week 3 of cycle 4, and I hit 8 reps on my deads (1+). I'm pretty aggressively increasing the weights on the farmer's walks, and that (I think) combined with the snatch grip deads is helping the main lift immensely. While my other lifts are starting to…

Usually on here when someone refers to lifting heavy, they mean compound barbell exercises (squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press, upright row, etc) which I don't believe can be done effectively with a bowflex. As for reps, lifting heavy would mean you want to use a weight heavy enough so that you can't do more than…

But when I squat with a bench behind me, I'm not able to get to parallel (not even close), and neither are most of the people I see doing that.

I've seen this a lot lately too, and to me, it looks like it almost forces you to not go deep enough. Maybe I have short lower legs (I'm 5-10, so around average height), or I go much deeper than most or something, but whenever I sit on a bench I feel like I'm doing a half squat.

I think I might need to give that a look too...

I worked it into my deadlift workout this morning. My workset was @ 240, and I was doing snatch grip with 135 just to get a feel for it. The first set, I was thinking "it doesn't seem too hard to grip this". I was supersetting with hanging leg raises and the farmer's walks though. I got 1 rep on the 4th set at that weight…

I use mixed grip. I'm not even that sure my grip is the issue on deads, but at my work sets, I always seem to feel like I could do more reps if my grip wasn't giving out. I suppose it could easily be that I'm just hitting my maxes there mistaking the overall fatigue for grip failure, but even if that's the case I don't…

Stronglifts definitely won't take you 90 minutes, I think 45 would be doable, and for the first few weeks at lower weights you can probably get away with 30 mins for the full workout.

I start cycle 3 tomorrow morning. On my 1+ days in cycle 2 I was hitting 7-9 reps on all the lifts except OHP. where I think I was at 3, so I have quite a few more cycles before I need to worry about stalling. Grip issues have been my nemesis on deadlifts for quite a while, and I've added a bunch of assistance work to help…

Yeah, that's quite a bit higher than my OHP and I outweigh you by a good 15 lbs. http://www.strstd.com/ Plug your numbers in, that's well into "advanced" level at your weight.

The best thing for me in getting in and out of the gym quickly and efficiently is to have a plan. Find a beginner lifting program (insert requisite references to Starting Strength - my recommendation, Stronglifts 5x5, or New Rules of Lifting for Women). That way, when you go into the gym, you get there knowing you need to…

I guess I'm just not bothered by that... In life I've dealt with a lot of people who use slurs matter of factly in their daily life without trying to be offensive about it, its just the way they speak. Sure, its not the most enlightened way to communicate, but that's what they know. Reading Rip's book, I definitely never…

Rip says a lot of "offensive" things that are clearly meant as jokes, but don't seem to be coming up in here... I don't recall the exact reference (I think it was to bench pressing with an open handed grip) but he recommended against using that grip and followed it up with something like "If you are going to do that,…

I definitely agree with this. For a while I was just going in, doing my Starting Strength routine and just kind of guessing on the weights I should use on the warmup sets. I wasn't very consistent with the warm up weights at all. I recently started (5 weeks ago) a 5-3-1 program which uses a specific % of your one rep max…

If you're a student, don't you have access to the college gym for free? Look up "starting strength," scope out the weight room and teach yourself how to lift.

I'm 35 and have just discovered how much I like lifting heavy in the past 6 months. I've been wishing I wasn't such a lazy punk back in my 20s and had gotten shape then because I know how much stronger and more fit I could be now. So, yep, I'm better in my 30s than in my 20s. Hell, I'm wearing the same pant size I wore…

This for me too. If I fail on the last rep and can't get it all the way to the top, your arms don't fully give out so the bar falls on your head, but you just bring it back to the start position and rack the bar. This has happened many times to me using a SS type progression where I was adding weight every workout. At a…

I'd recommend you start reading. Look around on the web for "Stronglifts 5x5" - the initial document can be had for free Look into a bookstore for "Starting Strength" or "New Rules of Lifting for Women" I'm only a few months into lifting myself, and started with Starting Strength so I'm a bit biased, but the detail given…

Only once for me. In one of the Max Plyo workouts in Insanity. With about 4 moves left before the cooldown I told myself I wasn't going to take any breaks. I pushed through and when it was over I sort of leaned against the wall sucking wind and started laughing without really knowing why I was laughing and the tears…

I've been looking at good mornings recently, as I'm not all that confident in doing them. In Starting Strength, Rippetoe points out that the weight used should be no more than 35% of your max squat, and that it isn't worth doing good mornings at all unless that weight is at least 95 lbs (so if your max squat is below 270…

no, they said that muscle weights 4x fat. It seems pretty silly to assume they meant that 1 lb of muscle weights 4x as much as 1 lb of fat. By that thinking MFP might as well throw out the weight tickers for everyone's profile because we all weigh the same (one lb of the OP weighs the same as 1 LB of dbmata).

Week 5 is a "recovery week". That workout is a pretty light workout that focuses on stretching. Basically, after a month of super hard workouts, you get a week long break to get ready for a month of even harder workouts.

I'm a guy and I definitely notice and pay some attention to what other people are doing in the gym. Usually in the free weight area, there's less people as its a smaller area. In between my sets I tend to see what other people are doing and pretty quickly mentally classify them as someone who knows what they're doing or…

I've been in a similar boat since October. I got to my goal weight, then really cranked up my exercise. I did Insanity first, and while I had positive results from that, I think I've had much better results on a heavy lifting program (Starting Strength, but I've moved onto 5/3/1 in the past week). I'm definitely nowhere…

1. you joined the site 3 weeks ago... give it some time. 2. when I eat an extra salty meal I'll be up a couple of pounds for a few days, give it some time and realize the weight isn't fat. 3. how accurate is your scale? mine only measures to the nearest half pound and if I step off and back on it, i'll occasionally have 1…