I discovered recently that I really enjoy biking. I hadn't gotten on bike in something like 14 years, and I was nervous I wouldn't be able to do it, but then I discovered riding a bicycle is like riding a bicycle. You can go to pretty places and forget that you're supposed to be exercising (ride in Central Park while leaves were changing late afternoon=teh beautiful), and at least for me, the motivation to work on hills seems to come easier than, say, the motivation to just walk faster. I'm not sure why that is.
How long does the stairmaster exercise take? Is it preferable to spending the same amount of time walking outside? (I don't know what your weather is like there in Singapore but if it is nice, I would rather walk outside than inside.) I am not really a good one to listen to for advice about weight loss though.
I used to hear stuff about how exercise form X is better than exercise form Y, but I think that the differences are marginal and only important for highly competitive athletes with very specific goals. My guess is that the more calories you burn by any method, the better.
Your brother is an otherwise wonderful person, I'm sure, but diet and exercise / body builder / gym rat types can be the biggest bullshitters in the world. There's so much scuttlebutt in that community.
I tried the stair-climbing method (about 30 flights a day), combined with some gym and a semi-vegetarian diet (no big hunks of meat, just meat soups) and it worked. As I control, I quit going to the gym, quit climbing the stairs, and started eating hunks of meat, and voila! the weight came back on. Pretty ironclad proof there, no?
Maybe I should get Graham to comment in this thread. He reads a lot about health and nutrition (this is different from actually being healthy and nutritious. I'm not sure how nutritious he'd be, if I were to renounce veganism and try him out). Anyway, he says there is a target heart rate you can calculate online, which is lower than your maximum heart rate, and this is the best for weight loss (as opposed to cardiovascular fitness).
Also, speaking of exercise 'n' outdoor stuff, if any Unfoggeder is interested in coming out sledding later if it lightens up, lemme know. We have two sleds for two people (just plastic dish sleds, not cool sleds with runners) and could comfortably share with more people, I think.
If you have access to the proper facilities, I'd receommend adding in regular weight training. Not necessarily anything excessive, but like three days a week, for at least 30 minutes, but not more than 60.
With regard to diet, more frequent, smaller meals work better than a couple large ones. Don't starve your body for protein. The trick to starve it for fuel and make it draw on your fat stores. Cut your protein too far back and you'll lose muscle mass, and will burn less calories.
An easy way to supplement your protein is whey powder. The chocolate ones aren't too bad. A scoop of chocolate whey shaken/blended into 10 ounces of milk tastes pretty much like a glass of chocolate milk, but is under 300 calories and around 30 grams of protein.
You might also want to take a vitamin supplement, But not that megadose nonsense. The cheap easy way to do this is childrens chewables, I kid you not. One to two of those a day is fine. The one mineral you might consider specifically supplementing is calcium, as there's generally not a ton of it in a multivitamin.
Another good trick is to watch what your sources of carbs are. Avoid processed sugar and flour. Avoid eating a lot of bread, pasta, cold cereal, etc. Try and have your main carb sources be unrefined carbs like fruits, vegetables, brown rice, etc.
Your brother is an otherwise wonderful person, I'm sure, but diet and exercise / body builder / gym rat types can be the biggest bullshitters in the world. There's so much scuttlebutt in that community.
God, don't get me started on bodybuilding mags. There's some truly bad advice in those things.
ok, yeah, husband x is going to teach me how to use the free weights at our gym this week. should be cool. but what do you guys think, is there a point of climbing the stairs beyond which i should definitely switch to something else? i used to run in the states, but I would be kinda scared to ride a bike on the singapore streets, in addition to which it's really, really, really fucking hot outside. the airconditioned gym? ok. the breezy stairway? ok. running at 7 am? ok, but I fucking hate to get up early. otherwise, the outdoor cardio shit? not so much.
I think that one of the important things about exercise is that it be something you like to do. You'll do more of it.
Also -- something that you can fit into your schedule. A major factor for lots of people.
Except for duty-obsessed masochists and obsessives who do more of things when they don't like them. In that case, you should do whichever exercise you like least, because that will be morally improving.
I don't know exactly how easy it is for you to work out, but it sounds like you have a gym in your building in addition to the pool.
How long does it take you to climb all those stairs? There is a sort of diminishing returns effect, as after a while your body will get more efficient at stair climbing, but it's easy to tell when that happens because it gets easier. In any case, a good rule of them is once it starts getting easy, you need to do something to increase the intensity or difficulty of your workout. When 40 flights is easy, then either add more flights, or jog up them, or something. I would also recommend taking the stairs down, as you use different muscle groups to 'catch' yourself going down than you do to 'pull' yourself going up. If it's starting to get so easy that you have to spend more time on it than you want to feel like you had a workout, do something else. (Like swimming.)
Free weight are good. Burns calories, develops muscle, makes you look toned.
I've heard it claimed that heavy Stairmaster use over a period of years puts unhealthy stress on your knees, and surely actual stair-intensive training would have the same effect. Just something else to worry about.
1) They kept me interested. AFAIK, there is essentially one kind of curl you do with a barbell, but dozens with dumbbells. How do you do a hammer (palms facing hips) curl with a barbell? Or a hammer fly? Playing with all the varieties was fun.
Versatile. Use them with crunches, bends, sit-ups.
2) Less likely to injure yourself. Add a plate to either end of a barbell and you're up twenty pounds. Dumbbell, up ten. From what I have seen most of the serious injuries, some of which can be permanent, happen with barbbells.
3) Full body workout, balance and agility. Perfect form can be tougher with dumbbells, but less dangerous if you are off. Right hand curl, I could feel my left hip and legs working to maintain straightness and balance.
4) Cheaper. I have two pair with a whole stack of plates. I can pyramid (5-10-15) easily. With a cheap adjustable bench, my entire exercise setup was under 100 dollars. Potentially, I could put 60 lbs on a dumbbell.
5) Finally, and you will get a lot of disagreement on this, I use lighter weights. If the first set felt like exercise and the third set felt like work, it was good enough. After six months, I was plenty strong and big enough. "Work to failure" looked scarey and impatient. The book (Stephanie Kerony & Anthony Rankin:Workouts with weights Sterling Publishing) I use, for non-athletes men and women, has no pictures with weights over 25 lbs. Most use 7 1/2 (2 x 2 1/2 + bar). But also 20-30 different exercises a day, 20-30 reps each.
The point of excercising for a lengthy period (I've read at least 40min) is that it takes that to really get your metabolism burning fat. The idea is that up till that point you're just burning what's in your stomach and whatnot. And once you've excercised enough to burn stored fat, your metabolism will stay high for a while. But I don't think I'd do stairs for 40min b/c I'd worry about my knees.
I second bob's weight-lifting recommendations. Lower weights & slow reps is almost always better, because you will maintain better form. And good form is about 90% of good lifting.
I favor a bar for bicep curls, because I find it's easier to stabilize (otherwise I tend to pivot slightly.) Free weights are much better than machines because the rest of your body has to work subtly to stabilize your movements.
Weight training is good for losing weight. When you build up muscle mass, it raises your resting metabolic rate (the amount of energy you burn just sitting there), so you get a benefit even when you're not actually exercising.
Would our esteemed bloghosts consider adopting ogged's practice of making signed edits? Especially in place of deleting comments altogether–"[deleted by xxx]" has the added advantage of leaving the comment numbers unchanged.
On stairclimbing: I'm no one's idea of a coach, but I used to do stairs for rowing, and you should be walking down the stairs -- hard exercise, going straight to standing still for a couple of minutes (i.e., in the elevator) isn't good for you. There isn't a point of diminishing returns, as long as you're getting enough rest (skip at least one day a week, take longer breaks every couple of weeks, mix up longer and shorter workouts). You should be doing as much as you can, right up to the amount of time you're willing to devote to working out - if you want to put in a half-hour a day, than do as many flights as you can in a half-hour a day. If that starts getting easy, there's always running up the stairs -- run a couple of flights, drop back to walking, run more if you feel like it -- and you can mix it up by taking the stairs two at a time, which is great for building explosive power in your quads. (This is all do as I say, not as I do -- I lift weights some now, but I'm not in terribly good shape.) Really, for cardio workouts, whatever you like doing that gets your heartrate up is just as good for you.
Free weights are also excellent -- I like this website for advice. It's aimed at women, and is nicely aggressive. IME, weights won't make you lose weight, but they will move everything around so it's arranged more nicely, and it is so much more convenient being strong.
28- weights won't make you lose weight? That's a bit deceptive. Eeating fewer calories than you burn will make you lose weight, period. Lifting weights burns calories, and adding muscle raises your resting metabolic rate, so you also burn more calories just sitting around. In other words, lifting weights is great for losing weight.
I suspect what you meant was that lifting weights often doesn't lead to actual weight-loss because people often don't eat fewer calories than they burn, and also because you are adding muscle at the same time you are losing fat (and muscle weighs more than fat). So if your sole measure of progress is what the scale says you may feel like you aren't making progress.
But using the scale to measure progress is stupid. Nobody cares how much you weigh, and you shouldn't either. It's not about your weight, it's about how you look when you are naked. And weight-training will help there (as LB noted).
What I would say has pretty much already been mentioned, save one thing about increasing the number of flights you do: overuse injuries are a nuisance, especially as you start to see results. If you're not already doing about 5-10 minutes of stretching beforehand, start doing so (especially quad, hamstring, and ankle/calf stretches), and when you increase the number of flights you're walking, only do so by about 10% to let your body adjust to increased strain.
Also, climbing stairs is great, but doing anything exclusively or excessively is not great. What you are doing is certainly beneficial, but mixing it up with free weights (and extended sessions of energetic sex) are also good suggestions. Stumpuous.com is a great website with loads of very good info/advice -- though it's suprisingly difficult to navigate (meaning only that there is MUCH more there than you would ever find just clicking and browsing around). Of course, her advice is very good but also pretty intense -- her workouts aren't for teh lazy.
Do you think sledding will work? The snow is so light and fluffy, I think a sled (even one of those saucer things) will just sink into the snow and sit there. I told the kids sledding was for tomorrow, after the snow had time to seize up a little.
Nobody mentions running. I love it. 40 mins every second day as fast as I can except for 2 months in winter, when my exercise regimen falls apart.
Our ancestors spent a lot of time running away from big animals and running after small ones, and I think that's the exercise our bodies were built for. Whatever else you do, you should also run.
Well, the sledding's great in Riverside Park, and my virgin sled went well; we found a nice steep hill where some other people had already packed the snow, but it wasn't too crowded, and I didn't bump into any trees, but alas, my brilliant sledding career has been cut short by a fall I took ice skating last week. Why does ice skating turn people into such sociopathic banshees? That's what I want to know. I am a totally incompetent skater, yet I never bump into people, so it can't be that hard to avoid. But every time I go skating in New York, some asshole knocks into me and I fall down. Last week I hurt my lower back/upper butt, and as soon as I sledded down the hill it seized up again. I feel like an old woman.
I end up using the machines at the gym because they feature illustrations that correspond roughly with my body. If free weights could tell me how they should be used in order to, say, work the back (and it's in your best interest to develop your back, btw), I'd use them. Is it simpler than I'm making it out to be, is there a book I can buy?
There are approximately a million books you can buy, or you could hire a trainer for a couple of sessions to show you the ropes. (This is my big extravagance, a trainer once a week. It's amazing how much more I'll lift if someone is telling me to. I lift on my own the other days, but it's not nearly as good a workout.)
My understanding of the manly way of learning to use free weights is to lurk in the free weight part of the gym, watching other people lift, and imitating them -- probably combining a dose of that with a good book (you're looking for something about the size of the phone book in a medium sized city, with lots of pictures) is the way to go.
Around here we call that either a jinx or a pwn. You owe LB a Coke.
The thing about those books is that the only one I'm remotely tempted to look at is the one on billiards. Not that I'm holding out for Weightlifting for Art Critics, but most of these books reek of dried blood and motor oil and the lamentations of women—and I suspect they would not be good advice for someone with my body type/goals.
Maybe I'm going at it the wrong way and should be reading the Schwarzenegger text, but this one looks sufficiently academic to suit my aesthetics.
Here is the one I mentioned above. Nice reviews. Lots of pictures of a couple who are not muscular or developed but slim and healthy. It is all the book I have needed for years. For back, I don't know if you can search inside textm but good morning.
I also pick up an occasional mag while at the grocery store, but frankly feel pretty weird. The glistening tanned bodybuilders...I say no more
"Good Morning" 2 pictures start, middle:lady has 5 or7 lb dumbbells on shoulders
"This exercise, while valuable for strengthening the lower back, can put stress...start with very light dumbbells or no weights at all...."
Starting Postion:Stand, knees straight but not locked, feet about shoulder width apart,pelvis tucked. Rest dumbbells on top of your shoulders...
keep chin up.
Movement
1. Inhale as you bend over from waist until your torso is parallel to floor. Keep your back as straight as possible and your hips and ankles stay aligned.
2 Exhale as you slowly return to starting position. Do not lean over backwards
Maybe I'm going at it the wrong way and should be reading the Schwarzenegger text,
Well, kinda, yeah. My stunningly gorgeous and ferociously strong high school buddy (mentioned occasionally in these pages as Scrabble Girl) swears by an older edition of the Schwartzenegger book. You want to do the same exercises Ahnuld is doing, you just stop before you turn into a leathery freak (and this shouldn't be difficult). I understand finding bodybuilders unappealing, but if you're going to lift weights, those are the people who know how.
You shift it a little bit forward and don't let your butt go backwards. I think it helps to engage your locks--one in your perineum (i.e. do a kegel), and the other in your lower abs, like where your tummy starts to be your genitals. I think that's right.
56: decent question. Looked in index and glossary, finally stood up and practiced. I could tuck but like tightening stomach muscles can't quite say how. "Pelvis tucked" in this case means "bend from the waist not hips and don't lean forward". Looked it up in a couple other references.
The "good morning" also works abdominals, which means stomach tucked or muscles consciously tightened. Other back exercises include dead lift, straight leg dead lift, bend-over row, one-arm reverse fly, upright row, and shrug.
I'll take a look at S's book, but insofar as there's an expert book out there on developing tone not mass, that would be the better pick for me (I think). Nevertheless, all this talk about strenuous exercise is draining.
Another way to think of tucking your pelvis is that you straighten out the natural curve in your lower back. If you were lying on your back, your lower back would be a little off the floor -- the motion that would bring it down onto the floor is tucking your pelvis.
You oughta get some good steroids too. The little green ones are best. Take two or three every once in awhile. There might be some side effects -- but no pain no gain. You don't need to worry about testicular cancer so you probably can take a larger dose than a guy could.
My firm understanding, from a fair amount of reading, is that this is a myth. If you want to be stronger, you want to increase muscle mass. There is no such thing as 'toning'.
Now, obviously, you only want to increase muscle mass so much, or you'll become unsightly, but this isn't a real problem. If you're lifting so much that your muscles have gotten unattractively big (we should all have such problems), then slack off and jog or something instead -- they'll go away again.
If by higher reps you mean more than 15 or 20 per set, I believe the term is 'pointless and boring'. If what he's looking for is visible muscle definition without a lot of bulk, what he wants is to do some medium weight / medium rep lifting, and either lose some weight (diet, cardio) or put on some muscle mass and maintain his weight -- that is, lower his body fat.
Eh. I was also told that higher reps at lower weights increase strength disproportionately to the mass added. The analogy I was given was to building stamina.
This page says there's a male kegel, although I don't know enough about what it feels like when a man pees to know if that's the same thing as the perineum lock. Just visualize the space between your balls and your butthole and squeeze, okay. It will help tuck your pelvis.
As I understand it, and as Ben suggests, there are ways to promote muscle strength ("tone") without encouraging growth. When I first started having epileptic seizures in college, I started taking a weightlifting elective as a sort of poor man's physical therapy. If it were a better course I'd know the answer to my questions, but we used machines exclusively and went by a schedule of varying reps/weights. This schedule could be tweaked according to user needs. Again, it was a bad class, but I think it's accurate to say that you can develop muscle efficiency.
Would it be in poor taste to make a joke about fast-twitch fiber in response to Armsmasher's epilepsy comment? Would I be letting myself in for smashed arms?
I'm pontificating harder than I really have the knowledge to back up, but while you can develop muscle efficiency, I'm pretty sure that you can't develop it much. You can work on muscle stamina; if your goal is to be able to repeat a fairly easy lift thousands of times, then you're going to have to get there by doing high reps/low weight. If you want to get stronger, though, I'm sure (I'm willing to eat my words if demonstrated to be wrong, but I'm sure) you have to add mass.
If you don't have side effects, double the steroid dose.
I'd like to see a study of competititve weight lifters. They need to increase strength without increasing mass too -- much -- they find their best competitive weight and stay at it. I know that their methods for "making weight" before competitions are brutal, but they're the same for everyone.
So how does one 159 1/2 lb. guy get stronger than another 159 1/2 lb guy without going over weight?
One legendary Turko-Bulgarian lifter (Naim Süleymanoğlu) seems to have done it by not having any pain sensors. He trained so hard that he crushed a vertebra. He now competes with a steel vertabra, which seems like it should be illegal.
URBAN LEGEND ALERT: Can't find the vertabra story.
I think the confusion is in what we understand by tone. Smasher can get stronger without adding much mass if he's woefully out of shape - fat will be replaced by muscle. He can also get toned by either increasing his strength or his endurance. So no one seems to be contradicting another.
If you want a web reference for exercises with free weights, including animations of people doing them, http://exrx.net/ is awesome. Also has a workout planner that's pretty cool.
Yeah. I, at least, am confused by Smasher's goals -- increase in strength; increase in fitness for some particular athletic endeavor; some esthetic change, but if so, what; some health benefit?
Actually, when I started lifting weights stamina was my goal. The rapid and sometimes intense muscle contraction of clonic-tonic seizures can leave you feeling sore. So I'm not a total n00b, but after college I fell off the map. Now I'm trying to get back to the gym, but I only ever learned how to use the prissy machines. Fortunately, I balance my workout with a diet of small children.
Does your gym have a decent rowing machine? (Decent meaning Concept II. There are no other acceptable manufacturers.) That'll give you a cardio workout which works your back, quads, and arms -- it sounds like more what you're looking for than a high-rep/light-weight lifting routine, which I will continue to be insufferably snide about.
I could use something for my back. I've always ignored the rowing machines, but one of them resembles the Concept II. Another one actually makes a swishing noise—it involves water in some way.
Bodybuilding- a problem with bodybuilding is that the focus is on hypertrophy rather than athletic performance. Strength and hypertrophy are not the same thing. There is some relationship between muscle size and strength, but if you look at powerlifters, they never look as big as the body builders, but are much stronger and faster.
Mass - overly massive, or "too bulky" is damn near impossible for most people, especially women, they just don't have the testosterone, guys often seem to think that with basic weightlifting they're going to just effortlessly pack on the mass, sure you are buddy
Efficiency - your body does indeed better better at doing exercises, and quite a bit of this is due to your body learning to fire all the proper muscles in the right sequence, etc., a lot of strength training is training your body to perform the task, kind of like you're training the nervous system
Type specific - if you want a certain results, your training must mimic the desired results, moving smaller weights explosively to help develop an explosive muscle response, using extremely heaving weights to develop maximal strength, etc.
Powerlifters have learned a lot about cycling your workouts, avoiding injury, recovery, etc. There's a lot of info in the articles at Westside Barbell to get ideas on different exercises, cycling your workouts, etc. You don't necessarily need to absolutely mimic their workouts, but the general concepts are good. For instance they work up to a max single to develop strength, but as this can be risky you might try working up to a 3 or 5 rep max. It's also unlikely you'll be ordering chains and all that. But things like what exercises on different days are good to know. They for example train certain movements along with the accessory muscles on the same day. On a "bench day" for example you'd start with some variation of a bench pressing type movement, then move on and do the accessory muscle groups like triceps, shoulders, lats. On their leg day they'll start with a deadlift or a squat type exercise, then do the accessories like hamstrings, isolating exercises for glutes and lower back, calves, etc. Small muscle groups like abs can be done pretty much every workout. Just set aside five or ten minutes at the end of every lifting session to do ab work.
Resembles probably doesn't cut it. Even the ones designed on a similar flywheel principle all, so far as my experience takes me, suck. But if there's a real Concept II, it's a great workout. (Their website is riddled with good information on technique, suggested workouts, etc.)
Something for your back? I would suggest McManus's exercise in 54, but the following variations: 1) no weights, 2) arms stretched out to follow your spine, 3) legs bent. And then repeat a whole bunch. Next to the side: arms again stretched out to follow your spine, no fair letting your pelvis rock back!, think UP and over. Repeat until you're tired in at least three different areas of your body.
About the pelvis-tucking: in some schools, this is called a "lower contraction." One especially vivid teacher regularly shouted out to a mixed-sex class: "And...three, four...CLOSE the vagina!...three, four...OPEN the vagina!" The experience was somewhere between liberating and embarrassing.
In Martha Graham's memoir she quotes one of her male dancers saying that her company was the only place where men felt vagina-envy. It's not that the muscles are so different, it's that the vocabulary to describe small-scale adjustments "down there" can be so gender-specific.
So what other people have said about flattening out your lower-back curve is accurate, but what's important is that this flattening out should happen within the core of your pelvis--and NOT from the back muscles. There are a number of ways of finding these inner muscles--like laying on your back and holding your right knee to your left eye-socket (or nearish it) for a while, or laying on your back and lowering your legs from ninety degrees really, really slowly. These are good muscles to find: if you have a general sense of where they are and what they should be doing, you're less likely to get hurt while exercising (or even just while sitting).
Minimal resistance level over a very long session, of course.
That's the fiendish beauty of the Concept 2 -- you don't set it to a resistance level (well, there's the vent adjustment, but that's unimportant) you just row. If you want to work harder, you row harder. If you want to work less hard, you row less hard. It's like rowing on the water; the harder you pull, the faster you go.
Boy, I said the weight/rep ratio might be controversial. One failed curl with a fifty pound dumbbell or 100 one lb curls? The experts disagree, so how is an amateur to know? I said 20-30 reps, 1st set exercise, 3rd set work. I like working with the same weights throughout, so I can easily tell what muscle groups need work. But if it feels easy, add weight. If it hurts or you can't finish the set, take some off.
I suspect for back strength, weightless good mornings and dead lifts, even toe touches, done regularly are a good start.
Tone is a matter of fat goes away, muscle shows. That is all. Then you can get into definition, strength, size. I am fairly certain body builders aren't the strongest, strong muscles look loose until stressed and extended, and the strongest dudes look flabby when relaxed.
You want to look good like Arnie when striking a pose? Or when relaxed and hanging out? Or maybe you want to pull monster trucks down the street with you teeth? All sorts of goals out there.
For that hitting lower back, butt, and hamstrings all at once, deadlifts are about as good as it gets. For me they don't bother my knees the way squats sometimes do.
But that dude in the pic is holding the bar wrong. The proper way is one hand over, one hand under.
96:Short legs, won't reach Minnesota from Texas. Since we are going to see 80 degrees Tuesday, I sure as hell ain't heading up that way. We think 55 is cold down here.
One of my back exercises involves 2 60 pound dogs on 12 foot leashes in a rabbit field. Looking into a Kevlar vest in case of wandering VP's.
LB--Could you take up sculling? There are some wider boats that you can practice on before graduating to a super tippy shell.
Alameida--I highly recommend ashtanga yoga. You get strength training, flexibility and something like cardio-effects. I'm not sure that your heart rat egoes up once you're good, but the funky breathing helps to increase your lung capacity.
You should take a class to leanr the moves first, but David Swenson's short forms is great to practice with at home when you don't have time for the full 90 minute practice.
I discovered recently that I really enjoy biking. I hadn't gotten on bike in something like 14 years, and I was nervous I wouldn't be able to do it, but then I discovered riding a bicycle is like riding a bicycle. You can go to pretty places and forget that you're supposed to be exercising (ride in Central Park while leaves were changing late afternoon=teh beautiful), and at least for me, the motivation to work on hills seems to come easier than, say, the motivation to just walk faster. I'm not sure why that is.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:52 AM
How long does the stairmaster exercise take? Is it preferable to spending the same amount of time walking outside? (I don't know what your weather is like there in Singapore but if it is nice, I would rather walk outside than inside.) I am not really a good one to listen to for advice about weight loss though.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:01 AM
I used to hear stuff about how exercise form X is better than exercise form Y, but I think that the differences are marginal and only important for highly competitive athletes with very specific goals. My guess is that the more calories you burn by any method, the better.
Your brother is an otherwise wonderful person, I'm sure, but diet and exercise / body builder / gym rat types can be the biggest bullshitters in the world. There's so much scuttlebutt in that community.
I tried the stair-climbing method (about 30 flights a day), combined with some gym and a semi-vegetarian diet (no big hunks of meat, just meat soups) and it worked. As I control, I quit going to the gym, quit climbing the stairs, and started eating hunks of meat, and voila! the weight came back on. Pretty ironclad proof there, no?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:09 AM
Maybe I should get Graham to comment in this thread. He reads a lot about health and nutrition (this is different from actually being healthy and nutritious. I'm not sure how nutritious he'd be, if I were to renounce veganism and try him out). Anyway, he says there is a target heart rate you can calculate online, which is lower than your maximum heart rate, and this is the best for weight loss (as opposed to cardiovascular fitness).
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:14 AM
Also, speaking of exercise 'n' outdoor stuff, if any Unfoggeder is interested in coming out sledding later if it lightens up, lemme know. We have two sleds for two people (just plastic dish sleds, not cool sleds with runners) and could comfortably share with more people, I think.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:26 AM
If you have access to the proper facilities, I'd receommend adding in regular weight training. Not necessarily anything excessive, but like three days a week, for at least 30 minutes, but not more than 60.
With regard to diet, more frequent, smaller meals work better than a couple large ones. Don't starve your body for protein. The trick to starve it for fuel and make it draw on your fat stores. Cut your protein too far back and you'll lose muscle mass, and will burn less calories.
An easy way to supplement your protein is whey powder. The chocolate ones aren't too bad. A scoop of chocolate whey shaken/blended into 10 ounces of milk tastes pretty much like a glass of chocolate milk, but is under 300 calories and around 30 grams of protein.
You might also want to take a vitamin supplement, But not that megadose nonsense. The cheap easy way to do this is childrens chewables, I kid you not. One to two of those a day is fine. The one mineral you might consider specifically supplementing is calcium, as there's generally not a ton of it in a multivitamin.
Another good trick is to watch what your sources of carbs are. Avoid processed sugar and flour. Avoid eating a lot of bread, pasta, cold cereal, etc. Try and have your main carb sources be unrefined carbs like fruits, vegetables, brown rice, etc.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:52 AM
Your brother is an otherwise wonderful person, I'm sure, but diet and exercise / body builder / gym rat types can be the biggest bullshitters in the world. There's so much scuttlebutt in that community.
God, don't get me started on bodybuilding mags. There's some truly bad advice in those things.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:56 AM
From my favorite exercise site: (weight training focused, with a feminist academic slant)
Kardio Kween: "3-4 sessions a week of 20 minutes per session is fine. "
Fartlek: mentions research on high intensity vs. long time cardio
Posted by enigmania | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:10 AM
ok, yeah, husband x is going to teach me how to use the free weights at our gym this week. should be cool. but what do you guys think, is there a point of climbing the stairs beyond which i should definitely switch to something else? i used to run in the states, but I would be kinda scared to ride a bike on the singapore streets, in addition to which it's really, really, really fucking hot outside. the airconditioned gym? ok. the breezy stairway? ok. running at 7 am? ok, but I fucking hate to get up early. otherwise, the outdoor cardio shit? not so much.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:15 AM
I think that one of the important things about exercise is that it be something you like to do. You'll do more of it.
Also -- something that you can fit into your schedule. A major factor for lots of people.
Except for duty-obsessed masochists and obsessives who do more of things when they don't like them. In that case, you should do whichever exercise you like least, because that will be morally improving.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:31 AM
7 -- Oh, c'mon, get started. I for one would love it.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:38 AM
I don't know exactly how easy it is for you to work out, but it sounds like you have a gym in your building in addition to the pool.
How long does it take you to climb all those stairs? There is a sort of diminishing returns effect, as after a while your body will get more efficient at stair climbing, but it's easy to tell when that happens because it gets easier. In any case, a good rule of them is once it starts getting easy, you need to do something to increase the intensity or difficulty of your workout. When 40 flights is easy, then either add more flights, or jog up them, or something. I would also recommend taking the stairs down, as you use different muscle groups to 'catch' yourself going down than you do to 'pull' yourself going up. If it's starting to get so easy that you have to spend more time on it than you want to feel like you had a workout, do something else. (Like swimming.)
Free weight are good. Burns calories, develops muscle, makes you look toned.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:57 AM
I've heard it claimed that heavy Stairmaster use over a period of years puts unhealthy stress on your knees, and surely actual stair-intensive training would have the same effect. Just something else to worry about.
Posted by DonBoy | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 9:00 AM
I really really like dumbbells.
1) They kept me interested. AFAIK, there is essentially one kind of curl you do with a barbell, but dozens with dumbbells. How do you do a hammer (palms facing hips) curl with a barbell? Or a hammer fly? Playing with all the varieties was fun.
Versatile. Use them with crunches, bends, sit-ups.
2) Less likely to injure yourself. Add a plate to either end of a barbell and you're up twenty pounds. Dumbbell, up ten. From what I have seen most of the serious injuries, some of which can be permanent, happen with barbbells.
3) Full body workout, balance and agility. Perfect form can be tougher with dumbbells, but less dangerous if you are off. Right hand curl, I could feel my left hip and legs working to maintain straightness and balance.
4) Cheaper. I have two pair with a whole stack of plates. I can pyramid (5-10-15) easily. With a cheap adjustable bench, my entire exercise setup was under 100 dollars. Potentially, I could put 60 lbs on a dumbbell.
5) Finally, and you will get a lot of disagreement on this, I use lighter weights. If the first set felt like exercise and the third set felt like work, it was good enough. After six months, I was plenty strong and big enough. "Work to failure" looked scarey and impatient. The book (Stephanie Kerony & Anthony Rankin:Workouts with weights Sterling Publishing) I use, for non-athletes men and women, has no pictures with weights over 25 lbs. Most use 7 1/2 (2 x 2 1/2 + bar). But also 20-30 different exercises a day, 20-30 reps each.
Slow vs fast? By me. I like slow.
Warmups and stretches. Warmups and stretches.
Fuck aerobics & cardiovascular.
Finally, don't listen to me. I know nothing.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:05 AM
More energetic sex. You've got to do it for at least 40min to make it into an anaerobic workout.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:16 AM
(just plastic dish sleds, not cool sleds with runners)
The best sledding I ever did was atop a cafeteria tray. The element of theft nicely complemented the elements of speed and mild danger.
Petty larceny expires after how long? I made the whole thing up, anyway.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:16 AM
WIE in 12!!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:18 AM
Emergency, emergency! Everyone to get from streets!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:21 AM
I edited 12 to remove the indiscretion error.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:24 AM
The point of excercising for a lengthy period (I've read at least 40min) is that it takes that to really get your metabolism burning fat. The idea is that up till that point you're just burning what's in your stomach and whatnot. And once you've excercised enough to burn stored fat, your metabolism will stay high for a while. But I don't think I'd do stairs for 40min b/c I'd worry about my knees.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:24 AM
Oh, god, so sorry about that.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:26 AM
Put out the sirens; back to defcom 1!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:28 AM
I second bob's weight-lifting recommendations. Lower weights & slow reps is almost always better, because you will maintain better form. And good form is about 90% of good lifting.
I favor a bar for bicep curls, because I find it's easier to stabilize (otherwise I tend to pivot slightly.) Free weights are much better than machines because the rest of your body has to work subtly to stabilize your movements.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:30 AM
Weight training is good for losing weight. When you build up muscle mass, it raises your resting metabolic rate (the amount of energy you burn just sitting there), so you get a benefit even when you're not actually exercising.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:31 AM
Would our esteemed bloghosts consider adopting ogged's practice of making signed edits? Especially in place of deleting comments altogether–"[deleted by xxx]" has the added advantage of leaving the comment numbers unchanged.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:37 AM
Ok, that's 2 secondings of weightlifitng, but not a single one for vigorous-sex-having. I worry about you people.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:44 AM
I don't think there's any point in eating vitamin supplements if one eat as much fruit as one should.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 10:55 AM
On stairclimbing: I'm no one's idea of a coach, but I used to do stairs for rowing, and you should be walking down the stairs -- hard exercise, going straight to standing still for a couple of minutes (i.e., in the elevator) isn't good for you. There isn't a point of diminishing returns, as long as you're getting enough rest (skip at least one day a week, take longer breaks every couple of weeks, mix up longer and shorter workouts). You should be doing as much as you can, right up to the amount of time you're willing to devote to working out - if you want to put in a half-hour a day, than do as many flights as you can in a half-hour a day. If that starts getting easy, there's always running up the stairs -- run a couple of flights, drop back to walking, run more if you feel like it -- and you can mix it up by taking the stairs two at a time, which is great for building explosive power in your quads. (This is all do as I say, not as I do -- I lift weights some now, but I'm not in terribly good shape.) Really, for cardio workouts, whatever you like doing that gets your heartrate up is just as good for you.
Free weights are also excellent -- I like this website for advice. It's aimed at women, and is nicely aggressive. IME, weights won't make you lose weight, but they will move everything around so it's arranged more nicely, and it is so much more convenient being strong.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 11:14 AM
28- weights won't make you lose weight? That's a bit deceptive. Eeating fewer calories than you burn will make you lose weight, period. Lifting weights burns calories, and adding muscle raises your resting metabolic rate, so you also burn more calories just sitting around. In other words, lifting weights is great for losing weight.
I suspect what you meant was that lifting weights often doesn't lead to actual weight-loss because people often don't eat fewer calories than they burn, and also because you are adding muscle at the same time you are losing fat (and muscle weighs more than fat). So if your sole measure of progress is what the scale says you may feel like you aren't making progress.
But using the scale to measure progress is stupid. Nobody cares how much you weigh, and you shouldn't either. It's not about your weight, it's about how you look when you are naked. And weight-training will help there (as LB noted).
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 11:25 AM
What I would say has pretty much already been mentioned, save one thing about increasing the number of flights you do: overuse injuries are a nuisance, especially as you start to see results. If you're not already doing about 5-10 minutes of stretching beforehand, start doing so (especially quad, hamstring, and ankle/calf stretches), and when you increase the number of flights you're walking, only do so by about 10% to let your body adjust to increased strain.
Posted by tw | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 11:28 AM
Also, climbing stairs is great, but doing anything exclusively or excessively is not great. What you are doing is certainly beneficial, but mixing it up with free weights (and extended sessions of energetic sex) are also good suggestions. Stumpuous.com is a great website with loads of very good info/advice -- though it's suprisingly difficult to navigate (meaning only that there is MUCH more there than you would ever find just clicking and browsing around). Of course, her advice is very good but also pretty intense -- her workouts aren't for teh lazy.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 11:30 AM
Where are you going sledding? I was just complaining to my roommates about the lack of hills nearby.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 12:00 PM
Riverside Park. In about a half hour.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 12:13 PM
Do you think sledding will work? The snow is so light and fluffy, I think a sled (even one of those saucer things) will just sink into the snow and sit there. I told the kids sledding was for tomorrow, after the snow had time to seize up a little.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 12:24 PM
I will report back afterwards. I saw kids out with sleds. I'm from CA, and know little of these matters.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 12:35 PM
If I had known you could get an effective stroke from a swimming instructor, I would certainly have wasted less money in brothels.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 12:38 PM
dquared, you got fleeced. They're supposed to pay you to practice your stroke.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 12:43 PM
Nobody mentions running. I love it. 40 mins every second day as fast as I can except for 2 months in winter, when my exercise regimen falls apart.
Our ancestors spent a lot of time running away from big animals and running after small ones, and I think that's the exercise our bodies were built for. Whatever else you do, you should also run.
Posted by Adam | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 1:01 PM
Running and the climbing of actual stairs have the same risk to knees and other joints. Gym stairclimbers are lower impact I think.
Run when you can, though. I used to love it, and now I can't.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 1:53 PM
Well, the sledding's great in Riverside Park, and my virgin sled went well; we found a nice steep hill where some other people had already packed the snow, but it wasn't too crowded, and I didn't bump into any trees, but alas, my brilliant sledding career has been cut short by a fall I took ice skating last week. Why does ice skating turn people into such sociopathic banshees? That's what I want to know. I am a totally incompetent skater, yet I never bump into people, so it can't be that hard to avoid. But every time I go skating in New York, some asshole knocks into me and I fall down. Last week I hurt my lower back/upper butt, and as soon as I sledded down the hill it seized up again. I feel like an old woman.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 1:55 PM
I end up using the machines at the gym because they feature illustrations that correspond roughly with my body. If free weights could tell me how they should be used in order to, say, work the back (and it's in your best interest to develop your back, btw), I'd use them. Is it simpler than I'm making it out to be, is there a book I can buy?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 2:17 PM
We ended up playing snow football in tompkins square park.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 4:32 PM
There are approximately a million books you can buy, or you could hire a trainer for a couple of sessions to show you the ropes. (This is my big extravagance, a trainer once a week. It's amazing how much more I'll lift if someone is telling me to. I lift on my own the other days, but it's not nearly as good a workout.)
My understanding of the manly way of learning to use free weights is to lurk in the free weight part of the gym, watching other people lift, and imitating them -- probably combining a dose of that with a good book (you're looking for something about the size of the phone book in a medium sized city, with lots of pictures) is the way to go.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 4:36 PM
Probably anything on this page would be fine, if you manage to avoid buying the Encyclopedia of Billiards.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 4:40 PM
This what you're lookinf for, Smasher?
Really, there are about a trillion weightlifting books to choose from.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 4:48 PM
Darn you, LB! Trying to steal my thunder.
There are also a billion websites with info on weightlifting, including menshealth.com which has "new" excercises every week or something.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 4:50 PM
With proper work, you could achieve results like these.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 4:54 PM
That would be 'successfully stealing your thunder', wouldn't it?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 5:08 PM
That's a subjective judgment. My hyperbole was greater than your hyperbole, after all.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 5:12 PM
Around here we call that either a jinx or a pwn. You owe LB a Coke.
The thing about those books is that the only one I'm remotely tempted to look at is the one on billiards. Not that I'm holding out for Weightlifting for Art Critics, but most of these books reek of dried blood and motor oil and the lamentations of women—and I suspect they would not be good advice for someone with my body type/goals.
Maybe I'm going at it the wrong way and should be reading the Schwarzenegger text, but this one looks sufficiently academic to suit my aesthetics.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 5:22 PM
I don't have any advice but if there exists a swimming textbook, I feel confident that the book you're looking for must exist somewhere.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 5:29 PM
I gather 12 oz curls aren't doing it for you anymore, Smasher?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 5:38 PM
Workout with Weights
Here is the one I mentioned above. Nice reviews. Lots of pictures of a couple who are not muscular or developed but slim and healthy. It is all the book I have needed for years. For back, I don't know if you can search inside textm but good morning.
I also pick up an occasional mag while at the grocery store, but frankly feel pretty weird. The glistening tanned bodybuilders...I say no more
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 5:55 PM
"Good Morning" 2 pictures start, middle:lady has 5 or7 lb dumbbells on shoulders
"This exercise, while valuable for strengthening the lower back, can put stress...start with very light dumbbells or no weights at all...."
Starting Postion:Stand, knees straight but not locked, feet about shoulder width apart,pelvis tucked. Rest dumbbells on top of your shoulders...
keep chin up.
Movement
1. Inhale as you bend over from waist until your torso is parallel to floor. Keep your back as straight as possible and your hips and ankles stay aligned.
2 Exhale as you slowly return to starting position. Do not lean over backwards
Note: Remember not to lock or bend your hips.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:11 PM
Maybe I'm going at it the wrong way and should be reading the Schwarzenegger text,
Well, kinda, yeah. My stunningly gorgeous and ferociously strong high school buddy (mentioned occasionally in these pages as Scrabble Girl) swears by an older edition of the Schwartzenegger book. You want to do the same exercises Ahnuld is doing, you just stop before you turn into a leathery freak (and this shouldn't be difficult). I understand finding bodybuilders unappealing, but if you're going to lift weights, those are the people who know how.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:20 PM
How does one tuck one's pelvis? I'm not familiar with that particular manoeuvre.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:23 PM
You shift it a little bit forward and don't let your butt go backwards. I think it helps to engage your locks--one in your perineum (i.e. do a kegel), and the other in your lower abs, like where your tummy starts to be your genitals. I think that's right.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:36 PM
56: decent question. Looked in index and glossary, finally stood up and practiced. I could tuck but like tightening stomach muscles can't quite say how. "Pelvis tucked" in this case means "bend from the waist not hips and don't lean forward". Looked it up in a couple other references.
The "good morning" also works abdominals, which means stomach tucked or muscles consciously tightened. Other back exercises include dead lift, straight leg dead lift, bend-over row, one-arm reverse fly, upright row, and shrug.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:39 PM
I'm not certain I'm anatomically equipped to do a kegel.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:40 PM
I'll take a look at S's book, but insofar as there's an expert book out there on developing tone not mass, that would be the better pick for me (I think). Nevertheless, all this talk about strenuous exercise is draining.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:44 PM
Another way to think of tucking your pelvis is that you straighten out the natural curve in your lower back. If you were lying on your back, your lower back would be a little off the floor -- the motion that would bring it down onto the floor is tucking your pelvis.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:46 PM
You oughta get some good steroids too. The little green ones are best. Take two or three every once in awhile. There might be some side effects -- but no pain no gain. You don't need to worry about testicular cancer so you probably can take a larger dose than a guy could.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:48 PM
developing tone not mass,
My firm understanding, from a fair amount of reading, is that this is a myth. If you want to be stronger, you want to increase muscle mass. There is no such thing as 'toning'.
Now, obviously, you only want to increase muscle mass so much, or you'll become unsightly, but this isn't a real problem. If you're lifting so much that your muscles have gotten unattractively big (we should all have such problems), then slack off and jog or something instead -- they'll go away again.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:50 PM
I thought the conventional wisdom for what Armsmasher wants is higher reps of lower weights.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:52 PM
If by higher reps you mean more than 15 or 20 per set, I believe the term is 'pointless and boring'. If what he's looking for is visible muscle definition without a lot of bulk, what he wants is to do some medium weight / medium rep lifting, and either lose some weight (diet, cardio) or put on some muscle mass and maintain his weight -- that is, lower his body fat.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 6:59 PM
59: you can do a kegel! You have a perineum.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:00 PM
It's the same muscle, but I don't think it counts so much as a kegel, as it does making one's cock bounce about oddly.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:01 PM
one's cock bounce about oddly
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:03 PM
Eh. I was also told that higher reps at lower weights increase strength disproportionately to the mass added. The analogy I was given was to building stamina.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:03 PM
This page says there's a male kegel, although I don't know enough about what it feels like when a man pees to know if that's the same thing as the perineum lock. Just visualize the space between your balls and your butthole and squeeze, okay. It will help tuck your pelvis.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:04 PM
As I understand it, and as Ben suggests, there are ways to promote muscle strength ("tone") without encouraging growth. When I first started having epileptic seizures in college, I started taking a weightlifting elective as a sort of poor man's physical therapy. If it were a better course I'd know the answer to my questions, but we used machines exclusively and went by a schedule of varying reps/weights. This schedule could be tweaked according to user needs. Again, it was a bad class, but I think it's accurate to say that you can develop muscle efficiency.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:05 PM
Would it be in poor taste to make a joke about fast-twitch fiber in response to Armsmasher's epilepsy comment? Would I be letting myself in for smashed arms?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:14 PM
I'm pontificating harder than I really have the knowledge to back up, but while you can develop muscle efficiency, I'm pretty sure that you can't develop it much. You can work on muscle stamina; if your goal is to be able to repeat a fairly easy lift thousands of times, then you're going to have to get there by doing high reps/low weight. If you want to get stronger, though, I'm sure (I'm willing to eat my words if demonstrated to be wrong, but I'm sure) you have to add mass.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:14 PM
If you don't have side effects, double the steroid dose.
I'd like to see a study of competititve weight lifters. They need to increase strength without increasing mass too -- much -- they find their best competitive weight and stay at it. I know that their methods for "making weight" before competitions are brutal, but they're the same for everyone.
So how does one 159 1/2 lb. guy get stronger than another 159 1/2 lb guy without going over weight?
One legendary Turko-Bulgarian lifter (Naim Süleymanoğlu) seems to have done it by not having any pain sensors. He trained so hard that he crushed a vertebra. He now competes with a steel vertabra, which seems like it should be illegal.
URBAN LEGEND ALERT: Can't find the vertabra story.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:18 PM
This is fairly interesting.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:19 PM
Right, goes to the stamina v. strength tradeoff I described in 73.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:22 PM
I think the confusion is in what we understand by tone. Smasher can get stronger without adding much mass if he's woefully out of shape - fat will be replaced by muscle. He can also get toned by either increasing his strength or his endurance. So no one seems to be contradicting another.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:28 PM
If you want a web reference for exercises with free weights, including animations of people doing them, http://exrx.net/ is awesome. Also has a workout planner that's pretty cool.
Posted by enigmania | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:32 PM
Yeah. I, at least, am confused by Smasher's goals -- increase in strength; increase in fitness for some particular athletic endeavor; some esthetic change, but if so, what; some health benefit?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:33 PM
Actually, when I started lifting weights stamina was my goal. The rapid and sometimes intense muscle contraction of clonic-tonic seizures can leave you feeling sore. So I'm not a total n00b, but after college I fell off the map. Now I'm trying to get back to the gym, but I only ever learned how to use the prissy machines. Fortunately, I balance my workout with a diet of small children.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:35 PM
I don't see how that's fortunate at all. Aren't they fatty?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:37 PM
Atkins, Ben, Atkins.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:39 PM
So no one doubts that I'm tough.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:39 PM
Yawn. I've been hearing about the health benefits of the small children diet for *years* now. Tell me something I don't know.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:40 PM
Preparing small children can be exercise, too.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:43 PM
Smasher-
Does your gym have a decent rowing machine? (Decent meaning Concept II. There are no other acceptable manufacturers.) That'll give you a cardio workout which works your back, quads, and arms -- it sounds like more what you're looking for than a high-rep/light-weight lifting routine, which I will continue to be insufferably snide about.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:44 PM
Decent meaning Concept II. There are no other acceptable manufacturers.
Woot! The number of hours I put in on those things when I was on the crew team...damn good exercise. Stregth/cardio, in one neat little package.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 7:58 PM
I could use something for my back. I've always ignored the rowing machines, but one of them resembles the Concept II. Another one actually makes a swishing noise—it involves water in some way.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:03 PM
Bodybuilding- a problem with bodybuilding is that the focus is on hypertrophy rather than athletic performance. Strength and hypertrophy are not the same thing. There is some relationship between muscle size and strength, but if you look at powerlifters, they never look as big as the body builders, but are much stronger and faster.
Mass - overly massive, or "too bulky" is damn near impossible for most people, especially women, they just don't have the testosterone, guys often seem to think that with basic weightlifting they're going to just effortlessly pack on the mass, sure you are buddy
Efficiency - your body does indeed better better at doing exercises, and quite a bit of this is due to your body learning to fire all the proper muscles in the right sequence, etc., a lot of strength training is training your body to perform the task, kind of like you're training the nervous system
Type specific - if you want a certain results, your training must mimic the desired results, moving smaller weights explosively to help develop an explosive muscle response, using extremely heaving weights to develop maximal strength, etc.
Powerlifters have learned a lot about cycling your workouts, avoiding injury, recovery, etc. There's a lot of info in the articles at Westside Barbell to get ideas on different exercises, cycling your workouts, etc. You don't necessarily need to absolutely mimic their workouts, but the general concepts are good. For instance they work up to a max single to develop strength, but as this can be risky you might try working up to a 3 or 5 rep max. It's also unlikely you'll be ordering chains and all that. But things like what exercises on different days are good to know. They for example train certain movements along with the accessory muscles on the same day. On a "bench day" for example you'd start with some variation of a bench pressing type movement, then move on and do the accessory muscle groups like triceps, shoulders, lats. On their leg day they'll start with a deadlift or a squat type exercise, then do the accessories like hamstrings, isolating exercises for glutes and lower back, calves, etc. Small muscle groups like abs can be done pretty much every workout. Just set aside five or ten minutes at the end of every lifting session to do ab work.
I would really recommend getting a book. Something like Vladimir Zatsiorsky's Science and Practice of Strength Training.
Zatsiorsky is on the faculty at Penn State.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:25 PM
resembles the Concept II.
Resembles probably doesn't cut it. Even the ones designed on a similar flywheel principle all, so far as my experience takes me, suck. But if there's a real Concept II, it's a great workout. (Their website is riddled with good information on technique, suggested workouts, etc.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:25 PM
If it turns out to be the right machine, I'll give it a shot. Minimal resistance level over a very long session, of course.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:33 PM
high-rep/light-weight lifting routine, which I will continue to be insufferably snide about
With good reason. That kind of lifting has applications for aiding recovery, preventing injuries, etc., but isn't much of a core workout.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:38 PM
Something for your back? I would suggest McManus's exercise in 54, but the following variations: 1) no weights, 2) arms stretched out to follow your spine, 3) legs bent. And then repeat a whole bunch. Next to the side: arms again stretched out to follow your spine, no fair letting your pelvis rock back!, think UP and over. Repeat until you're tired in at least three different areas of your body.
About the pelvis-tucking: in some schools, this is called a "lower contraction." One especially vivid teacher regularly shouted out to a mixed-sex class: "And...three, four...CLOSE the vagina!...three, four...OPEN the vagina!" The experience was somewhere between liberating and embarrassing.
In Martha Graham's memoir she quotes one of her male dancers saying that her company was the only place where men felt vagina-envy. It's not that the muscles are so different, it's that the vocabulary to describe small-scale adjustments "down there" can be so gender-specific.
So what other people have said about flattening out your lower-back curve is accurate, but what's important is that this flattening out should happen within the core of your pelvis--and NOT from the back muscles. There are a number of ways of finding these inner muscles--like laying on your back and holding your right knee to your left eye-socket (or nearish it) for a while, or laying on your back and lowering your legs from ninety degrees really, really slowly. These are good muscles to find: if you have a general sense of where they are and what they should be doing, you're less likely to get hurt while exercising (or even just while sitting).
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:39 PM
Minimal resistance level over a very long session, of course.
That's the fiendish beauty of the Concept 2 -- you don't set it to a resistance level (well, there's the vent adjustment, but that's unimportant) you just row. If you want to work harder, you row harder. If you want to work less hard, you row less hard. It's like rowing on the water; the harder you pull, the faster you go.
God, I miss rowing.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:43 PM
Boy, I said the weight/rep ratio might be controversial. One failed curl with a fifty pound dumbbell or 100 one lb curls? The experts disagree, so how is an amateur to know? I said 20-30 reps, 1st set exercise, 3rd set work. I like working with the same weights throughout, so I can easily tell what muscle groups need work. But if it feels easy, add weight. If it hurts or you can't finish the set, take some off.
I suspect for back strength, weightless good mornings and dead lifts, even toe touches, done regularly are a good start.
Tone is a matter of fat goes away, muscle shows. That is all. Then you can get into definition, strength, size. I am fairly certain body builders aren't the strongest, strong muscles look loose until stressed and extended, and the strongest dudes look flabby when relaxed.
You want to look good like Arnie when striking a pose? Or when relaxed and hanging out? Or maybe you want to pull monster trucks down the street with you teeth? All sorts of goals out there.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:51 PM
bob, one question remains to be answered: Could you kick Emerson's ass?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:54 PM
For that hitting lower back, butt, and hamstrings all at once, deadlifts are about as good as it gets. For me they don't bother my knees the way squats sometimes do.
But that dude in the pic is holding the bar wrong. The proper way is one hand over, one hand under.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 8:55 PM
96:Short legs, won't reach Minnesota from Texas. Since we are going to see 80 degrees Tuesday, I sure as hell ain't heading up that way. We think 55 is cold down here.
One of my back exercises involves 2 60 pound dogs on 12 foot leashes in a rabbit field. Looking into a Kevlar vest in case of wandering VP's.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02-12-06 9:24 PM
LB--Could you take up sculling? There are some wider boats that you can practice on before graduating to a super tippy shell.
Alameida--I highly recommend ashtanga yoga. You get strength training, flexibility and something like cardio-effects. I'm not sure that your heart rat egoes up once you're good, but the funky breathing helps to increase your lung capacity.
You should take a class to leanr the moves first, but David Swenson's short forms is great to practice with at home when you don't have time for the full 90 minute practice.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02-13-06 4:24 AM
Kobe!
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-13-06 6:35 AM
I curse all of McManus's ancestors back to the original Pict. I dare him to come up here into the balmy 20 degree weather.
Also Tim's.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-13-06 7:24 AM