The Official Gym & Fitness Thread

Yeah I know what I'm doing may not be the best, but the main goal is to burn calories as I'm close to becoming a fat old man. And reading articles that come along it seems to be 6 of one, half dozen of the other as to the proper workouts.

 

I resemble that.

My workouts are a combination of cardio and, what I call, joint maintenance. I alternate cardio heavy days and weight (joints) days. I do these for 1.5-2 hrs per day, but I am attempting to maintain a bunch of weight lost 6-7 years ago, and since I don’t have an ‘active’ job, I need that time to maintain. My cardio days are 1.5 hrs of running and/or bike riding and a bit of core work. Joint days are about 45 min cardio with the rest of the time doing weight work to maintain ROM and muscle, alternating upper and lower body days. It works for me. By no means am I a builder, much more of a maintainer.

 

I let myself eat anything, but have to stay under 23-2400 calories total for the day, unless I snowboard for 5 hours then run 10 miles at work that night and have crazy extra cals burned that day. Under 23-2400 and over 120 G protein for the day. Results in the fattiest thing I eat being peanut butter or Eggs. havent gone off the deep end to only egg whites yet

 

Gotcha. Yeah, just eating clean then, going from that to shoving your face into processed, nasty food, covered in more oil than you eat in a week, that'll do it.

I use Cronometer. Pulls in my strava stuff automatically. The purple is base metabolic, the green is "you aren't in a coma" added burn, and the orange is activity imported by strava. Strava's really good at calculating running and walking. Bicycle is a disaster, usually after my rides it says I burned like, 200 calories. the same effort level on a stationary bike and time is closer to a thousand. So, I use it, but don't really trust it for bikes. Run/walk it's respectable.

 

In - N - Out

 

…it’s like having an opinion on which is better eating; cowpies, bear scat, or mouse droppings…

 

Out of all the options in the area I live in, all things considered…including price, I’d say In-N-Out would be my #1 pick.

 

I usually go with 3 decently clean meals a day.
Meal 1 is usually 2 eggs fried in a small amount of olive oil, 1 cup of oatmeal, 1 cup of skyr yogurt and a few cups of black coffee.
- 25-50g protein shake between meals after my gym time.
Meal 2 is a protein like lean ground beef or chicken with some white rice and a protien bar as a snack.
Meal 3 is a packet of tuna fish, 6.4oz and more white rice and another protein bar.
Sometimes i'm throwing spinach/kale salads into the mix with tomatoes and cucumbers, olive oil and vinegar, i love eating them i'm just not consistent with them.
I don't really measure and weigh my servings anymore or count my calories, i just get to the gym 3-4 days a week most of the time, save for vacations and such.

My workouts are usually the typical bro splits Back/bi's - Chest/Tri's - Legs- shoulders/arms, nothing fancy.
Once in awhile i'll change it up and do push/pull days.
As i'm getting older (48) i can feel it in my joints now and again so i've backed off trying to push heavier lower rep sets and go for more hypertrophy training with moderately heavy weight and higher rep, I've just learned to focus more on the contraction and slow down on the negative movements. I'll still do heavier sets, just not as often.
I've moved away from barbell squats (tweaked my back a few times over the years, nothing major) and found that i really love doing belt squats. I've also learned to love RDLs and Deadlifts.
I've found that if i keep my rest periods between sets shorter, it keeps my HR up and favors my cardio.
building and retaining muscle is much harder at this age and i know it's only going to get more difficult so for me, it's important to keep at it and prevent as much muscle atrophy as possible while i cruise into my golden years and beyond.

This is all just to balance my life, it allows to still enjoy my beers/drinks in moderation and have some shit food here and there.

I am by no means a bodybuilder or a huge guy, i'm 6ft 190lbs, i just try to steer the weight more towards lean muscle than bodyfat.

 

Whenever a statement is made about exercise/fitness, it's important to remember that just about every one comes with 100 caveats.

I'm going to guess that every single elite/professional athlete isn't working out wrong because they do so for hours a day.

I think for the lay person, what is most important is intensity matching duration. It's perfectly acceptable for workouts to be longer, especially if one is doing high intensity that requires more break time. Shit there are lifters that have to take 10+ minutes between squat sets.

My forte is running. For a conditioned/trained runner, a steady state (Zone 2) run of any less than 60 minutes does not result in any physiological conditioning change. So by the logic of an hour at most, a trained runner would get no training benefit out of a routine that was limited by 60 minutes.

With exercise it's really important to note age, sex, trained status (novice/intermediate/advanced/elite), hormone therapy/gear status, and body fat percentage.

Does it make sense for a novice to hit the gym and lift for 2 hours? Hell no.
Does it make sense for an advanced lifter to only hit the gym 30 minutes (with improvement goals)? Hell no.

Your workouts need to match all the caveats above as well as consider your goals and now well/competent you are at being able to meet your nutritional needs.

I actually would warn against any strenuous cardio prior to your lifting session. It's ok if it's a separate session prior to lifting earlier in the day but I wouldn't bang out a Zone 5 mile before lifting. It's a waste of energy and an injury risk. A Zone 2 mile would be acceptable. You don't want to be tapping out your glycogen and pre-fatiguing your stability muscles before you need them on a lift.

I think it's funny I'm a runner, but never run immediately before lifting.

I would say most novices do not efficiently and effectively use their time in the gym, whether it's 30 minutes or 90 minutes. You can accomplish a great workout in 30 minutes, when you have the experience to use that time most effectively in terms of intensity. Most novices probably get jack shit out of it. The average person has no real concept of RPE (rate of perceived exertion) and what lifting to failure truly is. When you know your true RPE, you can get much more out of your time at the gym.

None of this by any means indicates that any workout is a waste. It just means some workouts are more efficient than others for particular goals.

I struggle with the issue of wanting to go through my workout too fast. I have to get my phone out to slow me down (bad ADHD). I would say that because my rest times aren't appropriate, I probably am reducing my training effect, because it impacts my RPE for the next set. Taking too short of a break is easier than too long.

 

I’m in the same boat as you. Although I’m 6’2” & hover around 200lbs. Same age etc. I don’t do squats much but should. I usually do 3 sets of 12 - 14 reps of lighter weight so my joints are not sore. I have a couple lbs of chubs I could lose and am currently trying to burn it off but that requires more cardio & a caloric deficit which isn’t easy for me. We’ll see…

 

Once a week I treat myself and do 30 extra mins of cardio that day and adjust my eating a little bit. 315 calories for these two and it’s a solid reward. My sweet tooth cure

 

Yeah Id rather run 12 miles and go for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or Graeters (but Ive only honestly put down a whole pint in one sitting once in my life lol).

I’m bougie about my ice cream.

Does that Halo not give you the shits?

 

Nope. I also can’t do more than abt an hour of continuous walking/jogging w out needing a painkiller or my problematic knee starting to swell lol. So walking on treadmill or riding a bike is the cardio I do.

I had ice cream maybe 3 times all of 2023 so this is a more recent thing since I’ve started my cut. Result is halo top tastes just fine to me.

I did see another brand of low cal ice cream next to it at Walmart. Didn’t look too closely but next time I’ll maybe try the other and see

 

There are many brands for that now it seems.

I want to try it but worried about the sugar alcohols on my tummy.

Sweets aren’t my vice tho

 

Oh hey I didn't even see the username, 'sup, you're in this thread too?

You get blades yet?

For the average joe, an hour per session is fine. I usually ride 2 hours or 1 hour, depending on the day, but then after a quick rest (the drive home, loading up the kayak, etc) I'll go for another hour, but usually an hour or so is where I top out continuous.

I don't believe in marathons though. The first one killed the guy, so, no thanks. My limit is gatorade/powerade for susteance needs to finish a task. If I need more than that, like energy gels, peanut butter shots, etc - I'm out. Have fun, I respect your decision, but I'ma not do that.

I'm the same way. Sweets are fine, but I can be fine without them. My issue is portion size for the good stuff. Sausages, pastas, burritos, pizzas. Doesn't help that I'm pretty good at making my own bread both yeasted and sourdough.



Anyway I realized I forgot to check in this week. It's not going well. I do not enjoy winter. And it just dumped snow yesterday so the roads and paths will be jacked up probably through the weekend until it melts is my guess. But the sunsets are getting later, we're a month away from DST. Once I can run every day at lunch without needing 5 layers, and get back to riding/walking/running/hiking constantly after work, his will hopefully turn the right way. I don't like the cold.

 

Dude… shoveling snow is a great workout. Shovel the neighbors walks for extra cals.

I like shoveling my driveway after I get off my treadmill in the am.

I wished I lived in an area with more snowshoeing, climbing, and outdoor winter recreation than we have. But don’t quite have that $4M for the Rockies home quite yet

 

I live in Rhode Island. We get the cold of New England without the snow of New England.

 

Oh cool! So you guys don’t get super hot in the summer?

I’m tired of the midwest -13F to 100F weather.

Heat is what I can’t stand the most. My asthma is triggeredby high humidity and heat.

 

Nope, we get the heat.

90 minutes north and I'm in southern NH, it's a whole different environment. I can go 15 hours south to NC, and it's pretty similar. That light green is known in the northeast as the rain/snow line, and it continues kinda all the way down the coast.

We don't get as cold as the rest of new england, but we still get cold. We get a LOT less snow. But this is way better than just 90 minutes north in NH. Way more livable in the winters. Summers are a tad bit hotter but usually negligible, but I'm a heat fiend. I hate the cold.

 

I appreciate all seasons and wish to experience them all. I don’t like extremes. I’d love to live in a place thats 25-85. I don’t mine some 0 days or 90 days but I dont want them common.

I struggle in the heat with my asthma. Humidity just kills me. IL is getting so bad with humidity.

Most guys around here live in the south and I have no clue how they do it.

Ive not been to New England but its on my list.