The Official Gym & Fitness Thread

Lots of benching in there. Do you ever do dumbbells? Also, do you switch up bench, like 2 sec pause, or block benches or anything?

 

I like Spoto

 

Yeah, I usually alternate dumbbells and barbell each every other week or sometimes I'll do a combination. I always do at least one flat and one incline press or fly exercise each week though.

For yesterday's workout, I did slow sets on decline (4 secs down, 2 sec pause, 4 secs up).

I always try to switch things up or tweak things to keep from falling into a boring routine.

 

Yea I always try to get at least 2 types of press -db or bb, and 2 types of flys with cable or db. Then I do some random acc stuff like hex press, dumbbell pullover, maybe a 3rd fly or some other random shit I can't think of right now.

I also like to switch it up and do pauses and other types of timing movements. Seems to work good.

 

I did chest yesterday, but today my shoulders are sore. I must have used bad form on something.

 

Shoulders like front delts? I did shoulders last week and my Lats were sore, I'm guessing from bracing with my Lats and doing shoulder presses. Shoulders were sore too, but inwas surprised what other muscles are activated. Your body was recruiting what it could.

 

Yep, front delts. I didn't do anything I don't normally do, so I'm thinking my form just must have been off on something. Incline press maybe?

 

That's normal. Chest exercises hit shoulders, especially if you use a full ROM on incline movements and flies. I always make sure to do chest and shoulder exercises far apart (like chest on Mon and shoulders on Fri) so your workouts don't suffer from fatigued muscles.

Anytime you do compound movements like shoulder presses, bench press, squats, etc., your body will recruit different muscle groups to help out...that's why they call them compound exercises lol. However, if other muscles are sore from isolation exercises, you're doing something wrong...your lats shouldn't be sore from dumbbell side raises. A good example for me is rope pushdowns for the lats: it's super easy to lose the focus of engaging the lats and letting the triceps take over.

 

Yea I did some heavy dumbbell presses with the 75 lbs soon know I was using my Lats to stabilize myself in the seat lol.

 

Starting Texas Method today, stoked. Did my homework and read the whole program before starting it and like the idea behind it. I started with Starting Strength two years ago, got beat up on it and needed to get diet and recovery right after about 4 months. Went to 5/3/1 for a looser program and did that for about 6 months before going to Stronglifts for 4 months because my squat sucked. This year I've been dicking around and not following any programming and feel ready to get back into it.

 

Anyone ever try the Westside program?

 

Ditto on that. I’m still nursing a shoulder over rotation injury from snowboarding. So when doing chest or shoulder day I put at least back and leg day in between them for plenty of rest. And depending on the kind of chest exercise I can tell when it starts to use the shoulders. Still don’t feel comfortable using a barbell for chest yet, as it seems too restrictive on the shoulder tendons. I wanted to try one of those ladder barbells, so instead of a traditional grip it’s the parallel grip, which would be a more comfortable position, but the only one at our gym is too small to use for a bench press.

Thats why I love dumb bell presses over bar bells any day! I value stabilization muscles and tendons most for my day to day needs so I like to (In both shoulder press and flat bench press) lower one side at a time while holding the other side up. Not sure exactly what thats called.



Also, meal prep is continuing to kick me in the balls. I finished making an omelette for tomorrow at 11:30 at night, after cooking for 2 hours, and my room mate strolls by “my god, your life is just one giant meal prep”

 

Yea everyone loves to comment "all you do is eat" "all you do is meal prep" "all you do is workout"

Well, all you do is be fucking lazy - so fuck off.

 

What do you mean you brought lunch and don't want to go get deep dish grease pizza for the third time this month?

Goddammit, now I regret starting this cut.

 

Depending on your propensity to eat leftovers and quality/texture/repetition issues aside, you can simplify things into basic categories for meal prep that make life so much easier. I do a weekly meal prep and spend roughly 4 hours start to finish including cleaning and that's from 8 hour Sunday preps a couple years ago that included all sorts of insanely complex recipes. I basically put the oven on 450 and throw in whatever needs to go longest for however long based on what I'm cooking. Usually I go with potatoes, dish of 24 eggs, veggies, and any meat that I'm baking after searing on the stove top. Run separate alarms on my phone for each food and go from there. I eat really simply and more or less the same things at all times occasionally changing up lunch. This was the new item for lunch this week and it's fucking delicious. https://www.eatthismuch.com/recipe/view/power-chicken-hummus-bowl,906554/

 

i did the cowboy method from juggernaut which is based out of the texas method. i loved it and you'll like the texas method if you love to squat like me.

 

squatting is bad for your knees....

 

This is real similar to the program I’m on now for my “transmutation” phase before my meet. It’s basically squat/bench one day and deadlift the next and back and forth. Squats, pause squats, front squats. Bench, spoto bench. Deadlifts, pendlay Rows, GHR/Bridges. I need to send you the new portion

 

Going on our delayed honeymoon to Jamaica tomorrow. 10 days no gym. Gunna be awesome but I might try and do some bodyweight exercisss/run while I'm there to avoid killing myself in the all inclusive booze and food.

 

Not squatting is bad for your knees.