The Official Gym & Fitness Thread

Great!

Are you doing ATGs or parallel squats?

 

thanks! Can't wait to see where I'll be after a few cycles!

I'm doing parallel squats, I can do ATG but that puts a lot of pressure on my lower back. I haven't tried to do them in a while though. Last time I did ATG was paused front squats with 225 and that was a grinder.

 

Was just curious. I find a lot of people don’t do them.
I find them much easier than paralell. Havingto stop all that weight and push back up is more challenging for me.
I’m a short dude though. I think most guys over 6 foot struggle with ATG since the angle on the hips is greater and does pur more torque on the lower spine.

 

I don't think I would benefit from them much. I'm sore today, but to the point where I can't walk. Just complain a little.

 

Went to the gym after work last night after a 7 week hiatus.
I’m going to try PM workouts for a bit. I got a new job and I can pick my hours (because I don’t work with clients so SCORE!) so I get to work early. My husband wasn’t happy with my new get out of bed time being 4am. So lets try PM lifting and see how it goes.

Workout went OK. My forearms and triceps were tired AF making it hard to do my normal weights as the workout progressed. Hopefully I can get back to baseline really fast and start building.
I will give it two weeks before I recalculate my 1RM and get back to Wendler.

No keto fatigue that I could tell.

 

Tomorrow is my zero sodium day with normal water intake. No salt added to anything. Today is my last zero carb day - running 22 carbs these last 2 days. Tomorrow small carb before gym, then 100g carb after gym spread out over 2 meal.

Friday morning, sodium load with zero water all day. Can't wait to see what the outcome is. This last minicut I am on I am much leaner and stronger. Super happy with the results so far.

 

21 month progress check of diet and heavy weights

 

Great job dude! Keep it up! Heavy weights... body building, powerlifting? Or just weight training?

 

Bodybuilding is my goal, but it seems like I respond best to powerlifting inspired workouts. Lots of 5x5, 3x3, etc with the goal being progressive overload, pushing more weight each workout.

Hour and thirty mins cardio each week and tracking every calorie/macro.

 

What’s your age? Macros? Cals?
Bf %?

 

Hey guys, I'm looking to lose some weight. I'm currently at 246 lbs and I'm 6'1''. Looking to drop at least 40. I've looked at a couple different avenues of how to get there. I'm thinking of doing a variation of the Keto diet. Mainly just cutting out carbs, soda and junk food while exercising daily. I'm not looking to get swole just looking to trim some fat around the mid section. Any advice would be much appreciated. After looking through this thread seems like a few of you are way into it and know what you're talking about, there's a lot of misinformation out there. Do I lift lighter weights with more reps to burn fat or lift heavy and put on more muscle to burn fat. Sorry noob at this, thanks for any advice

 

I turned 40 this year. 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat. Adjust total calories based on scale and body fat. Think I’m at 2700-2800 calories now. Weight is 163. Weight in before pic is 178. Got down to 149 at one point on between, lol.

 

IMHO what really matters is consistency, hard work, and time. Be consistent with your diet. And pick a diet that you can live with as a lifestyle. Who gives a shit if you lose 40 pounds and then celebrate by gaining 50 pounds by eating all the food you deprived yourself of? Work hard lifting weights (muscle requires calories to maintain itself) and give yourself time. Results take months and years.

 

You need to do what ever you enjoy and will stick with. Diet and exercise are lifestyle changes and no one sticks with things long term they can’t stand.
Are their perfect ways to lose weight and gain mass? Yes but they don’t matter if you don’t stick to it (and outside of pros... no one sticks to the perfect methods lol)

Cutting carbs is a good way to improve the quality of your diet. Your diet should be made up of nearly all natural nutrient dense foods and very little to no refined or processed foods.
When you cut carbs way down or to virtually nothing you basically cut out everything “bad” for you.

If you are a pretty healthy eater and love veggies keto is a great diet. I think for some people though it may require too extreme of a lifestyle change and it can be discouraging.

I’m into week 2 keto and I don’t miss carbs. I feel awesome.


I don’t think there is really any scientifically validated rule about reps and weight. Everyone responds differently to different types of training.
I think the only rule you should follow is to not follow a hypertrophy (mass building) plan if you are restricting calories. Simply because you will increase your risk of injury because you won’t be eating enough to recover from your workouts.

Do what you enjoy in terms of weight and reps. I like to mix things up and vary what I do. The bodybuilder a couple posts ago said he prefers powerlifting routines.

You will not gain muscle mass in a caloric deficit so even if you lift heavy you shouldn’t expect to build much muscle. If you are a newbie to the gym you will gain a bit of mass and strength in a deficit but that willnot last long. So your focus will be fat loss.

Eat your protien. 1g of protien per pound of body weight (in your case you could probably do with your goal body weight and aim for 200+g of protien).
If you do Keto though you should restrict protien to no more than 25% of your caloric intake. You can eat too much protien on keto and it will kick you out of ketosis. But thats only if you follow keto. If you eat more than 5% that rule doesn’t count so you need to up the protien again.

 

I agree on the consistency part and finding something you like suggestions. One thing that took me forever to finally realize is that when doing cardio going full tilt for shorter duration's is not helping to burn fat or improving aerobic capacity. Keeping my HR down to where I am moving at a speed that is near a level I am able to hold a conversation burns a lot more fat than doing high intensity interval work. I picked up a book designed to train high altitude mountain climbers and have been pretty impressed with my progress in the first 4 weeks. The thing I like about it is I have a structured schedule and each day I know exactly what I am going to do and no longer wandering around a gym aimlessly.

FWIW I have not changed my diet other than cutting out as much junk food as I reasonably can. I am far too stubborn for that and being Italian there is no way I am giving up my pasta and bread. I know if I did I would see faster improvements but just not worth it for me, because I know there is no way I could stick to it long term. Im now down to 211 and have added some solid muscle mass in lower body, upper body has greatly thinned out and starting to tone up.

 

HIIT burns more calories and raises metabolism through mitochondrial biogenisis (ie it raises your metabolism to continue burning calories after the exercise).
LISS (low intensity steady state) cardio burns more calories from fat during the exercise only.
However it equates to less overall calories burned than HIIT and thus carries less weight loss potential.

HIIT just doesn’t help you endurance wise.
It is preferable to LISS for weight loss though.

Just because you aren’t burning calories from stored fat doesn’t mean its not helping with weight loss. In fact its the oposite, as counterintuative as that sounds.

HIIT requires your body burns calories to recover from the exercise while LISS is so low insensity as soon as the cardio stops, so does the calorie burn.

 

Thanks for the info. I don't think I could do a full Keto because I do have to have the occasional bread or pasta haha. So I'm thinking of doing a hybrid version of it in cutting out a lot of carbs but still having some to help keep me motivated. I've looked up food recipes for Keto and it seems to peak my interest in terms of likability and ease of preparation. I'll be doing weights but also swimming which helps me a lot with my knee so once I get a routine down I think it should be pretty good.

 

Like I said I’m on week 2 so I’m very new to it. But so far I love it.
I know it will not be something I’m diligent on forever. I’m a beer enthusiast so I’ll need some carb allowance here and there for that. Plus you know... I’m gonna crave pizza eventually.

Lets see if I stick with it long term.
I love how I feel on it. I’m getting a lot of nutrient dense foods that fill me up. I’m realizing now carbs are pretty meaningless calories. Just filler foods.


Watch I’ll talk it up and come back in two weeks and be like F this! LOL

Eating is really just a habit. Anyone can get used to eating (or not eating) anything.

 

Did deadlift last night on my last week of 531. Bar is not very knurled so it slipped using hook and switch grip on the first try. I got 3. Waited around a bit did some planks and light bicep curls. Then I got my straps and attacked it again. I ended up getting 6! CNS took a hit though. It took a lot out of me on the last two. Backed down to 1st set, did 5, then 225 for 5 then foam rolled and went home.

Posterior chain is getting stronk. Numbers look like they're going up. I hope to be doing 405 for reps like @ThunderCookies BW has gone up too. Im about 2 lbs heavier than i was when i started. I dont really mind getting heavier as long as my lifts go up. Next week is my deload then start cycle 2.

Not as strong as Jen Thompson but I'm getting there! Should be fun! Screen shot of where i started and to where im currently at.

 

Have any of you tried Hybrid Performance? Just switched from Fitnes Culture (which I loved) after about 8 months.

Made it through the first week of the powerlifting. Barely. Not used to heavy squatting four times a week.

Any idea for some conditioning work that’ll spare my legs? They are barely recovering as is. It has two rest days so I want to add something in there on one of the rest days. Everything I know is pretty leg heavy (sled pushes, lunges, etc).