Gyming advice

Originally Posted by Dibby

Gyming in this weather? Forget the gym and get outside!

10 hours of bike riding/ walking about in the woods is far better for you than sweating under the aircon of a gym. 10 hours is easily achievable

Ok so according to Dibby I need to get out and do 10 hours of exercise. Add to this the 9.5 hours I'm at work every day leaves me 4.5 hours a day to fit everything else into my busy schedule, including my beloved sleep.

Taking all the findings into account my conclusion is...screw it I'll stay fat

Originally Posted by Voo

Ok so according to Dibby I need to get out and do 10 hours of exercise. Add to this the 9.5 hours I'm at work every day leaves me 4.5 hours a day to fit everything else into my busy schedule, including my beloved sleep.

Taking all the findings into account my conclusion is...screw it I'll stay fat

A good yomp in the countryside for a couple or 4 hours is brilliant, of a weekend. At the moment I'm managing about 45 min fast walking along local country footpaths everyday, and it's great this time of the year! Can't say I'm likely to lose much of the home-deskbound-job gut I've developed, but at least I'm working up a sweat and getting some fresh air

I must say, I think your cardio workout seems abit severe in my opinion. I studied P.E at GCSE level, and over the past 2 yrs I've been at the gym 5 times a week and it completely went against what I had learnt.

You don't need to slog it out on the treadmill running on an interval training program to start seeing results in cardio fitness at all. I run just under 1 mile a day, with like, 5 x 10 second sprint sessions built in, 3 x 10km/h slow jogging session I often skip to help workout the lactic acid and even a walking period stuck in there too.

Its all about stressing the heart, gently pushing it, but its where your real craving for fitness really lies as you will feel safer being fitter in fight or flight situations.

I play five a side football to once a week, and that's all about quick sprints and pacing yourself in between. My training program in the gym has made me fitter than everyone now at football, and I was only running just under a mile! It takes less that 8 minutes! Its easy! And it reeeally really works!

Oh yeah, and on the weight side of things, flexibility is crucial to having confidence in your ability, so light weights are fine, just concentrate on a smooth linear action. The machines at my gym have weight steps of 2.5kg because when your pushing the bigger weights, you DO need them, so don't be bothered about lifting lower weights, just do them properly

A good workout strategy is to start with the weights (after a warm up of course) as this will fairly quickly burn up the glycogen in the muscles, then do some cardio. If your weights program is a good one, at this point you shouldn't really feel like doing any cardio, but push yourself to do it anyway. Having depleted the muscles of their glycogen supplies, this extra demand for energy will kick the body into metabolising fat to make up the deficit.
As far as weights go, heavier is not better. Your body will work much harder and you'll get much better results if you do the exercises properly and slowly. The correct weight is the weight that leaves you unable to do the last rep of the last set. Once you can achieve all the reps of all the sets with correct technique in a slow and controlled manner then you can step up to the next weight.
What I am about to say should not be attempted until you have built up a good amount of strength and core stability. Free weights are much better than machines and standing rather than sitting is better still. You will find that you have to use all the small groups of stabiliser muscles and core muscles. Not only does this burn more energy but it vastly increases the stability of your joints as you are strengthening all the small muscle groups that support your joints as they work hard to keep control of the weight.
Weight machines are good for rehab work where a muscle group needs to be isolated and worked in a particular range of motion. For good whole body conditioning you need to be using free weights to develop the 3 dimensional strength of the muscle groups. Also when you start with free weights you will find that you will not be able to use the same amount of weight that you can with the machines, so drop the weights down to a level that is manageable and then work up again. As an example, I can bench press 120kg on a Smiths machine, however if I bench press using dumbells then I drop down to 34kg dumbells, so just over 50% of what I can do using a machine.
As for cardio, do whatever you enjoy. Most of it is boring as hell but if your gym offers classes such as spin, body combat, boxercise etc then give them a go, the time flies by when you have a fit girlie instructor infront of you . It's especially useful if the classes are timed such that you can do your weights session and then go straight into a class.
Good luck and put the effort in and the results will come.

Originally Posted by Mkii Spit

the time flies by when you have a fit girlie instructor infront of you

Very true

Originally Posted by Mkii Spit

A good workout strategy is to start with the weights (after a warm up of course) as this will fairly quickly burn up the glycogen in the muscles, then do some cardio. If your weights program is a good one, at this point you shouldn't really feel like doing any cardio, but push yourself to do it anyway. Having depleted the muscles of their glycogen supplies, this extra demand for energy will kick the body into metabolising fat to make up the deficit.
As far as weights go, heavier is not better. Your body will work much harder and you'll get much better results if you do the exercises properly and slowly. The correct weight is the weight that leaves you unable to do the last rep of the last set. Once you can achieve all the reps of all the sets with correct technique in a slow and controlled manner then you can step up to the next weight.
What I am about to say should not be attempted until you have built up a good amount of strength and core stability. Free weights are much better than machines and standing rather than sitting is better still. You will find that you have to use all the small groups of stabiliser muscles and core muscles. Not only does this burn more energy but it vastly increases the stability of your joints as you are strengthening all the small muscle groups that support your joints as they work hard to keep control of the weight.
Weight machines are good for rehab work where a muscle group needs to be isolated and worked in a particular range of motion. For good whole body conditioning you need to be using free weights to develop the 3 dimensional strength of the muscle groups. Also when you start with free weights you will find that you will not be able to use the same amount of weight that you can with the machines, so drop the weights down to a level that is manageable and then work up again. As an example, I can bench press 120kg on a Smiths machine, however if I bench press using dumbells then I drop down to 34kg dumbells, so just over 50% of what I can do using a machine.
As for cardio, do whatever you enjoy. Most of it is boring as hell but if your gym offers classes such as spin, body combat, boxercise etc then give them a go, the time flies by when you have a fit girlie instructor infront of you . It's especially useful if the classes are timed such that you can do your weights session and then go straight into a class.
Good luck and put the effort in and the results will come.

Great advice there That is what I did and reaping the benefits from it too.