OFFICIAL: Gymfreak thread.

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jpnole wrote:

Was a consistent 3 day a week gym guy from 96-2010. Fell out of the scene for a year, and after spending all of 2011 getting back into it, I hurt my left shoulder. I noticed holding the squat bar on my traps would start to hurt my left shoulder a bit. As is typical with gym rats, I took a couple weeks off and kept working out, ignoring the tweaks. Then one day after I did wide grip rows my shoulder came up lame the next day. Doc said it was tendonitis but no RC tears ever showed up on the MRI. I'm feeling better and after 4-5 months of PT the pain is gone. I haven't been back to the gym in 9 months though. I guess I'm a bit injury shy at the moment.

Ouch, good luck with the recovery man... I have shoulder issues too, I am just a walking injury. :(

Zeto, my pal! You must be pretty damn shredded! How long have you been lifting for? Do you compete/model at all? Or compete in any form of athletic field?

I started lifting with a buddy of mine at school back in 1999. He was a teen bodybuilder and hockey player... kid was enormous. During that time I got probably as big as I'll ever get, which was ~160lbs and I was benching ~300 at my heavy end if that gives any indication of how solid I was.

But like I said, I have a hard time eating the quantity of food required to really grow, and now that I'm doing PhD work, it's all gone down hill ;) I'm still extremely low body fat though... it's just how my body is... it just 'deflates' over time.

I never did any competitions or anything, as that wasn't really my goal, nor did I ever think I was big enough to do something like that. I was into sports as a kid, although I mostly did competitive judo. After that I became a weird combination of party nerd... so the fitness thing was mostly to look good going out to clubs, and then to look good in my chair at home doing computer programming and molecular biology work :P

Favorite exercises are: bench, squat, deadlift (I prefer trap bar), skullcrushers even though they can be bad for your elbows, weighted on chest ball situps with a partner standing on my feet, pullups, seated rows, t-bar rows, arnold press, weighted inclined side bends (I do them on the back flexion apparatus, these are oblique destruction, DOMS like no other)

I used to do concentration curls with 60-70 lbs, but my arms grow faster than the rest of me for some reason so I stopped doing biceps at all and just do compound exercises to hit them. Likewise I used to love doing tricep pushes on cables or seated, but it's kind of funny, I didn't weigh enough for the weight I was pushing so I always needed a seatbelt or someone holding me down :P So again I stopped doing those and switched to mostly just compounds or crushers. I definitely recommend doing more 'natural movement' compound exercises for most people, and skip the machines. I've hurt my shoulders numerous times on machines... so I definitely advise against them since they can force you into bad positions for your size/physiology. I had 1 MRI done the last time I hurt it, and while there was no tear, it was probably caused by impingement and you could see the giant blob of inflammation... he then stuck me in the butt with some high dose anti-inflammatory meds, which hurt like a bitch heh...

Favorite shake is probaby: ON's Oats and Whey chocolate... it's clean, no bs in it, strong bitter chocolate flavor. Lots of decent shakes out there, but most have a ton of nonsense in them and/or artificial sweeteners which I think taste terrible.

I haven't been seriously in the gym for quite some time, and I would love to get back to doing that.

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I have been wanting to get into boxing... Not so much MMA since I have had some serious back problems three years back. Have to baby it in the gym as it is. :( How long have you been practicing... What Martial Arts exactly?

Started when I was 10. I was in Boy Scouts so I ended up stopping. Went back in 97 when I was in high school. Then took another break because of a work schedule that didn't allow me to make classes. My wife ran into one of my old instructors a few years back and started going again with my kids. So about 10 years or so of actively going to classes. Even when I wasn't in class I still studied and practiced. I have black belts in Tae Kwon Do and Isshin Ryu. I have studied or watched several other styles but never took classes in them. Try out boxing you never know if you can handle it if you don't. If that doesn't work see if you can find some Tai Chi classes. Tai Chi can be an intense work out if done right.

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klake wrote:

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I have been wanting to get into boxing... Not so much MMA since I have had some serious back problems three years back. Have to baby it in the gym as it is. :( How long have you been practicing... What Martial Arts exactly?

Started when I was 10. I was in Boy Scouts so I ended up stopping. Went back in 97 when I was in high school. Then took another break because of a work schedule that didn't allow me to make classes. My wife ran into one of my old instructors a few years back and started going again with my kids. So about 10 years or so of actively going to classes. Even when I wasn't in class I still studied and practiced. I have black belts in Tae Kwon Do and Isshin Ryu. I have studied or watched several other styles but never took classes in them. Try out boxing you never know if you can handle it if you don't. If that doesn't work see if you can find some Tai Chi classes. Tai Chi can be an intense work out if done right.

One of my previous coworkers actually teaches, privately, Krav Maga - That shit is pretty vicious to say the least.

I got my Level 1 certification as an Army Combatives Instructor, but never really pursued it further. Grappling on the ground is waaaaay too much of a workout for me, while getting my certification I was bruised and hurt in places on my body that I didn't even know existed.

Krav Maga is very brutal and effective. One of my instructors was ex special forces and taught us some of it.

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Ir0n wrote:

FUCK OUT THE WAYYY!!!!

What kind of a routine do you run? Been doing a 4-day split rotation for a year and 8 months so far. Back/Biceps, Chest/Triceps, Shoulders, Legs/Abs.

We got TMW fans. Wont be surprised if this turns into a degraded /fit/ thread

The unweighted sit-up has to be the most obvious sign that culture makes us crazy.

The sit-up fallacy exposed: You have biceps. If we accept the basic situp as something that is not completely useless, then we must assume the equivalent arm exercise is effective as well. "Pumping your fist in the air fiddy times will make you get huge bicepz, brah."

And yet. We don't make kids do unweighted fist pumps in PE classes.

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Elynole wrote:

It may sound pretty crazy, but I achieved that time due to watching too much Dragonball as a kid. I ran with a backpack full of weights, or a bullet-proof vest and helmet on when I was judging myself for time.

Poor kids in the day used the "tie a tire to meh and I'll drag it" method to accomplish this.

Rich guys, use sleds like the prowler for conditioning.

Running (not walking) with an anchor on your back is generally frowned upon. Once you're already over the 200lb mark, with an extra 200 strapped on; pounding the ground one leg at a time isn't sexy fun times for teh knees.

While I don't think unweighted regular childhood gym style situps are really valuable, I think that comparison is slightly a stretch.

If you take the total mass from a pivot point and find the center of mass as the distance from that pivot point, you can find the average torque on a particular muscle given it's origin and insertion points.

That said, a fist with a bicep vs. a hip-flexor and an abdominal wall stabilizer are quite vastly different, as your entire torso and its center of mass compared to the hip flexors or even the abdominals is significantly greater than the bicep example.

A better analogy would be to put a 20-30 lbs weight in that hand.

That said, the sit-up is a hip flexor exercise and most people do not know this. Your abdominals are a spine flexor, so in order to work abdominals you need to extend the spine prior to flexion. Crunches attempt to do this, but only do HALF the possible flexion, due to starting at the neutral straight position... which makes them largely ineffective, particularly because the distance covered is very small, and now your origin/insertion points have changed to specifically the abdominals and the center of mass has also changed. Without weights and a ball, I don't feel that crunches have much value. People should instead do stabilizer exercises like the bicycle maneuver.

Now even THAT said, abdominals are rarely worked significantly by successful gym-goers. They get abs by having low body fat and doing compound exercises that require abdominal stabilization, with what I'd consider a comparatively mild amount of direct ab work.

I try and lift lightweights here and there, and do some treadmill walking sometimes when I dont feel like going outside or whatever. Use to go to the gym but it got really boring for me and I stopped because my friends stopped also.

Any tips for the atheletes here about losing weight but getting a little cut? Nothing too outragous where I have to work out 2 hours a day lol. And how should you take protien supplements? Before or after working out?

What supplements do you reccomend? (Vitamins,Protein drinks,etc..)

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zeto wrote:

That said, a fist with a bicep vs. a hip-flexor and an abdominal wall stabilizer are quite vastly different, as your entire torso and its center of mass compared to the hip flexors or even the abdominals is significantly greater than the bicep example.

Barely. A factor of 2 or 3 or 5 times almost zero is still practically nothing.

And that's only because that isn't what these muscles are designed to do. They're there to keep your spine from snapping while lifting heavy rocks or rowing; making an entire exercise out of some incidental secondary function is very weird. Sensical in the poverty-stricken, you can get something out of it if you're Mas Oyama three years up in the mountains, sort of way.

Learning to squat in a rack should really be mandatory in high school. Spreading awareness of the basic tool to avoid becoming the "help I've fallen and can't get up" lady. Tis a bonus that it's also the primary exercise for the current appearance fads: "asses and abs".

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What supplements do you reccomend?

Burritos. Steak and bean burritos.