Chris Comeau
New Member
First of all, congratulations on the interesting and intelligent web site. There's a lot of clear thinking going on here.
(edited to focus the post a bit)
Some background info:
I'm a 23 year old guy who's been weightlifting on and off for quite a while without making progress. Everyone says beginners respond to pretty much any program but for some reason I've never had much success, and often would actually lose ground. I'm in the middle of turning my life around overall and I'm redoing my fitness approach as part of that.
I'd say my failure in the past was mainly due to being inconsistent and halfhearted in my approach... I had been depressed and sedentary most of the time, and even during the workouts it was kind of a lazy approach with long breaks between exercises.
Fat loss is my first priority. My goal is to get slim and fit first, then worry about packing on the muscle later. I'm on a 1500 calorie diet with lots of water, about 4 meals a day. Probably not getting the recommended amount of protein. I'm 5'10, 180 pounds with a waist still around 36. I'm hoping to get down to 160 with maybe a 30 inch waist (10% body fat?) by the beginning of august. Once I get rid of all the extra fat I'll start eating more so muscle gains will be easier. Until then, I'm using HST principles to try to make the best of the situation.
I don't have a lot of money to spend on supplements. I don't really want to waste money on them if there are some simple mistakes I'm making that would keep me from triggering their benefits.
I've done some research but have a feeling I'm missing some of the basics. I know a lot of you must be way past this point but maybe you can think back and remember how you got around this stuff. Trying to rebuild my computer geek body here
The issues:
- Lack of energy. (feeling lazy / tired)
I'm assuming this is just an aftereffect from being sedentary, and this will improve over time with a more general fitness approach (strength training + daily interval aerobics + moderate diet + sleep).
I assume I need to keep a more consistent level of activity overall, so I've split everything up as much as possible. Every day has a 30 minute morning strength training session (alternating upper body / lower body days) with a 20 minute interval aerobics session later on (alternating running or a fun martial arts style workout). I assume since the overall volume's low, training this frequently shouldn't cause overtraining and should help my metabolism. I use the "1 set, stopping when you start slowing down" approach since it makes the most sense to me. (I find I get more sore with 2 sets on most things, so I may try 2 sets done the same way soon)
One other thing I forgot to mention - I probably haven't been warming up adequately because I usually don't work up much of a sweat.
Sleep's obviously a factor here, so I try not to over or undersleep, trying to factor in about 9 hours for it at consistent times, although I'm usually getting to bed around midnight. I had found 8 hours usually wasn't enough - I'd actually be sleepy instead of just unenergetic.
- Shaky muscles
This was a big problem with my abs. It's not so bad any more. I assume it's just a nervous system training thing where the muscle wasn't really used to the controlled movement.
- getting "the burn"
In the past, I would usually wind up ending a set because the reps "weren't doing anything". This isn't as much of a problem any more as I've focused on keeping the tension more constant during the exercise with smooth controlled movement.
That works well on some things, but on a lot of muscles (mainly smaller ones) there's still no burn at all, at any weight. Is the burning sensation a necessary thing, or is getting 15 reps and stopping due to slowing down fine?
- using HST concepts in beginner training
I'm experimenting with an HST style approach for now, where I work from my 15RM to my 5RM over a 6 week period (smooth sweep from one to the other over time, since that makes the most sense to me).
Since the weight ranges are small, I wind up repeating some weights 2 weeks at a time, but I saw somewhere that it wasn't the end of the world, I'd just get some diminishing returns.
I started with a 3 week SD where I was sick most of the time, so it was a pretty good one. (Edit: I had found my 5 rep maxes but guessed on my 15's because I wasn't sure what they were supposed to "feel" like).
Overall it seems to be working. I'm sore in most places so the SD did what it was supposed to. I probably screwed up this cycle a bit with the initial estimates too light, but I don't think it'll be too much of a problem.
Since I'm on a restricted diet I don't expect a bunch of growth anyway. I just want to make sure I have HST and training in general right by the time I start "eating for growth"
That's it for the specific questions, but any general advice is appreciated (links, etc).
(edited to focus the post a bit)
Some background info:
I'm a 23 year old guy who's been weightlifting on and off for quite a while without making progress. Everyone says beginners respond to pretty much any program but for some reason I've never had much success, and often would actually lose ground. I'm in the middle of turning my life around overall and I'm redoing my fitness approach as part of that.
I'd say my failure in the past was mainly due to being inconsistent and halfhearted in my approach... I had been depressed and sedentary most of the time, and even during the workouts it was kind of a lazy approach with long breaks between exercises.
Fat loss is my first priority. My goal is to get slim and fit first, then worry about packing on the muscle later. I'm on a 1500 calorie diet with lots of water, about 4 meals a day. Probably not getting the recommended amount of protein. I'm 5'10, 180 pounds with a waist still around 36. I'm hoping to get down to 160 with maybe a 30 inch waist (10% body fat?) by the beginning of august. Once I get rid of all the extra fat I'll start eating more so muscle gains will be easier. Until then, I'm using HST principles to try to make the best of the situation.
I don't have a lot of money to spend on supplements. I don't really want to waste money on them if there are some simple mistakes I'm making that would keep me from triggering their benefits.
I've done some research but have a feeling I'm missing some of the basics. I know a lot of you must be way past this point but maybe you can think back and remember how you got around this stuff. Trying to rebuild my computer geek body here
The issues:
- Lack of energy. (feeling lazy / tired)
I'm assuming this is just an aftereffect from being sedentary, and this will improve over time with a more general fitness approach (strength training + daily interval aerobics + moderate diet + sleep).
I assume I need to keep a more consistent level of activity overall, so I've split everything up as much as possible. Every day has a 30 minute morning strength training session (alternating upper body / lower body days) with a 20 minute interval aerobics session later on (alternating running or a fun martial arts style workout). I assume since the overall volume's low, training this frequently shouldn't cause overtraining and should help my metabolism. I use the "1 set, stopping when you start slowing down" approach since it makes the most sense to me. (I find I get more sore with 2 sets on most things, so I may try 2 sets done the same way soon)
One other thing I forgot to mention - I probably haven't been warming up adequately because I usually don't work up much of a sweat.
Sleep's obviously a factor here, so I try not to over or undersleep, trying to factor in about 9 hours for it at consistent times, although I'm usually getting to bed around midnight. I had found 8 hours usually wasn't enough - I'd actually be sleepy instead of just unenergetic.
- Shaky muscles
This was a big problem with my abs. It's not so bad any more. I assume it's just a nervous system training thing where the muscle wasn't really used to the controlled movement.
- getting "the burn"
In the past, I would usually wind up ending a set because the reps "weren't doing anything". This isn't as much of a problem any more as I've focused on keeping the tension more constant during the exercise with smooth controlled movement.
That works well on some things, but on a lot of muscles (mainly smaller ones) there's still no burn at all, at any weight. Is the burning sensation a necessary thing, or is getting 15 reps and stopping due to slowing down fine?
- using HST concepts in beginner training
I'm experimenting with an HST style approach for now, where I work from my 15RM to my 5RM over a 6 week period (smooth sweep from one to the other over time, since that makes the most sense to me).
Since the weight ranges are small, I wind up repeating some weights 2 weeks at a time, but I saw somewhere that it wasn't the end of the world, I'd just get some diminishing returns.
I started with a 3 week SD where I was sick most of the time, so it was a pretty good one. (Edit: I had found my 5 rep maxes but guessed on my 15's because I wasn't sure what they were supposed to "feel" like).
Overall it seems to be working. I'm sore in most places so the SD did what it was supposed to. I probably screwed up this cycle a bit with the initial estimates too light, but I don't think it'll be too much of a problem.
Since I'm on a restricted diet I don't expect a bunch of growth anyway. I just want to make sure I have HST and training in general right by the time I start "eating for growth"
That's it for the specific questions, but any general advice is appreciated (links, etc).
but don't get too impatient, remember that your muscles have to learn that particular curve and yes, in the 15's this is not uncommom specially in the first few workouts, however it can be corrected, slack the speed of each rep to 2 0 4, 4 0 6, even a superslow approach is it is that bad, that is a bit drastic though we are talking 10 0 10.