You want to save time building muscle and losing fat. You want to put in as little time as possible, using as few days out of the week as possible, and get the most bang for your buck. In that case you should exercise only when you can maximize your returns on time invested. Here’s how:
There are so many choices out there for exercise equipment, sometimes it is hard to know what to choose. Free weights are always best – barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, odd objects, and even bodyweight. Machines have their place, but they don’t usually belong in your main training routine.
So how can you choose your equipment based on your training history, goals, and injuries?
 Exercise Equipment |
The following guest post was contributed by Christine Howell who frequently writes about Online Health Care Degrees and other college related topics for Online College Guru, an online college directory and comparison website
Although lack of motivation is a big deterrent to exercise, finding the time to incorporate it into a busy schedule is even greater.
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Here is an exercise from the Diesel Crew that you’ve probably never heard of. They call it the Diesel Row. Give it a try.
This movement is a combination of a pull-up and inverted row. The goal is to build strength through a greater ROM of the shoulders thereby increasing their integrity and strength.
Your Questions |
I get plenty of questions in various comments throughout the website, but I also get comments and questions via the Project Swole Contact Form.
Generally I address those questions through e-mail, but often I do not have the time to reply to each and every question personally.
From now on I want to take a more proactive approach to answering Your Health Questions by posting them separately in the blog. This way we can be sure that everyone benefits from the Q & A.
“Hi, I am a 44 year old female just diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I am 5′10 and I weigh 250 pounds. I want to get down to 180 pounds. How many calories a day should I be consuming to lose weight?
Also what kind of exercises do you recommend for weight loss and how many days a week should I do them to lose weight and keep it off?
My doctor told me if I lose weight I might be able to come off the diabetes medicine. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Cherie”
 Arnold Deadlifts |
Male weightlifters want to be able to lift thousands of pounds off the ground with minimal effort. It makes us feel good to be able to pick up anything we want. Especially when most guys in the world struggle to pick up even 100 lbs off the floor.
Female weightlifters want to sculpt and tone their thighs and buttocks. It makes them feel good to have a tight butt that can fit into size 2 pants. Especially when the majority of American women are roley and poley, thanks in no small part to low fat dieting in the 80’s and 90’s, and to the yo-yo dieting of the new millennium.
The number one way to make all these things happen? Train your hamstrings, lower back, and glutes (your bum) with complex free weight exercises.
OK, so you’re a fat guy (or girl) and you sit in front of a computer all day. In case you didn’t realize it, you are a fat nerd. Or perhaps a fat geek. Those two terms can be used interchangeably for the purpose of this article. The only two things that will happen if you keep this up are that you will get fatter and then you will die. These things are not fun. To combat this, you should start an 8 week fitness boot camp. You will start slowly, learn some initial lessons over the course of the 8 weeks, and be prepared to embark on a lifetime fitness plan after the boot camp is over. Let us start with some motivational wisdom…
Let me tell you what you will not have if you are a fat geek:
Yes indeed, being a fat nerd is probably the worst thing you can do for your social life and for your general health.
Now picture your body weight at a level where you can actually see some muscle definition. Go ahead and imagine it. Now add about a year’s worth of dedicated weight training to that image. Starting to look good, isn’t it? Combine this image with the intelligence of a geek, and what do you have?
Let me tell you what you could have as a healthy, hardbody geek:
You fat boys see where I am going with this? If you are real smart, you have a chance to do well in life. If you are real good looking you still have a chance of doing well in life. Combine the two, and you are a force to be reckoned with!
It is insanity to continue on your current path hoping for a change. It won’t happen. You must take it upon yourself to start a lifestyle change that includes both diet and exercise. That is not to say that you should start a fad diet; instead, you should change your daily lifestyle eating habits.
Changes you can make today:
While following a healthy diet is good for you, you will still need to make your body stronger and more agile. You will accomplish this through some sort of exercise or training. I recommend a combination of weight lifting and interval sprints, but you might want to start with something a little easier. Remember, all you need to do to start is pledge to exercise for 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week. You will want to add minutes and days eventually so that you are doing 60 minutes a day, 4 days a week, but once again, start off with a light exercise program to test the waters.
Changes you can make today:
Last, but not least, you should be concerned with your general lifestyle. Make sure to get at least 7 hours of sleep every night. Sitting in front of the computer for 18 hours a day, exercising for an hour, and sleeping for 5 hours just isn’t going to cut it. To feel strong and confident about yourself, you need to eat well, exercise, sleep well, shower, shave, brush your teeth, and dress confidently. If you make an effort to improve all these areas of your life, a little bit at a time, you will morph into the person that you really want to be: a healthy, successful, guy, who also looks good naked.
Good question!
Week 1: Walk at a moderate pace for 30 minutes on Mon/Weds/Fri. Try to hit some hills. Practice ALL the new lifestyle eating tips. Decide what additional exercise you wish to participate in and get that membership to the gym or dojo, and/or go out and buy your new equipment.
Week 2: Reduce the walking to 20 minutes, and combine it with 30 minutes of whatever exercise or sport you chose. I recommend 5 minutes on the elliptical, 30 minutes of circuit training, and 15 more minutes on the elliptical. Or perhaps you have a 60 minutes kickboxing class. Either way, pick up the pace. Don’t forget to stretch after working out.
Week 3: You should be at a combined 60 minutes of exercise 3 days a week. This week you should practice targeting your carbs and calories. The bulk of carbs and calories should make up breakfast. Also consume some carbs before and after training, but never at night. Try to eat a low carb, low calorie dinner. Avoid anything more than a small fruit or high-protein snack before bed.
Week 4: You are approaching your half-way point in the 8 week fat geek boot camp. By now you should be familiar with the general exercise plan. This is a good time for me to recommend trying some free weights. Take one day off from circuit training and try some bench presses or some dumbbell shoulder presses instead of machines.
Week 5: You are half way there. During this week I recommend making 50% of each workout based around free weights. If you don’t know what to do based on articles from this site and other Internet fitness sites, just go ask one of the trainers at the gym to give you one exercise for each muscle group. A full body weight training routine is what you will eventually strive for.
Week 6: If possible, add in one extra workout on the weekend. Since you are in the initial stages of this lifestyle change, your body has not adapted to exercise yet; you are not actually putting forth maximal intensity and effort because your body has not yet been trained to do so. Therefore you can add a fourth day without worrying about overtraining. All you should be doing on this forth day, is some additional cardio. Bring back the 30 minute walk or bike ride if you so choose.
Week 7: You should have a good idea about how to eat on a daily basis at this point. You should have a good idea about how much exercise your body can tolerate and what you really want to do for exercise. You should know generally how to perform most simple exercises like bench presses, deadlifts, squats, shoulder presses, curls, sit ups, etc… You should be exercising intensely 3 times per week with some form of weight lifting or martial arts, warming up, stretching, and cooling down. Hopefully you are also implementing some form of fourth 30 minute workout. If you are not doing some of these things, or don’t know how to do some of these things, it is your responsibility to ask around or research it online.
Week 8: You have nearly graduated the fat geek boot camp. It is now time to set future goals. Plan out your exercise routines 2 months at a time. Get goals for fat loss, strength gain, endurance, or whatever else you have decided to focus on training. Start keeping a training log if you are weight training.
My recommendation is to keep 3-4 workouts per week, for a 45 minute duration not counting warm ups, cool downs, stretching, talking, ogling treadmill girls, or any other time wasters. Stick 90% to free weights, and focus on the largest muscles in the following order of importance:
If you stick to this diet and exercise plan, and integrate it as part of your lifestyle, you will feel so much better. You will once again, or maybe for the first time ever, have a chance with women (or men, if it applies). You will be stronger and healthier, making you less prone to disease, illness, or injury. Best of all, you will feel much more confident about yourself, thereby allowing you a chance for greater success in business, with client relationships, and with personal relations. Plus I’m sure you will look much sharper in a suit and tie when you turn that spare tire girth into broad shoulder girth.
Nothing will ever happen if you don’t try, so stop being a slob and just give this 8 week program a try. You won’t regret it.
How do we maximize our time spent in the gym?
Compound free weight exercises are what I choose 9 out of 10 times. The reason for this is several-fold.
a) Free weights build strength in assistance or stabilizer muscles.
b) Free weights eliminate injuries that normally occur from repeated motion along one plane of resistance, such as that with machines or even cables.
c) Free weights burn more calories by stimulating a chain of muscles rather than a single isolated muscle.
d) Free weights = calluses. =)
We also want to reduce or eliminate muscular imbalances, so it is a good idea to use uni-lateral exercises (dumbbell or single leg presses) once in a while in order to determine if one side is stronger.
In order to make the most of our time in the gym, we want to get as much done as possible in the time that we have. Therefore we will be using the concept of Giant Sets nearly everyday. This means we will be pairing each larger exercise with a mechanically unrelated smaller exercise (think of pairing bench presses with calf raises, or deadlifts with cable flies).
High reps (25+) will give you endurance.
High-Medium reps (15-25) will give you some mass and some endurance.
Medium reps (10-15) will give you mass, although this is the ideal range for most women and will function more to tighten and tone than to build much mass.
A Project Swole service reminder:
WOMEN DO NOT GET BIG BY ACCIDENT
Low-Medium reps (6-10) will give you some mass and some strength.
Low reps (1-5) will give you strength.
I tend to promote 1-2 warm up sets and 2 work sets on small to medium exercises. I will recommend 2-3 warm up sets and 2-3 work sets on the biggest, hardest exercises.
Clearly we do not need to psych up for warm up sets, but for each subsequent work set, we intend to lift more weight or more reps. The initial goal will be to lift a certain weight a certain number of times before moving up in weight the next workout. Sometimes it helps to take a couple breaths and picture yourself completing the set successfully for the prescribed number of reps, before hoisting the first rep. Then it becomes all about breathing and the mind-muscle connection. There is also almost never a reason to drop any weight from 2-3 feet in the air all the way to the floor. If you do this you are as big of a dickhead as the guy that curls in the squat rack or power rack… or on the deadlifting platform.
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