Life The Getting in Shape Thread

[boemshiika]

tae kwando!? maybe

i was following a fitness(it was more kick boxing then anything) dvd the other day and it started off with warming up the joints; neck-shoulders-back-hips-knees-enkels-elbows and wrists. then the muscles; joging on the spot-squads-skipping-bush ups etc.
the first half was a introduction to boxing and the second half involved kicking. in the last part teaches some breathing techniques and stretching(its important to keep joints/muscles warm when doing this).and because it made stretch every muscle on my legs, i was able to perform a split on my first ever session. and now im able to reach 10 inches past my toes.

the only thing left now is to find a balanced diet. i either eat too much food or drink too much water. thats why a friend of mine told to devide my stomach space into three. 1/3 for food - 1/3 for water and 1/3 for air. it happens to me sometimes that when i overeat it gets hard to breath.

 

[baboysai]

well you could always drink tea.

Tea is healthy because it detoxifies.

 

[Forever_Melody]

@Blai: Flexibility is worked on by bending muscles past their normal limit. Usually it's done in pairs because well, you can't pull your leg back farther than it can go naturally alone lol

There are many stretching routines(once again done in pairs) that help improve flexibility. The trick to it is to go until you reach a point of discomfort(not hurting, discomfort) and to maintain that position for a given amount of time(normally a few minutes is enough, lest you start tearing too many muscle tissue). Also note you have to be careful of bone structure when trying to improve flexibility. As a dancer and gymnast, I've had years to make my skeletal structure adapt to the moves I do. henceforth, I can sometimes move bones off or at the edge of their respective joints, which isn't an option for people who haven't trained like this.

 

[blai]

Yeah I know about the thing when it comes to being a gymnast since my sister was a gymnast teacher and when I was like seven I could do ridiculous things, but my mom had me stop around the age of nine/ten so I'm like... not that flexible... I was like wondering if there were some type of exercise where you could improve for flexibility, while strengthening your muscles. I know we had a couple of those exercises at icehockey but I can't remember them... ;/

Thanks for the info Mimi! (Off to find someone as weird as I am to halp me)

 

[Lohnt]

Do you have any special exercises? Or is it just fitness to increase your lung-capacity?



Just a quick question. I know exactly what I eat and stuff nowadays but there's one thing I haven't thought of before... I'm eating a lot of tunas and I know it's really healthy because it has approx 25% proteins and Omega 3 but I haven't researched that much on the fish-topic so do you know another fish that tastes almost as good (impossible to, tuna = love) and that is healthier?
Preferably something canned since it's expensive and I'm a poor student

Cod, haddock, flounder and sole are all relatively cheap frozen fish. You can probably get 12 pieces of fish steaks that will easily last you a week if you eat 2 a day. (And eating meat/chicken once a week). Salmon is a little more expensive.
In general all large fish are high in protein and low in fat, some are high in cholesterol though but in general will provide you with high omega 3 and nutrients you'll normally lose. I guess Catfish/shark would also qualify.

Try avoid adding additional salt to fish, substituting instead garlic (goes with nearly every fish), pepper, oregano and ginger. In general all canned fish, even small ones like sardines/crab have decent protein, but I prefer to avoid them due to high sodium ratings.
Also with tuna, prefer water brine over oil cans.

And always try to steam/boil/bake it, with a simple sauce like lemon and oregano/oil.

Just remember not to get discouraged by your budget, I know about having no budget due to school, I'm still in that situation with my MBA program now, but I try to sacrifice other things in order to eat better.
If you don't spend the money now on a better diet, you'll pay for it later at a gym or knock on wood a doctor/surgery.

In general fish diets are difficult, unless you're a chef and follow a lot of foodnetwork/have time to look up recipes/can just afford sushi.
But they tend to work sooooo much better than meat protein diets. Chicken breast diets are really only for bodybuilders. Chicken may work better for gaining muscle mass, but it is incredibly stressful on your body, and you have to have a personal trainer constantly pushing you to the next level.

 

[blai]

Thank you!
Honestly this thread is contributing with more than on my biology and chemistry class when we were able to choose topics themselves and I worked a month with the whole metabolism cycle and whatnot...
I know a lot of people are bashing those that use protein powder but I use them when working out heavily since I'm still not 100% sure what to eat to get all proteins that's necessary when you're working out and wants to build muscles...
Do you have any suggestions for a veggie that eats fish and shrimps?
(Shrimps are too good to resist I know ;< )

 

[Arrogance]

Hmm, protein powder isnt a bad thing. I personally don't use it because I have enough protein in my diet to begin with (I love my meats ). But your particular body build is that your smaller and trying to gain muscle mass, then your gonna need extra protein. I personally am already a big guy with a lot of muscle mass, so right now I'm not persnally working out to gain mass persay, but more to help define my muscle more (but I don't mind if they get any bigger though )

 

[blai]

Yeah same here, I don't think protein powder is a bad thing unless you do - as you said - get enough protein in your diet because in that case you're only overdoing it and it'll do more harm than good. I'm not small, but I'm neither big. I have a body that's great for building muscles on if we can say that, it's kind of compact but still flexible, good width between the shoulders and blablabla... Do you know anything apart from like beans that has a lot of proteins innit (and that are fairly cheap)?

I still need to build some more before I start to define or "shape" them like i want to. Though I'm shaping my abs i'm still pumping breasts arms triceps / biceps and my upper back. Shaping lower back and shaping my calfs.
I hope you know what I mean by using the word "shape". Not like ripping but almost... meh my explaining level just sank to 4...

 

[Arrogance]

I know what you mean by shape, its one thing to build size and get strong, which would be power lifting (and I've done that back when I played American football) but now that I'm not, I still like being strong so I like working out for bulk but at the same time I want it too look good as well, so I'm trying to define them a bit more as well, but I guess the way you can look at it the main bulk of my workouts are strength training, plus I find it more motivating as well trying to take yourself to another level by lifting heavier weights and working your way higher and higher.

As for protein, honestly I just am a man that likes meat, so I've never had problems with my protein. Beans are good like you said but I can see how it can get boring and bland after a while and thats why you want more....Eggs have some good protein and then some fish. Honestly though, its hard to have CHEAP protein really, other than have meal substitution shakes and watnot. Cause lets be serious, Meat is probably the easiest source for protein and yet is meat ever really cheap? So its kinda hard to find cheap protein in my opinion.

 

[blai]

Yes meat is indeed the best source of protein and that makes it pretty hard for me to find cheap protein-filled food. Apart from cottage cheese which has like 11 or 14% of proteins. I don't know which gives the most satisfying, doing bench / power lifting and feeling your max potential increasing, or doing not so heavy, but more reps and feeling that you aren't increasing in strength that much but with muscle-stamina and stuff... I try to combine them as much as I can...

Another thing I've started to do is to, not only stretch but to do a lot of agility exercises and also some exercises that increases your mobility and movement so that it'll be easier to - for example dance. Also, it's much better to have a strong flexible body than a strong stiff body, even though the flexibility workouts are a b*tch in the beginning...

Well for the veggie-food... 4 veggie-burgers costs like $3,5 and idk how much it is, 200g? 250g? That's cheap for veggie-food... the average is approx $5 if you count minced "meat" and (5*7)*4=$140 and then add other food to it. I don't afford that

 

[Arrogance]

Well I try to stretch as well, even though I am working out more for bulk and strength, cause no matter what, stretching helps your muscles to grow, especially after a hard work out where all your muscles are tight, it helps a lot to take the time to stretch everything out. Another thing I know if as well, is its important to have a rest day in between your workouts, your muscles need time to recover from your workouts, otherwise you could work out everyday but you can't do the same muscle parts everyday, you would then need to alternate between work outs.

As for your agility workouts, I haven't done much agility exercises cause those aren't as practicle as me going into my basement and lifting weights. As well (I think I mentioned this a few pages ago, but I had knee surgery a while back) and ever since my agility has never really been the same as it used to be when I played football and before the injury. So for me those type of exercises although they would probably help with my knee problems, they are very exhausting and can even hurt my knee sometimes so in the end I just avoid them and instead try to just be active with things like playing some casual sports or bike riding, just to keep my lower part of my body active and my knee moving smoothly, lol.

---

Ok well was talking about what I do to work out in the Hangout Thread but Blai told me to move it here....so I did. Just to have all my info that I was talking about here I shall re-post what I was talking about....

Lets see....right now I'm using a machine since I workout in my basement and that saves a lot of space and money and I'm getting good results. Unfortunately I have maxed out the weight on the machine for many of my exercises so i kinda need to approximate what numbers I'm actually lifting, but I'll give it a shot. Benching: I could probably get 280-300 up. Curls i do 25lbs and thats dumbbells. Triceps are 23-30lbs. Shoulder press is like 220lbs, etc. I need to approximate what I can do the most of because since i maxed out the weight on my machine, I need to get creative and do more reps or different types of exercises for that same body part to get good results. So for my my stats aren't written in stone because I don't have the opportunity to life like 300 lbs in my own house to find out for sure, lol. But I still get a great workout and the results I'm looking for so I'm happy with it for now.

Well for my arms, I do a little bit lighter, cause I like being able to do more reps...when I do a fully body work out I end up ding 3 different types of curls. I do regular, hammer, and concentration curls. Each are five sets of ten reps.....so that comes out to 150 reps of curls for each arm with 30lb dumbells. So I do 300 curling reps in total each time I workout. Also I end up doing extra reps for my left arm since I'm a righty and for some reason because I use my right arm on a daily basis and its much more coordinated, then it gets bigger than my left. So i need to workout my left arm a little more to compensate. So in the end I'm doing like 200 reps for my left bicep and like 150 for my right.

No I don't watch youtube, I learned some things from my dad and then developed others on my own. And yea I do specific things to target muscle groups as well. I do those 3 types of curls for my biceps, I do 2 types lateral dumbbell raises for my shoulders, I do 2 different tricep workouts, two types of ab workouts, shoulder presses, benching, flys, shrugs, 3 types of back workouts, and thats just about it. So yea I do the standard strength training workouts as well as I target certain muscle groups with specific exercises as well. And I usually don't do just one work out for one muscle group, I do more than one type to target different parts of that specific muscle.

 

[blai]

Youtube is crap. The real deal comes from the veteran dudes at the gym and from personal experience ^_^

 

[Arrogance]

Yea, like Youtube can be fun in order to watch some of those things like there are some guys that do some crazy things with a pull up bar and stuff and is a very intense workout yet its not something I couldn't really due, its just more entertaining and motivating to see it (here is one of them, this is one of the Ghetto workout ones but its still pretty entertaining to see it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT_3LAhd0LE&feature=fvw). Anywho, Most of the stuff I do I developed myself and have learned from my dad or just my own experiences.

 

[blai]

Yeah, it's THE shit for getting motivation My personal inspirationsource is jamerjay
Have you seen the vids with the plyometric and the spider push-ups?? I saw this guy doing them @ the gym and it was insane!
I totally wanna be able to do like 50-70 of 'em :x
'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rghpvUUy7bA

 

[Arrogance]

Damn, see I'm more of that bulky build, I can't do stuff like that lol. I used to do a lot of Plyometric stuff when I played (american) football before my surgery. All the conditioning was like that, we used Agiles and everything, it was completely nuts, but after my injry my knees can't really take stuff like that. I could probably do some of that stuff still but my endurance is shot though so I wouldn't last as long as I used to when I was doing them.

 

[Akiyama]

I do all my workout usually outside in the fresh air. Begins with a walk...that's easy...but i usually walk for 1 to 2 hours. I have a very long driveway and it has a very good incline. Then I enjoy doing pull ups, sometimes chin ups but those are harder. Right now i can only do between 40 to 50 of those with a rest between them. Then push-ups later in the day but not that many since I'm already worn out. The next day would be crunches, usually 100 in the morning the 100 more later in the day combined with a shorter walk. No weights for me since i don't have any and the nearest gym to to far away boooooo. My diet would by no junk food(fast food, candy, etc.) allowed not even eating cake on my birthday. The only exception is vanilla ice cream mixed with fruit in a blender just to satisfy my taste buds, good source of protein. Not much meat i eat except lean turkey that's low in calories. I sometimes count calories and usually stay below 1500 cals. a day.

 

[blai]

Be careful so that you don't get a cals deficit. If you do you'll loose muscles instead of cals beacuse there are none to break down.
Bird is great meat \o/ and I eat 1package of crisps every day almost now the last month and I'm still on -+0 if not on a deficit on cals.
Cottage chesse is also superb \o/

Welcome to this thread Aki, browse the WHOLE 4 PAGES of knowledge! :x It's give and take ^_^

 

[Akiyama]

I thought that burning more calories than you take in would make you lose fat not muscle.

Thanks Blai, very interesting and useful thread!

 

[blai]

That depends on how big the gap is between how much you take in and how much you burn IIRC.

Np, It's an awesome thread - I know \o/

 

[Arrogance]

Well the thing is if you are one of those people on a no carbs diet then you may face problems. Carbs are your first line of defense if you will. You body burns those off first, and when you run out of that then your body moves onto lipids for energy. So the way a now carb diet works is that it eliminates your first line of defense completely so then your body burns just fat as your energy source. Problems with this is that it throws off your body and you really need to remain loyal to it in order for it to work. Now I think more of what Blai is talking about is if you don't eat enough calories or enough protein, then your body won't have any energy to build muscle so you will actually end up losing it. So going back to my lines of defense thing you eliminate carbs and fat and you have nothing for your body to burn, so your screwed, lol. You really need to watch what you eat and eating less is not always the key, its a matter of picking what you eat wisely. I more don't worry about what I eat and I just go with having the intense workouts becuase I'm not one who is able to follow strict diets, so I just work out really hard to burn my calories and fat and do gain muscle mass.