This is part four in a series of blog posts where I talk about living a healthier life. Some have told me these are too long and others have called them inspirational and motivating. I write this to get everything that’s in my mind down on digital paper so I can keep my routines and diets in my head and avoid getting things mixed up. So far, I’ve written about the keys to a successful fitness regiment and how to stay with it. I’ve shared a bit about a diet that you could follow and I’ve been pretty clear about the benefit of supplements even if you don’t need to get in shape and are happy with your body. Today, I’m going to talk about training and what I’ve been doing to get fit. It’s important that you remember this is written as a guy who is trying to lose weight and gain muscle. Also remember I’m not an expert and keep in mind that I am changing up my routine every 8 weeks which I’ve already done once. I’ll share my full basic routine as well as variances and different thing to work the same muscle. This may be a pretty long post but you can skim and just read the bulleted routines. Finally, I hope you’ve spent the last month eating well, taking vitamins and stretching daily. Now that you are in a habit of eating well and thinking about yourself and where you need to improve, it’s time to add in the physical part of this transformation.
The keys to a successful fitness regiment:
Beyond the focus and determination and push to kick ass and be your very best, there are a few very common mistakes that people make. I know you’re excited and pumped up about getting started but you can’t take the excitement and put it into the wrong areas. Here are some basics that should be applied to nearly every type of physical exercise.
- Rest: I know it seems weird to start with this but, you must take appropriate rest while working your body at a high level. This means getting 8-9 hours of sleep each night and taking 1 or 2 days off every week where you just go for a walk. Don’t run or lift weights or do laps in the pool. On rest days, sit on the couch and watch TV. Yes, you’re allowed to do this once a week. Today, I didn’t go to the gym. I drank beer and watched football and ate bacon for breakfast. It’s my rest day.
- Stretch: Before and after workouts and on rest days, please stretch. Focus on your legs and hip flexers. Ensure all of your joints are limber and make sure you have a full range of motion every day. It takes 15 minutes for a basic stretch and is crucial for avoiding injuries. The moment you pull a muscle in your back during pull-ups, you’re going to regret not stretching or doing warm ups.
- Controlled Movements: When exercising, don’t swing your arms or legs or move any part of your body that isn’t the muscle you are working on. If you’re doing an arm curl and working on your biceps, there’s no need to swing your hips, move your head or enact your shoulder muscles. Plant your elbow to the side of your body and curl without moving anything else. If you’re swinging or moving around wildly, you’re doing it wrong. It’s like when people do sit-ups and swing their arms down with every body raise to help them. Wrong. Control your movements to get the most out of each exercise.
- Hydrate: Don’t kill yourself with water. It is possible. However, you should consume water in sips during workouts to replace water you’re losing. On heavy workout days, you are welcome to drink beer at home before bed but your body will hate you the next morning with a very dry mouth. You are dehydrating yourself while exercising and making it worse by drinking anything other than water. You’re also lengthening your recovery time post-workout. If you want to be sore 5 days later, then don’t drink water. I dare you.
- Change up your regiment every 2-3 months to keep things interesting and to keep your body growing. Hitting a wall is a reality so always be mixing things up but, don’t mix things up until you’re sure that you’ve reached that level. As an example, I’ll do a leg workout that involves Cybex machines. I’ll do leg press+leg extension+leg curl+calves. Every 2 leg workouts, I switch to squats+box jumps+pulling the sled+tire flips+100 meter sprints+stair lunges. My legs are getting a weight workout but also a true to life body only workout every 2 weeks. Mixing things up shoots fear into your muscles and forces them to adapt to something other than controlled pushes in one of three angles.
- Consume protein and calories following your workouts. If you work out for an hour, take in 400 calories and 30 grams of protein immediately following the workout. I keep protein powder and protein bars at the gym. These are in my bag as I leave and I finish them on the way home. I’ll eat dinner a few hours later but I always put something in my body after workouts. Very important. I eat a spoon of sunflower butter an hour before workouts with a pre-workout nitric oxide scoop. You don’t have to do that but it helps.
- Cardio is NOT the ultimate weight loss exercise. You will lose weight and a lot of women say they don’t want to get big and bulked up. You won’t get bulked if you do resistance training but you’re not going to lose that extra flab if you only do 30 minutes on the elliptical 3 times a week.
- Breathe: It’s important to breathe in when you prepare to do a repetition and breathe out on the rep. For example, the bar comes down on your chest in a bench press and you breathe in while that happens. Breathe out as you push the bar off of you.
- Rest in between sets. If you’re doing resistance training, you should rest no less than 45 seconds between each set and no more than 90 seconds. Feel free to take 1-2 minutes in between each specific exercise but don’t rest more than 90 seconds between each set within an exercise. Generally, do 3 sets per exercise.
Those may have not been quick tips but they’re absolutely critical for growth and progress while you’re working out. Let’s review my regiment. This workout has helped me go from 290 to 250 while increasing my chest, should and arm size by 2x in 3 months. Muscle weighs more than fat so, I’ve lost about 60 pounds of fat while replacing it with 25 pounds of muscle. My beer belly is still here but, genetics has shown me that’s the last thing I’ll be getting rid of.
Monday: Chest, Shoulders and Triceps
We group these muscles for a reason. While doing benchpress, you are using your soldiers to stabilize and your triceps to extend the arms. After a hard chest workout, you’ve already started to tear down your chest and triceps muscles. So, it’s only fair that we completely tear those muscles down for a full trifecta
Chest:
- Flat Benchpress (with bar or dumbells)
- 1 Warmup – 15 Reps (repetitions)
- 3 Full sets – 10-12 Reps
- Incline Benchpress (with bar or dumbells)
- 3 Full sets – 8-10 Reps
- Decline Benchpress (with bar or dumbells)
- 2 Full sets – to failure (as many as you can do)
- Pushups – to failure (keep going switch to your knees if you have to go go go until you just can’t push anymore)
The key to benchpress is that you arch your back and push your body with your feet where a lot of the pressure is on your shoulder blades. Don’t lay on the bench flat footed or flat backed. Arching slightly will put more focus on your chest. Arms should be wider than shoulder width and you should feel chest muscles and not shoulder muscles while doing these. Breathe out with every rep.
Shoulders:
- Stand vertically and grab some dumbells. Raise your arms out to your sides. Don’t swing your arms (10 times)
- Same stance, raise arms in front of you. Don’t raise your shoulders above shoulder height and don’t swing. Start with 5 pounders for this exercise. You’re going to do both of these back to back. So do the 10 with the dumbells being positioned at your side then do 10 more with the dumbell coming in front of you. Rest and do this for 3 sets 10+10 then rest.
- Grab dumbbells that are slightly heavier and find a bench with a vertical back. Bring the dumbells up and do presses. This is where you push the dumbells above your head straight up into the air. Do these 10-12 times for three sets. If your gym as a shoulder press machine, you can use this to work on your form but you’ll get more from dumbells.
- Any of these can be done using cables, machines dumbells. I like dumbells because they force your body to stabilize in different ways so, instead of just moving a machine that’s on a cable above your head, you have to do that with individual weights and control their direction. This causes your body to use other muscles beyond just the ones pushing up.
Triceps:
- Cable crossover machine, attach two handle rope to top of the machine elliptical so the rope is hanging eye level
- Stand in front of machine and grab with your hands and extend your arms downward. Don’t swing and don’t let your arms bend in less than 90 degrees. Three sets of 10 reps
- Dips. If you lean forward while doing dips, you’re working your chest and triceps. Have your body vertically and you’re focusing on the triceps. When getting started, and since it is a chest day, you’re fine to do leaning or straight up. Do as many as you can then do another set as many as you can.
Cardio:
- One hour on the elliptical at 5-10 resistance level
- 10 minutes of jogging / power walking on a treadmill
- 10 minutes in the steam room while downing loads of water (stretch while in sauna)
Day 2: Back and Biceps
These are another grouped set of muscle groups. While pulling things down or back to work your back, you’re activating the biceps as well.
Back:
- Pulldowns using a wide grip bar
- 1 warmup (15 reps)
- 3 full sets (12 reps)
- Seated row
- 3 full sets (12 reps)
- Pull-Ups
- Just do as many as you can. Many people can’t do one.
Biceps:
- Dumbell curls. Alternate one at a time. Start with holding a dumbell in each hand and curl each and squeeze at the top. You can do this with a bar as well to isolate one muscle
- 3 sets (12 reps)
- Cable Rope Curls. Works outer biceps. Same reps as previous bicep exercise
Cardio
- 1 Hour Elliptical
- 15 Minutes on the treadmill
- 10 minutes in the sauna (stretch while in sauna)
Wednesday: Cardio & Core Day
- Take extra time to stretch today. If your gym has a stretching class, take it and take notes. Stretch for 30 minutes and really do a full body stretch.
- 15-20 minutes of abdominal exercises. This is usually crunches, leg raises, full sit-ups and other abdominal machines that you have at your disposal.
- Lower Back: Just find a machine or one of those items where you hang over facing forward. Grab a 45 pound barbell, hold it to your chest and do 3 sets of 15 reps. If this is too easy, grab more weight.
- One hour on the elliptical
- 2 MIles on the treadmill
- 100 meter sprints (4 of these)
- Hit the whirlpool or steam room if you want but it’s optional
Thursday: Legs
- Leg Press Machine
- 1 Warmup Set (15 reps)
- 3 Full sets (12 reps)
- Leg Extensions (same sets as above)
- Leg Curls (same as above)
- Calves. You can use the leg press for this and just work your calves or find a dedicated machine
No cardio on this day. If you can still walk down stairs once you’re done with this, you didn’t do a good workout. You should be dying to find a chair after this is done. If not, you need to add more weight next time. Remember, when doing leg presses (not standing but sitting down), If you weigh 150, you can at least do that. Add 50 pounds to your weight as a baseline. We know you can lift yourself because you do it every day. that’s why I can do 400 on the leg press because I already weight 300 pounds so adding 100 to that was no big deal.
Friday: Rest
I don’t believe in weekday rest days so, if you want, I’d come in Friday and do another cardio & core day with some small things like benchpress, curls, pulldowns and some misc free weight exercises and another stretching session. Do an hour on the treadmill if you’d like and then rest Saturday or Sunday. If you want to come into the gym on the weekend, that’s fine but, I take weekends off since the gym is half an hour away so I always do something on Friday and then start the cycle over on Monday. It’s up to you.
Saturday OR Sunday: Maintenance
- One 20 minute jog
- One stretching session
- One at home abdominal session
- One 100 meter sprint
- Hydrate but also splurge, drink a little beer and wine, eat some bacon
- Just make sure you do something physical on one of these days.
Conclusion:
So, that’s my post on physical training. It’s pretty basic and you should always alternate and change things up as often as possible. However, follow this for the first 2 months especially if you are currently doing no physical activity at all. You have to start somewhere and this will be much harder than you expect it to be.
When it’s time to switching things up, If found this GREAT website that holds your hand with all of the potential exercises you can do
http://www.exrx.net/index.html
It has GIF examples of every exercise you could ever think of and it shows you exactly what it’s working and has categories. There are also sections on training for a 5K or marathon and training without weights. Browse through, take notes and build your workout. Thanks for reading. I don’t think this concludes the blog series but, for now, it does. Thanks for reading.