Gross, bub.
Well, my second session of cardio exercise in the last six months is… Better than when there was only one?
It was swimming again- I’ve lost my stamina but am still pretty nippy. Tomorrow I hit the gym floor.
love it
This is saddening. GUYS, using a machine isn’t somehow going to make you any more or less bulky than using free weights.
You. Will. Not. Get. Bulky.
Saying that you’ll get bulky by walking into a gym and picking up some weights is a MAJOR insult to the women who literally dedicate their lives to the discipline of trying their hardest to look athletic. You do NOT get bulky without trying to get bulky, and even then, loads of women bodybuilders still use steroids.
I normally keep the negativity off my tumblr, but this enrages me. If you don’t want to lift weights, that’s fine and totally okay. If you do a couple of machines instead of free weights because you want to be “toned” and not bulky, I just… sjdksjdksk.
The most ironic thing is that the 10-15 rep range is the one used for hypertrophy
aka muscle size
this thing is just bad lol
yea man. Pretty misinformed article. But hey what else is new.
Yeah man I thought that the first time I went, the dude was showing us round the machines, like “ideally you want to put about 5-15kg to start with cause these are isolation movements and I don’t want you hurting yourselves” (fair enough) “and you’ll want to put a weight where you can do 10-15x3 relatively fast and energetically to tone up without building muscle.” Like, if you want to “tone up” in that way you gotta reduce the weights until you’re basically using the Tracy Anderson method, no? Cause if you take the maximum weight you can do 15x3 at that’s basically the key to getting swole without building much strength. That’s what I do in the “I want to look like Rin Nakai” phase of my workout.
Jesus this fucks me off. I’m a woman who puts on bulk relatively easily (I think it’s the bit of me descended from hardy northern farm girls) but it literally takes me months to gain any sort of visible bulge and that’s with extensive cardio. But more to the point: I only use machines. I don’t trust myself to do the full motion with free weights because I know what I’m like and my propensity for injuring myself- sure, machines are less likely to end up with you rupturing something through lack of knowledge but they’re not equipped with a fat shot of oestrogen (which is a steroid, anyway, fun fact; I assume because being pregnant means your body has to adapt pretty fast to some fairly extreme change) or a shrink ray because fuck DAMN if after four months of work the tiny increments of mass I would gain were somehow erased by a Gwyneth Paltrow electro zap I would hulk the fuck out right there and then.
If you’ve got as big and strong as you want to, just do more reps at that weight to maintain. Jeebus.
Well it’s a start
So I’ve finally moved my gym membership so I can actually go there and I’ve gone for a swim. Not a good or long swim but any swim is better than none.
Tomorrow I’m going to try and get into the actual gym itself and do some toning/conditioning stuff gently and then 5k before work on Thursday, after which I’m giving blood so unless I go for a very very gentle swim on Friday lunchtime I can’t see myself exercising til next week.
The plan this year is Operation: She Hulk. I want to achieve what I believe the fitness community calls ‘swole.’ I know I can put on muscle rapidly; I want to maintain enough subcutaneous fat to not look totally ripped, just sort of big and strong and y’know, hott. So the plan is not to lose weight but gain muscle- I am hopelessly scrawny on some bits of me and I think any attempt to tone and lose weight will just result in the jutting shoulder blades and knock knees of December 2011, when I was very fit, fairly misrrable from
dieting and looked awful with my clothes off. This time I’m thinking more the Chrissie Wellington look than Paula Radcliffe, appropriately as I’m never doing a sodding marathon and I’m doing a triathlon in July.
Helpful nutritional advice/exercise protips etc gratefully received. The main thing I need to do is put the work in.
*Yes I know there’s a marathon in an iron man event. But there isn’t in my triathlon (400m swim, 15km cycle, 5km run yes I am 1x such wuss what of it) so err w/e.
Omg. The casualness of this, the easy power to the way she’s holding herself. Holy shit.
I’ve posted this to my main blog before but. Fitspo.
RIGHT THEN
Aims for 2013;
- become She Hulk
- do a triathlon
- take up some form of martial arts to assist with frankly abominable coordination
- turn burgeoning paunch back into lean muscle
(not necessarily in that order)
Although the first point of order is to actually re-enter a gym for the first time in err, five months. :(
(in all fairness I have actually been straight up ill for three of those- I’m still coughing but I figure it’s got to happen at some point)
If I had access to a grown up size jungle gym, I would be unreasonably hench. I would do monkey bars all day. Why has no one monetised this? Are these not capitalist times?
Interesting, Macfadden does bodyweight squats on his toes.
Which, actually Tsatsouline suggests too but as he says “not many comrades can stay in that position for very long”, which, yup. It’s a challenge though.
On the other hands, making your knees snap with every rep? What are you talking about Bernarr? Ouch!
Was he a sprinter? Cus it’s how you do it if you subsequently want to use the muscles developed to run on your toes. It does make it harder but I think I might be potentially doing something odd to my hamstrings, otherwise. Not that all these bastard squats have actually got me into a condition where I can go back to the track yet but blergh.
My knees crack at every rep but uh, that’s just my shitty knees.
Also recovering from an injury is boring
I am doing between 150 and 200 squats a day and I ought to be doing the same number of lunges but there’s nowhere very convenient in the house so I get bored and all that’s happening is that my arse hurts as well. :(
Other things I should be doing: skipping, step machine, swimming. Unfortunately these all require me going to my gym, which is right next to Former Workplace and I have psychological issues about this. I should also be doing a ton of weights and push ups/sit ups/twists and there’s no excuse for not doing that.
Get on it, Mog. Still, at least I can do a full squat now, something that came in very useful when I had to use a pissoire on holiday.
Nutritious and blergh
Is there some form of protein that doesn’t taste totally vomit-worthy or do I have to suck it up and accept that the raw vegan thing I’ve found that doesn’t actually make me gag is the best form?
I’ve never used protein supplements before but it totally is a good idea to have some after track, I’m also aware I flat-out don’t eat enough protein generally it’s probably fairly necessary. My OH is on a diet that I’m cooking for, which is fine because I wasn’t helping myself by eating a massive pile of buttered parsnips every night and it is indeed good to lay off the pork occasionally. The downside is that I really can’t get at all excited about chicken, which is his preferred form of lean meat and so although I’ve convinced him to eat fish as well (which I like) I am aware I’m giving myself more mushrooms than breast when portioning things. I mean, not that I do such an enormous amount of exercise that it really matters but err yes. Muscles: must get some of those.
Fuck squats man
Or more specifically, fuck my left knee and the way it clicks every fucking time.
I managed to cack up my right leg again at track, alerting me to the fact I may actually have to do something more substantial than ‘ignoring it’ to get it back to a usable state, unfortunately that something is basically a shitload of squats and lunges, motions that I have wholesale avoided for ehhh, at least 13 years.
PLUS SIDE: arse like Nicki Minaj surely just across the horizon
DOWN SIDE: holy balls, it’s boring and I want to run but I know even going 10m for the bus provoked the strain and grr and argh
