Bocc Kob

Hello, sorry I've been inattentive lately. I started doing rest days after I realized my sets were getting progressively shorter when I tried doing a full routine every day. By the time the overexertion stuff started, I was doing a full routine every other day, then on off days I would do the warm-up and cool-down stuff with some random more basic bodyweight stuff I'd look up that day. I'm trying to gain weight. My diet at the time was either some chicken breast, tilapia, or ground beef depending on the day for dinner, tuna sandwich or peanut butter sandwich with an apple for lunch, then eggs and toast or something for breakfast. I have frozen mixed vegetables and either regular noodles or white rice to make it more filling. I've been drinking a lot of whole milk to round out calories/protein because my budget is very tight. I have protein powder for a shake, but I only have one after I do a full routine. My rest breaks used to be three minutes between sets, but as I started feeling that overexertion they'd get from ten minutes to stopping completely because just starting anything again would make me immediately nauseous. Is 40 too many? Ten reps per set is around my limit right now because I don't know/can't do more difficult bodyweight stuff yet. Although that could have changed, because I haven't exercised in over a month now due to new job and sudden inexplicable sleep disorder.

Maybe I need to add a lot of cardio or something. Lately I can't even do more than one set of each exercise before I'm almost dry heaving. Today I couldn't even get through the warmup routine before I felt nauseous. It would make sense if I was trying to do too much before I was ready, but this is stuff I've been doing for a month and even though my muscles don't feel like I'm getting enough resistance anymore, my stamina has steadily been getting worse without anything in my diet or routine changing. I really don't understand what's going on at all.

I agree, I figured the speed was to show like "look what you can do with crossfit training!", but it was the first video I found that had some instruction and showed a couple variations of the exercise. When I do toes to bar, I try to keep an even, deliberate pace so I get the full effect of the movement and don't have momentum or gravity helping me along. But that's mostly been my assumption of what would work better.

I started out doing knees to elbows before I could do the full version. Here's a video of a dude showing some variations.

I've been following the Body Weight Brigade guide for the most part. One day I do handstand pushups (against wall), chinups on rings, side to side pushups, pistol squats, and feet to hands on a chinup bar. Next day is rest day, where I've been looking around for less strenuous things to do like dips, superman holds, an ab thing I don't know the name of where you hang from a pullup bar and bring your knees up to your chest, and a couple other things depending on what I can find a video for. Day after that is pullups on rings, those clapping pushups with my feet up on a one-foot high step stool, split squat with my back leg on the stool, divebomber pushups, and L-sit. Then it's the same rest day stuff the next day and the day after that I start over with the first routine. Everyday starts off with some warmup stuff and ends with cooldown stuff. I do four sets of everything and try to pace myself so I get ten reps of each thing per set, except the handstand pushups which go down to eight or nine after the first set and the exercises using individual limbs get ten each. The superman hold goes for thirty seconds and the L-sit goes fifteen to twenty depending on when I start shaking. I've been thinking four or five exercises a day doesn't seem like enough, but I'm not sure what else I could add to them.

Hello. I've been exercising for about the past month using bodyweight routines exclusively. I haven't been noticing much difference in size, but I haven't been measuring myself either. I've definitely been progressing in strength and endurance, but I've hit an odd point. The past week I've been starting to do things like handstand push ups (against a wall), pistol squats, L-sits, slowing down my pull-ups/chin-ups so they're harder to do, and a few other exercises. The problem I've run into is while I can barely manage four sets of ten reps doing these which seems ideal, I exert myself so much that my heart rate gets too high, it takes me more than a minute or two to catch my breath, and a few times I've even gotten queasy to the point I've had to stop for an hour or two. I don't feel much or enough resistance doing easier exercises anymore. Am I trying to progress too fast? Should I just increase my rest periods between sets? Move back to the easier stuff and increase the resistance by doing them slower? Could I simply be breathing wrong? I'm not sure if the size building thing of "increase resistance until you can only manage six reps per set" thing I've read about applies to bodyweight stuff too. Maybe I should keep doing what I am, but increase the resistance so I stop earlier than ten?

I've gotten going before. I can manage a basic routine (except for knowing which exercises to do so every group is covered), but where it falls apart for me is my near-total ignorance on proper diet and knowing where/how to go after that starting point. The details and complicated stuff are what I need now so I'm not wasting time/effort. I've done exercises for months at a stretch before, but it's never felt like an actual "workout" because I don't really know what I'm doing.

Ah, okay, so length/frequency is more of a what you can handle thing? I'm still a little confused by it. If you can spend an hour going at a decent pace or half an hour blasting it out, how much does that affect? Are you eventually just able to feel "okay that's all I can handle today"? If a routine is "supposed to" take an hour or so, but you're able to do it in half that without exhausting yourself, does that mean it's too easy? Does soreness factor in at all? Like, I'm sore that means this routine is still good or I'm sore, better make it a rest day? What I'm going for is mostly to satisfy curiosity in how far I can go. I don't have a target weight or waist size or something like that, though I would like to fill out more. I'm curious to see what I'm capable of if I fixed my diet and exercised as much as possible and increased the difficulty as much as possible without going to a gym or spending several hundred dollars on equipment and if that could equal or surpass someone who did. I don't want to exercise "enough" to gain some weight or build some strength, I want to be Batman. Is there a particular kind of frozen vegetable to include a lot of? I've always bought mixed bags, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to them on the label. If I want both strength and endurance, I guess I mix up the reps/difficulty? For example one day do more reps with an easier exercise, then another day a few reps on a tougher version? Would it be better to vary them up every day or every week? Ooh! I thought of another one! Multiple exercises that focus on the same muscle/group. Is there any reason to include more than one per day? I guess pull-ups and chin-ups on the same day. They're kind of the same area, I think? Or different ab exercises on the same day. Are you getting anything by targeting abs in one way, then in a different way later on in the workout assuming the intensity were the same? Is it better to save that stuff for when you get bored doing the same thing everyday/week?

Hello. I've been looking around at different message boards and this one seemed to have the most favorable mix of knowedgable and not-scary. Physical fitness is weird for me. I've always been somewhat aware of it, but never really engaged in it, so it's like when you can follow a conversation but don't know enough to contribute to it. Anyway, I'm 28 years of age, about 5'8" and used to hover around 135lbs for my entire adult life until I took a somewhat strenuous job ten months ago and dropped down to 123lbs. I look pretty under-weight. I certainly sort of feel it and could overall use an increase of useful mass. On a whim, I bought one of these things: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007RQ0F8W/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 First I tried the doorframe kind, but then I discovered my studio has no doorframes it could fit in, so I said whatever and purchased that behemoth. Luckily the pull-up bar is just short enough that I can do those without flattening my skull. But other than that, some dips, that thing where you suspend yourself and move your legs up and down, along with basic things like push-ups and such, I didn't really know what exercising entailed. I also don't know anything about proper dieting. So on came the questions! (Numbered for convenience) 1. My biggest question so far, is how much is too much/enough? Some people say exercising 6-7 days a week for two hours a day with all kinds of weight machines/free weights/etc. are the best results. Then I've seen as little as an hour or so three days a week doing bodyweight stuff is plenty for optimum gains. Is there any accurate, hard data vs. personal preference? Does it depend on what you're going for? It makes sense in my head that more = better, but doing less while targeting multiple muscle groups at once makes sense too. If time isn't an issue, what's the absolute most I can do for optimum results before I start getting diminishing returns or risk injury? I'd like size, definition, strength, and endurance. The quadfecta! Also as little fat as is healthy to walk around with. The quinfecta? 2. Is there a consensus on bodyweight vs. external weight? Personally, I'm not into gyms or using weights. I don't want to buy special pants or a sweat towel or heavy things I might drop on sensitive areas or trip over in the night. Plus, they're friggin' expensive and you end up out-growing most of them anyway. I'd read (on The Internet) that gymnasts train mostly doing only bodyweight exercises. Those folks can do some pretty awesome stuff and despite not training with (many) actual weights, could lift the same or more as someone who focused exclusively on them. But this was also from a guy trying to sell a book on bodyweight exercises. Having smaller, but denser and most importantly, highly functional muscles is the most appealing to me. If I'm going to put all that work into building them up, I want them to be able to do things besides look good or be able exercise more. What would I be missing out on if I never set foot in a gym and never touched a dumb nor bar bell? I have the Dreaded Aparatus linked above and also have a pair of rings on the way. What more could I want? 3. Where do you GET all that protein and calories? The simplified rule of thumb is 1g protein for every pound you weigh, right? I did a quick tally of my current diet and found I get maybe a quarter of what I need. If that. Depending on the day. My daily calories are maybe half what I'd need just to maintain. I'm already a careful shopper and rarely buy junk food except when it's on sale and my food budget is already stretched. I can dip into my savings for the bulk-up portion, but just maintaining would be rough unless there's some miracle foods high in the stuff I need that hardly cost anything. Is there a good resource for this sort of thing? I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, but I'm also not big on eating lots of meat. Unfortunately where I live, most of the fresh fruits and vegetables look and taste terrible (when they have taste at all) as well as costing more than meat. The bits I've seen of the Paleo Diet also appears to warn against grains, dairy, and a third thing I forget. I bought a jug of protein shake... powder.. stuff..., but I like real food. What's left to eat?! 4. Does a "rest day" literally mean "do nothing"? An off-shoot of question 1, some workouts I've seen have "rest days". Does that mean you just don't exercise at all? Is it a matter of whether or not your body can take it yet or is there stuff going on in the background that would actually be hindered by more exercise? 5. When do you stop a set/how many sets? I've seen some workouts recommend a set number of reps per set to shoot for before increasing weight/difficulty and others recommending "until fail point". I've also seen the magic number being "three sets of ten, max resistance you can handle". But then other workouts will have the sets/reps/resistance all variable. Is there an optimum thing here? Does it depend on the person? What am I supposed to be looking for? I can manage sixteen pull-ups before I can't get up there again, but if I had to do three or four sets of them I'd fall off or my heart would explode somewhere during the second set. What gets me the most returns? 6. Why is this all so difficult? Seriously. It seems like so much of the information floating around outright contradicts each other. My basic understanding of exercise has always been, "move against resistance, keep doing that". Is everyone just arguing over what method they like best or is there actual evidence of movements/resistance levels/etc. for what actually works the most that gets drowned out? I bet I have more questions, but I forget at the moment.