CaptainCat

Head to guitarnoise.com Sweet forum with tons of helpful people, I used to post over there back in the day. Getting mentally involved with a lot of people who are serious about improvement will really help you start to get into it Beyond that, I recommend a copy of Fretboard Logic to anyone starting guitar or bass. I know a ton of guys who have played the guitar for years and never really figured out how it all works together, or how to improvise anything, or think that a chord is only one given shape on the fretboard, when in reality it's just a set of notes. It helped me bridge the gap from "guy who has a pile of songs memorized" to Actual Musician! Good luck!

Wow man, the epic scale of your journey blows my mind. The hardest part is getting serious and turning your vague desires into specific goals, and it looks like you've done that with gusto! Good luck as you continue, I can't wait to see your progress, and I hope you start to feel what a lot of folks here feel, and that is that your increased physical abilities and self confidence will transform every element of your life.

Once I pushed through my ultranoob gains I definitely felt a frequency drop was required. I originally got the idea from bodybyscience article which indicated that most of their clients hadn't even gained back to their previous level of strength (much less supercompensated) even after a full week of rest, which obviously would blunt your results. http://www.bodybyscience.net/home.html/?page_id=221 Tons of good stuff there. Anywho, remember the workout is your muscle breakdown, and the muscle development happens when you're on the couch, or sleeping. Keep your focus on efficient recovery, give your body all the things it needs to recover: water, protein, good carbs, and kick it's booty This change in mentality helped me to bust through my bench in the 140 area and smoothly go up to 180, hopefully it helps you as well

Getting your guts looking great is all about losing bodyfat%, skip the OMG AB BLASTER bullshiz. The formula is literally this simple: Lose weight while maintaining muscle. How? Strength training + small calorie deficit. Eating high protein while on this deficit can help minimize muscle loss (a handy side effect of being on paleo). I also recommend starting one of the many forms of regular intermittent fasting. Here's an article which I'm sure will be of some interest to you Body composition and intermittent fasting. Even if your goal isn't to get LOLRIPPEDOMG it's still worth knowing.

I went through what you're going through at one point, and I'll say the biggest thing that helped me get over the hump was a change in mindset. I stopped thinking of not eating as a matter of willpower, what I could keep myself from eating, and began thinking of it like searching out good foods to support my goals. I've also made Saturday my fasting day, which just completely takes that potentially dangerous social element out of the equation. I've just had coffee while friends are having lunch periodically, but that's fine, no one cares or complains. Hope this helps

First pull-up is exciting! Work those negatives every chance you get, toss in some bent over rows, it'll come quicker than you think!

Awesome work getting going! Starting is the hardest part, just have to iron out some details Doing muscle work when you're on the extreme end of the weight spectrum can be tricky, but it looks like you've already got the idea of scaling your workouts to what you can do, and working from there, so good job Instead of pullups, try bent over rows, they took me from not-a-chance-in-hell-of-doing-one to the point where I could start doing negatives, and eventually only real pullups Couple key points, which I'm sure will be reiterated by others: - Make it a real strength program, not just lifting stuff. Plan for progress, every workout you should do a LITTLE bit more than the time before! - Fix your diet ASAP, that's where real body changes happen. Whether it be Paleo, calorie restriction, whatever, but fix the diet WHILE you're strength training and watch your body transform. And welcome

Not to be a negative nancy, but it doesn't take many almonds to equal the same calories as that cookie Replace them little snacks with something with fewer/no calories, then you're making progress

Yeah using electrical impedance that infrequently and with that many variables in your current state of water, carbs etc is close to meaningful. I use mine daily, but try to keep my body conditions similar at time of measure, and then use the overall trend to really track progress.

That'd be a record holding powerlifter with severe scoliosis. The conclusion you're supposed to draw is that scoliosis is not a detractor from doing heavy barbell exercises.

2nded on water, also making sure to get 8 hours in every night helps. You'll also see a loss in your energy if you've recently dropped your carbs way down, Ive been trying to get a bit more in the way of good carbs, especially after a hard workout, seems to be helping my general energy level quite a bit.

Awesome challenge! Having folks around you doing the same thing is a great motivator! Muscle soreness is totally normal when starting a routine, it will pass soon enough If your goal is body recomposition, lifting heavy is definitely the way to go, but if your goal is strictly scale-based, it will definitely be worth it to do as much cardio as you can handle. At the heart of this though is your diet, incorporating tons of nutrient dense but calorie light foods will help you stay full and prevent binging, so load up on the spinach and lettuce while avoiding cheese, nuts, chocolate etc. makes the calorie deficit a cinch!

Wanted to second the motion that fat loss is all about diet. I've gone from 27% bf in october to 16% currently, and the only cardio I do is leisurely walking with my dog for about 15 minutes a day. My plan is to be 10% in April, and it's looking very doable.

You forgot the option of "Start a home gym!" Seattle's got a kickass craigslist, if you have a place you could dedicate to it, you could set up a lil weight area at home

+1 vote for the Chamster. Great forumite. Epic avatar.

The real woot is getting the most out of it! Use the knowledge here! Make progress every session! Kick it's ass, seabass!

Agree with Waldo, just skip them for now if you're already doing all those other things. Once you've improved your balance and leg strength from squats and deads and possibly dropped a couple pounds, they'll get easy.

The Idiocracy reference made me chuckle, good times! Like most methods of measuring body fat, you can't get much better than "a good estimate", and if you use it at the same time, and often you will get a picture of your overall average trend.

Be sure to check out staci's 30 lb weight gain for some revealing insight about how much weight matters I find my only real reason to track my weight these days is to combine it with my Omron measurement to make sure I'm dropping weight in fat and not in muscle, I recommend it Check out my chart, I've got a great thing going on right now, EVERYONE who sees me thinks I've lost 40 lbs, when in reality it's only been about 15, but it's been the right kind of weight loss

Despite how convoluted this convo has gotten, it's definitely made me do some serious thinking about how I progress. I was originally on the basic stronglifts program with linear volume progression, but I recently switched over to what I call "progressive deloading": Basically I set my workouts up for a week on squats like this: Week 1: Monday: 5x5 @200 Wednesday: 5x5 @205 Friday: 5x5 @210 Week 2: Monday: 5x5 @205 Wednesday: 5x5 @210 Friday: 5x5 @215 And so forth. My concept here was to apply the same concept that bodyweight exercisers use to barbell training: Get the weight, then drop down and re-ramp to the next 5 lb increment. I felt this would give my stabilizing muscles more chance to develop, and slow the progression to a slower level, which would hopefully keep me going longer without a real plateau. Interesting stuffs I tellz you.

I agree, no go. Too much for what it is, and you're really going to stunt your ability to progress on bench without a rack, unless you plan on deadlifting your husband's weights over to him, which I guess would be kinda sweet to see, but no

Great info Waldo, 2nded! Check out this book on Amazon, it's a really great book on increasing your strength through progressively less leverage: Overcoming Gravity I spent an hour looking through it with the "look inside" option on Amazon, and was pleasantly susprised to see how much you can really do for strength using only gravity

100% normal! I make it a goal to drink 20 oz of water during my workout, seems to help Welcome to real training!

Tracking every detail about calories, macros, workouts can get a little hectic, make sure you're tracking your success stats too! Helps me stay the course!

Boom! Nailed it, go with variations, do negatives, scale the workout to you, you're still going to get great benefits! You're in good company, some (most?) of the people here have had to work hard to get 1 chinup, or 1 deep squat, you can totally do it!