Draken50

Do a proper valsalva. Inhale into the belly, and keep it there. To help avoid headrushes and the like keep your mouth open. Exhaling slowly while you lift is not what you want to do especially when the lift starts with the eccentric movement(Squat, Bench) Some people exhale at the top once they've locked the weight out. I generally don't as I usually lower a bit slower to work the eccentric movement but mostly becuase hex plates suck for deadlifting. Air-in, mouth open-pull the weight up... Put weight down. Exhale.

Hey if you're rocking 500 lbs. squats with 1 minute rest times.. yeah I could see the problem. That's what you're doing right? 500 lbs. squats with 1 minute rest times? That's really impressive... the guys in my gym only hit like 455. And they take long rests to recover. During which time they have no problem with people working in... hmmmm, maybe that's why they don't have 500 lb. squats? Perhaps they are resting to long, and being too considerate. I bet watching someone else move those wieghts after their heavy sets, just makes them more tired. Cause generally us weaker squatters, we just say "Hey, we'll strip the plates and put them back on" just watching that must just... kill their ability to lift, due to tiredness. I suppose your right, I mean moving those 45 lbs. 4 times if you're doing one side must be exhausting. I'm mean heck... they must be so tiring that instead of doing 500 lb squats, you'd be able to just move the empty bar right? I mean that's 45 lbs. that must be just a huge exhaustion. Really, why bother squatting 500lbs. at all? 45 lb. plates are so tiring, they must cause some kind of muscular adaptation right? I mean sheesh, unloading a bar is exhausting, hell you might as well leave them there when you finish, that way you can spare anyone else having to go through the tiresome effort of putting weights on. I mean you'd think taking weights off the bar would be easier since gravity pulls that way, so maybe you should never put your weights away, that way you could save the next person the onerous difficulty of taking the weight from its resting place, thereby forcing them to overcome the weights inertia, and place it on the bar, thereby exhausting themselves before they ever begin the workout. After all it's not like you went into that gym to move weights. No sir. Un-racking bars, or racking them again? That's practically cardio! No, instead of working in, talking to each other, communicating or heaven help us working together like some kind of barbarian horde, we should absolutely resort to passive-aggression. That way they won't even know that they've offended you! And other people can have those fun stories to post on the internet about dudes curling in the squat rack while other people stand their and wait. We need more of those for sure. Hey you know what else you can do? When someone else is in the rack, you can just stand behind them and sigh loudly! Or make faces! Or grumble to anyone standing nearby! That'll fix everything!

Then you are a jerk, and not the lifting kind. If you can only see other people in the gym as obstacles to your carefully prepared schedule, and consider the 30 seconds it takes to add or remove plates to a bar, particularly working in concert with someone else. So yes, if you consider a person pressing in the rack, and offering anyone who comes by to work in, as well as assistance resetting the weight on the bar to be some kind of overly rude action due to your "my way or the highway" attitude. You are a problem. You are why people don't want to work out in the weights section. So get off your high-horse and stop being an immature little twit. If you don't want to share space and equipment, buy your own, and get the hell out of the gym.

I'm confused... how the hell does working in while I'm pressing affect their squatting? Aside from maybe having to use a lower rack like you would if you were working in with someone shorter doing squats. My clean sucks. I press a little over a wheel for sets of 5, but I can barely clean it due to never really learning the pattern. My rule is: Work in, or eff off. If you are "Waiting 20 minutes" you have decided not to work in. Your decision, Your problem.

I do OHP in the squat rack all the time. I always offer to let people work in their squats, if they decline however, that their problem. I will admit that cleaning your presses can be worthwhile, but frankly when I'm pressing, I'm working presses and don't particularly want to tire myself out at all before I start an exercise that can require lots of work for little growth. I will clarify that while I don't have a problem with such advice being given on a board such as this, if I am in the gym working OHP and someone demands the squat rack because "I could clean it first" I'm going to tell them to go pound salt. My rule of thumb is, be nice, offer to work in, and be considerate. You appear to have done all of those things, and there's nothing rude about saying:"I'm not working the seated press, if you want to work in that's fine, and I'm happy to do that, but I will be finishing my workout." There's a big difference between that and the:"This is my equipment becuase I got here first and I'll do what I want" attitude that people are annoyed by. Also generally the better the lifter the less they care. I've had guys who got there first strip 4 wheels off each side so I can start my warm ups with empty bar. The whiners are usually the weaklings, and I say that being pretty weak.

Personally, I tend to prefer the larger amount of sets. What I tend to do in those situatoins is to gradually increase the repetitions of the last set assuming the prior sets are completed in full. Monday set 1:20 squats, set 2:20 squats, set 3:2 squats Wednesday set 1:20 squats, set 2:20 squats, set 3:4 squats And I would simply do that with each exercise.If I failed to reach the number of repetitions I was attempting to reach on a given day, I would not increase the repetitions until I did. Incremental progress is a very useful tool.

I'm not sure why you are finding it necessary to involve another metric. Have you considered the color or material of your pants? I've found that if I wear several pairs of pants simultaneously, i cannot run as fast. So having more material may have slowed me down compared to one pair of pants. Therby showing that pant material/number affects my running. So I could spend a large amount of time analyzing the precise thickness of that pants that I want to both not be to thick but also not appear to be a David Bowie from labyrinth cosplay and thereby cause distraction. Alternatively I could just ... keep doing what was working and continue to increment to make it just that much tougher.

Not a bad nitpick at all. I don't actually condone 6 day a week training. Personally I found adding some hill sprints on to say Sat. when on a M-W-F lifting schedule wasn't to bad... like I"m noticing you're saying, but I could definitely see how that could be read as "do HIIT every non lifting day." Yeah the biggest limiting factor is going to be your ability to recover. Often driven and motivated people are more limited by that than the time and effort they are willing to put in. Recovery is an adaptive process as well, and just like with strength you can increment your total exercise volume just as you would with lifting to promote improvement without providing more stress than can be handled by your body in that state. The people who can go 6 days a week, didn't generally start there. They started at 2 or 3 and worked up the intensity of what they did.

From what I understand there are two major things you'll want to do to protect and strengthen your knees during squats, rather than injuring them. 1). Keep your weight in your heels. The most common cues to help correct that are "Weight in your heels", "make sure you get your hips back", and" You should be able to wiggle your toes." The toe wiggle isn't a half bad test. Keeping your weight in your heels will be something you can feel, and people dropping their hips without moving them back is usually the most common cause of bad postion at the bottom of a squat. 2)when squatting "knees out, knees out, knees out", shove your knees apart. This is where your IT band weakness probably would affect the most. That's okay, doing these exercises can make them stronger. You want your knee over your ankle, especially in a lunge. Some people think flexibility to go outside the foot is good. The big thing is, you don't want your knees caving in, as in towards the middle of you, or each other. To help with that in squats, point your toes out, possibly widen your stance... again with toes pointed out. For lunges, take your time keep hips an make sure your knee is over your ankle. One last piece that can help. I adore knee sleeves. They give a little bit of compression that helps you feel what is going on, and help to warm up the ligaments and the like. Squat to depth, if you can't you may want to try elevating your heels slighty and see if that helps. You won't need it forever. My wife did that for weightlifting and not doing any other mobility stuff now squats over 200# barefoot just fine.

I gave myself the specific goal of trying have stories worth telling. Mostly though the key is getting out, going elsewhere, and eventually you might even talk to strangers. Nothing different happens in the same places. Go explore, even if it's just studying in a new place. I was a people watcher, so I went places with people and watched them, hijinx ensued and my small town friends always had a hard time understanding why my life seemed so much more interesting. Simple answer, I got out. I went salsa dancing, I couldn't dance well, didn't end up on the floor much aside from the lesson, and even then only because I was asked (I'm a dude). I went to a goth club... in a Hawaiian t-shirt. I played Magic the gathering with some dudes and went to a poker night were everyone else spoke spanish... I don't know spanish and I was the first one out, but at a 5 dollar buy-in it was cheap and made a good story. So yeah, so worry less about what you're going to do when your there and just go ... do stuff... some days/nights will be duds, but you'll have some pretty good ones too.

As big of a fan as I am of Strength Training, yeah you train for the goals you have, and squats aren't in the triathlon. May not be a bad idea when you've done them though. Edit:Dang, didn't realize this was already old.

A strength training program like starting strength should fit the bill 3 days a week, compound lifts, overall a good place to start. Squats and Deadlifts will greatly increase leg strength and once heavy work abdomen and back very well. Additionally, I feel that overhead pressing is a very good exercise to help prevent shoulder injury in contact sports. Having had a shoulder injury that was rehabbed by presses caused in martial arts I can say that they definitively suck, and while not entirely preventable occur far less often if a person lifts weights overhead. Squats and dead-lifts help strengthen and protect your knees as well. For endurance, look at HIIT(High intensity interval training) on non-lifting days, pushing a prowler, pulling a sled, ect. Just make sure you have at least one rest day a week, and plan for recovery being as important as your training. You'll want to eat and sleep well for that much training. Endurance comes and goes the faster than strength does. And you may look at some kind of periodization based off of your seasons if necessary. Off season = lift,eat,sleep until a month or so before when you hit endurance harder and harder. In season=Maintain but stay as fresh as you can for competition. A lot of that will also depend where you are strength wise.

For where to start, Starting Strength is a great resource. Additionally I found practical programming to be very useful for understanding strength training programming methodologies. I'm currently using the 5/3/1 programming schema, and I felt the book really helped me to understand some of the concepts that may have been used in developing it. I would highly recommend finding a program to use and following it, as the ability to track your growth, and as such confidence that your time is not being wasted is often very helpful in maintaining the habit you are working so hard to build.

No problem, both your goals are really good. If you want to learn about building strength, the most comprehensive single resource I know of is Starting Strength. It outlines a basic strength routine that is very good for building strength and of course muscle. Your current post says you go to the gym 3 times a day, which is rather a lot, but should be enough to do the prescribed workouts. Basically 3 compound lifts for 3 sets of 5 reps. Often when people are starting out the whole of the exercises may only take them 30-45 minutes. That time does get longer as the weights get heavier and longer reps are needed. You may also hear about stronglifts which doesn't require a book I suppose, but frankly the amount of knowledge in the book is a big part of why I recommend the starting strength program. Squats are done each lifting day (3x a week, not every day) and will definitely help build your leg muscle. For pull ups specifically, I feel and there are others who may concur that they are a "skill" movement in addition to a strength movement. Basically there are a lot of muscles that need to work together properly in addition to being strong enough. As a result a combination of assisted pullups and negatives can be usefull. I tend to recommend a similar methodology in regards to pullups as what is outlined in starting strength, stronglifts or other novice programs. Use the assistance machine, do 3 sets of 5, and when you complete 3 sets of 5 increase the weight by the next increment you are able. For negatives try to make the decent as slow and controlled as possible. The negatives are very important as the assistance machines cause some minor mechanical differences that don't exactly match doing a pull up unassisted, but are still useful in developing the strength needed to do them. Adding assisted pullups and negatives in addition to the deadlifts that you would be doing following most novice routines will greatly increase your back strength. A key piece to strength and muscle building is going to be consistency. You want to do the same big compound lifts with regularity and increase the weight regularly. If you are constantly doing different exercises it can be difficult to track your success and you are far less likely to make good progress. Additionally it is very worthwhile to note down your exercises and the weight used each workout, both to ensure your progress as well as for motivation on those tough days. It doesn't take long to have a warmup that once felt incredibly heavy that now feels super light. To clarify, my recommend reading material is Starting Strength. A book available off of amazon.

Starting strength. Add calories. Milk's good, as is meat. Meat+milk+progressive loading strength training=bigger.