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.

Yeah, you may be using excessive layback. Pretty common problem when people start pressing. It's super important to tighten your abs to avoid that. When pressing I find it very important to keep my glutes, abs and legs very very tight or I can have form breakdowns. I have seen some issues as well where the bar is not pressed directly overhead, and is too far forward, but while I can conceive of that putting strain on the lower back, I cannot say for sure.

Okay, you have a lot of good questions, and they'd be great if your goal is to be a figure competitor. If that is your goal, ignore everything else I'm going to say, don't even bother reading it. Otherwise, stop, take a breath, and try to pretend you've never heard anything at all about how to lose weight or look good or anything else. Okay? I may be off base here, but you started this thread talking about feeling overwhelmed and a lack of progress in both weight and lifting, and your tracking everything and you're doing a bunch of work and not seeing the results you want. So yes, if you want you can calorie count, and weigh and measure and spend a lot of time working for those last lbs. or what you think you'll see in the mirror if you just sacrifice more and more. If that's the process you think you'll need to use, feel free to do it. If you want to try something different. Something less demanding lifestyle wise, and something that works for a fair number of people, but isn't quite as a efficient, here's what I've got for you. 1) You eat clean... this is good. You count calories. This is unnecessary. You don't eat enough to build muscle. This is bad. 2) The look people go for "Toned," "Lean","Fit." ect. This comes from a lower body fat %. Same as usual so far. Body fa Percentage is basically Fat weight/Bodyweight. So, when people go to decrease it, they try to lose fat. Makes sense right? The thing is. You're not really fat, you're at a point that it's hard to lose even on a hugely low amount of calories. So, maybe you might look at changing bodyweight side. See, if you raise your bodyweight, by gaining muscle, and you don't add fat, or very much as it goes. Then your body fat % goes down. Fat= Looks bad, Muscle=Looks good. Muscle is healthy, a bit of fat is healthy. Women on bodybuilding magazines don't look unhealthy because they have big muscles, but because they don't have enough fat. When I say unhealthy, I mean it, like body fat % so low they don't have periods anymore, if it persists for longer term medical conditions arise unhealthy. 3) You are not strong. You are weak (physically, not like... as a person). You don't have much muscle. This is good. See, the weaker you are, and the less muscle you have, the easier it is to get stronger and build muscle. See, people who are already strong, and have more muscle have a harder time building muscle. It takes more work, more diligence, and more careful monitoring to not also build a bunch of fat. You, I say without reservation, are not there. Often the advice given by such well meaning people is tied to what they themselves are doing... which is currently unnecessary for you. See, the marketers of fitness crap have figured out, people want 2 extremes. 1. They want it to seem really easy (30 minutes a day!, just take our pill!,Poop a lot!) or 2. They sell it as being hard. (This workout will kick your ass!,Sweat like a pig!, Move fatty!) Neither are the case. The truth is in between. Hard workouts can be good, if they're smart. A workout doesn't have to be killer to be worthwhile though. The things people spout about caloric intake vs. exercise blah blah blah blah blah, while worthwhile for advanced folks, isn't necessary for weak ones, and all the information just to leads to confusion which leads to.... 0 progress made. So. Step 1. Eat clean! (You already do this! Huzzah!) Step 2. Follow a basic novice barbell progression like Starting Strength. Pretty easy, you may already be doing this Step 3. Eat and sleep enough to recover and see results (You're not doing this. See, your body needs the energy to build the muscle, but if you don't give that you just hurt. Don't worry, and extra pint of milk or piece of chicken or whatever the hell else isn't going to turn you into a manatee.) Step 4. Don't do a bunch of other crap! (I don't know on this, but I've seen people try to do starting strength, but also run 3 miles every other day, and get up 2 hours early to do so. You're body needs to recover, and if you already run/do cardio ect. It's not building you any more muscle, and if you're worried about it. Conditioning comes back really really fast. Much faster than strength gets built. You can always hit weights you're happy with and decide to add it back in. I assure you, you start lifting, and people will immediately talk about adding HIIT or something to your off days. They will do it with the best of intentions, and it will make so much sense and your lifts will stall, or regress even, because you won't be getting enough food/rest. Wanna know why? Because a lot of people have been sold on must be hard, must be tough go! go! go!, and don't realize that gradually building gives better results than all at once.) Disclaimers!:Woo! There is a point where not only acceptable, but absolutely fine to stack cardio with lifting. The best time is when your novice progression has ended, as intermediate lifter you would then require more stimulus to continue getting stronger and forms of cardio can help with that. Around the same time, more attention may need to be paid to diet ect. Maybe... it depends on the person, but as muscle growth slows, fat is easier to put on. There are of course other ways to build strength than barbell training, but you're already doing it, and it has the easiest method to track progress I've ever seen. If the weight goes up, you're getting stronger! In addition to just improving appearance generally, muscle also can help improve posture, which helps improve confidence, and appearance. Oh yeah, and strength training often improves confidence, because you're stronger, which makes you better in all sorts of situations. If you have any questions, comments, or just want to tell me to stop posting. Send me a PM.

Okay, I'm recommend a bit different of an approach. Though one it seems like you're already on track for. So, for a bit, you're going to want to ignore the scale. Okay? You're 124 lbs. That's pretty light, don't stress it. So now, what you want to do is build muscle. An plenty of people are going to come up with some incredibly complex ways for you to do so Heck, they might even work, if you're down for incredibly complex methodologies and all that jazz. So, Here's my recommendation. Focus on lifting, stop counting calories, eat meat, and veggies and fruit and don't go hungry. If you're having problems making your lifts, drink a milk after. If you're lactose intolerant, find another drink that'll hydrate you and maybe munch something that gives you some protein. I've never seen someone get frustrated with a working program, when that program isn't overly complex. I've watched people having success on a program get very frustrated with the results because of how much effort they were putting in. So... simplify. Sounds like you're doing barbell training, and that's great. I'm hoping it's something like Starting Strength. Muscle, makes things look firmer, gets rid of that skin and fat dropping of you look, due to... muscle supporting it. So I would say, eff the scale. Do what you need to to get your lifts up, and no, right now, you don't need the Bulkerizer 5000 bucket o' crap or to eat a billion McDonalds cheeseburgers. You aren't that big, but you really aren't strong either. So eat well, don't go hungry, try to add more protien than breads and the like. If you're having problems getting lifts up, add some milk. Most of all, focus on the lifts, watch the numbers go up as you lift things off the floor or over your head. Focus on that, and you'll see growth. I've always seen people do better working on what they can do, rather than what they see in the mirror, becuase the mirror, well it's not going to seem like much. And the scale. Well, the scale doesn't generally make people proud like saying I can deadlift this, or press this, or just hey, F* you, I'm stronger and that's awesome.

Glad I could help. I understand the wanting the feeling of working hard, and I can definitely say moving heavy weights provides it. As to weight loss and appearance, muscle looks good and healthy and.. well.. it looks good. The stereotype people had of super bulky vieny muscle women come from pictures where they are at an unhealthily low body fat. Like, normal healthy process don't occur low. Otherwise muscle makes things that would droop... not droop, and overall for a more happy and healthy person. Happy and healthy being basically the basis for what people actually find attractive. Also you didn't seem dismissive at all. Good luck, it's a process, but remember that consistency is the most important and you'll see change. Better small things that build on each other, than large things that you stop doing.

Okay, I get that this doesn't makes sense in a lot of regards to you, and I can see how some isometric stuff can seem usefull especially completely untrained. But I'm going to create a kind of example for you. First, picture, and extremely weak man. Okay, like, super skinny, ilttle muscle, the whole skin and bones archetype. Now, that Guy is going to lift a barbell overhead 5 times. A barbell weights 45 lbs. Okay. Now, the second guy is huge, like professional wrestler, you can picture him all big an oily if it helps, but I'm guessing you grasp what I'm saying here. Now he, is lifting the 45 bar over head 5 times. Same weight, same movement. Which of the two do you think might get stronger from this? Probably the skinny guy right? He's probably not in the habit of lifting weight over head. But the big guy, he's not really going to get stronger from it is he? Dude can lift a person over head. He's already strong, and net getting stronger from lifting such a small weight. Though he's not getting injured or anything either. Now picture a guy whose left half is skin and bone skinny, and whose right half, is professional wrestler strong. He lifts a 45lb. barbell overhead. Just like the other 2 guys did. His right half is already "adapted" to the workload, being stronger and all, so just like the big guy, won't get any stronger. His left side, being weaker, is going to be adapting to the new stimuli, and thereby get stronger. That's what's going on. See, muscles don't function on their own, unless specifically isolated. They function as a system. So working them as a system is a good idea. Now, one side may be a little bit stronger, or more flexible than the other. This is normal. The thing to it is, when you work the muscles as a system. You are far less likely to create, and more likely to resolve an imbalance, than working them individually. This is again, because they are designed to work together. As a result even as you get stronger, what imbalance exists remains far more tolerable, and additionally, as your strength goes up, the % difference is likely to go down. Hope that makes sense. If it doesn't. Well... That's life.

Okay, so I don't know what your goals are, but there are other ways of working hard than just doing whole bunches of repetitions really quickly. As to fat cutting and building muscle. There's a bunch of bullshit about that. The fact is if you are currenlty 300 lbs., and you lift weights even if you are losing wieght you can still be building muscle as those resources are already very present in your currently 300 lb. form. As someone who lost weight and built muscle at the same time, married to someone who lost weight and built muscle at the same time, I know this to be the case. You have the resources available, it's doable, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If they do, ask when they were 300 lbs. So, The book you'll want is Starting Strength. It's the best starting book you'll be able to find, and well worth it. It will outline the basics and process by which you can improve. As to feeling difficult. Heavy weight lifting does not leave me feeling exhausted and destroyed like, say interval hill sprints do. However, it will certainly be tough/hard, and it is very very motivating to most people. Basically, if its not hard, your weights aren't heavy enough. That being said, it is very very important to pay attention to your form and increase the weight gradually. You will add more weight every time you do the exercise, the important thing is to do it by the recommended 5 lbs. as opposed to a less maintainable amount. As to your kness. Squats and deadlifts may not work for you, this would be bad. But doing a bunch of high rep stuff with them isn't going to do much anyway, and you can still work presses, and use machines for back if necessary. Now, if you do that, you still want a 5 rep range, and to increase the weight. If you aren't increasing the weight you aren't progressing, and if you doing more than 10 reps, that's more cardio/conditioning than it is strength training. Even, if you can't do squats and deadlifts the book is still a good resource both for understanding the mechanics, as well as the descriptions of the other exercises. Okay, as to how much you eat. Personally, I find calorie counting to be a dietary death sentence for people aren't happy doing that. I tend to go with the paleo mindset, and recommend eat clean, and eat so you're not hungry. This will feel like a lot of food to start, but your body adapts. So when I started I'd eat 3 chicken quarters and 2 sides of vegetables and a couple peieces of fruit cut up with honey... for dinner. This is because my body was used to burger king meals like twice a day, with soda ect. Here's the thing. As I ate better, my appetite naturally decreased. I never made any effort whatsoever to cut calories, or any effort to avoid eating. My rule was, if it's on the diet, I can eat it. If I'm hungry, I eat. So my food intake/caloric intake decreased by a very large amount without ever going hungry or actively trying to "reduce calories." I just ate better. This helped my wife as well.

Yeah, starting strength is my preferred resource. You don't need to make it all the way through the book, there's a lot of stuff in there. Try to start by looking at the "How-To" and "Things to avoid" sections for the Squat, Press and Deadlift. That'll be a good start for going in and beginning those movements.

Okay, cardio and lifting can work together, you just have to be smart about it. The big reason it's recommended against is that a lot of people do cardio to the point that their lifts stop going up. Additionally, as you've noticed, conditioning (cardio) adaptations disappear quickly when not being practiced. Strength, not so quick. The nice part is that cardio/conditioning comes a lot faster than strength does. So, the key is to limit your cardio, which is easy easy easy to overdo, so that your lifts don't suffer. Especially as breaking off your novice progression early means that a lot of easy strength gains are now going to be lost in favor of an adaptation that disappears rapidly. The other thing that happens is that people don't start slowly when adding cardio in. I still tend to recommend finishing your novice progression before adding cardio, with consistency and commitment it only lasts a few months anyway. Once you've got that base of strength your ability to recover from lifting will have improved to some degree as well, and intermediate programs can vary in intensity by a pretty large amount. From Texas Method, where you probably don't want to do anything else, to 5/3/1 where there's far more room for assistance work. Personally, I find martial arts to be a pretty good addition, helps with flexibility and applying strength practically. Sparring and the like can help work a nice full body intervalish cardio, and doesn't usually cause problems with lifting. That of course depends on the intensity and duration of your classes and cardio work too. Tossing in a bunch of squat jumps and the like, that some places do though may interfere with your strength training. Really depends on what your goals are. If long term you want to be strong, focus on getting stronger, you can get that cardio back much much faster.

Use the starting strength methodology. 3 sets of 5reps. Squats, deadlifts, and press. Just learning to keep your back locked out and the like is important. Start soon, try training every other day, make sure you eat and sleep enough for recovery. Chins make a good assistance exercise 3xmax after the other 3. Can you make the increase? Quite possibly but you'll need to be serious about it and quickly. Just get the starting strength book, follow directions post form checks if necessary.

Okay, other folks will probably chime in with more complicated science stuff, but I like simple and stupid. Weights. The weight will get heavy, just keep staying consistent. The cardio can interfere, but right now it's not, so no worries. You'll be able to tell if you're having problems because the weights will stop going up. Right now, don't bother with accessories. Just get your basic lifts up. If it feels easy, that's fine, it will stop feeling easy as the weights get heavier. Once you stop being able to hit 5x5 on a lift, deload once. If it happens again, switch to 3x5. If you stop seeing progress you'll need to use smaller increments. I'm a guy and it's hard for me to push my press up by 5 lbs at a time. I do 2.5 lbs. Some do 1 lb. Food and such. I don't count calories, if you can do it well, more power to you. Personally I try to stick to fruit, meat, and a crapload of vegatables. Consistency is key. Don't kill yourself. If you're sore all the time, you're doing too much, make sure you get enough sleep. Keep it up!