rtalencar

I'm not as active on here as many, and I know I'd be better off if I were, but I wanted to take a moment to thankyou for two key things this past year: I found this article, which turned me onto Nerd Fitness in the first place. It really speaks to me, and I re-read it often for inspiration. You quoted something I had said in the forums in one of your articles, and I realized how much I liked it. I really started being more active giving out advice after that, and I think it's made me a better person. Thank you.

lose 75 lbs add 95 lbs to my squat and deadlift have my bench and press suck a little bit less make lots of money

Can you do peanut butter? A spoonful of that every few hours is tasty as hell and wold hit your calorie goal as well.

Volume worked wonders for me. I also do my overhead work before benching and saw improvements there as well. OHP is more impressive than bench in my eyes anyway, so I'm ok with my bench suffering a bit for it.

I grew up in Manoa, no longer there anymore though, which sucks. I go back often.

Good luck to you, and I hope you reach your goals. I'd suggest hitting the gym to lift rather than run on the treadmill, and go for a run outside on your off days instead. Beyond that, whatever your reasons for it, if it drives you more power to you. Just make sure you don't lose the motivation when that underlying reason for it fades.

I always like rolling against folks who are lighter than me. I just lay on their head and choke them out.

I'm currently in the process of working out a routine that is below (generally around 70-80%) my max. I like the idea of this as an intermediate lifter. As a beginner you should most definitely be going for as many as you can do every time.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Diablo 3, and Black Ops 2

If so that makes it a good resolution, no? I've had mixed success with them, though I do like them. My best was I lost a whole bunch of weight leading up to my wedding. The wedding was the motivator but the new year really kicked my drive into gear (I had 6 months). Failure, as with most things, came from a lack of willpower.

Guessing that you're 30 (if you're younger it would be higher) your bmr is 1568.4. Your TDEE will be well above that given your activity level. I'd highly recommend upping your intake if all you get in is 1500.

I hear what you're saying, and I do think I agree to some degree with parts of what he was saying. If you had to choose strictly between strength training and cardio for health and fitness, strength training is the best bang for your buck. Agreed. There are a lot of cardio bunnies out there that would see tremendous results if they would dedicate some time to a decent resistance training program. Agreed. Beyond that though, I'm in intense disagreement. Using tossing hay as your premise for strength training over cardio is laughable. You know what makes you stronger in that situation? TOSSING HAY. Look at stories of brutally strong pro football players who grew up on the farm. You don't hear about how they got real good at cleans before hitting their chores. The work built the strength baseline, not the lifting. Strength 'training' outside of the work they were already doing was an afterthought, something to supplement that baseline. The whole argument is bogus because lots of folks don't NEED to be strong or fit to survive. As long as I've got the 'strength' to pound on the keyboard while sitting in an office chair for hours at a stretch, I've got quite a few good years (and a few not so good ones if I don't get healthy) left in me. In being as polarizing as he is, Rip changes the tone of the argument from what it should be (i.e. to get strong and fit you really should prioritize strength training, cardio has it's place but strength takes precedent) to a bastardization of it that's just plain wrong (you NEED to be strong, and until then you shouldn't even think about cardio...and by the way, when you do, it should be on the Prowler as it's way better than other forms). I don't NEED to be strong. I want to be strong, and thankfully I'm on my way to getting there, but I can certainly get through life just fine being weak. There needs to be balance, and that's what's important. I don't care if you can pull 2,000,000 pounds and pistol squat a suburban, if you need an oxygen mask to breath and can't go up 10 steps without needing a breather...you need to get your a$$ in shape. Equally I don't care if you can run 100 miles in an hour and have a resting heart rate of -11, if a slight breeze knocks you over you need to stop being so damn weak.

The problem with using them for grip on a bar is that it can actually interfere with your grip, particularly at higher weights. Some people swear by them, but I could never figure out why.

a) Have you checked with a doctor what's going on with your knee? Have you had someone check your lifting form to confirm that you're doing it right?

I actually really disliked the article. The initial argument with bales of hay is that strength training is practical and endurance training is worthless. Well I work at a computer for 8-12 hours a day, and come home to play video games on my computer. Strength is also a sham if all I care about is the bare necessities. But I don't just care about the bare necessities. With a 400+ squat and pull and a 250+ bench you can still get out of breath walking up a couple flights of stairs. How do I know that? Because I've been in that scenario. The solution there isn't just to improve my strength, there's no balance in that. Cardiovascular endurance has merit beyond just being able to run a marathon really really fast. While I agree that strength training for a beginner can have a larger impact overall and think a reasonable argument can and should be made that resistance training should take a priority, I will vehemently oppose any claims that it's worthless. That's as bad as gym rats with stick legs. And yes, I recognize he's not saying to never do cardio, but I stand by the fact that his attack on the practice was unfounded.

It's hard to say. Assuming you're eating at a calorie deficit I certainly agree that it's likely you've lost some fat in that time, but exactly how much I haven't a clue. I'd suggest you look into other means of assessing your body composition. Looking at short term weight loss is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster. There's too much fluctuation from day to day to get any meaningful data. The two things I have done that really help me personally: 1) Fat calipers (not the most accurate in the world but I don't have the time or money to get dexa scans once a week). 2) LONG term weight measurements. I like to input my weight on an excel sheet (or wii fit, which is what my wife uses) and view it as a line graph. Once you get 3 to 6 months worth of data it really starts to put things in perspective.

Your body fluctuates in weight normally. I often weigh 2 or 3 or even more pounds lighter in the morning than in the evening. This is normal.

I have the same issue. When it gets to be enough of an issue my wife's buying me a new ring and I'll put my current one on a chain and wear it as 'bling'

Overrated if you're eating enough and getting sufficient sleep

Gloves are great...if you're playing a sport where you need to catch a ball and it's below freezing...

Unless recovery is an issue, if you want to get better at deadlift...deadlift. Drop your weight and first focus on form, then focus on explosiveness off the floor. Getting the bar up as quickly as possible (with good form, of course). ...or at least I think that's the vid, I don't have youtube at work. Anyhow Bolton's setup is what I do before a heavy pull and it works well for me getting set.

iirc the leangains cutting program is actually a rather modest deficit, no?

Sounds like my kind of program. Only thing I'll point out is that with such a big gap between your wed lift and the next mon lift, you may have trouble keeping up with your lifting routine. Your other activities may make up for that, but you'd have to be wary of it. As others have said your program is pretty intense. Make sure you're eating enough and (very important!) getting enough sleep.

I'd say that you're not getting enough protein in. I get 5 times your minimum on the regular. Additionally your body looks more at sufficency of macros rather than ratio (i.e. as long as you get X protein grams, Y fat grams, and Z carb grams it doesn't matter what the ratio is or how much of one you got vs the other). However it sounds like you're not looking to change your diet, and if it's working for you that's of course fine. Sweet Potatoes Potatoes Fruit Honey "Low-fat" anything (just replaces fat with carbs) Bread Pasta Rice

My routines in the past have been slight modifications of this, but this is my plan for the new year: Monday - Legs and Arms Squat: 5,4,3,2,1,1,1, 5-3-1 SLDL: 3-5 Sets Front Squat: 3-5 Sets Bicep Curls: 3-5 Sets Pushdowns: 3-5 Sets Tuesday - Steady State or Interval Cardio Wednesday - Press Overhead Press: 5-3-1 Bench Press: 5-3-1 Decline Press: 3-5 Sets Incline Press: 3-5 Sets Dips: 3-5 Sets Thursday - Steady State or Interval Cardio Friday - Pull Conventional Deadlift: 5-3-1 Sumo Deadlift: 5-3-1 Pulldowns: 3-5 Sets Rows: 3-5 Sets Shrugs: 3-5 Sets Saturday - Karate Sunday - Rest During the week it'll be about an hour, and I may do something at home (workout with the wife, go to karate, etc) for an hour or so. I have done workouts 7 days a week before, eventually I just got used to it. The workouts would actually energize me. The trick is to eat enough and sleep enough to support the workload. I take a rest day because I like watching tv and playing video games. If I had more free time with work and such, I'd go back to working out 7 days a week.