aj_rock

Well what are you doing HIIT for? Keep in mind that it's not meant for rank beginners in the cardio world. You need to build your aerobic fitness before you can really get some good work in on HIIT. Aerobics will help you recover better during HIIT so you're not pushing hard for 30 seconds and then sucking wind for 30 minutes.

Push-up pads: One of the few extraneous pieces of equipment worth getting.

+1 for suggestion #5

Gentlemen, I do believe we are working with a rank beginner. I think some scaling back of the terminology is required. Some rigorous definitions: A rep, or repetition, is a largely continuous, defined movement composed of at least two distinct phases. One is the contraction, the other the expansion (a 3rd phase is the lock-out but not included in every exercise, typically only the heavy compound stuff that we've been telling you to do). The contraction is the form where you actively lift the weight and concentrate on producing enough muscular force to move the weight. The expansion phase is a controlled descent of the weight, where less (but never 'no') force is produced and the weight is allowed to return to the same position as the contraction started. Not all reps begin with one phase or another, but once both phases are complete, one rep has been executed. Now the set. A set is defined as an acute period of time through which one rep or more is/are performed. While no definite guidelines exist for exactly how much time a set should take, it generally lasts from when the weight is picked up before the first rep, and ends when no more reps are able to be continuously performed, and the weight must be removed completely from the muscle. Technically, as long as the muscle(s) are still loaded, it is still part of the same set. It is frowned upon however to rest for too much time in between reps as the muscles will generally fatigue even during this time, and less reps will be performed as a result. It is also possible that too much rest between reps destroys the integrity of the set itself. So with that out of the way, most strenght building workouts go anywhere between 3 - 10 reps. As a beginner, I'd personally recommend 5 reps per set, starting at a low enough weight that you could probably do a lot more, and just add 5 pounds to each workout until you stop being able to make improvements. Someone else explain other factors?

And anyone who addresses someone else like that on what is usually a pretty civil discussion board is obviously a troll

I still maintain that grains are being unfairly demonized. There is no perfect food, and everything you put in your body, even the green tea and the apples, is killing you slowly. Mortality rate is 100%, and nobody gets out alive.

Glutamine's been linked with improved sleep quality.

It's pretty easy to infer your fat intake is around 75g Unfortunately for you dead lifting is one of THE, hands down, best exercises for putting on muscle. Thickens up the core, legs, back... Besides that, squats, bench, and another back movement like pull-ups or rows is all you really need if you're just starting out. Get someone to show you proper form, and just make sure you lift more weight every week.

Increased abilities in other sports pushes me more than the training itself. Nothing is quite so satisfying as seeing some huge guy's face when he gets up ended by some kid under 90 kg ^-^

The gym I'm at does 6 month intervals, and you can negotiate for smaller amounts, albeit costs more per month. Never hurts to ask.

If anything, as you get heavier you'll find you must take a couple seconds' break between reps, because heavy deadlifts put a fair strain on the cardio system as well. Ever DL'ing the light weights that I do generally leave me out of breath after I finish!

Lots of hotels have gym rooms with basic equipment, and other countries have gyms too... just putting that out there If, like you say, you are training to be a reciever in football, I would recommend NOT the bodyweight stuff and doing explosive weight training. You can do much better sport specific type movements on weights than you can bodyweight. In football, you're either exploding and accelerating to maximum speeds, or your trying to move something errr somebody that may weigh a significant amount more than you. I'd just talk to your coach if I were you and pick up a football specific training program.

Please make sure that once you reach your ideal weight you add more food back into your diet. It's one of the few weaknesses of Paleo: you get so used to eating less than what you require, you don't realize you continue to eat less even when you're at an optimum weight. Some evidence has come out showing that people that have been on paleo for extended periods of time running into this problem of continual under-eating, and experience a backslide in their results.

Great minds think alike

High volume generally corresponds with 'metabolic' work, aka lots of reps, low weight. For example, I can lift saaay 220 on the bench 5 times 5 sets, but I can lift 110, so half that, probably 20 times for 10 sets. Lifting more total weight with the second one, but it won't generate much growth or strength. High-rep work is good for emptying you of your glycogen stores and not much else really... sure you CAN get strong on it, but tension/power workouts get more bang for your buck.

Look up Time Under Tension online. I won't source it, but AFAIK, you want to be slow on the down, explosive on the up. The reasoning usually given is, muscles grow better when they are stretched while still under tension. Doing this sucks and tends to hurt more, but there are other programs designed for hypertrophy (what you're looking for) out there.

Mm, I think I speak for some people that would say it's not fun to have premature (lol) failure of one side before the other on a compound movement. I agree that for most people having your dominant side capable of more work isn't a bad thing, but for some (BBers, athletes, anyone with ambidextrous requirements) it makes sense to try and equilize. Yeah it sucks to have to work your dominant side below capacity, but you areeeee only as strong as your weakest link after all.

That's a interesting conclusion King_mob. One would instinctually assume that it was largely neurological pathways limiting non-dominant strength. However, I've also noticed much less asymmetry in my quads than, say, my biceps. I think that generally, load sharing between your dominant and non-dominant legs is a lot more even than load sharing between dominant and non-dominant arms. Therefore, do it over! This time with arms! All the say, asymmetry can be fixed just by equalizing loads. So even if you're dominant side can do more reps, stop it at whatever the non-dominant side does. Or just don't worry about it. Get beef-cake big, and few people will notice that one arm curls 90's and the other one 87.5

I would assume it is really low. Gotta be lean to move that fast.

Acute sunshine exposure while taking both vitamin D and being a nerd will result in exploding heads. You have been warned. It may also just explode because I'm concentrating on it because you hated on tdot. For the record, if I had the money, I'd be a snow-bird. F*** winter, seriously. And unfortunately my weekend is booked

I've never really understood why we must have this huge paleo vs the world debate. Besides your saturated fats issue, which it seems you guys devolved into PALEO RAH RAH RAH issue, we KNOW what a healthy diet looks like. You can argue about the sat fats and the gluten and casein until you're blue in the face, but the end of the day, the simple truth is that in order to be healthy you have to put the god damn McDicks down and eat real food (organic is, again, a whole 'nother thing. Mention it and I may just rip your fingers off). Why is this so hard to get across? Nobody will argue about whether fruits n veggies are good for you, people in generall LOVE eating meats, and even if you want to go hardcore paleo, a suprisingly large number of grains and dairy products are still 'technically' available to eat. Paleo has told us, you, and the world NOTHING NEW. We've known what it takes to get healthy for a long long time.

What are you really asking? My initial thoughts are 4 calories per carb or protein, 9 for fat, E=mc^2, and one calorie (kilocalorie actually) is equal to 4 point-something or other kilojoules. Our bodies have been proposed to operate at about a 30-35% efficiency, and direct energy conversion of what you eat through energy conversions to energy expenditure is useless because of all the alternate energy sources in your body. It uses passive gradient osmosis, electrolyte balances, gravity, etc to perform a lot of functions you would normally think would take up more energy. In the end, it just makes more sense to treat your body like a feedback system. Find what foods work for you. Adjust your calories to match your goals. Fiddle with timing and cycling if you still get stuck. It's far from rocket science.

One does not simply walk into King_mob's work.

Where did anyone say NOT to eat as much bacon as they can?

As always, the answer is somewhere in the middle. No, your body does not break the laws of thermodynamics. If so, then everything we know and do is wrong and your head will explode. Ahem, anyways. The problem is that your body DOES NOT WANT TO LOSE FAT. It wants you to be as fat as possible. So the closer you get to being lean, the more your body fights it by using tricks. It'll pull its energy from muscles, or make you more lethargic in day to day activities, or spend less energy on your immune system, or this, or that... Calories in vs calories out works, no question about it. But as you close in on ideal body composition, the weight being manipulated goes on and comes off in the wrong areas. Your body also manipulates those numbers, lowering the calories out side, making it extremely painful to not bring calories in... So basically, it will work, up to a point. Then you must done your battle gear and fight the dark side of yourself. For men, pick up your sword around 15% BF; women, 20%.