Is the Academy a good fit for me?

[radious]

Hello fellow rebels! 

I've seen some posts about getting into the Academy or not but I have found none of them answering my questions. 

 

Few months ago I decided to change my life and lose some weight. I found a nutritionist, set up meetings and started loosing weight pretty fast (I'm ~30lb down from 250, yay!). Later, I found a personal trainer and started exercising with her twice a week, 35 minutes each time. After some time I noticed that she uses pretty much the same set of exercises every time. Instead of being fun, it became a chore. Moreover, it was crazy expensive. She tried to move me to a group training, which is a little bit cheaper, but I resigned instead.

 

I considered getting a new trainer and focus on weight lifting but it's even more expensive so instead I made a bet with myself. I'm going to set aside money I'd spend on personal trainer and every week, if I met my goals (exercise twice a week for now, three times later), I'll put it back in my "spending money" budget. Otherwise, I send them to savings account and forget about them until retirement  

 

I have a bike and plan to bike to work once a week, I live ~8mi from work so even if I do it one-way, it'll be a good exercise. There's a swimming pool nearby, I loved swimming as a kid and plan to check if the feeling is still there. But I don't want to completely resign from weightlifting, however I'm not sure how to start with that. I did some overhead presses and deadlifting once with my trainer but nothing really serious. We spend more time on step-ups and squats (with a kettlebell, so way more fun) than with dumbbell, and I haven't even touched a barbell with plates so I'm pretty anxious before going to that side of the gym.

 

My goals are pretty simple:

• burn more fat, to get my bfi lower (it's ~25% right now, I want to get to 24%)
• assist weight loss with exercises
• get stronger, way stronger

 

Here's what I'm looking for:

• exercise plans, especially with suggestions how to modify them on my own to get desired results
• instructions how to exercise properly, without hurting myself (I'm super afraid of that and I have friends who harmed themselves with a wrong form)
• some theory about how exercising works, how to use different types of exercises together (i.e. would swimming help me with getting stronger? or rather make it harder?)

Can Acedemy provide me this information? Would it be useful? I also consider just going with stronglift 5x5 program but it seems to be a very poor resource-wise.

I don't really need the nutrition part as I'm still over watched by my nutritionist, the mind module would be nice, maybe, depending on what it focusses on.

 

Thanks for your help!

[Artemis]

First, welcome to the rebellion!

 

I'm in the academy, but I'll give my overall fitness related thoughts and hope that they will help.

I'm glad to hear that you're paying attention to both diet and exercise and it sounds like you've made some great progress already.  That said, be careful to keep a close eye on any dietary adjustments you need to make as you lose weight/change exercise routines.  Nutritionists are only as good as the info you give them, so be 100% honest.  Doesn't seem like you have a problem with this, I'm just mentioning it as general advice.

 

On the fitness side of things, you're on the right track.  If personal trainers are too expensive long term, they can still be useful for learning new skill sets on an occasional basis.  I know the Academy has a how-to video series, hopefully someone else can comment on their opinions regarding the exercise videos.   Fitting exercise into your schedule by biking to work is a great idea. Definitely try that.  

 

You mentioned that you used to love swimming. If this is still true, I suggest adding it to your exercise routine.  Why? Because the best workouts are the ones you enjoy and that you will stick with long-term.  Swimming will also help you get stronger.  It won't make you massive, I'd expect a leaner sort of musculature if you swimming was your only form of exercise, but you will get stronger and burn a massive amount of calories.  Also, I know some swimmers and they also weightlift regularly in addition to doing "dry-land" bodyweight exercises.  

 

One last thing; what's your definition of stronger? Do you want massive muscles?  Be able to run marathons?  Wanting to get stronger is great, but it's also a little vague and I suspect you probably have a better definition in mind.

 

i'll leave the academy explanation to someone else.

[radious]

Thanks for the reply Artemis! I appreciate it a lot!

 

13 hours ago, Artemis said:

One last thing; what's your definition of stronger? Do you want massive muscles?  Be able to run marathons?  Wanting to get stronger is great, but it's also a little vague and I suspect you probably have a better definition in mind.

 

I think being strong for me is to be able to deal with more everyday tasks. Moving furniture? Check. Running to a bus without shortness of breath? Check. I don't have any particular goals yet, like running a marathon or deadlifting 2x my body weight, I hope them to get clarified in future. For now I'm looking at the paths of warrior and ranger.