13
Moving around a weight room has caused more injuries than training has, for me.
You can trip, people leave crap strewn about, and as you mentioned it's easy to drop a plate. Shoes won't protect you from a falling 45lb but they'll probably prevent or at least greatly minimize a stubbed toe. Something stupid like that can sideline you for a week. Walking ...
11
There's actually a number of strength sports, where people who don't compete train similarly to competitors in those sports. A brief understanding of them will help you decide what would be a better match for you:
Bodybuilding is primarily building and shaping your muscle for aesthetics. However, there is a big nutritional component to bodybuilding that's ...
10
Ideally, your knees travel out directly in the same line as where your toes are pointing, and your toes should be pointing out at somewhere between 20° and 45° from a line drawn perpendicular to your torso straight out in front of you.
If your knees are collapsing in, yes, it is poor form. It indicates that you have relatively weak leg abduction. (Remember,...
10
Wow, you're lucky! Kudos to your gym for acquiring one of these. I wish my gym had one too.
What is that?
It's commonly referred to as a "bamboo bar" because of its resemblence. It's actually plastic, as I'm sure you've surmised if you've tried it out.
Eric Spoto (one of the best bench pressers in the world) is a strong advocate for incorporating the ...
10
Yes, it's the right thing to do. Your shoulders should be retracted at the end of a deadlift rep.
Those videos have the answer. The deadlift is not finished until you achieve full (but not over-) extension, and that includes thoracic extension. "You can't cheat the [deadlift] by leaving your shoulders forward" is exactly correct.
I don't agree that ...
9
Any fitness regimen can be done by women.
As far as the gains, that is going to be highly personally dependent. Another woman (or even man) might increase every few days, someone else might only go up every couple months. It will depend on many factors, only one of which may be nutrition.
Training history, regular sessions, proper form/technique, proper ...
8
This sounds like muscle fatigue and is absolutely normal and expected. This happens to every single person who works out.
Your muscles aren't going to be able to curl forever during a workout session. You're breaking down muscle fibers with each repetition. This means the muscle will be temporarily weaker.
Resting and eating repairs muscle fibers, and make ...
8
Everyone wants a six-pack and everyone wants to increase core strength, but should you do abs exercises every day to accomplish that goal? Some of the most frequent questions I get about abs training are – “Can you work out abs everyday“, or “Should I workout abs everyday“? Conventional wisdom tells you the more abs exercises you do, the better.
The short ...
8
The 2019 IPF Technical Rules Book includes these items which will lead to your deadlift being disqualified in a competition (see Page 9 of this PDF):
"Failure to lock the knees straight at the completion of the lift."
"Failure to stand erect with the shoulders back."
You describe a severe amount of agony in ending the deadlift with your ...
7
Step 1:
Detail your goals, and prioritize them. You will find that building a good base of strength will help take you a long ways toward your goals.
Step 2:
Figure out how you should be eating to address your immediate goals. While you are a beginner, you can cut body fat and gain strength at the same time. However, you may start hitting plateaus ...
7
Go ahead if it floats your boat
You can do anything you want. You are a free-willed being. As Jean-Paul Sartre notes, you are in fact condemned to freedom, and the responsibility that unavoidably comes with it. However, Sartre also insists that "freedom itself is not free. We are compelled to act freely; there is no way to avoid being free." ...
7
Presuppositions
The presuppositions in this question are mistaken. A) It is possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time if the conditions are right. B) It's not true that one should not change one's training program while cutting--one should still do some heavy lifting, but the program should change.
The point of heavy lifting during a cut is to ...
7
In short, following a competent fitness program is the single best thing that you can do.
But let's explore your question more and extrapolate on why that is. First and foremost I want to point out that this isn't a stupid question, it's entirely valid. The stupid thing to do would be to NOT ask questions and pretend to know what you're doing, in that ...
6
There are several different approaches I have found to deal with this very problem:
Get your own squat rack for your house.
Clean the bar from the floor.
Get a spotter to help you.
Use the bench press barbell rack so you are only cleaning from waist up.
Use the steinborn lift.
Each of these has their own pros and cons, and you'll need to evaluate what is ...
6
Sometimes flaring is unavoidable, but you should avoid it if you can. Essentially it wastes energy on an already difficult lift. A good setup for overhead standing press is as follows:
Thumbs around the bar--as long as you are a beginner
Hands grabbing just outside the shoulders (this will bring your elbows up some)
Bar across the deltoids (shoulders), ...
6
Typically, no. What I've been doing is getting through the warmups as quickly as I can without rushing. When I'm done with the warmup work, I allow myself a proper amount of rest before the first work set.
How much rest you need really depends on you. If you have a head cold, or are running on too little sleep, you may need an extra few seconds after ...
6
General Advice
When I was learning the lifts, my first step was always to read the entire Starting Strength chapter on that lift, then re-skim it the next day I was doing the lift. The book is quite dense, and multiple reads enhance its utility greatly. I strongly recommend reading and rereading that chapter of the book. Make time for it.
As to the power ...
5
It sounds like you want whole-body exercises to lose fat mass, and you want upper-body exercises to improve aesthetics by improving the ratio of upper to lower body size.
One option in this scenario is to use a program that is more specific to your upper body, such as GreySkull LP (Linear Progression). It is still a novice's linear strength progression, but ...
5
I'd double check the rack to be entirely sure the pins can't be set outside the rack. Maybe I'd ask someone who works at the gym. Maybe the rack has holes on the side, and the pins can be turned backwards?
But let's assume you can't get a rack at chest height where you can press. Switching gyms is a fine option that sounds closed to you. Buying a power ...
5
I have seen protein suggestions based on all kind of factors: body weight, lean body weight or lean body weight modified by muscle mass.
The only one of those you can reliably measure is body weight. Body fat measurements are not really accurate and as a result you'd get an inaccurate lean body weight number. Same goes for determining the muscle mass.
On ...
5
After starting with StrongLifts (5x5), then moving to Starting Strength (3x5), I also found I wanted to do more.
It's common advice in the former two to just do the sets and go home, you don't have to kill yourself, be patient, strength will come, you'll stall soon enough... That didn't however ease the feeling of not making the most of a workout--I'd ...
5
I'm no expert, but I trained oly lifts for a while. My best power clean was 265lbs at 6'1", 190lbs. I can give you anecdotes and tips, for what they're worth.
It takes quite a while to start getting comfortable with the clean. It took at least some months for me, possibly 3 or 4 before I started trying to progressively overload. I didn't want to go ...
5
No.
Starting Strength is developed with a purpose, and it's written the way it is for a reason. You can morph it however you'd like, but then it's no longer SS3x5, and for better or worse, you can't expect the same results.
4
People need protein for their current muscles as well as new muscle. From what I hear, people who are 280 pounds of muscle needs to do quite a bit of dedicated eating to stay at that weight.
For instance, see Alistair Overeem, heavyweight MMA fighter, describe how much he needs to eat in order to stay as big as he is (and to sustain his training schedule). ...
4
If I find myself wanting more time between warm-up sets than it takes to change the plates, I know something is wrong. Most likely I'm not recovered enough, indicating my program or eating or sleeping or stress is messed up. It's not a big problem, but it's something to note. I should be getting warm and mentally ready for my work sets, not getting tired.
...
4
Here's one area of concern:
I didn't increase the recommended 15 pounds from the first time as I'm purposely limiting growth by only having a caloric surplus on my workout days.
I'm not sure this is necessary. Limiting muscle growth in order to lose fat mass is, I believe, not the best course of action. If your goal is body recomposition (fat loss), the ...
4
Just take it easy, if it's easy the first week or two, it doesn't mean it's going to remain easy forever. The biggest mistake to make with SS is to hurry too much. Remember, you are still increasing linearly and this is amazing progress! Pushing yourself too hard at the start can set you back later on for weeks.
Next time, just increase by the set weight. I ...
4
The question is whether you can recover from the extra load during the rest period. If you can recover from the extra work, then that's great! You want to do the maximum amount of work that is recoverable.
It is indeed a trial and error process to learn what you can recover from. I think developing that intuition is part of the sport of lifting, and it ...
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