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Stop Making Excuses
"I have six [to] eight years of trial-and-error evidence to show that I am incapable of building strength to any measurable degree from any form of exercise."
Either you have a serious medical issue or I call bullshit. I bet the reason you're not getting results is that you "have [never] been satisfied with results from any workout ...
25
Supplements
Muscle Core X won't do any good. I don't know what's in it, and it doesn't matter. It could be anabolic steroids mixed with cocaine and it wouldn't make much of a difference for you, because what you need cannot be distilled into a powder.
For someone just starting to work out, no supplement will do much good. Powders and shakes are well-...
22
Welcome to the Fitness SE!
Making your own program
When it comes to making your own program, the general rule of thumb is one simple rule: Don't.
The reason for this is something you've already touched on. Namely the fact that you're
an absolute beginner when it comes to working out
A beginner simply doesn't have the know-how to make a good program ...
15
Being able to touch the toes depends mainly on two things:
hamstring flexibility
body proportions (relative length of legs, torso, and arms)
It is not possible to change body proportions, so, to reach the toes, someone with longer legs and shorter torso/arms will need to have more flexibility in the hamstrings. It is possible for anyone to reach that level ...
14
You're 15, you still have several years of development left. There's no magical panacea that will suddenly give you a few inches of height, platform shoes or heels not withstanding.
Height is determined by genetics, primarily. However, maintaining a healthy diet, low in processed foods, and keeping yourself fit and active will allow your body to grow to it'...
13
The problem with body weight exercises
In the world of free weights, you have something called a one-rep max (ORM) which defines the maximum amount of weight you can lift at your current level of strength. Using the ORM you can calculate the intensity of any workout with a simple formula, which if I recall correctly is (reps * weight) / orm. What's ...
13
Whenever we start something, we may find it boring.
So, I would suggest you for a change of mind, i.e., try different sports.
Running is good for you at this stage. You said you are unable to run continuously for more than 5 minutes. If I were you, I would rather follow the run/walk strategy. Run for 2 or 3 mins and walk for 1 min and continue this for some ...
13
That's because your gym is a typical commercial gym where majority of people don't have any idea what they're doing and they're just going with the motions. Go to a gym that caters to strength athletes or bodybuilders and your experience will be extremely different.
Problems with bro splits:
Not enough volume. You have to practice progressive overload to ...
12
Great question! As you probably expect, to get the results you're looking for, you'll need to do some work. 20 lbs is a lot of weight to gain, but it's an attainable goal! It's probably not what you want to hear, but in your first year, you shouldn't expect to put on more than 10 lbs of healthy weight. You'll need to be patient!
A great way to get ...
12
The most important thing with getting people started lifting is to help them to like lifting. The worst thing you can do is to overwhelm them with details. The dirty little secret for newbies is they can do just about anything and make some relatively quick increases (with few exceptions). That means it matter less what they do and more that they do ...
12
Don'ts
The biggest mistake people make when learning to flip, is that they try to flip into pools and onto mattresses.
This is a mistake because it doesn't prepare you for the inevitable challenge of having to spot your landing. And it takes away the need to really cushion the landing with your legs. And this needs to be practiced.
Dos
Trampolines is a ...
11
The answer is going to be pretty much the same for all three sports, in that you need to do a fitness/threshold test, and then use that to compute training paces.
For swimming, I recommend the 3x300. Warm up completely, then you swim 3 different 300 meter swims, with :30 seconds rest in between. You want to try to keep them as close in time as possible, ...
11
I'm a fan of the following progression(1), which is the simplest I've seen that hits all the major movements (press, pull, squat, hinge). The beauty of the workout is that each exercise warms up the next one. It goes like so, adding weight to the bar both between and within each step:
Clean and press the bar. (You can front squat it--before or after the ...
11
After scouring the web for resources on the subject, I have come to the following conclusions:
High intensity interval training ("HIIT") programs are typically defined by a 2:1 ratio of work to rest/recovery periods, with anywhere from 4 to 10 cycles of work/rest, for a total workout session between 4-15 minutes depending on its structure ([source]).
An ...
11
Optimal Jump Training Without Restrictions
"Arioch" recommends squats, plyometrics, and speed work with submaximal weights to improve jumping height:
An athlete wishing to improve his vertical jump should not only squat, but perform a variety of assistance work specific to both improving squatting strength as well as specifically improving jumping skill. ...
10
Here's something most people don't know: when people say that 1 pound of fat is 3500 calories, that's not actually true. Or rather, it's not the whole truth.
You see, 1 pound of fat is 3500 calories only in an oven. That's how we determine how many calories are in a given food: we burn that food and measure how much heat is produced as a result. We can't do ...
10
Yes! Squatting -- as part of a proper regimen of exercise, eating and rest -- can lead you to lift huge weights, improve lung capacity, or reduce body weight. The squat exercises the body's largest muscles and is one of the most basic functional movements. Until the invention of sitting toilets, squatting was a daily necessity for all humans even into old ...
10
One work-out routine for high-intensity is "Tabata", see this search on this site: Search:tabata and this question: What is tabata? How effective is it?
Answering your question, you would do 20 seconds of burpees, rest for 10 seconds and repeat this for e.g. 8 times. That would take you about 4 minutes. The more fit you are, you can add more sets.
...
10
Many people make the mistake in running that they think it's ok to just go out and run, without any base training. This misconception leads to a lot of injuries. My LONG run for the entire week is 10ish miles, and that's when I'm running between 30-40 miles/week.
If you don't have a lot of base, then 10 miles twice a week is not what I would recommend. Plus,...
10
First, get strong
People who haven't yet done strength training should generally avoid overly task-specific exercises. Instead, they should get strong generally. As Mark Rippetoe puts it:
Strength is the most general adaptation. It is acquired most effectively through exercises that produce the most force against external resistance, and as such is ...
10
What the author refers to as Burst Workouts most other people will call HIIT, or High Intensity Interval Training. The reason this is highly effective, compared to say slow-poking it on an elliptical for 60 minutes, is that it generates an "afterburn" effect that lasts up to 24h after your workout. Multiple studies shows this and a quick search on Google ...
9
The good news is that there is more than one way to achieve your goals. That means that you can have two answers that vary within a certain degree and they will both be right. In short, there is no "best". The related question that @Informaficker linked to in his comment applies to this conversation.
It's also important to understand that many successful ...
9
The critique of bodybuilder split routines is not that they don't work. They obviously work, so anyone who says they don't is either ignorant or speaking without thinking. It's that a bodybuilder routine may be sub-optimal for some goals. Usually the critique is that a powerlifting foundation is more effective to build whole-body mass. Personally I think ...
8
If you are training outdoors, when you train is largely dependant on the weather. For example, I'm from Dallas so in the summer I have to weigh lower temperatures and higher humidity in the morning versus higher temperations and lower humidity in the late afternoon/evening. In a more temperate climate, you may not have that issue.
When I run sprints or a ...
8
Crossfit seeks to increase fitness in many domains simultaneously. This includes training different metabolic pathways and increasing overall strength and agility. Crossfitters would say that an elite marathoner who can not lift an average amount of weight is not really fit. Similarly, an elite weightlifter who has trouble with a 5k is also not fit.
...
8
You are correct to be suspicious of the "one muscle a day" prescription. While that method works fine, it is perfectly possible and very productive to do whole-body exercises every time you work out.
Many Olympic weightlifters do what's called Bulgarian training, which is training five or more days a week, sometimes several times a day. They use whole-body ...
8
Dedication > Programming
Lots of programs work. Twenty-rep squats get people plenty big and strong. Working on deadlift singles gets people plenty tough. Three reps, five reps, eight or ten or twelve or twenty, with one set or ten sets or whatever--the major factor is that if you're lifting and recovering, you'll get somewhere.
That's not to say that some ...
8
Body-building is an individual pursuit that requires specific understanding of the individual in question. A general beginner's course would be so simple as to be useless - there is no sense in writing a body-building guide for average height adult males under 60 kg; they have much more fundamental problems. Likewise, 120 kg average height females should not ...
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