Rambling, probably boring

[telophase]

I was supposed to do my weights yesterday - my schedule being Sun, Tues, Thurs, with Fri and Sat off for rest, but with Day 2 of the migraine last night, decided to put it off for another day because exertion and overheating would make it worse. Woke up without pain, but when I got home form work, I had a bit of a headache, so didn't do it right then in order not to trip another migraine. After dinner, however, my head was fine (probably had been hurting in part due to hunger), so I finally got around to lifting around 9:15. :) And added a half-pound by dint of using a new 13-pound bar I got instead of the dumbbells with 6.25 pounds on each. Woo, progress!

I'll probably shift all of this week's workouts one day, to keep the days off, which are supposed to be the more important of the days - your muscles build by fixing themselves during rest, after all.

Aaand now I'm very tired, in a good way and not the migraine exhaustion of the weekend, so shall crawl off to bed...

Oh wait, one more thing. Here, have a video I snagged from lifting_heavy_things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVVzgtp0_to (in case the embedding doesn't work)

Comments

[l_elfie]

that video is really interesting and amazing. i'm really glad she made it.

[telophase]

Isn't it awesome?! :)

[arcly.livejournal.com]

Fat strong lady is awesome. You and she are making me feel like getting my weights out from under the bed. What's the theory these days - is it better to lift larger weights with less reps, or the other way round?

[weirdquark]

If you want to build muscle, you want to do heavier weights with fewer reps. I remember being told back in high school (so, like, fifteen years ago) that if you can't do five reps, the weight is too heavy, and if you can do more than ten with no problems, you should increase the weight.

I'm pretty sure they're still saying similar things about needing to lift more to get stronger; I'm just hearing more now about how doing more reps with lower weights to improve your muscle tone is crap and doesn't actually doing anything. (Except for possibly increasing your endurance.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Bingo - the current wisdom is high weights/lower reps for muscle strength and size* and low weights/high reps for endurance, which basically works the muscle you have without stressing it enough to gain strength.

The trainer in New Rules of Lifting for Women says that if you're a guy, the weight you can handle is probably less than the weight you think you can handle, and if you're a woman, the weight you can handle is probably more than you think you can handle. :)



* Although size is a special snowflake - if you want to LOOK big, you train extensively on all muscles, especially the smaller ones, to maximize their size. If you're just in it for strength and not bodybuilding for size, you can do much fewer exercises that copy natural movements that your body does and work several muscles each and not bother with working the smaller ones individually, as they'll come along as far as they need to naturally.

At least, I think I've got that right. :D

[arcly.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's really useful. Just doubled the weight on the dumbbells and had a go, and my arms now actually feel like they've done something. :)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Do eet!

The rest of this is copied and pasted from my reply to weirdquark because I r lazy:

Bingo - the current wisdom is high weights/lower reps for muscle strength and size* and low weights/high reps for endurance, which basically works the muscle you have without stressing it enough to gain strength.

The trainer in New Rules of Lifting for Women says that if you're a guy, the weight you can handle is probably less than the weight you think you can handle, and if you're a woman, the weight you can handle is probably more than you think you can handle. :)



* Although size is a special snowflake - if you want to LOOK big, you train extensively on all muscles, especially the smaller ones, to maximize their size. If you're just in it for strength and not bodybuilding for size, you can do much fewer exercises that copy natural movements that your body does and work several muscles each and not bother with working the smaller ones individually, as they'll come along as far as they need to naturally.

At least, I think I've got that right. :D

[arcly.livejournal.com]

>the weight you can handle is probably more than you think you can handle

I just had a go and was pretty surprised by how much I could handle lifting, given extreme unfitness and feeble-ity. It feels much less boring with heavier weights, too, although I worry a bit about possibly creating neck-shoulder tension which might lead to migraine. 'Fewer exercises that copy natural movements' sounds good - what sort of exercises?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The NROLFW program has me alternating 2 workouts for 4-6 weeks for each stage, and has about ... er, 5 or so stages? I've forgotten offhand. (Presumably once one is done with all stages one is interested enough in the subject to hie off on one's own. :D)

The 2 workouts I'm alternating now are:

Squat
Push-up
Seated row
Step-up
Prone jackknife

and

Deadlift
Dumbbell shoulder press
Wide-grip lat pulldown
Lunge
Swiss-ball crunch

Basically, all exercises that involve large groups of muscles pulling or pushing the way they were designed - picking up and carrying heavy loads, pushing boulders away from you, or pulling a heavy object towards you, etc. I've adapted a couple of them as I don't have a Swiss ball or a lat-pulldown machine, but they give you alternatives in the book. :)

As you go to the next stage, you get different exercises so your muscles don't get used to the exact movements you're doing and switch to endurance instead of strength. You're also encouraged to add weight as the sets get easier to complete.

There's also http://www.stumptuous.com if you want more encouragement and workout ideas. :D

[arcly.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Much easier to adapt things once you get the theory behind it all. And that looks like a fun, sensible sort of workout - covers everything, but not too long and complicated. Hope you have fun with it!

Also, great link. Story about 95-yr-old bodybuilder especially encouraging as I feel about that age. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

If you liked that story, you'll love these stories (http://rosstraining.com/blog/category/the-blog/age-related/)! There's even a man who was 101 in 2008 or 9, when the story was posted, who was running a marathon!