Okay, I'm going to sort of rebut too. First of all, I wrote A LOT of information in 1.5 nights. I busted my ass trying to get as much in as I could. I also requested not getting ripped apart for it. As I said, feel free to correct misinformation, but you can be civil about it, meaning, you don't have to just flat out call me wrong, when you admit you haven't even bothered to read the entire thing. That said, yes, HFCS contains sugar, (fructose,) but I think the point was misunderstood. When people think about sugar and soda, they're thinking in terms of "white sugar." That's why people will be apt to drink "diet" soda. That's just as bad, if not worse, than "regular" soda. Diet soda may not contain "white sugar" but it still contains HFCS. It also contains that crap they make to "fake" sugar, which is made with solvents associated with gasoline. I don't know about anyone else, but I find it extremely disturbing to use a product like that. (Interestingly, Splenda claims to be better than everyone else because they "use real sugar" to make it. That's a bullshit claim, but that's a wholly different issue.) I pointed out HFCS because it's used in far more products than just soda. People need to pay attention to it on the back labels of the food products they purchase. Just because something doesn't contain the word "sugar" doesn't mean it lacks this crap. ------------------ On another note, I'm not telling anyone to avoid hot dogs for the rest of their lives. I'm back to eating them. If you read through everything I wrote, I'm actually back to eating practically ANYTHING I ate pre-diet. The point I'm trying to drive home is to BE over-reactive for the SHORT TERM. The key is to get yourself into a new mode of thinking about what you put in your body. The best way to do anything is to go directly at it. "Cold turkey," if you will. Get all of the crap out of your diet right away, to start yourself on a better path of decision making, and then reintroduce the things you like later on, when you've started achieving your goals. It's almost more a reward system. We threw a BBQ party for my son a couple weeks ago. I had 3 hot dogs, 2 hamburgers, and a nice piece of steak off the grill. I also had some chips (which are fried in veg oil,) along with a nice slice of birthday cake (though I only ate the actual cake part, I scraped off the icing.) I also had a couple of Budweisers (and no, they weren't light beer either.) Total net weight gain: 0lbs. ---------------------- My point all along was that you don't have to be some super health food store guru who only eats asparagus 7 days a week. If you improve the things you consume, eating more balanced meals, and regular portions at eat meal, with sensible snacks in between, coupled with a regular exercise program of hard, intense work, you WILL lose weight, and KEEP IT OFF. ----------------------- And this is why I specifically stated in the very beginning I didn't feel like getting ripped by people who don't agree with it, who have no plans to even attempt it. I was specifically REQUESTED repeatedly to post my program. I did just that. I didn't do it blindly, nor did I claim I know everything. Is my program perfect? Of course not. Nothing short of being the hunter 100,000 years ago is going to be perfect. What this is though, is a radically different way of looking at losing weight, but also making sure you keep it off. The vast majority of diet programs out there today simply show you how to lose some weight in the short term, while setting your body up to regain all of it again later on, and then some. Starting a program that promotes muscle growth is the way to assure your body doesn't regain those shed pounds later in the year around the holidays. I plan on eating like a pig come Thanksgiving. At the same time, I know that my body will be a calorie burning furnace, and that's all I need to worry about to keep myself in the shape I like being in. ------------------ I've even admitted I don't follow the plan very closely. I steadfastly refuse to drink soda, but I do have sugar in my coffee every morning. But my body is already beginning to look the way I want to, so taking in some empty calories from sugar doesn't bother me. I know I'm going to burn them off later in the day, usually not long after I intake them. ---------------------- As for the carbs thing, I stand by what I wrote. If you go on the Atkins diet, where you consume exactly zero carbohydrates every day over the course of whatever number of weeks, your body will eat your muscle. That's the problem I was pointing out. The human body adapts to its current situation. If there are no carbs available for conversion to energy, it takes that energy from somewhere else. Yes, you'll burn the fat first, since that's the way the body is designed to work, but what happens when there are no carbs to convert into fat? The next thing for your body to burn is muscle. Even worse, when you start eating "normally" again, your body is going to go into emergency mode, and take every carb you intake, and convert it to fat, since you still need some fat stores within your body to survive. Body fat can be bad when it's too much, but it's not altogether evil when it's the proper level either. Is this wrong? Hell, I guess it could be, but that would go quite contrary to everything I've read over the past few months. Like I said, I've spent a countless number of hours researching this stuff. I'm not flying by the seat of my pants here. Could the information I found be wrong? Of course it could, but I find it extremely hard to argue with the logic presented to me, which I have in turn presented above. -------------------- So anyway, this probably sounds a lot more abrasive than it would had I wrote it in the afternoon, but I'm trying to type while drinking my sweet coffee, so I'm grogy and grumpy. To all the guys who like what they've read and are ready to get started, I look forward to seeing your progress. To those who want to laugh it off, go right ahead. It doesn't affect me. I'm going to be taking off my shirt at the beach for the first time in years this summer. That's all that matters to me in the end. And to those who've expressed appreciation for my posting this stuff, I give you a hearty You're Welcome.
just did my first go around of your morning routine, changed it up a little bit because i think my stamina is pretty good from doing cardio anywhere from 3-6 times a week for the last 6 months so i wanted to get my heart going a little more. it took about 12 minutes or so for me. thanks so much for posting that i never thought such simple exercises could get my heart going so much but I'm sweating and feel my heart beating still and I've been done for about 5-10 minutes after I'm done at work tonight I'm gonna come right home and try out the evening routine. luckily I already have a cheap set of dumbbells so i can jump right in. thanks again something like this is something i have been looking for to switch things up from boring cardio for awhile.
I benched 225, squatted 325 and cleaned 155 yesterday. I was happy. Im gonna be doing a workout program called Strength In Motion over the summer for football. Should bring my numbers up alot, Colleges like looking at that kind of stuff.
Thanks for the writeup, Alio. I've been trying to gain weight for football but I hit a roadblock at 215 for about two months now. I'm gonna start this system right away and see what happens. I think I'm going to do a bit more than what you say here, I'm not exactly in bad shape as I do a decent amount of biking and plenty of weight lifting as-is, and I'll probably keep doing what I'm doing already in addition to this style of sets. I never thought of doing these things in spurts, I was always taught to do everything slowly so as to not cheat yourself. Time for something new!
Yeah, that's the insane part of it. It eliminates the "I don't have the time to do it every day" argument. You're getting a full workout, in a miniscule fraction of the time. Plus, the way it gets your heart rate up so high, it's just like cardio. I'm glad it's helping you out! Keep us posted on your progress! :up:
Dude, that's an awesome workout. I'd love to get to that strength level, but I'm still quite far from it. Can you post up some info on the Strength in Motion program? There's never anything wrong with sharing notes! It could give us some more ideas to build on.
Hey, that's great! There's nothing wrong with a system you have, if you've been in shape already. Mostly, my system is good for people who are looking to get into shape as quickly as possible. That's not to say this won't help you though. The clean living (cutting out things that are harmful to your insides) is good for anyone of course, but the exercise program can help too. Just be careful, since as was pointed out earlier, you're sacrificing some stamina for muscle gain. Playing football, you don't want to sacrifice a lot of stamina. I don't want to see you getting hurt. One of the parts of the program that could help you out is the sprinting, or since you're already biking, the hardcore biking method I pointed out. Nothing wrong with gaining a "quick burst" advantage in football! Just make sure you talk with your coaches. Again, this system is designed for controlling the amount of fatty deposits in your body. I honestly don't know how it's going to affect you overall, football-wise. You don't want to piss off your coaches. :wink:
Heh, I'd love to know how many he can do. Not to mention, I posted a lot of my own flaws, simply to show that I'm not some super-human workout freak all of a sudden. This program is designed to help people who have managed to find all sorts of excuses not to get in shape, not to be world-class power lifters. But of course, there will always be detractors.
http://www.strengthinmotion.com/ A couple of the coaches there went to big university's, like Syracuse and others. They help your diet, but its mainly a weightlifting program. It increases your strength, speed, agility, endurance and decreases things like body fat %. Ive never done it before so it should be great. Its preety expensive though and takes definite commitment. Its around 700, for 4 days a week all summer. Im not sure if its nation wide or just in the Syracuse area.
Ahh, gotcha. I thought it was more of a program, but it's more of a "camp" type of thing, right? Cool either way. Best of luck with it! Keep us updated if you can!
Last I heard the HC expects me to line up at DE (6'4", 215) so I don't think I can piss him off through any way of gaining weight, which I will desperately need. As for getting hurt I already have a strained tendon in my right knee and a torn right labrum. Playing hurt isn't a problem here And MC I never thought I would ever say this in my life but . . . I wish I lived near Syracuse.
I gotcha. I just want to make sure people take care of themselves. No sense trying to get into an exercise routine of ANY kind, if you're just going to wind up hurting yourself, and ruining the work. You're probably smart about wanting to gain a few more pounds at DE. I'm 6'1", and at my heaviest I was 225. I was THIN except my belly, which while big for me, was not that big. You must be a rail.
9... back in March I could hardly do two. I was being harsh before and I want to thank you for your time putting in this thread. You've contributed more to this MB in this one post than I have combined. I can get on board with most of the stuff you posted -The nutrional stuff isn't much of a surprise to anyone I don't think, except for maybe the diet soda part. A lot of people think they're doing themselves a favor with Splenda and yet there is not a single study that proves any of that shit is better than real sugar. -With cardio I agreed with much of what you said. If you want to get really fit you will have to do intervals of full out sprints to get really in shape. You can do this on traditional cardio machines but like you said it's better outside. In terms of the weight lifting part I've got some advice for people. You had suggested to people to do curls and what I would suggest is to focus more on pullups and pushups, at least in the beginning. The key with any part of weight training is you want to do what are called compound exercises. What these are are just exercises that work multiple muscles at the same time (ie pullup, dips, pushup, squat, lunge etc) Two main reasons for this: 1. Working more muscles in less time 2. Ensuring that you don't create muscle imbalance and possible injury Like I said at the beginning of this post I can now do around 9 pullups depending on which way my hands are facing. Since March, I have gotten much more muscular and pullups were a big part of it. I'm very happy with my body in terms of muscle but I still have a decent amount of fat at my chest and belly. I'm about 5 ft 9 165 and last I checked I had about 16% body fat with room for error (pinch method). I want to aim at getting closer to 10, 11 and cardio /nutrition is where I need to improve and in that area Alio was dead-on.
No problem bro. As for the pullups, I could do more if I worked on them, I'm sure. I bought the bar, but never put it up. I think I could do at least 4 right now. When I started working out, I couldn't do a single proper-form pushup. Now, I can do in the neighborhood of 40, along with all the other exercises. As for the compound exercises, I discussed them already. I referred to them as "supersets" which is how I've seen them termed. But we're talking apples to apples there. I'm going to introduce them into my routine in the near future. (I actually want to get a barbell set to use that.) I'm actually doing dips a few times a week too. I also do an exercise for my triceps where I hold a dumbell, sitting straight up, (with the abs tight,) elbow bent, and pointing at the ceiling. Holding the upper arm steady pointed at the ceiling, I bring the weight up, until my entire arm is pointed almost straight up. (Never locking the elbow at the high point.) I actually find the bodyweight exercises far more effective than the dumbell-only exercises. The pushups and dips seem to have far more good effect on my muscles than the dumbells. Obviously, the best of both worlds is using the weights on things like the squats and lunges, but I would be fine if I only did bodyweight exercises.
I LOVE dips, Ill crank out reps of 25, feels great afterwards. When im bored and playing video games or something, Ill do 10 fast jumping jacks (probably in 5 seconds) run in place fast for 10 seconds, then do 10 pushups. I aim for under 20 seconds. keep the heart pumpin lol.
And I'm wide, too. Torso is thin as heck (tiny gut but hey who cares) but monster gluts, calves, and hammies. My weight's all in my legs I need upper body strength. My bike is a rusted classic racing bike (aka gears are impossible to pedal, I'm the only one I know that can go around the block in it) which is why I love it so much. Yeah, dips are G-D's gift to workout warriors. They're fun and can be done in so many places. Whenever I see parallel bars anywhere I like to start doin' em. MC where do you go?