All styles welcome, this is to chat- be it yoga, simple calories in/out diet/weight loss, macro ratios, keto, bulk/cut bro spits, recomps (are they even real?), martial arts etc. Share here please.
Heck, we are all adults, so if you have gear/PED experience, I find that fascinating as well. When I was an EMT my partner got a super candid ‘briefing’ on gear by the local huge guy we knew at the gym- from a science standpoint its fascinating stuff.
Not sure what the official necro rules are but all the fitness related threads I found are pretty old. Want to start one off new:
Beginning
I’m getting back into fitness and would love to conversate with LVL’ers on their journey, lessons learned, goals etc.
I’ve found this subject can get pretty toxic and highly opinionated, I hope that the community here can do well at being a higher… LVL than that.
So where to begin? What I’m currently up to:
- YouTube IronWolf (Marine that learned to do a lot of body weight stuff due to FOBs lack of equipment).
- Think of Iron Wolf like p90x and the like. A routine that is more cardio than strength and can be done with next to no equipment.
- caveat, since I’m overweight I actually put muscle on doing Iron Wolf as the body weight stuff is more like progressive overload you would do in a gym to build mass. So your results may very due to the speed in which you do it, your current health, weight and diet.
Beginner: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K3jLinUZw4XyR9N0sKDfgEsj4V8WFWed/view
Intermediate: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16WItW1yleYxcDPSNGDRxicoOf97m4Aw_/view
Advanced: April Challenge_Advanced.pdf - Google Drive
There are so many that would sell this for money, or use PEDs to make an unrealistic aesthetic and then sell some blah routine for natties that won’t have near the expected results. I love that he just started up a channel of him hardly talking and just un-edited going through the reps. He is like a digital work-out buddy.
Praise from some dude I can empathize with:
As the above post, I have some experience. I was NOT into sports in school, not athletic, but many moons ago as a typical young male of my time and geography I wanted to get aesthetic and got taken under the wing of an ex college ball player. He showed me how to make gains, before that I did random magazine stuff with next to no results. So for a long time I was more a ‘big gainz’ weight lifting type that would do phases of bulks and cuts. I peaked around 2007, where after a cut I was both aesthetic but also felt like a million bucks- a fitness test I was required to take yearly showed I far far above average for my age.
current head space
At my older age I’m less into gainz and size, and more into actual fitness (validation not with aesthetics but with good blood work, low BP and low resting HR).
Secondly: Covid closing the gyms near me
Thirdly: I’m an introvert and the longer away from gyms, the harder I find the idea of returning to them
Fourth: With current goals, a gym is not required, I love the Iron Wolf / Prison style of being able to do almost all of it in a small room.
Not hating on aesthetics and I give praise be to the mighty Zyzz, but at my age I’m gunning for max gains in healthy biochemistry, organ health, low blood pressure, low heart rate etc. If I’m small and meh looking from it, so be it. As the Zyzz would say, we are all going to make it brah.
Status
Contrary to the above, the last 6 years or so I really let myself go. After a left ankle surgery long ago, I stopped all gym and cardio work and never really got back into it. But I kept eating like I lifted… so… I’ve fluctuated between 30-20% body fat. When on the heavier side I’ve noticed pre-hypertension and pre-diabetes.
TIME for change:
I am currently on my 3rd “cycle” of the Iron Wolf beginner program. 1st cycle I had to modify the program a lot in order to complete, for example do a lot less pull ups, less burpees, skip some of the runs. By this 3rd phase I’m up to doing the exercises in full with gas left in the tank so I’m about to graduate to intermediate.
Apps
I use MyFitnessPal. Yes its a privacy nightmare but its unmatched in function and tie-in with other APIs.
For more privacy minded people there are alternatives. I forget off the top of my head so you would need to google them.
Garmin Connect- used to keep tabs on my HR, and monitor exercise to auto upload into MyFitnessPal to correct for Macros required of the day.
Chomping at the bit for a brand to finally get blood pressure via light (much like HR) dialed in.
Nutrition
I think this will vary big time on the person. With lots of genetic and ethical diversity there will be arguments on what is “right” and “wrong”.
I say, you do you. Do what your body responds positively to. You can find vids, forums, studies and blogs that can convince you to be all meat, or vegan, or whatever.
IMO - Do what you can sustain and what your body responds to. Please don’t coming into this thread with a religious zealot of opinion about your particular diet.
WHERE my nutrition is at:
I have a sensitive GI so there are a lot of things I can’t eat even if I wanted to. So my goals are:
- healthy meats (sourced from ethical free range options) (again for you zealots, take “healthy” and “meats” in the same sentence with a grain of salt if your vegan/etc)
- “healthy” carbs such as sweet potato. I also eat rice. I avoid simple/fast digesting carbs such as sugar, corn syrup etc. Basically I avoid a lot of what we call “food” these days haha.
- I try to get fiber, pro and pre biotics into the equation via yogurt, cottage cheese, vegies, pickled things (really pickled, not just brined).
- I’m not really convinced of the uber high protien to weight ratios of the youtube types, but I’m still trying to get in more than the above will provide so I found a protein powder that doesn’t cause me distress (Quest multipurpose for baking).
- I’ve done keto in the past with great results, so I will likely do a few keto “cycles” to get to my target weight/body fat percent.
- I take a multivitamin, glucosamine and other stuff. I will take various doses of electrolytes depending on the day or diet I’m on (for example Keto I take a lot of the three electrolytes to avoid headaches).
- Vitamin D seems to do a lot for general health of both mind and body, and supposedly its not absorbed well (if at all) in pill form. Thankfully I’m in a sunny region so I get the natty source.
where to start?
I think a lot of beginners stop before they start- paralysis by analysis.
Lots of the industry loves to split hairs and make big deals about things that make a 1% difference in results.
IMO just dive into it, the only caveat is research for good form. Just diving in can cause injury so take due diligence into researching warm ups and form. Ask me how I know/why I think this…
Outside of that, don’t stress on when to eat, beef vs. chicken, this supplement or that- just get after it, those things will follow as you get more experienced and confident, as you first graduate optimum macros, then micros, then get into the sub-atomic stuff that makes the smallest of difference in results.
motivation
IMO should be self-perceived health. We live in a really bad head space these days. Tons of super hero movies where all the actors are hella juiced, magazine covers, YouTube etc of super un-realistic aesthetics of what it is to be healthy.
Google pic a 1980s gold medalist with their shirt off, their lifespan. Then google pic the deluge of 5% body fat “fitness influencers” that have died recently.
What is fit and what we think fit looks like have diverged into two very different things. Think about your arteries, organs, damage from sustained high blood pressure (being too big, supplements, pre-work out, stims, etc).
For me the motivation is not having a hard time putty my shoes on. To not just live longer but with quality of life, and from my prior experience of being fit- the headspace those positive/good body chemistry puts you in. IMO a cure to a lot of people’s depression and anxiety would be a sustained healthy exercise routine.
When I was at my peak those years ago, I was also in my best mental health as well, and IMO it wasn’t coincidence in timing. The body chemistry of eating clean, of lots of good activity, of a great BMI, it had trickle down into my state of mind. As freewill as we think we are, IMO lots of mood and therefor decisions we make is highly influenced by chemistry in our blood.
thread
Please share your journey, your goals, your hacks. This is already a forum that ups our technical game, lets up our physical and mental health game too.
