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Fitness Checkin

Protein powder isn't necessary if you're getting enough protein in your diet through food, but that's why it's considered a supplement. No supplement is necessary. I have definitely had good results with different things I've tried. A lot of it just depends on your goals and what kind of exercise you're doing.

I drink a protein shake during the day because it's too hard for me to get the desired amount of protein through my regular diet.

The biggest problem people have with supplements is using them the wrong way. Certain supplements are designed to do different things. I only ever try something once I've done a good amount of research on it. If you drink a protein shake after a workout without knowing why you're doing it, chances are you're also not paying much attention to the rest of your diet either.
 
There's no way I could eat enough protein in a day, depending on the rule you go by. I don't honestly think the average person even eats 50g a day or more, much less 150 or 200 or 250 or w/e their body weight is. Steak is about 7 g/oz, chicken's a little less, pork's somewhere in there, hamburger's slightly lower too, bacon, eggs, etc. They're all good bacon sources but whey was specifically engineered to be better and faster absorbed than protein in your diet, so IMO, it's going to be virtually impossible to match the results with a whey+exercise regime using only protein from your meals (unless you're a woman).

On average I probably eat 50g of protein a day and drink 100-150.

I didn't used to be someone who believed in supplements, either. But a doctor friend of mine is always pointing out to me (as a caution, not a recommendation of use) that supplements are drugs, and her concern is that unlike Rx drugs, they're not required to undergo testing, so anything can be in them.

There's a study due out on Jack3d actually, they like to say there is anyway, supposed to be being published one of these days, like a university study not some 3rd rate research institution they can pay to say what they want. But they tested it against placebo and at some point it's supposed to be published.

But in general about supplements, I agree you have to know why you're taking it and what its' supposed to be doing. Some things you can't skip, or they're useless. Some things the dosage in insanely high because your body is stubborn about absorbing it. Some things work against each other (T-supps and carb blockers). I've tried lots of different ones and gotten off of some I didn't feel were doing anything. Atrophex and Epozine-O2 from BSN are two examples I didn't think did a damn thing. Axis-HT is a testosterone booster that I liked. Nitrix is a vascodillator that seems to work well. NO-Xplode, I thought was a stim, because it's a preworkout. Creatine, whey and casein are pretty textbook, doctors themselves will tell you they help build muscle. BCAA (Branched-Chain Amino Acids) are a little more fringe but lotta body builders swear by them in preworkouts, and these days they're in a lot of whey mixes.
 
I'm not too much into supplements, but something called Endurox R4 (it's a powder that you mix w/ water) has worked for me as a recovery drink after long runs. I forgot to drink it after my 8 miler on Sunday, and I felt the difference on Monday.

I had a really good workout in my garage today: 205 bench, 185 decline, 135 incline. Can you guess which one is toughest for me? I'm still trying to figure out the best angle for the incline on my bench. I did my first two sets at 155 but didn't feel right, so I knocked it down a bit.

That bench is the heaviest I've done in about 3 years, so I'm feeling pretty good right now.
 
Increased cable curl to 165, most I can get on the stupid thing - but I managed a set of 10 so I guess that supposedly means a 1-rep max of ...220. Wow. I'm not sure I buy that (from calculator).


Last time I hit a new leg press max of 420 at 6 reps which would give me a 1-rep max of 488, but today I did 10 at 400, which claims it's 533 - in any case I guess it's more work output so, hooray.

I also hit a new preacher curl max of 6 reps w/ a 90 lb bar.
 
While I was bored at work today I typed up a new routine for myself. I'm going to try and go back to actually tracking my weight and reps during my workouts. The last couple months I've just been winging it, and my progress has been incredibly uneven.
 
I had that problem in the past so I tracked sets an weights for a good... idk, 6-8 months. After Christmas break I stopped writing it down as I was doing it and just made a mental note, then created a FB note later that day for my own record keeping. After 3-4 weeks I stopped doing that too, I felt it was tying me down. Since I've just been trying to remember and keep it mixed up. It's going ok but it's forced me to focus on the abstract goal of burn out rather than specific numbers on some workouts I don't do as frequently and therefore can't exactly remember my maxes on. I guess in some ways it has LIMITED the diversity of my workout rather than assisted it. I might cycle back to recording it more diligently this summer if I feel like it's holding me back, but so far my maxes are still gaining... which, of course isn't the end-all/be-all of fitness, but it's as decent a benchmark as anything I suppose.
 
I haven't kept track of my workouts regularly for several years, and I normally do fine. I've just been in a rut lately, so I think tracking the numbers will help me and force me to push myself a little more. I don't plan to do it forever, just a little while to get me going again.

I started a new job 2 months ago, and it's been hard adjusting to the new schedule. I just need a little focus.
 
RoJoHen said:
I haven't kept track of my workouts regularly for several years, and I normally do fine. I've just been in a rut lately, so I think tracking the numbers will help me and force me to push myself a little more. I don't plan to do it forever, just a little while to get me going again.

I started a new job 2 months ago, and it's been hard adjusting to the new schedule. I just need a little focus.
Click to expand...

Yeah, changing a core aspect of your daily routine can make maintaining a workout regimen MAJORLY challenging. I have a supplemental gym where my parents live that I use on my sister's membership and even though it was my own gym for about a year before I moved where I am now, I feel like I'm in a bit of funk every time I go there while I'm visiting. It has most of the same machines, so it's not necessarily that my options are limited; but for some reason it just throws off my mojo. I've learned that on days like that it's important to go into the gym with a very specific plan in place for what you intend to accomplish.
 
I haven't been doing this too long, but I think taking notes drastically increases the effectiveness of my workout; when I can look back at the previous week(/s) what weight/reps I did and can increase the difficulty slightly or not depending on how I feel that day, so that I can do close to the max of my abilities immediately instead of having to waste time and energy on trial&erroring.

eta: and it's also an extra incentive to me to do just that little bit more to be able to record progress to the last time I did a specific exercise.
 
I am member of my local liesure centre. It has a GYM, a Pool, a Sauner, Lessons (Swimming/Boxing/Judo/Dance...) and use of their courts for Basketball and Football/Soccer, all included in my membership. I mainly use the Gym and the Sauner, and I have been known to go for a Swim/Splash from time to time, after my work out sometimes. I like working out, I had a 3 hour work out today, from 11am to 2pm, I've gone 3 times this week, I'm slowly getting back into the habbit, feels good. :)
 
I worked out in my wieght training class, at the end I was able to Bench 165. squat 200. and and that thing were you lift up the bar and curl your wrists while doing it to meet your chest-145. I could curl 45. A mile run. Avg time 7:45.
Its been awhile since I have really used those muscles, so since I am starting again.
I will start bench at just 145. I am not good at squat so I will start 150. And I have been really bad at keeping up with my curls, so I will start 25.
I used to be able to do 20 dips with 35lbs extra weight, so will just start out normal dips, no weight added.
 
I only maxed out once, and that was at the end of the class. Those numbers up there are my max. That day, I couldn't literally feel my arms, I tried to do a simple easy push-up and I couldn't bend my arm.
 
RoJoHen said:
Do you try to max out every time you lift?
Click to expand...

Not really, no, I only deliberately max out once a week, usually on Saturday - although sometimes I choose to make Saturday my extra rest day instead. I'll just like pick 2 muscles - say biceps and quads, or chest and upper back, or something, and max out in order to generate benchmarks, that way I can see if I'm plateauing or what.

Sometimes I end up with new maxes during the week but it's not a deliberate "I'm going to max out today". It just comes about as a result of a "push to your personal limit, not a number you wrote on a page" philosophy. It just depends on how I'm lifting and how hard it feels. I suppose that in reality, my maxes increase artificially quickly sometimes if I don't have a spotter one week so my "max" is really only as hard as I can max out while still being safe, whereas the next week I have a spotter so in addition to the gains I may have made since the previous week, there's some portion of additional effort I'm able to put directly into the push rather than the balance and so it gets artificially inflated a bit. I'm sure there's also fluctuations based on sleep, nutrition, etc.

Usually the way I end up generating a new max is simply that on my final set, whether it's 3rd or 4th, I will increase by a larger increment of weight than I did on the 1st-to-2nd set, and sometimes that increment might push me up to a larger weight and I'll do it to burnout.

Today I pushed my 2-hand curl max to 170 simply because I am home for the holidays and even though I did arms yesterday, the cable stack on my regular gym only goes to 150 and I managed to (not so safetly) get it to 165 by putting a 10 and 5 on the plate key. But the gym in my hometown where I went today must have a newer or larger version of the same Icarian machine because it goes up to 200, not 150, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and try 170.

i also got an opportunity to use the ankle weights I used to love (the gym I went to today is actually the gym I went to for about a year and a half before I moved to graduate school so I know it). Anyway I used ankle weights back in the day quite a bit - on leg raises, pullups, box jumps, etc - but my new gym doesn't have them. They have a belt w/ chain but I don't understand how anybody uses that for pullups, it crushes my crotch against the chain and digs into my lower back w/ the edge of the weight belt, it's insanely uncomfortable. Since I used to train as a Marine, I always placed a lot of emphasis on pullup counts and I found that going from doing large numbers of pullups to doing weighted pullups (got up to doing about 6 with 100 lbs or about 15 with 60lbs) generatd quite a bit more size in my lats and shoulders than just doing like half a dozen sets of 20 or 22 unweighted - AND it pushed my unweighted max pullups to around 35, WAY higher than the 20-22 I was able to do back in the MC days.
 
Pullups are awesome. I really need to get back in the habit of doing them again. Seriously, I was in such awesome shape a year ago. I don't know what happened.
 
^ I have trouble with those. I can easily do push-ups, but my wrists are such that it prevents me from doing the real amount I can, plus my arms are never in the same position.
 
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