Strength Training

[Gem]

About 8 months ago I became a gym member and started to lift so as to lose fat and get shredded. It was great I benefited physically, emotionally and psychologically - not to mention aesthetically. I lost a kilo per month, but because the exercise is strenuous, you need a lot of food, so there is no 'starvation' element to the accompanying diet. I ate significantly more than I did before I started training. My food bill went up a lot

The diet is at least as important as the exercise. One has to learn good nutrition just as one has learn to exercise properly. It is a whole life, and it isn't just diet, or just exercise. Health is everything you do and every relationship you have.

I have been training 8 months, and apart from losing all my fat, gaining muscle tone and feeling better, I also gained body mobility and flexibility. I couldn't do squats or deadlifts at all when I started out, but I worked on mobility and strengthened those muscle groups in other ways. Now I can do all those movements with quite good form.

Then I changed from the body building style of training to strength training. I started following the Stronglifts 5X5 program. It includes only 5 exercisess: squats, deadlift, benchpress, overhead press and bentover rows. I looked at other programs like the Cube method and the Texas method but these either lacked overhead lifts or they used Olympic snatch or clean and jerk, which are difficult technical exercises better suited to more advanced lifters that myself. I went with 5X5 because it is 'complete' and the lifts are suitable to fairly new or intermediate lifters like myself. I'm not lifting anything heavy -yet- but adding 5lb a time adds up fast.

I'm no spring chicken. I turn 50 this year, and it took some months to condition myself to be able to do these lifts. I feel good just being able to perform these movements. Now, with strength training, I'm adding weight to the movement and well on my way toward being strong again.

[shiningstars]

Great achievement, Gem, and thanks for sharing that!

Here's to your good health and happiness

shiningstars

[Lucky 1]

Originally Posted by Gem

About 8 months ago I became a gym member and started to lift so as to lose fat and get shredded. It was great I benefited physically, emotionally and psychologically - not to mention aesthetically. I lost a kilo per month, but because the exercise is strenuous, you need a lot of food, so there is no 'starvation' element to the accompanying diet. I ate significantly more than I did before I started training. My food bill went up a lot

The diet is at least as important as the exercise. One has to learn good nutrition just as one has learn to exercise properly. It is a whole life, and it isn't just diet, or just exercise. Health is everything you do and every relationship you have.

I have been training 8 months, and apart from losing all my fat, gaining muscle tone and feeling better, I also gained body mobility and flexibility. I couldn't do squats or deadlifts at all when I started out, but I worked on mobility and strengthened those muscle groups in outer ways. Now I can do all those movements with quite good form.

Then I changed from the body building style of training to strength training. I started following the Stronglifts 5X5 program. It includes only 5 exercisess: squats, deadlift, benchpress, overhead press and bentover rows. I looked at other programs like the Cube method and the Texas method but these either lacked overhead lifts or they used Olympic snatch or clean and jerk, which are difficult technical exercises better suited to more advanced lifters that myself. I went with 5X5 because it is 'complete' and the lifts are suitable to fairly new or intermediate lifters like myself. I'm not lifting anything heavy -yet- but adding 5lb a time adds up fast.

I'm no spring chicken. I turn 50 this year, and it took some months to condition myself to be able to do these lifts. I feel good just being able to perform these movements. Now, with strength training, I'm adding weight to the movement and well on my way toward being strong again.

Outstanding Gym!.....I'm no spring chicken either.....l turned 55 in January.... But I've been a lifter since my late teens and was a competitive powerlifter in my 20's
I haven't competed in years but I still lift....in fact never stopped lifting.......the one concession I've made for age is I've lowered the weight a bit and increased my rep range.

Where once squats were 6 to 8 reps on heavy sets......l don't use a weight that won't allow me to get less than 12 to 14

The 5X5 strength program is a perfectly good one and a lot of very serious lifter swear by it.

About 10 years ago l went to the dogcrapp program.....oh boy the name! Let me explain.
There's a well known a very successful bodybuilding trainer named Dante Trudel.....his internet handle is Dogcrapp (with 2 P's).....he has a widely acclaimed training program he developed that you guessed it...... Became known as Dogcrapp training.

It is fairly low volume and high intensity... To failure on every set!

If you want more info..here's Dante's forum

WWW.intensemuscle.com

Any way...nice to hear about another serious lifter....good job!

[Gem]

Hi guys


Letting you know I graduated with a qualification as a personal trainer.


School was actually very distracting and it interfered with my own training schedule, and really, most of the course content was your typical fitness stuff that is fine for the general population who just want to satay in shape, lose weight etc, but not appropriate for people who are athletes - that is, people who train for performance outcomes.


I lost a lot of strength due to inappropriate training in the last 6 months of the PT course but as soon as that was complete, I started my own training again - lifting heavy weight. I'm myself again.


How are your lifts going?

[Gem]

I'll just add a very good fitness channel - no nonsense, scientific info.



https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCER...SptUEU4wZ2vJvw

[Alice_1]

I am very glad that in 50 years you continue to work on your body.

[Gem]

Thanks, Alice. Sometimes people think we can get too old, but we have the body we have, some young and some old, and health and fitness is not a universal ideal, but optimising the potential of the body one has. There are no comparisons with other bodies, just this body and the limits and potentials of what this body can do.

It's very complex because a person can not divide themselves from their mind/body, and if a person is significantly out of condition, there would have to be emotional circumstances behind the presented fitness issue. Hence, fitness refers to a whole person, and not just the anatomy.

At the root of strength is a strength of character, because sustained training requires a commitment, dedication, enthuiasm/motivation, persistence, perseverance and other personality virtues that together characterise a 'strong person'. If the character strengths are not developed as part of the training plan, then a person can't adhere to the pathway leading to health and fitness.

Will power could work for a little while, but long term adherence depends on a personal transformation, and they don't teach you in personal training school how to transform the mind-set of a sedentary person into the psychological profile of an athlete.

There must be many people here with sedentary lives, excess body fat, muscular weakness, low cardio-respiratory function, et cetera, who would stand to benefit greatly from a physical fitness approach to personal betterment. Who have started fitness plans before, been on diets before, tried before, who are too busy, don't have the money or a geographically located where there are too few fitness options... Unlike me, in Sydney, where there are several gyms and sporting clubs within a stone's throw of my house.

The issues and obstacles aren't only personal; they are social and environmental. If your close social circle are not sportsy, then maybe you want to be sportsy but you have no social supports. It seems simple at first, like, 'hubby won't mind - he'd support my new found athleticism - I'll be hotter for him, right?', but a new direction toward healthier outcomes is not only a physical transformation of behaviour, nutrition and attitude, but physical change is necessarily concurrent with a transformation of character - and let me tell you, a couch-potato who became physically active has also significantly changed personality.

There is lot of nonsense being thrown about, like 'be motivated' and all that banal fitness hype... and I don't know why deep qualities such as determination, resilience and resolve are trivialised by the excitement people mistake for motivation, but this isn't a little addition, like, throw some exercise in the mix; it's a defining expression of self and the way you live life over the entire life path.

The journey is what counts because all transformation is a process. The goal is only a moment you reach one day and is immediately passed and gone. All of the substance is in a deep process of personal evolution that is expressed as one's life path.