All posts tagged general

Forced Restart

by Shane on April 12, 2011 in Progress with No comments

I haven’t updated this site in a long time and there’s a very not-fun reason for that. Workout Experiment is supposed to be the site where I write about various workout routines and related stuff that I try out and report on my progress. Unfortunately, there’s been no progress to report on. In fact, I have never been less fit or less strong than I am right now (except maybe when I was a toddler).

 

What Went Wrong

Right about at the beginning of this year, I caught some virus that had me coughing and lying in bed most of the time for about four weeks straight. That was bad, but it wasn’t the worst of it. Even before that, I had somehoe managed to injure my right-hand pectoral muscle and couldn’t work out properly anymore. Any pushing motion caused pain and made the injury worse. That meant no bench presses, no shoulder presses, no dips, no push-ups or anything similar for me.

I tried to keep up some kind of training routine, but it was all a bit half assed. Then, when that virus hit, I couldn’t train at all anymore and since the chest pain persisted even after that, I stopped working out entirely.

Part of this was because I wanted this thing to fully heal, part of it was because I’d just fallen out of the routine of training and was extremely busy with everything else in my life.

No matter the reasons, the bottom line is that I haven’t followed a proper workout routine in more than four months (which is by far the longest stretch of non-training I’ve ever had since I was about 12 and first learnt about the concept of training). The results of this aren’t pretty. I’ve lost muscle-mass very noticably and gained a spare tire around my mid section. This looks bad and it feels even worse. Seriously, it is no fun at all, living inside a slightly flabby and non-fit body. I have no idea how overweight people cope with that and I’ve zero desire to find out.

 

Time to Get Out of this Mess

Today, as I write this, is the first day in months that my chest is not hurting when I do pushing motions. I don’t know if I can dive back in and start piling on weights to bench again, but it does feel like I’m back to a point where I can do at least light variations of most exercises.

And even if this takes longer to heal, I’m fed up with sitting on my arse, so it’s time to take up a regular training routine of some sort again and get myself out of this mess.

Here’s the action-plan in a nutshell:

  • Find a routine that I can do right now
  • Take size measurements every week
  • Weigh myself every week or even every day
  • Take a snapshot every day

Goals:

  • Lose the spare tire
  • Get back to the level I was at before
  • Then start pushing to new limits

I’ll be updating this site with progress reports again. Stay tuned.

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Repetition Ranges

by Shane on May 1, 2010 in Workout Theory with No comments
Dumbbells

The question about what rep range to train in is a subject that has lots of rumours and also a fair amount of scientific evidence surrounding it. Generally, the distinction is made between low, medium and high repetitions. In this article, I want to give a quick rundown of each of the rep ranges and their respective benefits and drawbacks.

Low Rep Range

This range is anything from 1 to 6 or 7 repetitions. If you are using an amount of weight for an exercise that you can only lift a handful of times, then this is clearly a high weight-load for your body. In this repetition range, the weights will feel heavy, even during the first rep of the first set.

Low repetitions with lots of weight are ideal for building strength. The emphasis here is on “strength” not “volume”, in other words, for pure body-building, a higher rep-range is the better choice.

Training with low repetitions takes less time than training in a higher rep range. This can be a positive or a negative aspect: On the one hand, it saves you time, but on the other hand, a shorter workout can mean overall less stress on your system and therefore a weaker growth impulse.

Another downside of a low repetition range is that with the kinds of huge weight-loads you’ll be using, there’s a higher chance of injury. Obviously, you have to be especially careful when lugging around these kinds of weights (especially when doing free-weights exercises).

Medium Rep Range

This rep range is between 8 and 12 repetitions. This is the bodybuilding repetition range, as 8-12 is ideal for stimulating hypertrophy (muscle growth). You won’t see the strength gains you get from doing lower reps with higher weights, but you’ll certainly look like, you’re growing stronger.

The benefits and drawbacks here are pretty obvious: If you’re after bigger muscles, this is the rep range to go for. If actual strength increase is more important to you, then this rep range is not ideal.

High Rep Range

This means anything above 12 repetitions. Doing more than 12 reps of an exercise will usually take longer than 30 seconds and that’s about where the threshold lies for what can be called “strength training”. If an exercise lasts longer than that, you’re already entering “cardio” territory, from a biological perspective, at least.

This doesn’t mean that a higher rep range has no merits, of course. If you are using low weights and doing more repetitions, your body simply has to recruit different resources to keep you going.

One thing that needs to be addressed is a common misconception: High rep ranges do not build “lean muscles” rather than “bulky muscles”, as is often claimed. High rep ranges simply stimulate less muscle growth, but you can’t really influence the shape of your muscles with a particular way of exercising.

In conclusion, for most people, low to medium repetition ranges are ideal. In any case, mixing things up and changing rep ranges from time to time is probably one of the best things you can do for yourself.

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The Starting Point

by Shane on April 15, 2010 in Blog, Pics, Reports/Stats with No comments

Here’s the starting point for all my workout experiments to follow: This is what I look like on April 15th, 2010, before launching into my first experiment:

Front torso shot

Sideways shot

Back

Measurements

Weight: 76.4 Kg / 168.4 lbs
Waist: 82 cm / 32.3″
Arms: 32 cm / 12.6″
Chest: 104 cm / 40.9″
Shoulders: 117 cm / 46″
Thighs: 54 cm / 21.3″

That’s it. That’s me in all my current glory. It’s not hideous, but it’s nothing to write home about either. I’m very grateful for the fact that I’m not and have never been grossly overweight. But neither have I ever been particularly muscular.

I’ve been exercising regularly in one way or another for years. For long periods of time, I even did weight-lifting with the specific goal of building muscle, but it never really showed. Even after 18 months of doing the famous HIT (high intensity training), I had made almost no gains. My friend, whom I was doing HIT with, gained muscle very visibly during that same time.

In other words: I am a hard-gainer. I’ve looked the way I look for as long as I can remember. When I do very little exercise, I don’t lose muscle visibly and when I do lots of exercise, I don’t gain muscle visibly.

I now intend to embark on a series of fitness experiments in the hopes of gaining some visible muscle mass and putting on some lean weight. On this blog, I’ll describe what I’m doing and keep track of my progress.