General Fitness Discussion thread

[azstinger]

Cyclists, when you first started you were a bit sore right? I think my form is okay (according to google ). But yesterday I went over twice the distance than I ever have before and unlike any other time I'm hurting today. This was a spinning bike, so I guess a different seat than normal too. Just need to get used to it/toughen up the cheeks?

When I was riding around 200-300 miles per weak I can tell you bike fitting and saddles make all the difference in the world. Get a professional bike fitting done, it will seriously make worlds of difference. If your nether regions are starting to go numb there are a couple gender specific saddles out there that can help but generally speaking any nicer saddle with a proper fit will be fine. As for the rearend yeah, its going to hurt for a bit just no real way around it. I'd start with nice bike shorts but eventually you can move away from them (for the shorter stuff say only an hour or so ride at max) or thinner pads (triathlon specific shorts have thinner pads than full cycling shorts typically).

Are you shifting around on the bike? Unless you are in the breakaway from the peloton on the tour de france there is no need for you to stay in the drops or hunched over the entire time. My old rule was 40 minutes down 10 up, sometimes it would be 20,5,20,5 etc.. also if you are climbing F THAT NOISE get on the hoods and open you chest so you can get full breaths in.

Personally I can't do spin class bikes, I can never get the same fit twice and never really able to get comfortable but that's just me I know plenty who can.

[phil_in_cs]

What questions do you have for the more experienced people here?

Tips for getting out bed early! Morning kill me, I will snooze alarms and generally ignore any task in the morning so as to maximize the time between the comfy sheets.

[Chantrea]

I gave up trying to make myself get up even earlier...it didn't work out (ha ha) and then I just would say fuck it and not go. I finally just had to pick times according to my real schedule even of it wasn't optimal.

[DannusMaximus]

I've been keeping a journal since January, recording my workouts in detail. Rereading them shows me what I've always known: I change my routine far too often. I've gotten much better at working out consistently, but I have the noob disease of switching to something else without giving one program a fair chance. I'm working to rectify that now. My current regime is roughly this:

1)Two, sometimes three weight sessions per week-squat/bench/deadlift/OHP/rows, aiming for 3 sets of 8-12 reps.

2)Two short bodyweight sessions per week, pullups/chinups-leg raises-chestdips.

My intent is to add several short sprint sessions per week, on the mornings before I go to work.

Personal info: I'm 42yo, work an odd schedule of 12 hour shifts, and have 2 kids. I guesstimate my bodyfat at 18%, and I want to get it closer to 14%. I want to get stronger at the big lifts, increase numbers on the bodyweight stuff, lose some midsection fat, and continue to build some upper-body muscle. I've come to the realization that my expectations for natural muscle gain have been out of touch with reality, and I'm cool with the whole slow-and-steady thing now. I also know that bigger-stronger-leaner are three separate goals, but I'm still trying to do all three at once. Call me a fool, I can take it!

Bubba, you and I are in the same boat - - getting older and trying to stay fit in careers which tend to chew up backs and knees and spit them back out. Humping hose or patients isn't a young person's game, necessarily, but it is a FIT person's game.

I've started transitioning from 'meathead fitness' (run sprints until you throw up, lift so heavy you always smell like a Tiger Balm factory has exploded, etc.) to 'retire in 10-15 years and not be a cripple' fitness. To that end...

1. Keep up your Big 3 lifts (bench, deadlift, squat). Bench because it's fun, squat and deadlift because those are two exercises that are going to keep us from destroying our backs when we try to lift a 400 lb patient from their itty-bitty car which is upside-down in a ditch. Go heavy, us old men can handle it because we're smart about form.

2. Improve Flexibility. Every few on-duty days I do a flexiblity routine after my cardio, and that's my entire workout for that day. Gives my muscles a day off from lifting and keeps me from walking like a zombie because I'm so stiff from age and working out.

3. Focus on long-term Cardiac fitness. Shift work and emergency response work = heart attacks. I still try to do some higher intensity interval training, but have also started shooting for longer, slower cardio workouts like walk/jog combos or swimming. Easier on a body than running or sprinting, but still promotes heart health.

4. No more giant, gut-bustingly awesome firehouse breakfasts every morning on weekdays. Weekends it's still on, though!

Keep on keeping on everybody!

[lowjohn19]

I've been going to the gym for about a week now. Doing pretty basic stuff. Near the end of every workout, I get very nauseated, and sometimes vomit. Is this normal? Am I just overdoing it?

[JTNieman]

I've been going to the gym for about a week now. Doing pretty basic stuff. Near the end of every workout, I get very nauseated, and sometimes vomit. Is this normal? Am I just overdoing it?

Hydrating?

[lowjohn19]

I've been going to the gym for about a week now. Doing pretty basic stuff. Near the end of every workout, I get very nauseated, and sometimes vomit. Is this normal? Am I just overdoing it?

Hydrating?

Probably not enough.

[phil_in_cs]

I've been going to the gym for about a week now. Doing pretty basic stuff. Near the end of every workout, I get very nauseated, and sometimes vomit. Is this normal? Am I just overdoing it?

Yes, though hydration is the first thing to check. Drink water before, during, and after. Don't worry about 'recovery drinks', just get enough water.

[DJH]

For the getting out of bed thing, but with less pain & blood than the other suggestion...


http://www.amazon.com/Clocky-Alarm-Clock-Wheels-Aqua/dp/B000TAS9XQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339246468&sr=8-1&keywords=clocky+moving+alarm+clock

It rolls around and moves between snooze hits.

[azstinger]

Currently I have 3 alarms 1 on my watch that I wear to bed, one of my cell phone which is in the bathroom, and one on my iPad which is downstairs. Problem is that after I go and turn all 3 off I'll just reset the one on iphone for 30 or more minutes and hit the sack again.

[Dogan]

I did an out of the blue 9 mile bike ride yesterday, with a stock seat. My ass hurts.

[the_alias]

This is a super long article so I'm going to link it and post some excerpts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012 ... ing-us-fat

Why are we so fat? We have not become greedier as a race. We are not, contrary to popular wisdom, less active – a 12-year study, which began in 2000 at Plymouth hospital, measured children's physical activity and found it the same as 50 years ago. But something has changed: and that something is very simple. It's the food we eat. More specifically, the sheer amount of sugar in that food, sugar we're often unaware of.

The story begins in 1971. Richard Nixon was facing re-election. The Vietnam war was threatening his popularity at home, but just as big an issue with voters was the soaring cost of food. If Nixon was to survive, he needed food prices to go down, and that required getting a very powerful lobby on board – the farmers. Nixon appointed Earl Butz, an academic from the farming heartland of Indiana, to broker a compromise. Butz, an agriculture expert, had a radical plan that would transform the food we eat, and in doing so, the shape of the human race.

Butz pushed farmers into a new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in corn production. Burgers became bigger. Fries, fried in corn oil, became fattier. Corn became the engine for the massive surge in the quantities of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets: everything from cereals, to biscuits and flour found new uses for corn. As a result of Butz's free-market reforms, American farmers, almost overnight, went from parochial small-holders to multimillionaire businessmen with a global market. One Indiana farmer believes that America could have won the cold war by simply starving the Russians of corn. But instead they chose to make money.

By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it's often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap. HFCS had been discovered in the 50s, but it was only in the 70s that a process had been found to harness it for mass production. HFCS was soon pumped into every conceivable food: pizzas, coleslaw, meat. It provided that "just baked" sheen on bread and cakes, made everything sweeter, and extended shelf life from days to years. A silent revolution of the amount of sugar that was going into our bodies was taking place. In Britain, the food on our plates became pure science – each processed milligram tweaked and sweetened for maximum palatability. And the general public were clueless that these changes were taking place.

There was one product in particular that it had a dramatic effect on – soft drinks. Hank Cardello, the former head of marketing at Coca-Cola, tells me that in 1984, Coke in the US swapped from sugar to HFCS (In the UK, it continued to use sugar). As a market leader, Coke's decision sent a message of endorsement to the rest of the industry, which quickly followed suit. There was "no downside" to HFCS, Cardello says. It was two-thirds the price of sugar, and even the risk of messing with the taste was a risk worth taking when you looked at the margin, especially as there were no apparent health risks. At that time, "obesity wasn't even on the radar" says Cardello.

But another health issue was on the radar: heart disease, and in the mid-70s, a fierce debate was raging behind the closed doors of academia over what was causing it. An American nutritionist called Ancel Keys blamed fat, while a British researcher at the University of London Professor John Yudkin, blamed sugar. But Yudkin's work was rubbished by what many believe, including Professor Robert Lustig, one of the world's leading endocrinologists, was a concerted campaign to discredit Yudkin. Much of the criticism came from fellow academics, whose research was aligning far more closely with the direction the food industry was intending to take. Yudkin's colleague at the time, Dr Richard Bruckdorfer at UCL says: "There was a huge lobby from [the food] industry, particularly from the sugar industry, and Yudkin complained bitterly that they were subverting some of his ideas." Yudkin was, Lustig says simply, "thrown under the bus", because there was a huge financial gain to be made by fingering fat, not sugar, as the culprit of heart disease.

The food industry had its eyes on the creation of a new genre of food, something they knew the public would embrace with huge enthusiasm, believing it to be better for their health – "low fat". It promised an immense business opportunity forged from the potential disaster of heart disease. But, says Lustig, there was a problem. "When you take the fat out of a recipe, food tastes like cardboard, and you need to replace it with something – that something being sugar."

Overnight, new products arrived on the shelves that seemed too good to be true. Low-fat yoghurts, spreads, even desserts and biscuits. All with the fat taken out, and replaced with sugar. Britain was one of the most enthusiastic adopters of what food writer Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat, calls "the low-fat dogma", with sales rocketing.

By the mid-80s, health experts such as Professor Philip James, a world-renowned British scientist who was one of the first to identify obesity as an issue, were noticing that people were getting fatter and no one could explain why. The food industry was keen to point out that individuals must be responsible for their own calorie consumption, but even those who exercised and ate low-fat products were gaining weight. In 1966 the proportion of people with a BMI of over 30 (classified as obese) was just 1.2% for men and 1.8% for women. By 1989 the figures had risen to 10.6% for men and 14.0% for women. And no one was joining the dots between HFCS and fat....

[Regular Guy]

I've been going to the gym for about a week now. Doing pretty basic stuff. Near the end of every workout, I get very nauseated, and sometimes vomit. Is this normal? Am I just overdoing it?

Yes, it's pretty normal and yes you're over doing it. You have few things that can be causing it. It can be motion sickness from sit ups, spike in lactic acid, drop in blood sugar levels and/or under/over hydrating. When you feel yourself just starting to get sick, stop. Let your body chill. There is not benefit at all to getting sick or throwing up. Cool off, hydrate if needed and ease back on sit ups. I don't have six pack abs but I never do sit ups with any other work out. Without fail I will get sick if I throw the sit ups in the mix.

http://www.crossfitsantacruz.com/crossf ... iting.html

http://www.military.com/military-fitnes ... ng-workout

http://www.nauseahelp.com/why-do-i-feel ... ising.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_induced_nausea

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/lactic-a ... scles.html

[DannusMaximus]

This is a super long article so I'm going to link it and post some excerpts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012 ... ing-us-fat

Meh. HFCS is just the latest bogeyman. Well, along with gluten, I suppose.

I eat the same diet as most Americans, which includes processed foods and HFCS. I also get off my ass and exercise and make it a point to work in healthy foods regularly. The result is I'm in good shape and my vitals are likewise fine.

We're fat as a culture because we don't move much and we lack the discipline to push away the ice cream. That's it. No particular food or nutrient is causing it.

[DJH]

We're fat as a culture because we don't move much and we lack the discipline to push away the ice cream. That's it. No particular food or nutrient is causing it.

Amen.

Too much remote control and couch, to little get out and do something.

[JTNieman]

We're fat as a culture because we don't move much and we lack the discipline to push away the ice cream. That's it. No particular food or nutrient is causing it.

Amen.

Too much remote control and couch, to little get out and do something.

While that contributes, definitely, it's a simple concept. Take in fewer calories than you burn. Moving isn't the only part of that concept. Also, it's a hell of a lot harder to burn 1,000 calories than it is to eat an extra 1,000 calories. It's pretty much the eating thing, imo. You can't really be fit or lose weight and eat like shit, no matter how you work out. So yea, it is the eating, imo. It's the excess corn sugars, loaded up salts, uber fried culture (or maybe that's me living in the South) of foods that contributes to people's complacency in diet.

[Rev]

Let's not be too harsh on our inability to control our eating. It's not like this is a problem our species has run into before.

[the_alias]

This is a super long article so I'm going to link it and post some excerpts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012 ... ing-us-fat

Meh. HFCS is just the latest bogeyman. Well, along with gluten, I suppose.

I eat the same diet as most Americans, which includes processed foods and HFCS. I also get off my ass and exercise and make it a point to work in healthy foods regularly. The result is I'm in good shape and my vitals are likewise fine.

We're fat as a culture because we don't move much and we lack the discipline to push away the ice cream. That's it. No particular food or nutrient is causing it.

I don't really understand why you seem to take issue with the suggestion people should eat less crap food.

You can't out-exercise a bad diet. But you can clearly ignore all the scientific evidence because you WANT it to be the simple fault of 'lazy people' and ignore all other factors that contribute to the reason in the UK at least that people are on average 42lbs heavier than they were in the 1960s.
Put bluntly your personal anecdotal experience does not invalidate the research and evidence that Gary Taubes and other far more qualified people have undertaken.

[DannusMaximus]

I don't really understand why you seem to take issue with the suggestion people should eat less crap food.

You can't out-exercise a bad diet. But you can clearly ignore all the scientific evidence because you WANT it to be the simple fault of 'lazy people' and ignore all other factors that contribute to the reason in the UK at least that people are on average 42lbs heavier than they were in the 1960s.
Put bluntly your personal anecdotal experience does not invalidate the research and evidence that Gary Taubes and other far more qualified people have undertaken.

I don't take issue with the suggestion that people should eat less crap food. I specifically said that eating too much crap food is part of the problem (note my reference to not pushing away the ice cream...). I also didn't say that foods chock full of additives and artificial ingredients aren't in some way to blame for the western world being filled with fatties.

The research you linked too attempts to establish a link between the addition/advent of HFCS to the western diet and the explosion in obesity. It also seems to say that children are as active today as they have been in the past. Maybe. I don't have kids, I certainly didn't know any kids 50 years ago to compare the activity level (I wasn't born yet). I also don't live in the UK, where the study seems to have taken place. However, I can say with some certainty that 50 years ago the culture of suburbia (drive everywhere, avoid going outside at all costs) had just taken hold in the U.S., and that there were far fewer forms of electronic entertainment available to kids that would keep them sedentary and inside. And by 'far fewer' I of course mean 'none'. I don't know how a person with a straight face could possibly infer that U.S. kids are NOT less active today then they were even 20 years ago, unless the activity of said kids are self-reported by parents, which of course are going to bias the study - - nobody is going to admit they just let their kids sit on their asses 14 hours a day and watch TV or play XBox. Hell, many schools don't even have outdoor recess or PE requirements anymore in the U.S.

I'm sure that Gary Taubes is a bright guy. He's probably also got a bone to pick with Big Food or is in some way associated with a natural food/organic food movement. That's fine. He thinks that corn syrup is to blame for everybody getting fat. I think that putting all the blame on one food additive is frankly evidence of his bias against that particular food additive, for whatever reason. Anecdotally, let me cue you in on what I observe daily as a resident of the Midwest in the United States...

1. People drive EVERYWHERE, take elevators instead of stairs, use the drive thru, etc. In short they do everything possible to limit having to move under their own power.
2. Even if people WANT to move via foot or bike, our transportation system and suburban development system are overtly hostile to such endeavors. No sidewalks, no bike lanes, no bike racks on city busses, no way to shower once they get to work, etc.
3. People are largely sedentary at work. Sedentary like they sit on their butts their entire shift. Doesn't mean they don't have an important or engaging job, just that the vast majority of my fellow Americans have no measureable movement built into their daily work routine.
4. People largely ignore the wonderful advice that we should strive to eat real food, mostly plants, and all of it in moderation. U.S. diets are heavy on meat, fried foods, white flour, etc.
5. When people come home from work/school they are...wait for it...largely sedentary. Watching TV or updating your FaceBook status is the overwhelming pastime of choice in the U.S. That's fairly sedentary, no matter how hard you're rooting for your particular favorite on American Idol.

Taken together, these patterns of behavior (which I summarized as 'eat too much crap and don't move enough') seem to be a fairly good predictor of a person gaining weight. These behaviors can also be pretty much totally offset by my suggestion that people shouldn't eat so much crap food and should make it a point to exercise. This was offered as my opinion, and you didn't really need to pop off in such a dick-ish manner when all I did was state my opinion. In my opinion.

It's far, FAR easier to blame a single evil additive then it is to say it's our own fault we're getting fatter. Totally removes personal responsibility from the equation, which is ANOTHER thing we love to do in the U.S. It's much more palatable to believe that our ever expanding waistline is all Richard Nixon's fault...

[Rev]

I have been working with square baled hay for the past three days.

[Mild Thang]

I love this thread! Fitness has to be one of the most important parts of being prepared and one of the most difficult to maintain. A few things I have learned that have always been fairly common knowledge, but didn't really learn until recently:

1. The most important thing is to realize that you need to exercise and you need to control your diet. There are supplements that can help you achieve goals at a faster rate, but there is no way around the fact that exercise and diet are not optional. You can't do more of one to offset not doing another. That will not work.

2. Changing Body Composition, bodyfat %, is a common goal across the board. It has more to do with controlling your diet than specific exercises. Same goes for getting more muscular, you need to eat a lot more, but it needs to be the right food at the right times. The food you eat, what kind of calories and when you eat them are as important as how much cardio you do. Also, cardio is another necessary evil, in one form or another.

3. Fitness, your cardiovascular health, is not just about running/cycling/swimming. Any activity that increases your heart rate is cardio. You push your heart rate to as high a rate as you feel you can maintain and try to keep it going. If your goal is crazy cardio fitness, you are going to have to push your heart rate hard for extended periods of time, and you are going to sweat.

4. You need less calories than you think. It sucks. If you eat proper kinds of foods, you shouldn't feel hungry too much. There are many methods to getting the amount of calories your specific body/metabolism needs while controlling your hunger. Nutritionists can help out a lot, but so can a little trial and error, if you've got the patience for it.

Do you have concrete goals? (eg shed 50lbs in weight, run 5k etc)
Absolutely, everybody should. I want to complete a Tough Mudder, I want to summit Mt. Rainier, and I want to run a half marathon (I don't think I'm near ready for a full marathon). Specific fitness goals should be minor, like being able to do a muscle up, then five muscle ups, then ten muscle ups. I did that with jumping rope. I started as a basic beginner and worked at it until I could do double-unders, then cross-overs, and eventually cross-over-double-unders (mainly because Marky Mark does them in the movie The Fighter and I feel like I should be able to do anything he can ).

Oh, and my ultimate un-achievable goal is to make Mt. Midoriyama my bitch.

What exercises are you focusing on?
Currently, I am running more, alternating between long slower runs, incline runs, and speed intervals. I supplement that with elliptical and jumping rope, just so I don't get shin splints. I also like working a heavy bag. As far as lifting goes, I am not a power lifter. I do one of the big three (bench, deadlift, squat) and then continue working major/minors along those lines. So if I do bench, I warm up, go heavy and work down in weight, and then start my major/minor chest/tricep workout. Deadlift is back/bicep and Squats is legs/shoulders. I love doing shoulders, so it gives me a reason to get through legs.

What questions do you have for the more experienced people here?
Anybody who has run a Tough Mudder or half marathon who has any tips or things that they wish they knew before their first race, I would love to hear them.

What have you had success with?
I mix things up all the time. What I'm doing, when I'm doing it. If I get up and don't feel like doing cardio right away, I can give myself a morning off. I don't beat myself up about it. You have to be able to let something go, but when you do get to the gym, know that it is time to work. I cannot stand the socializing gym goers, it bothers me.

Where are your weaknesses?
I am terrified of hurting myself and I don't work out with a partner, so I don't ever go very heavy. 225 bench usually, and up to 250 for deadlifts and squats. That's as far as I go. I just do more sets and reps.

What are you doing to fix them?
Honestly, I'm comfortable where I'm at. It works well for what I'm trying to do, which is increase my muscular endurance for races and such.

[Mild Thang]

Oh, and as far as why Americans are getting larger and larger, it has to do with our economy shifting from production based (physically making stuff) to service based (just fixing stuff) to information based (advertising other people fixing stuff that is built overseas). People are less active at work, recreation is largely technology based now (except for those of us who are enlightened to how amazing the outdoors, which seems to be everyone here), and the food industry is out of control.

Portion sizes are grotesque. Does a family of 4 need a bucket of chicken? Of that bucket, how much do you suppose is just grease and batter? Pizzas are getting bigger and they are stuffing the crusts with cheese and hotdogs, just in case there weren't already enough calories. All the while, advertising makes it manly to shove 5 lbs of shit down your throat.

Unrelated to all of this, but I hated military chow because they wanted lean, mean fighters, but have dessert available with every meal. That has bothered me for the last 12 years.

That's just my take on why our society wears shirts at the pool.

[the_alias]

Changing Body Composition, bodyfat %, is a common goal across the board. It has more to do with controlling your diet than specific exercises. Same goes for getting more muscular, you need to eat a lot more, but it needs to be the right food at the right times. The food you eat, what kind of calories and when you eat them are as important as how much cardio you do.

This is a good point to raise - as preppers we need to be aware of how our diet affects our physical being. It is all very well bulking up a lot but can you maintain the fitness and strength you want if you do need to say eat food reserves. Of course in such situations things will change dramatically but I think it is something worth considering...

Dannus - good post, a lot of what you say I agree with. Thanks for expanding your points and thoughts!

[DJH]

There are some simple ways to add exercise into the dull jobs. As a pizza driver (pays the bills between the film gigs, and cash every night is very nice.) I always take stairs in buildings instead of elevators as an example. If you work in a large office building, do the same - it's not going to fix everything, but it's a good place to start. If you have a desk job and you can, get a standing desk to replace the sitting one. If it doesn't effect the timing in a manner your boss notices, take a longer route when walking something from your desk to someone else's, etc. A bunch of little stuff, but it can all add up and help out. Not saying it replaces regular exercise, but should be a good compliment and if nothing else it can help you feel better about yourself which can lead to better workouts & health as well.