My ex (good riddance) from a situationship I was in remotely factory reset my phones and now I have no way to 2 step verify my email since I don’t have any other devices with that email available and my phone number attached to it is old. I’ve given up trying to get in. Just a bummer since I had a lot of important stuff on it. But since I’m working out rn, any pointers I could get as a semi experienced (lots when I was in HS but that’s been 12 yrs give or take) but yet beginner lifter? Otherwise how my chapos doin?
Generally advice for muscle imbalance is either do isolation work if it’s a specific muscle group, and/ or splits if it’s one side or another. Like work in a dumbell press with your bench.
You could also deload a bit and work up. If you’re straining to lift something now, you risk having worse form and raise your injury risk. You might put a undue pressure on your ligaments/tendons. Also like I said if it sucks to do, you’re going to have another reason not to do it. It’s a good idea for now to focus as much on form and technique as possible. Build good habits while it’s easy.
Look up cues people use for the exercises and focus on one of those each rep. Like one of my favorite ones for squats is you should drive your knees outward as you rise.
Also just make sure to rest long enough between sets. Short rest is used for interval traing, cardio, endurance work, if your goals are power, strength or hypertrophy than short rest is counter productive.
One of my favorite and simplest forearm isolation is finding a bar and just hanging from it. It’s not just your forearms but that’ll be the target.
Don’t do it to failure. Your body isnt ready for that. You should be consistently going for at least a month or two before you think about doing anything like that. Personally I’m not big on it in general but there’s lots of people who are way stronger, smarter and more experienced than me who swear by it.
You could also just work through it lol, your forearms will catch up soon.
One more thing is you’re not in high-school anymore. Besides just overall bouncyness and springyness the difference between your body now and then is your ability to recover. Working in a proper warm up and recovery practice will be important to keep yourself healthy and minimize injuries.
My warm up is working on light weight that I slowly increase, stretching, and or biking (hard). Like the torso rotation I started super easy did 10 reps and went up 10 or so lbs until it maxed out at 160, then I went back to a median weight and did 20 reps each side etc. and yeah I have a pull-up bar and could do some dead hangs, probably should do farmer carries too. Imo even though I’ve been off and on with work and hardly working out, my upper body doesn’t feel nearly as shit as my lower. Like I bike but it’s a limited r.o.m. and it doesn’t really help my ankle mobility issues. But even with that I know I can leg press for days just need to work on the strength and my squats and eventually deadlifts. What’s your opinion on a.t.g. squats? And on working very light during recovery vs nothing during recovery?
Well I wrote a bunch of stuff to try and answer your questions, which I’m still happy to post as a followup, but I think I’ll start with this instead.
Before I tell you what I think of those things, can you tell me more about what your current routine or plan is and if you have any specific or general goals?
I honestly have no idea from what you shared so far.
Looking to get proportional everywhere, so like old school body builders without the roads and p.e.d.s, the exception would be legs. Would like some chunky tree trunk legs. Other than that aiming to do 3x (I’ll settle for 2.5 tbh)body weight for squats and deadlifts and 2x for bench at around 200 lbs. Currently doing machines since I don’t have Jim friends and I want to ease into things. I eventually want to master calisthenics (want to be a ninja pretty much lol) so I can be a useful member of the swoletariat when ish eventually heads south in the imperial core and also when I do decide to boof estrogen so I can defend myself, because rn all I would have is grit and determination lol. Basically don’t wanna look like a meat head just want strength but I know initially I should build some muscle.
Just started going back to the Jim as of 2 nights ago so no real routine yet, did torso 1st mainly, and a little of the adductors and abductors for legs. Last night did only legs and tried to make it as hard as possible to walk before I left. Tonight I’ll prolly only focus core. Then the night after arms. And so on. Pretty much no plan other than eat, sleep, lift, go to work. Working on r.o.m and flexibility is another goal as well. I follow movements by David (I forget if that’s it exactly, he says stay flexy a lot) on YouTube, and I wouldn’t mind a similar build and about the same flexibility. Just worried if I try what he does I’ll really hurt myself. I think my problem is that I’m not necessarily a beginner but idk if I’m at an intermediate fitness level either because of my lack of fitness for idk how long, like a year since I had my crunch membership I hardly actually used and I can’t remember what else before that besides a pull-up bar that I could only do chin ups and dips on (and like one muscle up). Like I could do a pull up but I needed an easier variation in order to see actual progress, but, I think it’d be useful to try and do again with negatives and dead hangs to build the forearms and lats. IDK… Hope I didn’t write a giant nothing burger and that this was more helpful… If you’ve got more questions, I’ll eventually answer them.
Btw I know, I thought it’d be funnier to misspell it
No thank you for writing it all out.
There’s lots of info out there ofc, but the two places I get most of my info now are the stronger by science guys and Jeff Nippard. I really like their approaches. Strength training and technique mostly but general understanding of theory and approach. Big and strong. Mobility and calisthenics I like the saturno movement group. They have an impressive mix of strength, mobility and skill.
So when I say you should or it is, I’m not saying I’m correct or it’s facts but it’s what I’ve learned taking info from people who work really hard in understanding their craft and work hard on sharing it. Of course it’s also what I’ve been able to “confirm” in my own experiences. Ymmv though.
Don’t think of beginner, intermediate or advanced as how strong you are, or how much you’ve done it in the past. This is how I understand it.
Beginners: make quick and consistent progress
Intermediate: once you reach a plateau on your progress you’re approaching intermediate. Here you have to readjust. Maybe you’ll spend 2-4 weeks at a weight before you can progress.
Advanced: I’ve never reached this level so I’m not familiar with it from my own experience but my understanding its takes a lot of very targeted work and honing in on technique to raise their weight by even 5lbs/ 1 rep.
So unless you’ve ever been at the Advanced stage if you take too long off you’re going to start back at Beginner. It’s not a bad thing it just means you will be able to make progress quickly.
The stronger you already are, and the more experience you have, the higher your baseline, and the shorter your Beginner period usually is.
For me after an injury from doing something stupid outside the gym, lol, I start with a beginner routine. Each time I’m at the stage for less and less before I get back up to my working weight. Like last time it took me about 3 months, to get to a weight that took me 8 months before the injury.
Beginner routines to me are defined by their simplicity and their focus on progressive overload. If you’re at a place where you can do daily or weekly increases to weight or volume than you’re a beginner. It doesn’t mean your weak, it means you can improve faster than someone who’s been consistently at it for months/years.
So don’t think of it as a bad thing, its not.
You also need to pick a routine and stick with it. You’re motivated right now so its easy to do whatever, but having to think about what you’re going to do each time will not only take more discipline and energy, but it’ll be just way less effective because you’re doing random stuff. Not to mention you give yourself space to make compromises and excuses in the moment.
It’s just really chaotic. Good job in going, it’s better than paralysis analysis, but if you want to succeed from a results standpoint, any sort of beginner routine will be better than what you’re doing now. If you want to succeed from a still doing in a few months standpoint you need a build in a routine around the gym that removes as much ambiguity and choice as possible. One day, “maybe I’ll just go tomorrow” will eventually turn into “eh I’m not really feeling it this week” and the next thing you know you haven’t gone in weeks.
This is something ive experienced and had to work through, this is something most people go through. The people who don’t, have very good routines and/or have been going consistently for so long they can’t imagine actually not going to the gym.
Try to think about why you stopped going the last time. If it was an injury or something then think about why you didn’t start again when healed.
I’d be happy to help you brainstorm and choose a routine for in the gym and around it if you’d like. We can address your goals and what it might/would take to reach them.
I of course encourage you to do your own research. I’d point you to the people I mentioned above, but there’s lots of good stuff out there.
You’re always welcome to come back and ask me whatever questions you have. You don’t need to censure yourself with me, if I don’t want to read something or answer something I won’t.
Edit: the Jim thing was funny. If you do want to go more in depth I don’t mind doing it here, but if you’d rather do it somewhere else just dm me.