Comment by hit8run | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hit8run | Hacker News Reader

Well done site. I have a little mixed feelings about the target audience. Working out for many years (gym and calisthenics) I know a lot of exercises. Beginners might be tempted to approach their fitness by asking that question:

what muscle I want to grow today?

That is not the way to go. If you start out or especially during a pandemic where you need to work with everything you can get go for composite exercises that hit more muscles and are the opposite of isolation exercises you might be tempted to choose from a page like this. Beginners: full body workouts. Advanced: 2 to 3 day split. Expert: you know your drill. and will do whatever works for you.

So who should be using this site? Beginners and advanced should use a plan that is preconfigured. Pros know what exercises they want to configure into their routines.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s nice to have for reference but do yourself a favor and use some preconfigured workouts if you’re starting out.

You won’t get a sixpack by only working out abs. Train your whole body and reduce body fat. That’s the way to go.

Popular beginner, intermediate and advanced barbell routines are typically structured around the concept of Main lifts (most often: Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift and Overhead Press) and accessory lifts. (I'm not trying to explain this to you, an experienced lifter, but to others reading this post with less experience)

The program typically tells you how to structure and progression of the main lifts, e.g. when, how many sets, the rules of increasing/decreasing the weight etc.. However, many of those programs give the user freedom in choosing their accessory exercises according to some rules. Example: Do your main lifts, then perform x sets, y reps of an accessory lift targeting $muscle_group. The plan will typically make some recommendations for accessory exercises to choose from, of course, but the emphasis most often lies on the fact that they can be changed. The modification and individualisation is built into the routine. Popular examples for this style of programming in beginner/intermediate plans are 5/3/1 variants or Greg Nuckols' programs.

So in short, I don't agree with a site like this in general lacking a target audience, I would consider myself advanced (~7 years of continuous strength training) and I still look up exercises from time to time nonetheless for multiple reasons, and I don't hold encyclopedic knowledge of every exercise for every muscle group. I agree that it is bad advice for a beginner to go to such a site and just pick exercises "at random", but as far as I can see that isn't how the site advertises itself.

This [1] was posted two days ago on HN, but didn't get visibility but is great to explain HN beginners how they should lift

[1] https://www.julian.com/guide/muscle/intro

Relevant thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12618223

IMO, the easiest way to get a full body workout is alternating rowing with push-ups. Rowing alone works almost everything, plus cardio and push-ups largely gets the rest.

Great advice. There are more complex variations of this (essentially, the reddit "bodyweightfitness" recommended routine mentioned in other threads) but these two basic motions are really the meat of it all.

If you just want to get started, this "one weird trick" of doing body weight rows and push ups really will work. Both exercises have numerous variations to increase load, as well. Then you can use something like the OP's site to find other body weight exercises to sprinkle in.

Can you share a good resource for beginners to find some pre-configured plans? Thanks!

Take a look at some of the recommended routines from thefitness.wiki https://thefitness.wiki/routines/ .. it's the wiki from sidebar of r/fitness, which is also a great place to hangout incase you have questions

I liked “You are your own gym” by Mark Lauren when I started out with body weight training back around 2010. There is a companion app that is free and still updated called Bodyweight Training by Mark Lauren. There are many offerings around this area. Try a few out and let us know what works for you :)

I got convinced by and fell in love with the r/bodyweightlifting Recommended Routine - I now advertise it left and right, for a quick link see: https://tinyurl.com/bodyweightrr I found it soothing and empowering how they calmly yet persistently insist on starting small and not overworking yourself, and explain a lot with science. They describe how to scale the exercises depending on your fitness level (or lack thereof), they also list amazingly many ways how to do exercises with minimal or no equipment (I started with only a door bar, though even that can be worked around if really needed; some year later I decided to add gymnastic rings to that, and I don't expect to need more for long time, if ever).

+1 For the RR

I actually almost immediately modified it because I have dumbbells and lack a pull up bar at home, but even so it was very helpful for figuring out what a proper workout is supposed to feel like and look like.

I thought I was missing out on a community! But I assume you mean /r/bodyweightfitness? I am also a big fan, but I moved on from it and do my own programming based on reading Overcoming Gravity (2ed) - fantastic book if you want to get into the nitty gritty on body-weight programming.

/r/bodyweightfitness have just started rolling out a new series of plans to replace the RR. So if you haven't popped by in a while it's worth a look.

The one thing that always bugged me about the RR was the videos were just a random mismatch and some weren't even the bodyweight variant - they just told you to ignore the barbell or whatever. It's a bit of work to film and edit but there are a finite number of exercises in the RR so I always felt it made sense to make a consistent set for people to reference.

That is one thing I really like about this website - the demonstrations are clear and consistent with what is being described. .

I don't know if Overcoming Gravity was named with this in mind but I've always loved its title: what is it that always keeps you down in life? Do something about it!

Uhhh, I wrote the subreddit name from memory, sorry for getting it wrong :/

As to the RR, I just recently internalized the last new RR, and you say they are gonna roll out a new one again? Huh I wonder why they change it so often o_O

edit: Hmm, IIUC this seems to be some "Primer Routine", so I assume this to be something new, and given the different name, probably not obsoleting the RR, no?

The usual advice is to do Starting Strength (little bit more technical, is a book) or StrongLifts. (little easier, is a website)

Both are focused on barbell compound lifts. There are many many strong opinions on what type of weight is best in what schedule, with many persuasive arguments backing them up. This is because you will get stronger and gain muscle mass if you eat at a surplus and do basically anything involving picking up a weight.

Meat doesn't actually care about the routine! Your triceps can't tell if you did six reps or seven. Just doing some kind of heavy lift is enough.

> Meat doesn't actually care about the routine! Your triceps can't tell if you did six reps or seven. Just doing some kind of heavy lift is enough.

Kind of... the most important thing for any beginner is to just start doing something; but, there are a lot of nuance on maximizing muscle growth that do mean different reps / weight ranges do make a difference. A couple of reps difference either side are going to make little difference but when you have drastically different ranges like 5 to 20 or something then you start training your body for different things.

Stick to low reps and high weight and keep progressively overloading and you will be good to go! As you said - for beginners something like SS or SL are great for starting with core lifts and give you a solid program to kick off from.

This. You probably don't need to focus on specific muscles unless you're a bodybuilder (in which case you should already know what you're doing.)

Bodyweight exercise at the park or backyard while listening to your favorite podcast or audiobook. That way you focus on developing a habit without complicating it with gyms, weights, and "plans".

Compounds lifts. Often people get confused about what program to use or how to optimize. If you're just getting started - anything will work. Make going to the gym a routine and the rest will follow. You can ignore the noise (much like programming! You could get lost in learning some niche flavor-of-the-month framework and never build anything).

Do squats, bench, ohp, and deadlift. You'll grow.

The /fit/ sticky is actually a pretty good overview: http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html

/fit/ is a crap board most of the time, but sometimes golden nuggets of information crop up. That sticky is one such gold nugget (permanently pinned to the top)

Agreed, most boards there are a total cesspit. However the stickies and the wikis often have good information (installgentoo.com for instance).

So I like to work out and I use some app which tells me how much % of what muscle I have worked out, also my personal trained told me to vary things up. I could use this website, to understand better on how to train my weakest muscle or how to add variance to my already made plan if I'm plateauing somewhere or some of my muscles are behind.

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