How going to the gym makes you stronger
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"I don't know about this, I've always been pretty small guy. I'm not just a weightlifter." "Dude, shut up and come with us."
"I don't know about this, I've always just done design stuff. I'm not really a back-end guy." "Dude, shut up and read this PHP guide."
Easily two of the most transformative conversations I've ever had.
(My workouts these days are weightlifting ones as well, so it's not that I'm not doing comparable workouts.)
Just want to throw that out there. I still recommend going to the gym, and love it.
Who can I talk to in order to shed some light on what's happening?
Go to the gym and do a heavy squat or deadlift day and I assure you that you'll feel pretty tired for a bit after the session. This is basic science. You can mitigate this by nutrition post workout, but even so, there will be a lag in time when you could feel drained.
I believe that I do maintain a proper diet for my weight-lifting, I eat well during the day before my workout and afterwards as well.
I feel fine after my workouts, I just don't feel so great that I can get into the state of focus I need for programming. So it's not fair to say that I don't feel well; just that it usually requires more focus to program than I can muster after a workout.
This is correct.
Eat a wholesome meal(but don't overeat) 90-120 minutes before you leave for the gym. Those squat numbers aren't going to go up on their own. :)
Tasting bile when squatting/deadlifting is really unpleasant.
During training, the secret to performance is sugar. Dextrose, to be exact. The CNS can run on ketones, but it works best with ready blood sugar.
Google wasn't helpful w.r.t the latter idea.
Squeezing the abs pushes the organs up and holds them in place, compressing the air in the lungs, creating a more rigid trunk. This stops lifters from having their chest drop down, which will cause a dropped lift or even an injury.
Of course, if you squeeze the gut, the stomach can decide it's time to vomit if you have a lot of food in it. So ... don't do that.
Similarly if you're having lower intestinal disquiet.
My tinker-genes get hyper after an hour of heavy lifting(starting strength 3x/week). I do hardly any cardio most days.
Heavy lifting has a small 30 min downtime after the session. (where you can shower in warm water to freshen up)
But, after that i'm raring to go and won't feel tired until about 4-5 hrs later.
This is my best productivity hack of 2011 - well worth the time spent.
> are you taking long enough breaks between sets?
3 minutes, timed on a watch, which is the recommended time.
I just can't program afterwards. Which is fine, I have lots of low mental-cost stuff I can do instead.
I could go on, but I've already put my thoughts into words: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3431621
There's a proverbial bit of wisdom that has been attributed to various sources: The will to win is important. The will to prepare is essential.
Now, years later, I've applied what I learned professionally to my athletic life and am going through the same olympic stuff you talked about. Spot on. Good write up.
Growing up, effort was given a back seat to my natural intelligence. Also, too much praise early on can trip you up in the RealWorld.
The nice thing about it is that this means that if you're having a crappy day, you accept it and train what you can. If you're having an awesome day, you squeeze more out of it.
Learning to give-and-take with your "recovery budget" is definitely an important lesson. I train less hard than I'm capable of because my employers don't pay me to be a zombie.
climbing tends to attract the people that like to solve puzzles because each route is a physical puzzle in how you should contort your body best to get up it. When is the best time to rest on a route if you can? where should take a stance to clip the next quickdraw? am I going to fall and is it going to be a safe fall? is my leg behind the rope and is that going to flip me upside down? You think about everything and nothing all at once. It's amazing.
It also has a very social aspect to it as well because you see the same people over and over again at the gym or local crag and there is a lot of downtime while you are resting. Bouldering is especially communal as people tend to shout out encouragement and help you figure things out if you want it.
Give it a go and you will probably like it.
edit: if you are interested go to http://www.reddit.com/r/climbing for more info.
So I will continue to go to the gym, reap the benefits, and try to keep my impulse to compete in check. Be warned that excelling is not something you simply decide to do as a third or fourth passion. It's best not to compete and expect to win against people whose first priority is fitness when your first and second priorities are something else.
If everyone was just racing against themselves, I really don't know that we'd ever have seen a 4-minute mile.
For $25 it's a no-brainer investment.
I train 5 days a week - Monday to Friday. I'm not being dramatic by saying I'd probably kill myself if I didn't do this. Usually by Sunday afternoon, thoughts start to creep in about how I'm a failure and should just end it now.
I'd love to train 7 days but it's overkill.
Again, I'm glad to hear you're getting help.
Anyone else with these symptoms should seek help, you're not alone.
"Regular exercise has psychological benefits."
This is news? Give me a break.
I've been falling into a similar second-day routine, though some weeks I try to go every day (and it usually doesn't go that well.) What is the best/most effective routine to get into? Every second day? Five days a week?
However I typically run 6 miles a day during the week at around 9PM, which serves the same purpose.
What it really comes down to me is a few things:
1) It forces me away from the computer for about an hour a day. 2) It clears my head from the day, and prepares it for tomorrow. I find that also helps me sleep better as I'm not cycling through things in my mind. 3) It is good exercise. I've never been fat, but it keeps me fit and that in and of itself makes me feel better
I think mostly its just something that doesn't require me to be wired in and hyper vigilant while doing, which I feel managing/coding/reading/hacking does.
http://www.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about-fitness...
HN Discussion here - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287213
I'm really glad you see it as the hardest challenge of your day and are able to keep that mindset all week, I really wish I could do that. Instead for me, it's just one more taxing and brutal aspect of my day. I love my job and I love lifting, but for me it's one or the other...
http://scholar.google.com.ar/scholar?q=cardio+fitness+brain&...
The key ingredient here is BDNF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_fact...
It is produced when exercising, either cardio or anaerobic.
And as a side note - prolonged cardio is detrimental for health. It puts body into inflammation state (inflammation markers are present in blood of those exercised daily about 90 min with medium to high intensity). You have to have to do resistance training to make hormonal levels more balanced.
So the best training for mind is an interval training.
The whole idea is loathsome to some people including but I expect not limited to me that think a sentient being investing in its meats is infeasible. Boring, too.
You'll still get the benefit of being away from your work for a short while, doing something physical and focussing on improving at something else.
All you need equipment-wise is a pull-up bar. I have a wall-mounted pull-up bar which is very stable. Maybe a cheap one for the doorframe will do the trick as well.
simplefit consists of progressively harder levels[2]. If you manage to finish "day 3" (judgement) in under 5 minutes, you go to the next level.
[1] http://www.simplefit.org/ [2] http://www.simplefit.org/workout.html#workouts
EDIT: forgot to mention that the simplefit exercises are done with bodyweight only. Also, they are laid out in a way that will keep your heart pumping and thus you will get fit pretty fast and in a time-efficient manner. No routine takes longer than 20 minutes. In fact, only "day 1" is ultimately bound by time (20 mins), the others are to be finished "as fast as you safely can". This is key for me and the reason I stuck to it over many weeks now. It doesn't take long and I still see results.
I mean, you're just standing/sitting there, pumping weights going through the repetitive movements. It's absolutely mindnumbing, boring, and you can't help but going through every single other thing you'd rather be doing with your time.
Right?
My solution is audiobooks.
I usually pick a book that's already a favourite, that I've read once or twice (because it's different than reading, if your attention drifts for a moment, you miss a bit--so pick a book you already know but enjoy re-reading so you don't have to rewind all the time).
Also get some good earphones because sometimes the music in the gym can be loud. For running I have those things that clip behind your ear, but in the gym those plugs that actually go in your ear might be best for shutting out the music (get cheap ones from a dollar store/K-mart type of place, you're not getting them for sound quality and I wouldn't spend much on something that's going to get crudded with earwax real quick).
You can also try podcasts. I find that because they're usually in a bit more loose/radio DJ/interview style, it's no problem if you miss the occasional bit, because people talk quite redundantly in general, unlike a book where every sentence counts.
For example, during summer I come home/go to work on kickboard sometimes. I do listen to podcasts en route.
Think about it as a way to improve blood circulation to your most valuable organ: your brain.
You might find this guys' videos fun: http://www.youtube.com/user/scooby1961?blend=1&ob=4 ; He sounds geeky enough to be trusted
Really easy to do at home and cheap. By the time your strength outgrows the sandbags, you should be motivated enough to invest in free weights or get to the gym. Or not, but you'll still have the sandbags and the muscles that result.
Copying a part of a book review:
Convict Conditioning is a book of bodyweight only training. It utilizes six training exercises, each having ten different variations. The six exercises are called "the Big Six", and they are one-arm pushup, one legged squat (pistol squat), one-arm pullup, hanging straight leg raise, stand-to-stand bridge, and one-arm handstand pushup. You don't start with these exercises, but rather easier versions, and they represent the ultimate goal of the workout.
The workout is structured so that each exercise of the Big Six is divided into ten steps, the final step being the exercises listed earlier. As a general rule, the first steps are the easiest and you move gradually to more challenging variations. For example, you start the pushups series with standing pushups against the wall, and progress from there into incline pushups against a table, then kneeling pushpus, and so on until you reach the one-arm pushup.
http://www.amazon.com/Convict-Conditioning-Weakness-Survival...
I personally love to lift weights, but for the next year I'll be lifting less and doing bodyweight exercises more as an experiment.