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Comment by shoobiedoo | Hacker News Reader

I have a few heavy kettlebells and dip bars in my room. I've never felt or looked better. I know many people out there get stuck on the "where am I gonna put a squat rack and barbells?!" hurdle. You don't need much!

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Or you can do simple calisthenics. Especially if you are beginner, save yourself time and money and do exercises like push ups and squats at home. When you progress on that go to outside gym which is also free and never crowded from my experience.

You know, I went through Darebee's "foundation" program, recommended for people with no idea what they're doing, on the theory that being in better shape would be nice.

https://darebee.com/programs/foundation-program.html

It has plenty of good points. But it's a miserable failure at letting you get into shape for the simple reason that it's a 30-day program with approximately 30 unique sets of daily exercises.

And Darebee seems to think of this as a strength! Variety, in their minds, will keep you interested in continuing with the program.

This incredibly misguided approach means that it's almost impossible to keep up the habit. Participating at all means that every day, you have to go find the program, find your current place, and look up whatever new exercises they've decided to introduce that day. Maybe those exercises will happen again two weeks later. Maybe not.

What I want is a set of exercises that I can memorize so that, if it becomes convenient to do some daily exercises during the day, I can do that without having to look up a schedule and then study what exactly I'm supposed to be doing. Working through the entire program left me completely unable to even repeat the same program.

I just can't understand where they got the idea that you need to be enticed into doing something most people consider unpleasant by imposing a lot of mandatory busywork every time you do decide to get on with it.

I'd rather recommend beginners check out r/bodyweightfitness' recommended routine

The Scientific 7-Minute workout is a great starting point.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/well/workouts/

I managed to get down to 13% body from more than 25% with a single set of adjustable dumbbells that cost me $60. For the first time in my life I had visible abs. What pushed me was a single week of counting calories - I never realized how many extra calories I was consuming.

Boy do I hear that. I was mostly eating what was very healthy, but I'd throw in an apple here, some crackers there... it adds up so fast and grinds everything to a halt.

In my experience at weight watchers, 99% of people trying to lose weight simply have no idea they’re eating way more calories than they need, and they have absolution idea how insanely calorie sense some things are, like cashews.

For Burt everyone they don’t need to count calories, they just need to knockout a few calorie dense things and the weight comes off.

Yes, getting abs is 90% of diet, 10% exercise.

Agreed. What surprised me is just how small a single serving of peanuts is. 28 grams - 180 calories. Spoiler, that's a lot less than two handfuls and going back for seconds.

I work out at home with dumbells, the one thing I miss vs a gym is some way to do lat pull downs. I can’t do a chin up and don’t feel like I’ve got a good way to work up to it.

I also don’t work legs super seriously, I have 2x75lb dumbells I use for squats and deadlifts, I could do more if I had heavier weights but that’s not a priority.

If you haven't tried single leg movements, that's the way to increase load on your legs when you don't have more weight available.

Moving fast is also a good way to increase intensity without increasing weight (you can clean less than you can deadlift, for example). The training effect is slightly different, but probably more useful for the average person tbh.

Actually I feel like moving very slow is also a way to increase intensity.

Move fast on the concentric (increases power), move slowish on the eccentric.

Yes. Although as you get older moving fast on the concentric might also increase your chances of injury.

For progressing to a chin-up or pullup, have you tried negatives? Or rubber band assist? Or, if you are willing to get rings, you can lower them so some of your weight is supported by your feet on the ground (body straight like a plank), changing the height of the rings will increase or decrease effort.

Chin up progression is eccentrics and band assists. They'll get you to your first chin up faster than lat pulldowns since you're actually doing the movement.

The modern way to progress to chin ups normally involves bands and eccentrics, but you can also just do partial reps (starting with the top of the movement) and gradually work on adding depth.

(This also avoids the stress on your elbows that can happen from the bottom of the rep if not controlled well.)

If you're quite far off starting with bodyweight inverted rows and working up in reps will train your arms and elbows in a very similar way from an easier position.

Anything "partial" gets a bad rep from people ego lifting with weights but it can be a legitimate way to work up to calisthenics exercises and saves fiddling around with bands

Simple dead hangs are a good start. Lots of people can’t hang for 30 seconds

Congratulations! People definitely overestimate how difficult it is to start getting into gym and weightlifting. Pull-ups, push-ups, and crunches will get you 50% of the benefits with 1% of the effort. Adding on some additional weight from things like kettlebells is all you need then for your lower body. Gyms are nice when convenient but not at all necessary.

The advantage of the gym is that machines usually (but not always) force or at least guide the correct form. Free weights and free exercise leave so much room for a wrong form and building up to injuries.

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