Gym/Exercise Thread

[PensFanInDC]

Lost 11 pounds so far doing Soldierfit. I expect to gain all 11 back this weekend in Pittsburgh though...

[Streaks House]

Anyone have insight on taking a ZMA supplement? I've heard good things about it for improving sleep, which is important for recovery.

[steelhammer]

Anyone have insight on taking a ZMA supplement? I've heard good things about it for improving sleep, which is important for recovery.

ZMA is awesome! Very deep and restful sleep. Crazy vivid dreams as well. And yes, recovery is greatly improved. Highly recommended.

Another great supplement for recovery is Gluta-Lyn. It's a pH balanced glutamine supplement. It is very highly reviewed online and my experience with it so far has matched those positive reviews. Pretty cheap too as a 6-month supply of powder is only around $40. My sprint workouts got immediately better in terms of wattage, length and recovery.

[tifosi77]

So two weeks ago I messed up my shoulder during a pretty intense workout. Very limited ROM; when I chicken winged my right arm it felt like there was a knitting needle going through my shoulder and someone was twisting it around.

My chiropractor checked it out and even with fairly light palpation it sounded (and felt) like my shoulder was full of Rice Krispies, much to the chiro's amusement, it must be said. Post-adjustment I regained some ROM, but it's still fairly limited. Can barely grab the belt loop behind my back.

Labrum? Rotator cuff? M.D. Doctor visit worthy?

[MelicharSux]

crokin,

any updates on your progress?

[columbia]

ZMA is awesome! Very deep and restful sleep. Crazy vivid dreams as well. And yes, recovery is greatly improved. Highly recommended.

Any downsides to taking it?

[Malkamaniac]

Quitting LA Fitness to either go back to my old gym or find a new one. The new LAFitness on Mcknight road got crazy busy once they bought Ballies and it's just been a mad house there.

Oddly enough, I hate people just enough for it to make me spend $10 more to be alone or I should say not standing right up on someone at the gym.

[steelhammer]

ZMA is awesome! Very deep and restful sleep. Crazy vivid dreams as well. And yes, recovery is greatly improved. Highly recommended.

Any downsides to taking it?

I have not heard or read about any. All the product is is a specific ratio of zinc to magnesium. Forget exactly what the mechanism is for why it puts you to sleep.

What I will say is the make sure you take it RIGHT before you go to bed. For one, it makes you extremely tired within 20 minutes or so. Another reason, and this may be just my limited experience, but I know a couple of times that I took it and didn't go to bed within a half hour or so, I kind if missed my chance and the opposite effect occurred and I had trouble falling asleep. Now, there are plenty of other reasons why this could have occcured unrelated to ZMA, but now i am very mindful to only take it within 10 minutes (max) of lying down for bed.

[steelhammer]

So two weeks ago I messed up my shoulder during a pretty intense workout. Very limited ROM; when I chicken winged my right arm it felt like there was a knitting needle going through my shoulder and someone was twisting it around.

My chiropractor checked it out and even with fairly light palpation it sounded (and felt) like my shoulder was full of Rice Krispies, much to the chiro's amusement, it must be said. Post-adjustment I regained some ROM, but it's still fairly limited. Can barely grab the belt loop behind my back.

Labrum? Rotator cuff? M.D. Doctor visit worthy?

I would go for doctor. Shoulder injuries are nagging and unforgiving. Was the injury from an acute movement or did it come out of nowhere? For me, I have had shoulder tendinitis several times and it is terrible. I am just getting over my last bout, but I am taking precautions to prevent it from occurring again. If it is inflammation-related I suggest:

1. Ibuprofen, 800 mg 3xday
2. Physical therapy routine (I'll post mine later)
3. Shoulder dislocations (look up that stretch on YouTube). Its the best. Do one set of 50 everyday.

[bh]

steelhammer, is there a good site for researching supplements that you could recommend? You seem really into this stuff.

Have you ever tried redline? Some guy I work with was trying to give me some yesterday. He said it gives you a crazy boost of energy but you crash pretty hard later on.

[columbia]

ZMA is awesome! Very deep and restful sleep. Crazy vivid dreams as well. And yes, recovery is greatly improved. Highly recommended.

Any downsides to taking it?

I have not heard or read about any. All the product is is a specific ratio of zinc to magnesium. Forget exactly what the mechanism is for why it puts you to sleep.

What I will say is the make sure you take it RIGHT before you go to bed. For one, it makes you extremely tired within 20 minutes or so. Another reason, and this may be just my limited experience, but I know a couple of times that I took it and didn't go to bed within a half hour or so, I kind if missed my chance and the opposite effect occurred and I had trouble falling asleep. Now, there are plenty of other reasons why this could have occcured unrelated to ZMA, but now i am very mindful to only take it within 10 minutes (max) of lying down for bed.

Thank you.

[steelhammer]

steelhammer, is there a good site for researching supplements that you could recommend? You seem really into this stuff.

Have you ever tried redline? Some guy I work with was trying to give me some yesterday. He said it gives you a crazy boost of energy but you crash pretty hard later on.

Well, I would start with trying to read medical journal reports of the ingredients in the supplements in question. As far as user-reviews, I don't really have a preference. I just try to find sites with the most reviews (preferably someone who used it for 6+ weeks or so and documented the results). Just type the supplement and the word 'review' into a search engine would be my advice.

I have never tried Redline. I try to avoid those kind of supplements for the most part as I too do not care for the roller coaster ride they put your body through. I am sensitive to stimulants so if I take something like that I'll feel the effects for way longer than the bottle suggests I would. It generally just screws me up.

That being said, I have taken the supplement RPM in the past and had rather good results with it. Aside from good training results, it gave me laser-like focus for my work and school work so it kind of acted as a poor-man's adderall (which I've never taken btw). I took a very low dose but still the effects last for a long time after and I don't quite feel like myself while taking it [sometimes that can be a good thing though ]. If you do decide to take Redline or whatever, I would suggest starting with half of the recommended dose. I try to take as few supplements as possible these days, but it's tough because some of them really do what they say and your performance can be at least moderately improved while taking them. The danger, of course, is being dependent upon them to the point that your training is severely diminished without taking them. I see guys at the gym and they can't even do a workout without slamming a monster energy drink or equivalent beforehand. Then it's you versus the rat race at that point.

[Godric]

Okay, heres goes:

I am 20 years old and 5'11 180 pounds, for the last 3 weeks I've been going to the gym 3-4 times a week for an average session time of an hour and a half. (30-30-30 recumbent bike/Elliptical/Basic strength training) My time at the gym has been more casual than I need for my goals.

My goal is to drop my body fat % to below 10% while staying 170~ pounds(I'm maybe 18-20% now). Diet isn't a problem at all. I have a extremely structured diet that is my own hybrid off the paleo idea.

I am going to hit up a vitamin barn or something and pick up some amino acids and I'd appreciate other suggestions for supplements that enhance recovery

The athletic club I am a member of has a crossfit room... anyone know anything about this?

[tifosi77]

So two weeks ago I messed up my shoulder during a pretty intense workout. Very limited ROM; when I chicken winged my right arm it felt like there was a knitting needle going through my shoulder and someone was twisting it around.

My chiropractor checked it out and even with fairly light palpation it sounded (and felt) like my shoulder was full of Rice Krispies, much to the chiro's amusement, it must be said. Post-adjustment I regained some ROM, but it's still fairly limited. Can barely grab the belt loop behind my back.

Labrum? Rotator cuff? M.D. Doctor visit worthy?

I would go for doctor. Shoulder injuries are nagging and unforgiving. Was the injury from an acute movement or did it come out of nowhere? For me, I have had shoulder tendinitis several times and it is terrible. I am just getting over my last bout, but I am taking precautions to prevent it from occurring again. If it is inflammation-related I suggest:

1. Ibuprofen, 800 mg 3xday
2. Physical therapy routine (I'll post mine later)
3. Shoulder dislocations (look up that stretch on YouTube). Its the best. Do one set of 50 everyday.

I immediately noticed the injury when I woke up the morning after a shoulder and chest routine. One of the moves was a plyometric pushup (all four contact points off the ground on the upstroke), so I thought maybe it happened during that high-impact move. But I can do pushups fine without any pain or anything.

If chicken wing stretch (don't know it's actual name) aggrivates the injury, the opposite motion is likely what caused the injury then, right? That would be reaching up and across my body, and there is an exercise in that routine that mimics that move. I don't remember anything funky after that, tho. Wasn't even using that much weight, tbh.

It's just really annoying that it's persisted this long. I have a buddy at work who tore his labrum and his biceps tendon doing Jiu-Jitsu and he had to have it surgically reparied and is now in PT. Hope it's nothing that serious.

[tifosi77]

The athletic club I am a member of has a crossfit room... anyone know anything about this?

Buddy at work is a CrossFit athlete, will likely qualify for his gym's team at the CrossFit Games this year (iirc they finished 5th last year, which was only like 10 mnths after the gym opened).

In this past year he went from a pretty fit guy (about your height and weight) to being Superman with sub-8% fat. As he is coming up on his one year anniversary as a Xfitter he's looking back at some of his early WOD's (Workout Of the Day) and in many cases he has increased his personal records on some specific Olympic lifts by over 100%.

If I had the discipline to live the lifestyle, I'd do it. But he honestly spends 3-5 hours every day in the gym. Even on his rest days he goes to the gym and stretches or does foam rolling or whatever. Plus the dietary stuff is..... I'll call it 'challenging'..... for me. Best I can do is adopt some XFit standards into my own workouts. For example, a squat rep does not count unless you basically touch your butt to your heels. And I've taken to wearing low profile zero-drop shoes when I workout.

Check out this photo essay from last year's CrossFit games. Slide 5 shows a lot of people from my buddy's gym (BRICK CrossFit, they're all the peeps in the bright orange) The captions offer some good insight into what makes CrossFit such an obsession for the athletes.

[jimjom]

Never knew that existed. Enjoyed some of the slideshow, heh. I could never be that disciplined. I look at the pictures and wonder when the last time any of those people drank a beer or dipped something in molten cheese was.

[Godric]

Never knew that existed. Enjoyed some of the slideshow, heh. I could never be that disciplined. I look at the pictures and wonder when the last time any of those people drank a beer or dipped something in molten cheese was.

I really really want to be sub 10%.... I have it in me to live the gym rat lifestyle...

[Godric]

The athletic club I am a member of has a crossfit room... anyone know anything about this?

Buddy at work is a CrossFit athlete, will likely qualify for his gym's team at the CrossFit Games this year (iirc they finished 5th last year, which was only like 10 mnths after the gym opened).

In this past year he went from a pretty fit guy (about your height and weight) to being Superman with sub-8% fat. As he is coming up on his one year anniversary as a Xfitter he's looking back at some of his early WOD's (Workout Of the Day) and in many cases he has increased his personal records on some specific Olympic lifts by over 100%.

If I had the discipline to live the lifestyle, I'd do it. But he honestly spends 3-5 hours every day in the gym. Even on his rest days he goes to the gym and stretches or does foam rolling or whatever. Plus the dietary stuff is..... I'll call it 'challenging'..... for me. Best I can do is adopt some XFit standards into my own workouts. For example, a squat rep does not count unless you basically touch your butt to your heels. And I've taken to wearing low profile zero-drop shoes when I workout.

Check out this photo essay from last year's CrossFit games. Slide 5 shows a lot of people from my buddy's gym (BRICK CrossFit, they're all the peeps in the bright orange) The captions offer some good insight into what makes CrossFit such an obsession for the athletes.

Thanks a lot for this post

[Rylan]

lol that captions made me laugh.

TRX is a fantastic workout. Absolutely makes you defined.

[tifosi77]

Never knew that existed. Enjoyed some of the slideshow, heh. I could never be that disciplined. I look at the pictures and wonder when the last time any of those people drank a beer or dipped something in molten cheese was.

You'd be surprised......... he eats bacon like three times a day, and can drink like a fish. Granted, he doesn't go to town as often as he used to, and he rarely goes to lunch with the rest of us anymore (and when he does, he is, as they say, a 'high maintenance customer'), but he will still indulge. Crikey, the guy makes his own butter from fresh unpasturized whole cream.

Fats don't make you fat. Carbohydrate does. It's the way our bodies process and digest the nutrients.....

Carbs Are Killing You

[Staggy]

Fats don't make you fat. Carbohydrate does. It's the way our bodies process and digest the nutrients.....

Carbs Are Killing You

I disagree with this notion. Excess calories make you fat. Eat at a calorie deficit, you lose weight. Eat at a calorie surplus, you gain weight. It's that simple.

[Godric]

It's that simple.

That's a totally ignorant thing to say

[Staggy]

It's that simple.

That's a totally ignorant thing to say

How is it ignorant? Most studies I've seen verify that and from my own experience of bulking and cutting, the main thing you have to worry about is the number of calories you're taking in.

[Godric]

It's that simple.

That's a totally ignorant thing to say

How is it ignorant? Most studies I've seen verify that and from my own experience of bulking and cutting, the main thing you have to worry about is the number of calories you're taking in.

It isn't the only thing.

Yes. A doctor whose name escapes me did a "Twinkie diet" and lost 20 pounds due to calorie deficit. However he was neurologically imbalanced as well as having nutrient deficiencies (duh) but his metabolism was badly damaged.

Wheat is the enemy.

if you really want your mind blown and to be educated on human physiology and nutrition I suggest:

"The Ultramind Solution" - by Dr. M Hyman ~ Absolutely brilliant and enlightening book

"Feed the muscle burn the fat" - by Tom Venuto ~ Legendary

"The paleo solution" - Robb Wolf and Loren Cordain

this books have a "People's history of the united states" effect

Tif, I know you would absolutely love the books I just listed

[Staggy]

Thanks for the suggestions. Sorry if I came across as saying you would be fine no matter what you eat as long as you're at a deficit, that's not what I meant. I was just trying to say if you eat a balanced diet of good food and nutrients, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll lose (or gain, depending on your goals) weight. If you're eating more calories than you're burning, then even if you are limiting carbs you can still gain weight. And vice versa. That's what I was trying to say in my original post.