Weightlifting for Kiwis - Discussion and support regarding the art of swole

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I hate cutting.
I got a subway sub today, chicken/bacon. Ate that fucker at like 3 PM and was like "mmm delicious" went to work out, came back, poured a protein shake out and decided "I should put in that sub in MFP before I drink this.

Turns out that sub was 2000 fucking calories, so I couldn't eat anything else.
 
I got a subway sub today, chicken/bacon. Ate that fucker at like 3 PM and was like "mmm delicious" went to work out, came back, poured a protein shake out and decided "I should put in that sub in MFP before I drink this.

Turns out that sub was 2000 fucking calories, so I couldn't eat anything else.
I got an opportunity to climb a mountain on pretty short notice so I'm trying to cut as much weight as possible in the next month or so, I'm doing rolling 120s (five days fasting, two days refeeding) and losing strength like crazy. I was hoping to harness the rebound effect from refeeding is offset any muscle loss but I'm not too confident about that anymore, gonna have to make a tough decision soon.

Edit: actually it's not nearly as bad as I'm making it sound, I'm just mad that I had to take 5lbs off my bench.
 
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Edit: actually it's not nearly as bad as I'm making it sound, I'm just mad that I had to take 5lbs off my bench.
I'm kicking myself over my laziness; of my 6 month bulk, I didn't go to 8 of them, and I probably half assed 6 of those weeks. I also decided to do 3x5 for compound lifts like bench and squat and now that I have a home gym I need to overcompensate with more so I'm doing 3x8/4x8s and I've had to drop a bunch of lbs on my lifts so I feel you.

Has anyone had experience with the rice bucket forearm exercises? I really wanna go harder on my exercises, more exercises/sets/reps and I can't really think of alot of shit to do for forearms. Really don't wanna spend $10 on rice and just pour it in a bucket though lol

 
I'm kicking myself over my laziness; of my 6 month bulk, I didn't go to 8 of them, and I probably half assed 6 of those weeks. I also decided to do 3x5 for compound lifts like bench and squat and now that I have a home gym I need to overcompensate with more so I'm doing 3x8/4x8s and I've had to drop a bunch of lbs on my lifts so I feel you.
My three month bulk turned into five because I spent two months chasing one PR like Captain Ahab and ended up 15lbs heavier than I would've. And one of those months was almost entirely wasted on stressful life shit and consequent sickness from the cortisol drop. Next year I'm giving myself strict bounds: Thanksgiving to Mardi Gras, so I can get lean in time for outdoors shit.

I haven't even been trail running because I'm afraid of blowing up my knees, and that's one of my favorite things in the world.
 
This is true. When you lift weights you end up creating small rips in your muscles and the rest periods fill in those gaps in your muscles which makes them bigger.
This isn't true btw, for some reason it's commonly accepted as the reason why muscles grow, but with science today we know that it's not really that mechanism that makes it bigger. Which is insane because I got taught this in physio uni as well. People just use it because it's an easy concept to grasp and imagine when talking about muscles.
 
Really don't wanna spend $10 on rice and just pour it in a bucket though lol
Same. That's FOOD, it should be being eaten by people, not squeezed and left covered with sweat to rot.

Can we do it with sand or fine gravel instead? That shit you get for fish tanks?
I'm afraid of blowing up my knees, and that's one of my favorite things in the world.
Weird.
 
Is it potentially worth it to buy home weights? Part of why I don't go to the gym is not wanting to physically drive over to campus, park and then walk like 15 fucking minutes to it.

I hate weightlifting and am only considering it because I have to lose weight and am open to the possibility that I could learn to like it if I did so properly.
 
Is it potentially worth it to buy home weights? Part of why I don't go to the gym is not wanting to physically drive over to campus, park and then walk like 15 fucking minutes to it.

I hate weightlifting and am only considering it because I have to lose weight and am open to the possibility that I could learn to like it if I did so properly.
Is that you in the pfp?
 
Honestly, it might be in ten years.

Edit: The exercise I like is mountain biking, walking/hiking (actual hiking i've only recently started getting into), swimming and kayaking. Swimming would do it, but that's also in the gym. For a while I was good about going. I have shitty form with that too.
Yeah home gym is viable if you have the space and the money. It cuts away a lot of the excuses, and pays for itself pretty quickly. All you really need is a bar, weights, bench and a rack/stand.
 
Is it potentially worth it to buy home weights? Part of why I don't go to the gym is not wanting to physically drive over to campus, park and then walk like 15 fucking minutes to it.

I hate weightlifting and am only considering it because I have to lose weight and am open to the possibility that I could learn to like it if I did so properly.
I have a set of dumbbells at home I don’t think I’ve touched for a decade. If I don’t go the gym I seem to have no motivation.
 
I've been cutting significantly for a few weeks now, and I've noticed my muscle recovery time has increased too much. Any way to remedy this? Hot baths?
 
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Figure out if your sleep is messed up in some way or other. Either not enough/bad quality/whatever. If I'm bulking and have a shitty night where I only get like 6 hours I can manage, but if I'm cutting that's going to leave me so tired I'm going to have to skip.

Has anyone had experience with the rice bucket forearm exercises? I really wanna go harder on my exercises, more exercises/sets/reps and I can't really think of alot of shit to do for forearms. Really don't wanna spend $10 on rice and just pour it in a bucket though lol
They work. I did them regularly for a few months for grip for deadlifting and definitely saw improvement. If you're careful about storage (plastic bag with moisture absorber) and making sure your hands are clean and dry every single time the rice lasts a very long time.

This isn't true btw
What's the actual mechanism? Google just turns up endless rephrases of the muscle tear thing.
 
I don't really care how I look, I just want to be able to DO things.
It always starts out like that. Then you see improvements.

But on a more serious note, the advantage of having a more specific goal is it makes programming much easier.

But for general fitness, I would recommend kettlebells. The high rep nature builds some stamina while the weights themselves aren't really heavy enough to cause serious injury but they are heavy enough to make lifting daily objects a trivial matter. Think heavy boxes in storage, a sack of grain, a 5 gallon jug of water.

Just don't be a retard with them.
 
What's the actual mechanism? Google just turns up endless rephrases of the muscle tear thing.
To keep it brief, since you can nerd out with a lot of terms surrounding this shit, mechanical tension is what causes the muscles to grow, since it sends a signal to your brain that tells it that it needs to build more muscle there, muscle tears just happen as a biproduct of lifting weights, and it triggers muscle repair, but not growth. For example there's a study in which the participants only had microscopic muscle tears, yet their muscles didn't grow, they actually got even smaller.
 
To keep it brief, since you can nerd out with a lot of terms surrounding this shit, mechanical tension is what causes the muscles to grow, since it sends a signal to your brain that tells it that it needs to build more muscle there, muscle tears just happen as a biproduct of lifting weights, and it triggers muscle repair, but not growth. For example there's a study in which the participants only had microscopic muscle tears, yet their muscles didn't grow, they actually got even smaller.

Yeah, mechanical tension causes release of Mechano Growth Factor, which is the primary cause of muscle growth. A few other things likely contribute to smaller degrees. But if muscle damage was the primary cause of muscle growth, you wouldn't have to lift weights, you could just have people throw rocks at you, and you'd get fucking jacked.
 
I hate weightlifting and am only considering it because I have to lose weight
If you hate it, you're not going to do it no matter how close the weights are.

Also weightlifting to lose weight is like painting to grow taller. The number one thing you need to do to lose weight is a calorie deficit. Count EVERYTHING, and be honest with yourself. In a very distant second place, you need to do cardio, not weight lifting. Find a way to do it while you do something else, like a treadmill at a standing desk, or an audiobook with bone conducting waterproof headphones in the pool.

In short: eat less, you big fat greedy fuck.
you could just have people throw rocks at you, and you'd get fucking jacked.
Close. If you wear a blindfold while doing this, and try to dodge them instead of tanking them, you're actually training your haki.
 
On the topic of weight loss, I'm like 2-3 weeks into my cut now. As mentioned before, I'm travelling, and unable to cook for myself which makes it more difficult. For better or worse, a few days in, I got food poisoning. After I got better, I was still repulsed by food, so decided to just water fast for a week. I've been eating for 3-4 days now, and my weight seems to have stabilized at just under 80 kg, 4 kilos below where I started.

It's a pain in the ass to hit my protein, but I'm managing. It helps that I need to walk all over the fucking place to find something I can eat, so I can a more aggressive than I'd generally recommend deficit at like 2500-3000 calories/day.

Switched from a 3 day brosplit, to 2 days of full body workouts per week. Obviously, my numbers tanked when I wasn't eating, but they've started to bounce back, and I'm recovering surprisingly well, all things considered. Planning for roughly another two months, so we'll see how I goes, and I may need to end up making some adjustments one direction or the other
 
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