The Bodybuilders Thread!

[prod]

Been weight training for 6+ months now, and did my vitality fitness assessment on Monday.
Could do 60 push ups in 1 minute and only 44 crunches in 1 minute.
And I was amazed at how inflexible I was.

Any one want to try it so we can get some numbers?
Basically count how many push-ups you can do in a minute and then how many crunches in a minute.
*Crunches: you lie on your back on the floor with your knees up. Then you slide your hands up your legs so that your palms go past your knees.

Without stopping even once I assume? Going to try it tonight, I've got a vitality assessment coming up sometime

 

[JerryMungo]

What are Vitality trying to achieve with that lol? They have their own definition of fitness it seems. Surely they'd let you chose your exercise? What if you're an uber fit sprint cyclist?

 

[prod]

What are Vitality trying to achieve with that lol? They have their own definition of fitness it seems. Surely they'd let you chose your exercise? What if you're an uber fit sprint cyclist?

Not sure man, I've never been to one. From the site:

The Vitality Fitness Assessment will show you which areas of your fitness you need to focus on. After the assessment you’ll get an exercise plan based on your unique needs.

The assessment includes:

A questionnaire about your diet, exercise and lifestyle habits
Your measurements such as weight, height (to calculate BMI*), waist circumference and body fat percentage
A step or bike test and abdominal crunches, push-ups and flexibility tests.
*Body Mass Index (BMI) is a widely accepted reliable indicator of a person’s weight status. It is appropriate for the majority of people as a screening tool, although in some cases – like pregnant women and body builders – a body fat percentage or waist circumference measurements may be more accurate.

I can see it now: they're gonna tell me I'm fat because I like to eat meat and lift weights. I can't wait for them to ask me what I eat for breakfast, "about 5 cups of black coffee, no sugar, first meal @ 13:00pm"

 

[kolaval]

Lol, I assume its hard to define fitness, so they picked push ups and crunches as a baseline?
but ja running out of breath doing the sit ups made me wonder how 'fit' i really am.

 

[JerryMungo]

Hehehe.
Well functional training takes care of that and you'll be surprised how quickly it works. By the 3rd session, you'll already see very noticeable results. High intensity anything for a minute is not easy.

On the subject of calves, I think I'm going to change my routine to treat calves as primary rather than secondary - instead of supersets with knee-elbow planks and 20 second rests, I'm going to pile a bit more weight on and do them on their own with 1min + rests and see how it goes.

 

[Tinuva]

Not sure man, I've never been to one. From the site:



I can see it now: they're gonna tell me I'm fat because I like to eat meat and lift weights. I can't wait for them to ask me what I eat for breakfast, "about 5 cups of black coffee, no sugar, first meal @ 13:00pm"

Well you quoted it, they allow bodybuilders an exception away from BMI, and use fat% measurement instead, so not sure why you afraid of being called overweight.

Besides, how the heck are you building mass by having your first meal only at 1pm? (leangains approach I assume, something on which you don't really bulk).

 

[JerryMungo]

I couldn't be convinced to skip breakfast I don't think.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

I'm not sure tbh. I could walk OK, but absolutely nothing gave me relief. I've had it a bit milder before - thing is it's always my calves.... perhaps because they're the most neglected in my routine. I'm going for gold from here on with them.

/off to google compartments syndrome :wtf: Sounds ominous.

You would know what I mean by your calf muscles going hard if it had happened. They literally go rock hard to the touch... Easy test to do is to run up a lot of stairs or a long hill, usually triggers it for me.

But from the other info in later posts it does look like you just trained too hard, take it easy and STRETCH after workouts. Overtraining is just as bad and sometimes worse than undertraining.

 

[Orihalcon]

Well you quoted it, they allow bodybuilders an exception away from BMI, and use fat% measurement instead, so not sure why you afraid of being called overweight.

Besides, how the heck are you building mass by having your first meal only at 1pm? (leangains approach I assume, something on which you don't really bulk).

Could be using IF? I know some guys that chow 4000+ calories in a 6 hour time span...

Heaven knows the whole eat 6-7 times for thermo boost from food etc have been debated on training sites till death...and while I personally have no stake in it either way...I do prefer eating 6 meals rather than say...3 big ones...is simply because it's easier for me to get all the food down

 

[Tinuva]

Could be using IF? I know some guys that chow 4000+ calories in a 6 hour time span...

Heaven knows the whole eat 6-7 times for thermo boost from food etc have been debated on training sites till death...and while I personally have no stake in it either way...I do prefer eating 6 meals rather than say...3 big ones...is simply because it's easier for me to get all the food down

Not arguing the amount of meals, I myself don't stick to 6 meals.
However, if you actually want to bulk while building muscle, you can't fast for that long.

 

[Orihalcon]

Ah! My bad, misunderstood.

 

[JerryMungo]

You would know what I mean by your calf muscles going hard if it had happened. They literally go rock hard to the touch... Easy test to do is to run up a lot of stairs or a long hill, usually triggers it for me.

But from the other info in later posts it does look like you just trained too hard, take it easy and STRETCH after workouts. Overtraining is just as bad and sometimes worse than undertraining.

Thanks, it's possible it's not the same thing, but I must admit I'm a bit weary of creatine now. I'm going to try a month without and see how it goes. I'll also stretch more - definitely something I neglect at this stage.

 

[kolaval]

I can see it now: they're gonna tell me I'm fat because I like to eat meat and lift weights. I can't wait for them to ask me what I eat for breakfast, "about 5 cups of black coffee, no sugar, first meal @ 13:00pm"

they use some calipers to measure the skin folds on your tricep, bicep, back and waist.
Still waiting on my results form the bio girly/discovery.
But the measurements were:
Biceps 6
Triceps 14
Subscapular 14 < back
Suprailiac 12 < stomach

 

[InternetSwag]

Need some opinions here. I know it's a subject that should not be over-thought because of the 80/20 rule, but I want to assess it anyways.

I been doing it like this and according to Jason Blaha more sets/reps will always result in more stimulation. However the longer you go on the smaller the increase. So basically doing 80 reps and doing 90 reps may have less than a 2% difference in overall stimulation and you risk connective tissue damage if you overdo it and obviously you can overtrain your CNS and impede future workout performance. It's all about finding a balance that suits you.

I don't have bodypart splits like, back and bi's, chest and tri's etc.

I been doing it like this

Day1 Upperbody (I do it this way because I was taught to) In this I do entire upperbody from traps to forearms.
Day2 Lowerbody (I do Deadlifts on this day for what it's worth).
Day3 Off
Day4 Upperbody
Day5 Lowerbody

So I'm giving each muscle 48 hours to rest, I don't know if I should make it 72 hours instead.

The reason I don't do splits or muscle part per day is because Protein Synthesis only lasts (in natural bodybuilders) for about 3 days IIRC, so if I do Chest every Monday there is a period that my Chest is not growing, ergo from Thursday to Monday again.

Conundrum?

I'm not even entirely sure what I'm asking.

 

[RogueTr00per]

Vitality test

The primary indicator of fitness for them IIRC is cardio fitness. It's a stepping test, stepping in time to a metronome for like a minute (or moe?) and then a minute break after. U will be fitted with a heart rate monitor to gauge recovery during the rest period. Several rounds will follow, perhaps 5 rounds in total. I only did this test in 2009 for the points and haven't needed to do it since. Do some regular 20 minute cardio sessions to improve your score on this test?

You can improve your flexibility quite a bit beforehand if u know what they will be testing. IIRC it was hamstrings, one leg at a time and then also sitting on ground touching toes or rather how fare beyond your toes can u go. So do this every night for a couple of weeks (ideally) beforehand, IMO.

Try to eat lots of fruit and veggies and answer accordingly when they ask

I can't remember if they do cholesterol and blood sugar in that test.

I know they have changed the amount of points one can get from this test in the last year or so, so possibly the test itself has changed a bit since 2009?

edit: The pushups and crunches test didn't count for anything (no points) when I did it. I just did them for fun. I think I scored in the forties for both, but hadn't been doing pushups regulary at that stage (just now and again) or crunches at all, had only just started gyming at the time.

 

[xrapidx]

Try to eat lots of fruit and veggies and answer accordingly when they ask

Meh....just answer accordingly.

 

[Orihalcon]

Swagman, I have never seen any point other than endurance to go high rep on any particular excerises in a specific set - i.e doing sets of 40 reps or such.

It has been proven that going heavy (as in 90%+ of 1rm) for 6 reps per set increases strengh morso than higher rep range with lower weight. Conversely optimal muscle hypertrophy is induced in the upper 10-15 rep range for growth and size. Now I am not going to get into the argumant that certain muscles (read abs and calves) need higher reps etc. But the above "rule" has been and is being applied by many power lifters and body builders for maximum results.

If you are hitting your whole upper body - that to me is chest, back, delts, traps, shoulders, biceps and triceps. I struggle to imagine how long this routine is and how much stress your are putting your whole body under.

As for the 3 days of protein synthethis and recovery you are by and large correct. The optimal recovery time for a muscle group when hit hard is 3 days. However the reason many people prefer a classic 5 day split with chest / back / shoulders / legs / arms (abs can be slotted into any day) is that the volume they hit the muscles with simply does not allow it to be combo'd with with another muscle group. I do a 5 day split hitting all my muscle groups with 4 excersises, 4 sets, 10-12 reps at a moderate to heavy weight. Imagine how long my sessions would be if I had to do my entire upper body on a single day?

In the end I choose to fully fatigue my muscles on a single day and while that muscle might recover in 72 hours. The growth and power increase more than off sets (for me) the "loss" of 2 days of theoretical growth.

As always in the end it is what your body responds to best.

 

[InternetSwag]

Ahh sorry man I made a mistake for that, I meant it only as an example number and being 80 reps in a total workout, like maybe 8 sets of 10.

I will read the rest of your post now sorry for that.

Edit: read the rest of your post, yeah it does make my workouts very long and I tend to cut out some exercises that work the same muscles, for example if I do Bench Press I won't do an exercise that works the long head of the tricep. I'll do something like rope pulldowns instead.

It does get a bit much sometimes with the volume and I sometimes I'll skip a few exercises and do them the next day. Like last week I didn't do forearms, traps and lateral delts as part of my main workout and did them the next day, just did lateral raises, shrugs and then reverse curls.

A lot of it probably has to do with me not being willing to wait the full 72 hours. I think I'll do that from now on or just split it up a wee bit so I don't feel overwhelmed.

 

[Orihalcon]

Try it.

If you split your workouts and muscle groups you can and will hit your workouts much harder as well.

Or go for the ever popular - chest+triceps / back+biceps / legs / shoulders / rest / repeat.

I honestly would not worry about the longer than 72 hours rest...I've seen hundreds of natty builders and general fitness athletes use a 5 split and they certainly have no problems in the muscle size department.

 

[RogueTr00per]

Week 2 workout of the crossfit open 2013 below. Damn this woman is strong and fit! Note women do a lower weight, but Julie Foucher would put some of us smaller & novice guys to shame!

Video submission:http://games.crossfit.com/video/open-workout-132-video-submission-demo

Julie Foucher and Adrian Bozman demo a video submission for Workout 13.2. Find the workout description, details, the PDF and scorecard here.

Copy/paste from full workout description:
MEN - includes Masters Men up to 54 years old
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 10 minutes of:
115 pound Shoulder to overhead, 5 reps
115 pound Deadlift, 10 reps
15 Box jumps, 24" box

WOMEN - includes Masters Women up to 54 years old
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 10 minutes of:
75 pound Shoulder to overhead, 5 reps
75 pound Deadlift, 10 reps
15 Box jumps, 20" box
<snip>
Equipment
To complete this workout you will need:
• A barbell that is loaded to the appropriate weight for your division
• A box that is the appropriate height for your division

*The official weight is in pounds. For your convenience, the minimum acceptable weights in kilograms are 52 kg for the Men, 34 kg for the Women, 43 kg for the Masters Men, 25 kg for the Masters Women.