You can always get more time by spending money. For example, consider hiring a personal chef (not as expensive as you might think) or look at other options for having packaged & cooked food shipped to you (even cheaper).
When it comes to exercising, doing the right kind of exercise is the most important part. You actually don’t need to do that much. Read “4-hour body” and look into high intensity interval training (e.g. tabata sprints).
For example, consider hiring a personal chef (not as expensive as you might think)
Probably quite expensive compared to the monthly budget of a student–I can only work on weekends–but something to think about when I graduate. I have this weird aversion to doing things like that, which I think is based on the association with ’stuff that snobby rich people do.”
I already have a very efficient cooking routine–I probably spend an hour on cooking once every four days, to make a large pot of something I can put in waterproof glass Tupperwares and take to work or school, and then I spend another 10 minutes a day heating up food to eat it, etc, and packing my lunchbag for that day. I know how to shop cheaply and I spend well under $200 a month on all food-related expenses. I’m guessing a personal chef is more expensive than that. Plus I like cooking–it’s therapeutic when I’m stressed.
I will very likely hire someone to clean my house for me once I have a house, though–I hate cleaning. Right now my apartment just isn’t very clean. And it was someone on LW who gave me the idea of hiring a cleaning lady to trade money for time. I had the same snobb-rich-people aversion, but convinced myself to overcome it.
You actually don’t need to do that much. Read “4-hour body” and look into high intensity interval training (e.g. tabata sprints).
Sounds efficient. Also doesn’t sound like much fun. I’m not a fan of sprints, mostly because I’ve always done exercise with a group (swim team a long time ago, now taekwondo), and I likely have a genetic tendency towards having lots of slow-twitch muscle fibres, and great endurance, but fewer fast-twitch muscles, therefore awful sprinting ability. Sprints and high-intensity stuff in general is now associated, in my mind, with me being the slowest one, whereas I used to overtake even much faster swimmers in long endurance sets.
That’s not an excuse not to look into it, though… I’ll read the book and see if there’s anything I would find bearable to do regularly. I need to re-motivate myself in this area, anyway; if I don’t exercise I get cranky and emotional, so I have to exercise, but most of the time I don’t like it and it saps my motivation.
When it comes to exercising, doing the right kind of exercise is the most important part. You actually don’t need to do that much. Read “4-hour body” and look into high intensity interval training (e.g. tabata sprints).
my biggest piece of advice would be to not worry at all about optimizing anything until you’ve first gotten into the habit of regular work outs, and actually enjoy it. Only then should you start optimizing in other ways. The biggest obstacle is always sticking with it.
1) It doesn’t matter that much what you do, as long as you stick with the basic, multi-joint movements (see below); what’s more important is that you do it consistently for a long period of time (i.e., years), and you train progressively harder as you make progress. That said, you need to avoid injury. Training with weights near your one-rep max is riskier as a beginner, especially without a coach. I like the set/rep progression laid out in the 5/3/1 book listed above. I’ve made good progress on it after doing regular weight training for 15 years; it’s difficult to make progress at that “training age”, so it should work even better for a beginner.
2) In general, you should strength train at least twice a week but not more than four times a week. This does not include conditioning or mobility training, which you should also do.
3) Don’t bother with supplements. Spend your money on a clean diet with lots of protein and you’ll be fine. Since you probably won’t take this advice: creatine monohydrate seems to have the most evidence in favor of its efficacy, but the effect is still relatively small and seems to vary between users. I haven’t noticed a difference when using it.
Remember that there are only a handful of great movements: squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, pull-up, push-up, dips, rows, power cleans. Consider the barbell, dumbbell, and bodyweight variations of these and you will have plenty to do without doing a bunch of exotic isolation work.
You can always get more time by spending money. For example, consider hiring a personal chef (not as expensive as you might think) or look at other options for having packaged & cooked food shipped to you (even cheaper).
When it comes to exercising, doing the right kind of exercise is the most important part. You actually don’t need to do that much. Read “4-hour body” and look into high intensity interval training (e.g. tabata sprints).
Probably quite expensive compared to the monthly budget of a student–I can only work on weekends–but something to think about when I graduate. I have this weird aversion to doing things like that, which I think is based on the association with ’stuff that snobby rich people do.”
I already have a very efficient cooking routine–I probably spend an hour on cooking once every four days, to make a large pot of something I can put in waterproof glass Tupperwares and take to work or school, and then I spend another 10 minutes a day heating up food to eat it, etc, and packing my lunchbag for that day. I know how to shop cheaply and I spend well under $200 a month on all food-related expenses. I’m guessing a personal chef is more expensive than that. Plus I like cooking–it’s therapeutic when I’m stressed.
I will very likely hire someone to clean my house for me once I have a house, though–I hate cleaning. Right now my apartment just isn’t very clean. And it was someone on LW who gave me the idea of hiring a cleaning lady to trade money for time. I had the same snobb-rich-people aversion, but convinced myself to overcome it.
Sounds efficient. Also doesn’t sound like much fun. I’m not a fan of sprints, mostly because I’ve always done exercise with a group (swim team a long time ago, now taekwondo), and I likely have a genetic tendency towards having lots of slow-twitch muscle fibres, and great endurance, but fewer fast-twitch muscles, therefore awful sprinting ability. Sprints and high-intensity stuff in general is now associated, in my mind, with me being the slowest one, whereas I used to overtake even much faster swimmers in long endurance sets.
That’s not an excuse not to look into it, though… I’ll read the book and see if there’s anything I would find bearable to do regularly. I need to re-motivate myself in this area, anyway; if I don’t exercise I get cranky and emotional, so I have to exercise, but most of the time I don’t like it and it saps my motivation.
Here’s an earlier post on weight training. Some of the top comments are really good. By eneasz:
and by jswan: