Don’t get married unless there is a compelling reason to do so. There’s a base rate of 40-50% for divorce, and at least some proportion of existing marriages are unhealthy and unhappy. Divorce is one of the worst things that can happen to you, and many of the benefits of marriage to happiness are because happier people are more likely to get married in the first place.
ephion
Karma: 559
Why would I want that when I can get two of these, have 43″ of real estate, and $240 left over?
Music is one of the primary joys and pleasures in my life. It is not optional for me.
This list is highly subjective. I can’t stand tennis, frisbee, or dance, and I really love lifting and yoga.
Look into plate loaded dumbbell sets. I’ve got a pair of 14″ screw lock handles that can accommodate up to 125lbs each (using 25lb plates), and it took me a long time to grow out of them.
Those are called dumbbell rows, and they’re a great exercise. 10lbs is awfully light for that motion, but it is better than nothing.
Without knowing your environment, it’s hard to say how I’d improvise pulls. You can set your feet up on a chair and do inverted rows against a table. A chinup bar is a great investment for this, as the chinup is one of the best upper body exercises available.
I’m noticing that your evening routine has three abdominal exercises and zero back exercises—you might want to consider adding back bridges or supermans to balance your core. I would recommend skipping crunches and situps—they’re bad for your back/posture and they’re ineffective at developing abdominal strength or endurance. Instead, I’d recommend planks, since they strengthen the abdominal muscles while emphasizing good posture. The hanging leg raise is also a great ab exercise, since it works the whole abdominal chain without loading the back.
Your evening workout also only has an upper body push motion (pushups) which is neglecting your pulling muscles. I would recommend adding rows or chinups to balance out the joint. Joint strength imbalance is responsible for many injuries that people experience, and it’s very common to be stronger at pushing than pulling due to the higher status of push exercises in Western culture.
For the office routine, planks get my recommendation again. If you want to invest a bit of money, the ab wheel can be used for rollouts which are extremely effective. That shouldn’t have you touching the floor too much if you put some padding under your knees.
A circuit refers to doing many exercises at the same time—instead of doing a set of squats, resting for a minute, then doing another set of squats, you’d do a set of squats, a set of pushups, a set of rows, rest for a bit, and then go back through doing squats, etc...
It’s unnecessary to rest that long unless you are doing a brutally intense bodybuilding style workout, and you’re taking the drugs necessary to see results from it. Full body routines done frequently are best for strength.
If you max out the difficulty on the variations (should take you a while -- 3x8 handstand pushups is no joke), then adding weight is the next step. A barbell setup is the most effective way, but a plate-loaded dumbbell setup can be very space efficient.
I’d recommend squats, pushups, and rows. To save time, you’d want to do them in a circuit. The links provided give a progression guideline. I’d say start off with 3 sets of 4, and when that feels comfortable, add a rep to each set, progressing to the next exercise when you can do 3x8. Pushups, rows, and squats all work different muscle groups, so they won’t interfere with each other, so you don’t need a rest period.
Finish off with 4 minutes doing Tabata intervals on your rowing machine. This entire routine should take you less than the 15 minute requested, and since you’re not resting much between sets, it will be a good blend of cardiovascular training and strength training.
Reposting from last open thread as I didn’t get any inquiries:
I’ve seen a lot of discontent on LW about exercise. I know enough about physical training to provide very basic coaching and instruction to get people started, and I can optimize a plan for a variety of parameters (including effectiveness, duration of workout, frequency of workout, cost of equipment, space of equipment, gym availability, etc.). If anyone is interested in some free one-on-one help, post a request for your situation, budget, and needs and I’ll write up some basic recommendations.
I don’t have much in the ways of credentials, except that I’ve coached myself for all of my training and have made decent progress (from sedentary fat weakling to deadlifting 415lbs at 190lb BW and 13%BF). I’ve helped several friends, all of which have made pretty good progress, and I’ve been able to tailor workouts to specific situations.
If she wants to get bigger, then I’d get her started with Greyskull LP. It’s a fairly basic beginner weight lifting program that, when combined with a caloric surplus, will get good results for size and strength. There isn’t much work involved (just three sets on 2-3 exercises; doing more is counterproductive for beginners) so it won’t use as much energy as a cardio or circuit intensive routine.
A couple of protein shakes with milk/almond milk are enough to get a caloric surplus going. You only need 250-500 extra calories to make good gains, and you can easily get that with a shake or two.
I’ve seen a lot of discontent on LW about exercise. I know enough about physical training to provide very basic coaching and instruction to get people started, and I can optimize a plan for a variety of parameters (including effectiveness, duration of workout, frequency of workout, cost of equipment, space of equipment, gym availability, etc.). If anyone is interested in some free one-on-one help, post a request for your situation, budget, and needs and I’ll write up some basic recommendations.
I don’t have much in the ways of credentials, except that I’ve coached myself for all of my training and have made decent progress (from sedentary fat weakling to deadlifting 415lbs at 190lb BW and 13%BF). I’ve helped several friends, all of which have made pretty good progress, and I’ve been able to tailor workouts to specific situations.
I’ve had similar objections in the past. What helped me overcome that was to think about it like I was “going undercover” and “behind enemy lines” to steal their secrets and techniques to use against them. I was going to get strong, yes—but I was going to do awesome stuff with my strength, not lame stuff.
As Nornagest put, I totally had the geek mentality of “Physicality is for jocks/oppressors!!” Eventually I realized that they were winning on a lot of important levels, and I was avoiding successful methodologies because they were being used by The Enemy. This was needlessly sabotaging my own success.
Even now, the weight lifting communities tend to be extremely irrational, misogynistic, homophobic, and otherwise problematic, and for that reason I’m not totally OK with identifying as a weightlifter, since that’s how most people associate it. However, there are groups of non-problematic weightlifters, and I find that identifying with that crowd is pretty cool.
Adjustable dumbbells are a possible solution. Especially plate loaded handles. I purchased this dumbbell set and expanded it with additional 1.25lb, 10lb, and 25lb plates. I can now load up to 125lbs on a dumbbell, with the limiting factor being the length of the handle. I’m looking to acquire some 20″ handles which should last me for years.
The popular novice programs have optimized the details for progress and effectiveness. The general principles of compound movements, consistency, progressive overload, and gradual changes can be applied to any amount of equipment. Assuming just the dumbbells listed above, you can do:
Day 1:
Goblet Squats (progress to single-leg if the weight gets too light)
Overhead Press
Romanian Deadlifts (progress to single-leg if the weight gets too light)
Day 2:
Goblet Squats
Floor press
Rows
Where progressing up in weight isn’t an option, progressing up in reps is.
They are incredibly damaging to the environment and health of consumers.
Huh. I’d describe myself as optimistic, empathetic, and handling stress well, but I am terrible at understanding speech in noisy environment.s
What’s your lifting program?
Storage isn’t the real problem. You need, for example, a floor which will survive 300+ lbs of steel dropped onto it from more than six feet.
Unless you’re doing olympic weightlifting (at which point you’d be using rubber bumper plates), you’ll need to drop weights from hip height at most. Any weight you can overhead press, you can safely lower slowly to the ground. A 300lb deadlift will have two 150lb contacts with the floor—if your floor isn’t built to withstand 150lbs of force (an average person jumping), then it’s not fit to live on.
Lifting weights without a spotter or a rack is risky, especially for beginners.
For the bench press or squat, yes. For the deadlift, overhead press, and row, no. In the deadlift and row, the weight is never over you, and in the event of failure, dropping it is simple and easy. For the overhead press, a failed weight is still light compared to a person’s ability to control it to the ground. Furthermore, you should almost never be training to the point of failure if your goal is strength.
Weightlifters keep on saying that, but I see no sense in this. Why in the world, say, an overhead press is a “fundamental movement”?
In an overhead press, you 1) use your shoulders and triceps to move the weight up, 2) use your abs and back to stabilize your torso, 3) use your legs to balance yourself and stay in line, 4) brace your entire body to transmit force from the floor to your hands. Increasing the weight used increases the demand placed upon the entire body to develop strength.
How can that not be a fundamental movement? And how could improving these four points not have carry over to other tasks and movements?
If asked about highly general fundamental movements, I’d probably say run, climb, swim.
These are actually fairly specific movement patterns, even though they’re rather common. If you only trained running, you would not improve your squat much—but if you trained squatting, you’d improve your running, jumping, kicking, and any other motion that involves leg or hip extension. If you train climbing, you won’t help your swimming much—but if you train rows or chinups, you’ll improve both.
Someone runs across a field—using leg and hip extension trained in the deadlift and maintaining good posture also developed by the deadlift. They swim across a river—using pulling muscles developed by the row and pushing muscles developed by the overhead press. They climb up a cliff—using pulling muscles developed by the row, and push themselves over the ledge using muscles developed by the overhead press.
Sports scientists have very good ideas about what has broad carry over (ie general exercises/movement patterns) and what has limited carry over (ie sport specific movements). The idea is termed specificity. Strength training is very general, which means that it has very broad carry over to other activities. Elite weightlifters have very impressive vertical jump and sprint speeds, despite never training for these events.
Fair point! I think 1080 is fine for me and the extra screen space would be more useful than finer resolution, but I can definitely see how resolution could be more important for other applications.