How Much You Bench?

[Necromunchkin]

Doom- one thing people do incorrectly with squating, at least with barbell squats, is to keep the bar to high up on the shoulders and neck area. it should really rest right at the base of the traps, rather than up on high on them, reducing the chance of bending forward. Initially it might feel a bit unnatural, but once you get used to it, it dramatically improves form and makes for a much more linear lift. If you mean hack squats with pads at an angle, I'm thinking it has to do with the placement of your your feet. I don't do the angled hack squats because the platform never seems to extend the right length for my height. I find straignt barbell squats are really the only thing I can go with.

On a different note, I have a question about splitting lifts according to muscle group. Generally my splits follow along with compound movements, but this gets a little funky when you consider the shared groupings. Namely, how you divide arms and shoulders and the various back muscle groups (Doomsniffer, Zog, I'm looking at you folks). Do you focus on shoulders individually, or place them with the presses i.e. bench and tris? On one hand you could group things like shrugs, barbell presses and dips into shoulder based movements, but that is a push/pull grouping. Doesn't seem a lot different from doing a push bull with chest/lat groupings. I don't really like push/pull muslce group splitting. I base my split on compound movements, so with squats it's legs, abs, and lower back. With deadlifts it's back, arms, and upper pulling (shrugs/upright rows) and with bench, I include the presses, and tris. Thoughts?

 

[Doom]

Thanks for the tips NM!

How many protein shakes do you guys have a day? I've only been having one a day, as soon as possible after my workout, but my hairdresser (of all people) told me that I should have a shake BEFORE my work out too.

 

[Furious B]

Good question. I've been thinking I'm going to need a protein shake supplement to help with this and possibly something like a meal replacement shake to add calories. I have a hard time eating a lot during the day because I'm constantly gone and I don't have money to a) eat out and b) find a place that has food that would help me in this venture.

Updates:

Current foods:

- Oatmeal (everyday)
- Milk
- Bagels n' cream cheese
- Eggs
- Steak
- Potatoes
- Homemade burritos (ground beef, spinach, rice, black beans salsa, cheese)
- Orange juice
- PBJ's
- Yogurt
- Carrots

Anything else I should be adding to this possibly?

Just joined a gym recently and it's pretty cool. They have everything I need. My routine is:

Monday - Chest/Back
Tuesday - Off/Running
Wednesday - Legs/Lower Body
Thursday - Off
Friday - Triceps/Biceps/Delt/Forearm
Sat. - Off/Running
Sun. - Off/Running

Thoughts on this? Doomcifer? Reign? Bueller?

 

[Doom]

I'm no expert at all but I'm just going to speak from my personal experience, and if someone wants to tell me I'm talking shit that would actually be useful.

Personally, I don't see that training your chest and your back on the same day is that useful. Some guy at my gym told me to do this but I ignored him. Obviously your chest and your back are major muscles, so, from my experience, say you spend 25 mins doing your chest, by the time it comes to doing your back you're already pretty fucked over and you can't really do your back justice. Obviously you can alternate which you do first each time you go, but still. I'm currently doing a whole body workout, but when I was following a split routine I would pair my chest with smaller muscles (like biceps, triceps) and always do my chest first so it doesn't really matter as much if you're already exhausted by the latter part of your workout. So basically I would do chest one day, back the next day, and legs the third day, and hit those with some good compound exercises, then in the latter part of my workout concentrate on smaller muscle groups perhaps with some isolation exercises.

Again, this might be total bullshit, so it would be interesting to hear what someone else thinks.

 

[Reign in Acai]

Ye lads ever come across the 60-70 something LaLaniacs who are still in reasonably good shape, (aesthetically due to copious quantities of preacher curls), who being the gym gurus that they are, offer unsolicited advice to some poor sap struggling with a pair of 25's? I was at Bally's earlier today, and I had the misfortune to witness a geeze who bore the likeness to Larry Funkhouser approach some young Asian sap who was minding his own biz and just bust his chops in the sake of his own esteem. This fucktard badgered the shit out of this gook while he was attempting to perform a set of bench presses. The goat sarcastically spiels, "so uhhh what you working on? Your back, your shoulders? You're using too much weight kid! How old are you? I'm TWICE your age, get on the floor and give me a set of 20 pushups, let's see what you got!" The chink just took it all in good fun and laughed it off, but what he should have done was wrap a barbell around his face until it resembled an EZ Curl. Fucking humanity, my chi was disturbed!

 

[rms]

 

[Guthrum]

 

[General Zod]

We don't many folks from the senior circuit in my gym.

FWIW... I've been doing P90X with the wife for the better part of two months. It's much more intense than I would have ever imagined. Although I like the workout, I miss the gym.

 

[Ars Magna]

FWIW... I've been doing P90X with the wife for the better part of two months. It's much more intense than I would have ever imagined.

Getting commercial-worthy results?

 

[Reign in Acai]

We don't many folks from the senior circuit in my gym.

FWIW... I've been doing P90X with the wife for the better part of two months. It's much more intense than I would have ever imagined. Although I like the workout, I miss the gym.

I tried the Yoga P90X session, it's a kick in the nards. First time I ever tried yoga, twas fun. Wouldn't want to dabble with the program beyond that, the gym experience is much more enjoyable.

 

[rms]

the Ab ripper is fantastic, I have the shoulders and arms one but havent used it yet

 

[General Zod]

Getting commercial-worthy results?

I'm already in pretty good shape, so the only improvement has been cardio and getting a bit more lean.

I tried the Yoga P90X session, it's a kick in the nards. First time I ever tried yoga, twas fun. Wouldn't want to dabble with the program beyond that, the gym experience is much more enjoyable.

Yeah... the P90X yoga sucks. Short of involuntary prison sex, it's the worst way to spend 80 minutes.

the Ab ripper is fantastic, I have the shoulders and arms one but havent used it yet

Yep. In essence, if you can get through all 340 movements, you have a six pack. The Chest/Shoulders/Triceps is friggin sick.

 

[rms]

Yeah I was actually getting abdominally ripped before I went on vacation and gotten fat and lazy..in due time it will be back!

 

[neal]

yeh i got a six pack


of Stone IPA at the store this evening. so much better than muscles its ridiculous.

beer gut

 

[Hell Mike]

I got gym access now and started project heavy muscle workout tyme about an hour ago. Hell damn am I gonna get strong. Probably won't be able to walk tomorrow, just want to die now.

 

[lurch70]

i don't know how but i lost about 10-12 pounds.

 

[dorian gray]

Diarrhea will do that.

 

[lurch70]

and stress

 

[Krilons Resa]

Let's talk it out Aurel.

 

[lurch70]

you'll find out soon enough when you have a kid