What type of workout do you use to gain muscle and lose weight?

RobertKaucher

The best types of routine for weight loss is Crossfit. The reason being is that it combines the most effective types of exercise together in such a way that is functional and not boring.
Facts:
1. You need resistance exercise to build muscle. This keeps your metabolism high so that you burn more calories at rest during the day.
2. You need cardio to increase your caloric deficit so that diet does not become so tedious you just quit.
3. Performing the same kinds of exercise day in and day out is both boring and dangerous. Your body also adapts and eventually doing the same routine will be less effective than it once was.

Ultimately weightloss can occur on any sort of routine when combined with proper diet, but functional exercises that combine complex (meaning multiple muscle groups) resistance based exercises in such a way that your heart rate is elevated for 2 two 3 minutes followed by a short rest and then the cycle repeats for 30 to 40 minutes (High Intensity Interval Training) are scientifically proven to provide the best results as they leverage multiple weight loss strategies at once.

Credentials: I lost over 125 lbs in 2 years. Since May I have gained back 15 lbs (consider this newbee gains) and my current lift weights are bench press 1x265 lbs, squat 1x 400 lbs (full squat below parallel, not sissy @$$ 1/2 squats) deadlift 1x400 lbs.

NOC-Ninja

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA. I try to train 4 x a week. Mon-tues-weds then saturday. Also, I lift weights whenever I get a chance but I'm not as buff as before. Its tough right now since I am preparing for my IE.

Excellent1

RobertKaucher wrote: »

The best types of routine for weight loss is Crossfit. The reason being is that it combines the most effective types of exercise together in such a way that is functional and not boring.
Facts:
...
3. Performing the same kinds of exercise day in and day out is both boring and dangerous. Your body also adapts and eventually doing the same routine will be less effective than it once was.

The second sentence of "fact" 3 is accurate. With regards to "dangerous": provided an exercise is done with good form and you're not overtraining, there is nothing harmful about a set routine.

The rest of what you said I mostly agree with. Anyone reading your advice that isn't in the best of health needs to realize that HIIT (done as it's supposed to be done) IS dangerous, however, and shouldn't be done by anyone that isn't cleared by their doctor and already have some basic level of fitness. You are correct that it's the best bang for the buck, results-wise, but it's not the sort of thing you want to start out with.

Nice numbers with your lifts, by the way. I have been wanting to start lifting heavy myself, but I don't have the equipment. No desire to go to a gym, so I may have to invest in some kind of free weights for the garage. Not a fan of bowflex or other cable machines, personally, so my options are somewhat limited.

Turgon

Everyone wrote: »

Swimming is awesome. You won't build muscle mass doing it, but you will get a lot of muscle tone, and weight loss. I wish I had a place to lap swim at. I was in the best shape of my life when I used to swim competitively. Now that I can't run, I wish I could get back into it again.

Right on! I did lengths of the pool three times a week a few years ago. Definately felt better for it in time. I recall an outdoor event with about 20 guys and we had to swim to a rock in the sea as the first obstacle of the day. I was probably the only person really trying but I made it to the rock first. No way would I have done so if I wasn't a regular swimmer. Swimming is good for you.

steve13ad

I've been reading Tim Ferris' 4 Hour Body .

There's a bunch of extra crap in the book but his Occam Protocol is really working for me.

Turgon

RobertKaucher wrote: »

The best types of routine for weight loss is Crossfit.

hehehe..that's totally a matter of opinion Robert and I will let everyone else fight it out because I dont have the time

UnixGuy

I hit the gym right after work, 5 days a week (weekends sometimes I swim).

I do 40 Minutes heavy weight lifting, then 20 minutes on elliptical machine. Works for me

Bl8ckr0uter

I am training for this: Tough Mudder - Probably the Toughest Event on the Planet - Doing it in March

I plan to keep it simple:

Now: (Daily)
Pushups
Situps
Squats

Future: (When I move)
Pushups
-Diamonds
-Traditional
-1 arm

Situps
- Traditional
- Side to Side
Squats
Pullups
Running (4x a week)
Curls

Pretty soon I won't have a gym close to me so I will need to achieve fitness using things I already have. I also plan to do some wrestling when the season starts again but only if time allows. I think that this will be enough to get me where I want to be.

CodeBlox

Running and swimming. I am 6' 2'' and weigh 150lbs. Not much, I know. I try to run at least 3 times a week on the local track outdoors. We have an indoor bike but I never use it.

Psoasman

I have dropped 25 pounds since June. Here is what I've been doing:

P90X: 4-5 days per week. Went from being able to do a pathetic set of 6 pushups to 5-6 sets of 30+. Can do several sets of pullups now. And the best thing is I can play with my boys without getting out of breath in 5 minutes.

Walking 2-3 days per week. I have bad knees from doing Tae-Kwon-Do earlier on.

I incorporated the Smart for Life eating plan into my day, it helped me get used to small meals and also kick sugar out of my diet. I have found that I don't want bread, cereal, or candy anymore. I drink mostly water and the occasional diet soda.

RobertKaucher

Excellent1 wrote: »

The second sentence of "fact" 3 is accurate. With regards to "dangerous": provided an exercise is done with good form and you're not overtraining, there is nothing harmful about a set routine.

The rest of what you said I mostly agree with. Anyone reading your advice that isn't in the best of health needs to realize that HIIT (done as it's supposed to be done) IS dangerous, however, and shouldn't be done by anyone that isn't cleared by their doctor and already have some basic level of fitness. You are correct that it's the best bang for the buck, results-wise, but it's not the sort of thing you want to start out with.

Nice numbers with your lifts, by the way. I have been wanting to start lifting heavy myself, but I don't have the equipment. No desire to go to a gym, so I may have to invest in some kind of free weights for the garage. Not a fan of bowflex or other cable machines, personally, so my options are somewhat limited.

Over training and repetative injury is exactly what I was talking about.

What people don't understand about HIIT is that the word INTENSITY is relative. HIIT can be done by beginners (all programs should be started with a visit to the dr, though). The objective is just to raise your heart rate to just above the typical "weight loss zone" for 1 to 2 mintes and follow it with a "rest" period. When I first started All I did was walk really fast. A week later I was jogging then walking fast as my "rest" - 6 months after that stoped yielding results I was sprinting and experimenting with the timing of the intervals.

I agree with what you say about machines also.

RobertKaucher

Turgon wrote: »

hehehe..that's totally a matter of opinion Robert and I will let everyone else fight it out because I dont have the time

I'll let anyone set their results up against a crossfit routine. It will destroy their previous results. The best thing about crossfit is that it is more a philosophy than a program. You can do crossfit in an olympic lifting style, body building style, or even mix it up in other ways to support sports training. The importance is intensity and functional exercises.

Excellent1

RobertKaucher wrote: »

I'll let anyone set their results up against a crossfit routine. It will destroy their previous results. The best thing about crossfit is that it is more a philosophy than a program. You can do crossfit in an olympic lifting style, body building style, or even mix it up in other ways to support sports training. The importance is intensity and functional exercises.

I'd never heard of it--the same as I'd never heard of the paleo diet until you mentioned it. I looked into it and it ended up being exactly like the paleo diet: common sense and sound physiological principles that have been around for years that had an unfamiliar label on it.

That said, I've been doing "paleo" and a lot of "crossfit" diet and training activities for the last couple of years without knowing that particular label applied. I'm all about what works, and when sifting through the huge amount of bs, propaganda, marketing, and spin that is the weight loss / muscle gain marketplace, the ones that are effective almost always come back to the same core of common sense and proven principles.

In any case, I appreciate you mentioning it. I looked at a couple of websites and found a couple more body weight exercises to try. The principles of muscular overload and adaptation do not require free weights, but it can be a lot easier and more convenient to use them. Until I score some, I'm going to keep with the body weight stuff.

On a humorous note, I picked up a jump rope a couple of days ago. Amazing how much of a workout you can get with a 3 dollar jump rope. I'm not exactly at the "Rocky workout scenes" level, but I can see now why it's still used by a lot of people as a staple for cardio and coordination. If anyone reading this hasn't tried it, give it a go--it's a nice change of pace if you've been doing the same cardio for a while. I've been doing the bike for almost 2 years now, so I'm well and truly burned out on it. Hoping to pick up a rowing machine and maybe an elliptical at some point to keep enough options to make it interesting.

Also, @ Robert: With regards to HIIT, have you tried Tabata at all or have any thoughts on it? Just curious. I'm a firm believer in HIIT, and I practice it myself, but I usually use either a 30sec / 60 second interval for 20 cycles or 60/60 for 12.

powerfool

A few years ago, I was looking to get in shape so that I could swim again and look good for my 10-year high school reunion; I used to swim competitively and it was some of the most stress relieving exercise I had ever done. I weighed about 215lbs. when I got out of the Navy, which was heavier than I had been, but mostly muscle. So, being about 250lbs at the time, I saw the infomercials for P90X. I started that and cut my diet to about 600 Calories a day of mostly protein... hardly any fat or carbs. I dropped weight like crazy, but I wasn't getting any stronger. I lost about 30lbs in one month.

I gave that a break for a few months and then picked up P90X again, this time with a moderate diet, for me, of about 3000 Calories, heavy in protein, but plenty of everything else. I also supplemented with protein drinks, nitrous pre-workout drinks with creatine, and I used a fenugreek supplement that is supposed to support natural testosterone production and extend its half-life. I did P90X for about a month like this and then got bored as it takes nearly 1.5 hours on resistance days. So, I joined a gym by work and went in daily at lunch time. I started do a HIT regimen 2-3 times a week and walking/jogging other days. HIT, or High Intensity Training, is where you try to minimize your workout time and maximize your results. Essentially, each workout if full-body; you ONLY do compound exercises and you do only one set of each exercise to failure for each muscle group. This included bench press, squats, shoulder press, and weighted pullups, along with some ab work. Each session you attempt to increase the weight by 10-15 lbs. I did this for two months.

Let me tell you, that seriously packed on the muscle. I was up to 240lbs with 12% body fat. It all came to a stop when I broke my wrist doing a shoulder press. It was simply poor form and I am sure a low intake of calcium was a contributing factor. I was lifting an 80 lb dumbell with my left hand just raising it off of my knee to get it into position. I was listening to a hard Linkin Park song and I heard the snap over the music... luckily I didn't drop the weight. Essentially my tendon popped into place very quickly adjusting for my poor form and ripped one of the little bones in my wrist in half. There wasn't much that could be done except to immobilize my wrist.

It's been a little over two years since then and my wrist feels great now, but I have not been able to get into a routine since. I need to lose 20lbs....

I have been planning to start an easy P90X (modified) for the past two weeks, but it just hasn't happened.

Note: HIT != HIIT... just in case there was any confusion that I was stating something incorrectly. And someone else mentioned Tim Ferriss... this came from him.

Turgon

RobertKaucher wrote: »

I'll let anyone set their results up against a crossfit routine. It will destroy their previous results. The best thing about crossfit is that it is more a philosophy than a program. You can do crossfit in an olympic lifting style, body building style, or even mix it up in other ways to support sports training. The importance is intensity and functional exercises.

I suggest someone does the following for a couple of months and then compares notes with you..

Day 1

Run 3 miles to a tree.
Pick up the spade that is leaning against that tree.
Dig a hole big enough to standup in.
Leave spade beside the tree.
Run 3 miles home.

Day 3

Run 3 miles to the tree
Pick up the spade and fill in the hole
Leave spade by the tree.
Run 3 miles home

Day 5
Run 3 miles to the tree
Pick up the spade and dig the hole again
Leave spade by the tree
Run 3 miles home

Repeat the process for two months. Will totally change your physique and life.

shednik

RobertKaucher wrote: »

I'll let anyone set their results up against a crossfit routine. It will destroy their previous results. The best thing about crossfit is that it is more a philosophy than a program. You can do crossfit in an olympic lifting style, body building style, or even mix it up in other ways to support sports training. The importance is intensity and functional exercises.

As long as you aren't following the main site, I would agree with this 100%

RobertKaucher

Excellent1 wrote: »

That said, I've been doing "paleo" and a lot of "crossfit" diet and training activities for the last couple of years without knowing that particular label applied. I'm all about what works, and when sifting through the huge amount of bs, propaganda, marketing, and spin that is the weight loss / muscle gain marketplace, the ones that are effective almost always come back to the same core of common sense and proven principles.

That is a very true statement.

Excellent1 wrote: »

On a humorous note, I picked up a jump rope a couple of days ago. Amazing how much of a workout you can get with a 3 dollar jump rope. I'm not exactly at the "Rocky workout scenes" level, but I can see now why it's still used by a lot of people as a staple for cardio and coordination. If anyone reading this hasn't tried it, give it a go--it's a nice change of pace if you've been doing the same cardio for a while. I've been doing the bike for almost 2 years now, so I'm well and truly burned out on it. Hoping to pick up a rowing machine and maybe an elliptical at some point to keep enough options to make it interesting.

Jump rope is something I have integrated into my programs in the past and it is pretty killer. It amazes me as an adult how much coordination and fitness that I had as a child. In the winter when I am walking or doing some HIIT on the track above the pool at my local YMCA I see those kids playing and having fun and I just think "It used to be so easy back then."

Excellent1 wrote: »

Also, @ Robert: With regards to HIIT, have you tried Tabata at all or have any thoughts on it? Just curious. I'm a firm believer in HIIT, and I practice it myself, but I usually use either a 30sec / 60 second interval for 20 cycles or 60/60 for 12.

You mean the vomit protocol? Very similar sort of stuff that we are talking about and when you do it with KBs it's a lot like crossfit. I may start doing some of that twice a week come Sept depending on the results I'm getting. I just got back from a SharePoint conference and spent 2 days eating mostly junk... I'm not too happy about that. But you do what you have to.

Patel128

I have been working out with adjustable dumbbells. When I get all the equipment I am going to start P90x.

brad-

I have lost about 80 lbs and gained a fair amount of strength over the past 18 months...i started doing only cardio 5 days a week for 1 hr on an elliptical - that went about 6 weeks. Then i alternated elliptical one day, stair climber the next. Then about 4 weeks later i alternated weights one day, cardio the next. After about 10 months of that, i got to a stable weight, then added running on the treadmill to drop another last 10 lbs.

However, ive turned my focus solely to weightlifting and really increased overall strength...loosely following the Mark Rippetoe Starting Strength program (google it). Its basically 5 exercises - Bench press, squat, press, deadlift, and power clean...5 sets of 5 (except for PC and DL).

Ive gotten totally away from machines, its all barbell. I used to go to a planet fitness, but they dont have half racks or power racks so it is impossible to do a squat or deadlift.

I've been doing that a while now and satisfied with where my strength has gone, now its time to shift back to cardio and get this last 30 lbs of gut off me.

I would advise anyone here interested in weightlifting to read "Starting Strength". I wish i had read it 15 years ago.

Turgon

brad- wrote: »

Its basically 5 exercises - Bench press, squat, press, deadlift, and power clean...5 sets of 5 (except for PC and DL).

Ive gotten totally away from machines, its all barbell. I used to go to a planet fitness, but they dont have half racks or power racks so it is impossible to do a squat or deadlift.

Good exercises. I like wide grip chins and dips as well.

RobertKaucher

brad- wrote: »

I have lost about 80 lbs and gained a fair amount of strength over the past 18 months...i started doing only cardio 5 days a week for 1 hr on an elliptical - that went about 6 weeks. Then i alternated elliptical one day, stair climber the next. Then about 4 weeks later i alternated weights one day, cardio the next. After about 10 months of that, i got to a stable weight, then added running on the treadmill to drop another last 10 lbs.

However, ive turned my focus solely to weightlifting and really increased overall strength...loosely following the Mark Rippetoe Starting Strength program (google it). Its basically 5 exercises - Bench press, squat, press, deadlift, and power clean...5 sets of 5 (except for PC and DL).

Ive gotten totally away from machines, its all barbell. I used to go to a planet fitness, but they dont have half racks or power racks so it is impossible to do a squat or deadlift.

I've been doing that a while now and satisfied with where my strength has gone, now its time to shift back to cardio and get this last 30 lbs of gut off me.

I would advise anyone here interested in weightlifting to read "Starting Strength". I wish i had read it 15 years ago.

Coach Ripp is f'ing amazing! His YouTube videos on the back squat added 45 lbs to my squat nearly overnight just by adjusting my form. I am serious. He is why I went from a hard 1x300 lbs to easy 6x325 and 1x400 over a period of just a few weeks. It's amazing what you can do when you actually know what you are doing.

brad-

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Coach Ripp is f'ing amazing! His YouTube videos on the back squat added 45 lbs to my squat nearly overnight just by adjusting my form. I am serious. He is why I went from a hard 1x300 lbs to easy 6x325 and 1x400 over a period of just a few weeks. It's amazing what you can do when you actually know what you are doing.

I bought his book and DVD, they're excellent...they're great tools for anyone remotely interested in lifting weights of any kind.

On that note, i tried to do teh low bar back squat like he prescribes, but because i have poor flexability in my shoulders and ankles, doing the low bar makes me want to bend my waist over too much. The high bar squat works much better for me. I got some lifting shoes to fix my flexability problem...he's right that the shoes are really the only peice of equipment you need.

I dont follow his program per se because im trying to lose weight...but the material he teaches is invaluable no matter what you're trying to do...particularly how proper form will increase the amount of weight you can do and avoid injury.

kerx

Any suggestions?

chrisone

These are cardio and you can do in your room, no gym required and burn lots of calories.

1. jump rope
2. shadow boxing, 2 minute rounds, try to do 3 rounds with 1 minute rests, then progress when you gain stamina.

This is also a very excellent and easy work out that burns loads of calories. You just have to buy a kettle bell, i was using 15lbs i think it was a lot of weight, i am 5'9 180lbs to give you an idea of how to gauge what kettle bell weight to buy. You have to start from 15 reps and count down, then the next set you start at 14 reps counting down, all the way down to 1 rep. I tried it and i was sweating like a dog and i am in good shape and go to the gym every week.

Lose The Spare Tire With Just Two Exercises | ThePostGame

qcomer

Studying is no reason to be unhealthy in the first place.

Don't eat crappy food and don't be lazy. Don't mean to sound rude but it's fairly simple whether you're studying or not studying.

SteveO86

I'd still save time for the gym, no matter how hard your studying.. At least an hour to make it worth while. Staying healthy physically will help you mentally. (at least it does for me)

If I don't make it to the gym I try and do at least 100 push up and 150-200 sit ups at home. Just something to stay in motion..

johnnyarks

kerx wrote: »

Any suggestions?

I do a mix of insanity / p90x I use to be 296lb, I'm 217 now...so yea they work... if your have room to workout in your living room / attic / basement... it beats traveling to the gym...and paying for it

jamesleecoleman

I suggest

pushups
setups
flutterkicks

I suggest putting a number on each category and
keep raising the number each week.

demonfurbie

i do ea sports active on the wii and a lower carb diet with a calorie limit of 1800 a day

i wanna do the insanity work out but i need to get in slightly better shape first

Psoasman

P90X works very well. Less than 1 hour per day. I have been able to get good results from 4 days per week.
I just try to do something each day, except on Sundays.