Espom Salt baths work I was so sore now I’m ready for tomorrow.
I have an ab roller that I use but not consistently enough. Other than just situps what is a good ab routine and how often should I do it?
Ab roller. I worked up from 3x20 kneeling to 3x20 standing 3x per week. I just do 1x20 7 days a week now, as I feel they are developed enough for right now.
Sorry for ignorance, but how in the world do you use an ab roller while standing?
Stand up. Bend over, place the roller on the ground. Roll out, roll back.
Nice, I don’t have any way to make something like that but I love it.
Somehow I never thought about standing up and just moving the ab roller. I always get on my knees and use it.
You don’t need to make anything like that. Do 3x20 kneeling until they are easy. Then do 1 rep standing followed by 19 reps kneeling. Do that for 3 sets. Next time, do 2 reps standing, 18 reps rolling, or however quick you can progress. I did it 3x a week, so it took 6 weeks to get up to 3x20 standing. I probably could have progressed quicker, but I got there eventually.
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Thanks for the advise going to try it.
I used to do bicycle kicks I’ve been wanting to get back into them.
Nothing wrong with just doing crunches…
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I’m going to offer the advice for which you are not asking…
You’ve started a lot of “how do I” threads. We all fall into this trap at one point or another; it’s not a character flaw. I strongly recommend you get off the internet and just start doing.
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Here’s a basic way to do standing. Just keep moving farther away from the wall/fence. After a while, you’ll notice you don’t need the wall at all.
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Well if that’s the case this site shouldn’t exist right? I mean we’re all pretty much here looking for advice. I have learned so much from youtube videos and places like this I would probably only be doing cardio if not for learning about the importance of building up my skeletal system. It’s what I did for most of my years in the gym.
Try some of this guy’s stuff as a finisher every-other workout…
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Is there a performance goal here or do you just want to build them up a bit?
So what days do your arms, hamstrings, and shoulders have off? Looks like one day a week to me.
Arms are used in all pressing and pulling movements. That make every day you’re in the gym an arm involved workout.
Hamstrings are being used on all squats and leg presses, unless you’re doing quarter squats and lock-out leg presses. Seems difficult to do any meaningful deadlifts without involving hamstrings.
Shoulders are involved in some arm specialization exercises.
What does “no major compound exercises” mean on your “light” day? What are some examples of “minor compound exercises” that you might do?
I think you’re overtraining, but I’d have to see you lifting/training to express a more accurate opinion.
Yeah I’m not going to do 6 days a week, going to try 5 and see how it goes. If I feel overwhelmed I’ll go to 4. I just did 3 days in a row but I’m taking tomorrow off.
I meant no compound exercises on light day. Such as bicep curls and ab work.
From what I heard it’s not solely about frequency of how many times you step in the gym per week but it’s overall volume for the week. Doing squats/deadlifts/bench press takes a little over an hour including warmup sets. But on the light days it doesn’t take very long less than 30 min. Maybe with cardio it’s too much.
Think I should just go to 3 compound days and cut out the other stuff? I still want to lose body fat thus cardio but would be open to suggestions on modifying the amount. I’m doing 3-4 times a week 30 min each time.
What are you doing for cardio? Adding a bunch definitely seems to grind me down, but some forms are a lot easier to recover from than others.
I just use elipticals I don’t like running particularly due to the impact on joints.
I was alternating 30 min steady state and 20 minute HIIT but someone suggested I cut out the HIIT so I am.
I like the elliptical, too, for similar reasons. The spin bike is next on my list. For easiest to recover from, for whatever reason, it seems to be incline treadmill for me.
I concur with dropping HIIT as a first step if you’re struggling to recover. I prefer to think of cardio in terms of total weekly minutes: so you can either drop a day or reduce ~10 minutes each day for the same reduction. If I remember right, you have a pretty decent cardio background, so a couple hours a week is probably fine for you?
All of that said, if your primary goal is to lose fat (understanding that diet is, by a long shot, the primary driver), I don’t think I’d try to ramp up that much activity (6 days weights + 4 days cardio) that quickly; that takes a lot of calories to get anything out of. If the cardio is helping with your primary goal, or just keeping you healthy, it would probably be valuable to see how little weight training you can do and keep progressing. Once you’re nailing that to the point you’re never sore or tired, then you add a day (and typically not even a real stressful day - maybe just arms).
I sometimes go to 6 days or even 7 a week, but they are all very low intensity. My default is a push, pull, legs, arm day, and arm day is both crazy easy and extremely optional. Then I’ll do ~15 minutes of cardio per session with it and some easy walks during the week. I’m not saying this as a prescription - in fact, I used to be able to handle more and maybe you can now - but just as an example of a relatively normal workload.
Not sure why I got on a roll there, but it’s already typed so there you go
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