Strength / Weight Training

Selected limited edition impact whey at My Protein for cheap.
2.5kg for £26.18 with code.

Ham roly poly, banoffee, apple crumble & custard.

Might get sick of the flavour after a while, but going through quite a bit at the moment, so just ordered 5kg.

Ham roly poly

Is this flavour why it is cheap?

Probably not vegan.

(supposed to be Strawberry Jam Roly Poly)

Weighing things essential to start. It's a drag but it works.

Use my fitness pal to log what you eat and it'll work out macros.

After a while, if you eat similar things, you'll be able to rely less on MFP/weighing and more on intuition.

I guess it is more the mental load of recording the food weight and calorie conversion, than the actual inconvenience of weighing.

I mean, you can’t easily follow a cooking recipe without weighing things.

People meticulously record the weights, sets and rest times for their lifting.

Businesses all track their income and expenditures.

The chances are that if you are fit, strong and lean, you’re keeping a close eye on your diet and your training (or pay someone to do this for you)

Has anyone got any experience of TRX type suspension strength training?

I really need to work on upper body and core but don't have much space at home for equipment and no inclination to join a gym. I can set up some of the TRX straps in the corner of the garage.

Obviously not looking to get absolutely ripped etc, just improvements to functional strength in core, back and shoulders.
Is it worth it or are there better things to do with my time?

I like suspension trainers, can do some excellent exercises with them.

Are you fixing a wall / ceiling bracket?
I find that you can do more with them if you can fix them high or on the ceiling.

If you have space on the wall, I’d recommend a wall mounted pull up bar along with a suspension trainer and some resistance bands.

They’ll be fixed to the rafter of the garage roof. There’s not much height to it and nowhere to fix to a wall. Nowhere to fit a pull up bar either.

It’s not ideal but I’m a bit limited on space here.

Depending on height you should be able to do rows, pull ups, Is Ys and Ts, suspension trainer planks / mountain climbers / crunches, so you should get good mileage for core, back and shoulders out of them.

Excellent, thanks for that.
I'll Google the exercises and see if I can put something together.

I’m a bit limited on space here.

Someone on here posted a photo of a weightlifting rack installed in a small bedroom. Looked awesome.
Maybe we can get them to post that photo again? Can't remember who it was.

Bit more klokov press this morning. I’ve moved on to the full length bar for a wider grip. Little bit of weight but going easy with this move. It’s definitely not a move I’m familiar with so I can only see it being a good thing for shoulders.

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If you haven't bought anything yet I would say olympic style rings are good for all the trx suspension style stuff but also more bodyweight stuff as well. Just staying in the top of a dip position is really good for your shoulders and core. If doing pull ups as well the rings will move so as not to put undue stress on your shoulders.

Are the rafters exposed?
You could bolt a metal pipe between two rafters in which case and then have a chinup bar, and somewhere to mount a suspension trainer and gymnastic rings.

Otherwise, put a 2 ceiling mounts, and hang something off them (gymnastic rings or just the handles from the suspension trainer if they detach) and use that for pull ups.

There aren’t rafters as such. It’s an old metal framed garage with corrugated concrete panel roof. The old 50’s/60’s type with the very low pitch roof. It probably stands no more than 2.5m high and the metal frame where I can attach anything is probably about 2m high.
I’ve got a set of the TRX straps, probably cheap copies, off a mate who used them for shoulder rehab a while ago. Just need to get them in the garage and play around with fixing points for them I think.

It seems to me that front squats and goblet squats are so similar that there is no point having both in your programme? I am happy to be proven wrong however.

The main difference other than mobility requirements is the loading range. Goblet squats are more suited to light weight/more reps and front squats the opposite.

It’d be hard to goblet squat a weight beyond the heaviest dumbbells in your gym. It can be hard to front squat lighter weights if you need a bit of mass on the bar to secure your front rack position.

So if you want to train that movement pattern both heavy and light in the same timespan (e.g. lower reps and higher reps; say to develop strength and muscle size) it could be beneficial to include both.

Front squats are harder than expected. Lot of effort in balancing. Feel like they work a different part of the leg than back squats.
Since wrecking my shoulder I am doing 5 sets of front squats then five sets of leg press twice a week. Better than nothing!

Which squats are the best for building bigger legs. Dumb question I know. But I’m tall and have the skinniest legs.

You need to be looking at a book called Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe for squat info.

I’d say Belt Squats on a proper belt squat machine. Minimal learning curve means you can get up to higher weights easier and no fear of failure means you can push harder.

With a barbell, high bar squats going as deep as you safely can. The higher bar position will balance quads/posterior chain and the longer range of motion will be more effective for building muscle than ramping up the weight and doing only half the movement.

Feel like they work a different part of the leg than back squats.

More knee and quad intensive. Which is why I desperately need them.

I know it doesn't answer your question, but if your goal with legs is predominantly size, I'd be using machines more than squats. Hack squat/leg press, leg extensions, hammy curls, calf raises. If you're set on squats I'd echo what Ptown said.

If I remember rightly you said you're trying to cut weight and get shredded at the moment. So just remember you're not going to put on size in a caloric deficit.

Did power cleans for the first time since working out at home without a squat rack during lockdowns on Monday - god they're so hard. I know they're pretty unrivalled as an exercise in generating power but the technical aspect of them is nutty. I suppose the same is true with quite a lot of other compound lifts, I've just done them more, funny position to be in though.

I get to use log, atlas stones and a yoke on Friday for the first time. Excited and nervous in equal measure.