Strength / Weight Training

Where are you thinking of putting it?

Between a door, maybe on the wall? Depends what I can convince my wife to accept.

I'm 198cm and about 100kg, which might be useful information.

I’ve got a piece of scaffolding steel in between the beams of the garage

Think it probably needs to be in my house to ensure I actually use it

I quite like this type:

Innovation Fitness Powerbar 2 Professional pull up bar NO Assembly and 10 year guarantee https://amzn.eu/d/9kZKSFe

Pretty safe on a doorway and the pull-up bar itself is higher than a typical doorway pull up bar.

Also given your height and weight I wouldn’t recommend a friction fit doorway bar. I’m guessing you practically duck under doorways as it is, wouldn’t want to be adding a metal bar at forehead/nose level.

If you have the ceiling height, a wall mounted bar is excellent, but you need to make sure you have enough head clearance above where you mount the bar. So mounting one above a doorway when your room height is 240cm isn’t going to cut it.

I hear you

ceilings at 3m+ so that could work. A doorway one might be less obstrusive though - it's not going to foul any furniture one. The one you linked looked good?

I have this one and I like it, also works for dips and as a desk with adjustable height. But I don't know where you'd buy one from.


https://www.rakidea.fi/products/puolapuut-dippi-leuanvetotelineella

Love that. So cool that it’s not just a piece of gym equipment.

Yeah its great, had it for years.
I have an extra wide one, because my doors are strangely wide, so worth checking before purchase, there is a diagram.

This is super cool!
I've got a set of NOHrD wall bars, no desk option, but I think I'm going to make a desk to hook onto it!

Where are you? You can have this if you can collect from SE6

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lovely offer but i've sorted something out (and i'm in glasgow, anyway!)

I'd like to start doing some training with weight in 2023. Any tips on where to get started? Would be good to do stuff from home if possible, although practically this means bodyweight exercises as I have no space for kit in the flat. Should I join a gym? Should I get a personal trainer?

I always recommend StrongLifts. Others will differ.

Bodyweight exercises are a great place to start: pressups, squats, planks, split squats etc. If you can find space for a kettlebell that's one way of adding resistance and introducing more exercises.

I think it depends what you're after and what your level / experience is. If you're a novice / looking for motivation, get a PT for a bit ot build confidence and progression whetehr or not you're going bodyweight (outdoors) or gym. If you're a previous gym goer and are looking to get back into it (and are fairly confident of your form), I'd strongly recommend GZCL program - it's a bit like Stronglifts, so concentrates on big compound lifts, but with slightly diff rep ranges and you can add stuff on. There's a free app that logs and calculates everything (Boostcamp) so it's super easy to follow. I've never followed a strict program before and it deffo helped me.

On a follow up note, anyone got any recommendations for bodyweight (or gym) programs that focus on athletic movement/ flexibility etc? I used to do a bit of outdoors calisthenics and remember being more flexible etc (although i was also younger!) so keen to get back into that, but I'm time poor and have no imagination, so whenever i make it to the bars I panic and end up just doing the same pulls / squats / pressups / crawls etc routine.

I did one of these programmes through lock down, maybe what you are looking for.

https://dialedhealth.com/programs

I'd recommend joining a gym and doing stronglifts 5x5, I struggle to do anything unless its prescribed and easy to interact with. You just use the app to track your workouts and it tells you what weight to use.

It starts off slow, you'll feel stupid for just squatting the bar but a month in you will say to your self "this is fucking hard" when you are trying to do your over head lift with 15kgs on the bar.

I did it for ~12 weeks straight, it fixed my lower back pain which I had spent 100s on physios for. I also lost 10kg and looked really good. 5/5 recommend. I stopped doing it because my gym across the road was rammed 24/7.

it fixed my [...] pain

Not to detract or invalidate your experience in any way, though it may be worth continuing to address any underlying problems (be they postural, musculoskeletal, neuromuscular etc...).

The increased muscle mass and strength may be masking the problem, and it won't always be there (or it may do - it's a good habit to have, after all).

Yeah in my case it was due to poor flexibility hips and glutes and the squats helped with that. I could not ride my bike for more than a few miles at a time, I'm much more flexible now but slowly losing it due to being a lazy sod.

@TGR @tomatoe @Detritus @Haggis

Sorry for the slow reply. Thanks for all your input - lots to think about.
I'm planning on joining a gym and following a lifting plan for 2023.

Right, finally back to the gym this year after a big renovation/covid/various lurgies. The renovation did involve carrying a lot of plaster bags etc... but since we moved in, it's been not much lifting.

We used to do deadlifts/leg press/chins/dips before, but as we are both "not 20 anymore" I am thinking we should do 4 sets of 12 for a bit, then 3 sets of 10 and then go back into negative chins/band dips and then back into the heavier lifts with fewer reps.

I have an idea what we can take from when we lifted over...em...2 years ago (sigh) and it is already adjusted with fewer sets/some higher reps as over 40 recovery slows. (again, sigh, but whatchagonnado) :)

Just so we don't injure ourselves, because tendons etc. will be weakened from not being used as much.

What do you think?

Never gonna regret starting slow and building gradually.

Definitely could regret going in too hard too quick.