Hey, have you been working out?

[Al B. Sure!]

And yes, I am fat now, unfortunately. It's just transition. You ever see some of those bodybuilders while they're putting on muscle... they get pretty damn pudgy but they lose it before their competitions.

Same with athletes who do weight cycles. It's very common in sports for an athlete to concentrate on strength, put on 20-30 lbs in a short amount of time, then cut back down before they have to meet a weight standard or training camp starts. They lose some strength when they go back down to their original weight but they're stronger than they started.

Unfortunately, I'm getting caught on the strength portion of the cycle. I'll get back down to below 10% body fat soon enough. Want to get some more strength gains first.

[Al B. Sure!]

lifting is:
machine leg press or squat, or single leg dumbell squat, or dumbell lunge
pull up or lat pull down
row or bicep curl (barbell or preacher/etc)
vertical press or assisted dip
dumbell bench press or cable fly
stomach twist or something
tricep pulldown

JM

Leg press
Lat pull down
Bicep curl

Do less pull downs and curls and more pull ups and chin ups, Jon.

As for the leg press... I have to agree with the esteemed Mark Rippetoe when he was asked why he referred to the Press as the Press and not the Shoulder Press:

We just call it the press, because how could you press without the shoulders? You can leg press... but that's gay.

I'm surprised you're reduced to doing assisted dips? You can't do an unassisted dip?

[MOBIUS]

1) I've gained 30 lbs in 2 months and 45 lbs since March when I came out of OCS at a mere 175lbs. Fat obviously is gained when you put on that much weight that quickly. I also haven't been running due to the fact that I had fractures in my legs.

2) I've seen your pictures. I hardly doubt you are even cosmetically in better shape than me. Pictures or it didn't happen, MOBIUS.

Dude, I'm not in the habit of taking pics of myself in the semi nude, let alone posting them online...

[Jon Miller]

I can't do very many unassisted dips.

Chin ups or whatever I also generally do assisted. Unassisted I could only do 1 or 2.

I weigh about 83 kg.

My upper body strength hasn't improved much in a long time.

My bicep curl is about 31 kg. My tricep pulldown is about 30 kg. My vertcal (military?) press is about 16kg (each). My leg press/machine squat is ~160 kg. These aren't maxes, but what I can do sets of (maybe set of 6).

JM

[Jon Miller]

If I don't lift for a couple months they drop a bunch. If I lift for a month or two they go back to about those numbers.

I started exercising about 4 years ago, going on 5. I reached similar numbers to those 3ish years ago.

JM

[Al B. Sure!]

I can't do very many unassisted dips.

Chin ups or whatever I also generally do assisted. Unassisted I could only do 1 or 2.

I weigh about 83 kg.

My upper body strength hasn't improved much in a long time.

My bicep curl is about 31 kg. My tricep pulldown is about 30 kg. My vertcal (military?) press is about 16kg (each). My leg press/machine squat is ~160 kg. These aren't maxes, but what I can do sets of (maybe set of 6).

JM

If you ask me, I would do unassisted pullups and dips even if you can only do 1 or 2. You'll quickly improve. Trust me. Do some sets of 1 or 2 or whatever you can manage every workout and in a week, you'll be finding you can do sets of 3. Unless something is wrong with you, I am positive this will happen.

In my opinion, there's no reason why an 83kg/183lb man can't do at least 7 pullups or chinups. You're light enough where it shouldn't be difficult. I could do 25 pullups at 190lbs though I've dropped to 15 or so but improving now that I'm almost 220lbs.

Try it. You'll be amazed by rapidly you improve. And once you can do a good number of chin ups (supinated grip), you'll wonder what's the point of bicep curls. Chin ups are a great alternative to curls because they also involve more muscles.

Here's some motivation:

A 44 year old WOMAN doing 39 pullups... she really could go down a bit more a have full lockout, but it's still extremely impressive:




For Azazel, this one is killer: Called GI Joe if it's 50; GI Jane if it's 100... burpee pullups

[Jon Miller]

I have done unassisted pullups and I got up to 8/5/3 at one piont. But that was after months, and for no reason I could see I dropped down tot 5/3/1. Currently I don't think I have even that. But I haven't been trying to do pullups recently.

Note that dropping in what I could do had nothing to do with increasing weight or exercising less (well, there might have been a few weeks were I worked out once a week instead of 2-3 times).

I was trying to do pullups earlier in the year. I was having difficulty doing a couple.

By the way, when I say I did 8 that doesn't mean 8 full good ones, that means 8 where I got pulled myself up part way and hung there until I quit.

JM

[Al B. Sure!]

Do them, Jon. I'm a huge fan of pullups although I kind of have to be since the Marine Corps tests you on pullups... if you're doing them assisted, don't bother. Try them unassisted.

[Jon Miller]

I think I have pullups and chinups confused.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Do them, Jon. I'm a huge fan of pullups although I kind of have to be since the Marine Corps tests you on pullups... if you're doing them assisted, don't bother. Try them unassisted.

I don't feel like I did a workout after them, but I just can't do mroe than a couple. Additionally, I don't get much improvement out of them.

Finally, it doesn't seem to improve my fitness, when I did go up to doing a few I dropped down to nothing really fast.

JM

[Al B. Sure!]

Pull ups are pronated grip (palms away), chin ups are supinated grip (palms facing you); they're the same thing really except chin ups involve your biceps more because your biceps can only go into full flexion from a supinated position.

There's things you have to consider, Jon. As with any movement, if you don't do it for a long time, you lose muscle memory so it becomes more difficult to do that movement, hence why you went from 8 pullups to 1 or 2. However, your basic muscular endurance might not have fallen so dramatically (yes, atrophy occurs, but not as rapidly as the loss of muscle memory). It wouldn't surprise me that if you started knocking out sets of 1 or 2, you very quickly returned back to 8 as your body 're-learned' how to do them efficiently.

There's also the matter of strength. Even if you don't care about your ability to do a pull up (ie- you're not climbing walls any time soon), you're still benefiting from the strengthened muscles gained by doing pullups which involve more muscles than curls or lat pull downs ever could. Even muscles you never would have thought were being worked.

It is anecdotal but check this out... There's a guy who had an EMG that could monitor that amount of activity that occurs in a muscle while working it... he wanted to see what was the ideal exercise for your abdominals (he also has a whole series called "Inside the Muscles" on t-nation.com where he looks at many different muscles). So what exercise got the EMG saying this is the exercise that uses the abs more than any other?

Chinups

http://www.t-nation.com/testosterone-magazine-627#627#best-ab-exercises

Probably the most shocking result of this entire experiment was the level of rectus abdominis activity elicited by a bodyweight chin-up! It beat out any other abdominal exercise, weighted exercises and all, in mean and peak rectus abdominis activity.

[Provost Harrison]

I normally do a few chinups when I go to the gym. Although I do try and emphasise cardiovascular exercise over weight stuff (I am naturally stocky, the last thing I want is more damn muscle) and I also do a bit of swimming too in addition. I find that swimming can be both very strenuous yet soothing at the same time, which is quite nice.

[Al B. Sure!]

It occurred to me...

your joindate shows as 1999, yet it seems as if you only joined a couple months ago.

Heresson, do you know who I am? What my login used to be?

[Provost Harrison]

Well I think he wants to have your pooey babies now

[Al B. Sure!]

Well I think he wants to have your pooey babies now

Yeah I wasn't aware that he was a homo but apparently he is.