Being overweight and having lost 35 lbs this year with plenty to go(I'm still overweight), I would say that you are more likely to work out and be active if you lose weight. That doesn't require much if any exercise, just an intelligent diet.
I'm not anti-exercise and I've worked out a lot in the past, but I've found that being skinnier makes being active easier and more fun. Moving sucks if you're carrying an extra 50-100 lbs. around. Most skinny people don't really get this.
So, I've focused on nailing the diet and that works for me. I basically didn't exercise more than once a week so far this year, but now that I'm down quite a bit, I am naturally finding myself to be more active.
In the long run both exercise and eating right are incredibly important, so if you're overweight and want to be more active, get rid of the extra weight and you might find yourself exercising more by default.
I've lost 25% of my body weight this year (I started on 4 Jan) -- 16 to 12 stone, ~100kg to 75kg. I've run marathons and climbed mountains in the past -- big Himalayan lumps and I've sumitted Denali, for example -- so I know what fit means. Or at least my body does.
Exercise comes naturally after losing weight, It is incredibly hard when you are overweight. At the start of the year I would sweat walking around the supermarket. Now, I run six miles over the local hill for an hour and a half. And it's marvellous. But it isn't easy. It requires single minded, selfish determination.
As a guy who went 110kg to 80kg, I can attest to it being easier and more fun when you don't have the equivalent of an extra sandbag wrapped around your torso. One particular thing that happened was that it just became so easy to break into a run to get somewhere it little bit quicker.
(Five years later I'm back up to 95ish, but I'm on the way down again. Remembering what it was like is a good motivator.)
Couldn't agree more. Most people will tell say it's 80% diet, 20% exercise... and, though that ratio may change somewhat based on weight & goals, I think it's mostly right on.
> Moving sucks if you're carrying an extra 50-100 lbs. around. Most skinny people don't really get this.
I was always a skinny guy most of my life. 4 months ago, I was 5'11", 140lbs, really lean. I recently got serious about weight training and bulking up, lots of high calorie/carbs/fats/proteins, and I'm now up to 177lbs. I'm not exactly fat, but that extra weight is killer. All of my movements are slower, walking up stairs gets me out of breath. I never really understood how much extra weight affects people until now.
I like Crossfit-style WODs (Workout Of the Day) because each workout has measurement built in, and you work to perform as well as possible against that measurement, which means motivation is built in, too. They're suitable for "startup" fitness because you can do the workouts by yourself or in a small group, and because you can adapt them to whatever equipment and facilities you have available.
For example, a circuit training-like WOD might be to do the following in the shortest time you can:
21 pullups
21 burpees
800m run
15 pullups
15 burpees
400m run
9 pullups
9 burpees
200m run
If you don't have space to run, you can jump rope, and if you don't have someplace to rig up a pullup bar (unlikely!) you can do rows with something heavy.
Or you might do the following as many times as possible in 15 minutes (in Crossfit lingo, AMRAC -- As Many Rounds As you Can):
10 deadlifts
20 wall balls (throwing a medicine ball against a 10' target on a wall)
400m run
After the workout, you record your time or number of rounds and the weights you used for each exercise. The numbers motivate you and allow you to measure your progress if you repeat the same workout every couple of months. For me, it helps a lot to have the measurement in mind while I'm working out. The harder I work, the better the numbers I get to write down afterward.
You can do this on your own, like I said, but for some people the pressure of performing in front of other people helps a lot. It's certainly true for me, even though I'm completely the opposite when it comes to mental work. Having instructors is good, too. They'll push you to pile on the weight or ease back on the weight as appropriate. If joining CrossFit is impractical or unaffordable, and you can't talk your friends into working out with you, competitive sports can serve the same purpose of providing motivation and measuring improvement.
I regret sounding like that guy, but Crossfit didn't invent "scaling" or measuring your workouts. I know you're not making that claim explicitly, but the way you framed "Crossfit includes measurement!" can be misread.
The concepts of record keeping and adjusting volume/intensity/exercise selection to the trainee are older than dirt. I'd be surprised if there aren't clay tablets with rep counts on them in a museum somewhere.
In its defence, Crossfit:
* Gets people off their backside to do actual hard training,
* Provides social structure to encourage consistent training, and
* Introduces people to Oly lifting, which as an Oly lifter I don't begrudge at all.
Working out that way is synonymous with Crossfit for most people the same way desktop computing is synonymous with Windows and OSX for most people. They didn't invent it, but they deserve a lot of credit for making it convenient for people to just sign up for a class and do it. Most of the people griping about Crossfit getting too much credit weren't doing anything to make it accessible and convenient for people until Crossfit came along and proved there was a market for it. If I wanted to train that way before Crossfit, I would have had to: find a suitable place to work out, buy or construct some of the equipment, schedule sessions with a personal trainer to make sure I was doing the exercises correctly, recruit friends to work out with me, and so on. And there certainly would have been compromises. Most gyms aren't set up to allow you to do a set of cleans, drop your weights, and then run 400 meters without dodging cars or pedestrians. (Hell, most don't let you drop weights, period. As far as I am aware, there are only two commercial gyms in my city that have bumper plates, not including the four (at least) Crossfit locations, and one of them is a specialized Oly training facility that costs more than Crossfit.) With Crossfit, I just show up, pay attention, work hard, and have fun. It's a great service.
This article essentially says "practice any sport, whenever and wherever, just keep at it". While that's not wrong, it's not very useful.
For me personally, scooby1962's videos on Youtube were really helpful. Great advice on building muscle without doing crazy stuff, not requiring a gym and almost no equipment.
just in case somebody is searching for it on youtu.be, it is scooby1961.
i discovered scooby through a friend of mine a long time ago and his tips really helped getting me started with weight lifting. i have lost all my back problems since then. just remember, as long as an exercise feels good, it is unlikely to hurt you. i had to learn this the hard way, i pushed too hard on an exercise, ignored the pain and was left with a typewriters cramp, not so great if you are in front of a computer typing all day long. so start small and build your way up.
Another good source of information is Ross Emanait @ rosstraining.com. His plan is geared more toward boxing and other combat sports, which I just always found more fun. E.g. throwing a heavy sand bag around as if you were getting ready to fight a bear, and so on.
If you are in SF: some of the best running terrain in the west is just over the Golden Gate bridge. Hop on your bike, ride to the Marin headlands, and go for a walk. If you're already pretty fit, go for a run. The trail network is amazing and you can go as far as you want.
If you are on the Peninsula: you're next to some of the best road biking on the west coast. You can make tons of loops up to Skyline Rd and they are all awesome. For starters try starting down in Palo Alto and riding over Arastradero to Alpine Road, work up to climbing Old La Honda.
I don't think I could go to a gym and exercise just for the sake of exercising and I'm guessing a lot of internally-motivated startup guys/gals are the same way, so I encourage you to pick up some sort of exercise that is also FUN.
I wake up at 5:00 am on Tuesdays and Fridays and go bouldering at Planet Granite (In Belmont, I'm currently located in Palo Alto (well, for a short time anyways))
For rock climbing/bouldering you need a fair bit of effort and it is also a very enjoyable exercise (it's kind of like playing).
This also fits nicely into the rest of my schedule.
I got a lot of value out of the Couch to 5k jogging program. Just downloaded the Robert Ullrey weekly podcast [1]. Then it was just a matter of putting on my running shoes every other morning and following his coaching.
It helped to follow two rules:
1) As soon as the alarm went off I was committed to get up right away, pee, step into my shoes, step outside, and close the door behind me. Once outside, if I really didn't want to continue, I could opt out and go back inside.
2) The following morning I do it no matter what. No more than 1 skip between sessions.
It worked really well for me and I recommend others try it. No fancy equipment, no custom apps. Just my music player, running shoes, and a piece of paper with the 27 (9 weeks x 3 sessions/week)workouts for me to tick off as I did them
I really wanted to try ShovelGlove [2] but have too many kids running around for me to feel safe.
Another place to look if you want a structured environment is your local community college. I recently rediscovered my love for playing soccer and was pleasantly surprised to find I could take a twice weekly class as a non-degree-seeking student. We spend most of the class scrimmaging.
They offer all sorts of sports like basketball, swimming, weight lifting, martial arts, dance, etc.
I tell practically everyone I know to try Crossfit. There are two basic difficulties with any exercise regimen, and Crossfit nails both:
1. Figuring out what to do.
2. Actually doing it, consistently, over the long haul.
Crossfit will teach you how to do the old-school, badass basics of fitness--stuff that will get you in great shape and is actually fun to do. No gimmicks, no miracles, just stuff that will kick your ass.
Doing Crossfit also makes you a member of an incredibly friendly, supportive community. This makes it so much easier to stick with it--every class, you'll see people in your community, friends, going hard and making progress. You support them and they support you. You'll work out with beginners, who you can help, and with badasses, who can help you.
Crossfit seems to be for people who are already pretty strong athletes. Is it really something you can just jump on board with if you're fairly out of shape?
I've spent the last few months following the "Starting Strength" plan (http://startingstrength.com/) with the idea of getting in good enough shape to do crossfit.
You absolutely can go to Crossfit if you're out of shape. It requires a certain disregard for your social instincts, because you will feel out of place. While I was taking on-ramp classes (intro classes with more intense instruction and slightly easier workouts) I saw several extremely overweight people join up. I didn't see any of them more than a few times, but they were welcome and could have kept with it if they wanted to.
It's easy to feel self-conscious and unwelcome. Half the people in my on-ramp classes were in stellar shape already, and at least two of them were professional personal trainers who were interested in eventually becoming instructors. There were times when I was sure nobody else wanted me there, and I kept going just out of sheer bloody-mindedness, with a kind of "fuck 'em, I don't care, I'm going anyway" attitude. In retrospect, it was all in my mind. I never minded any of the people who were in worse shape than me. You won't be in anybody's way. And I would have said all that to someone who hadn't been doing "Starting Strength" for a few months, so it goes triple for you.
I think Crossfit is great for beginners. Most of the exercises and workouts scale very nicely, so you don't need to be fit when you start. For example, a workout might call for 100 push-ups over the course of 20 minutes. If you can't do strict push-ups, you can do them on your knees. If that's still too hard, you can do push-ups with your hands on a raised surface or even against the wall. Similarly, if the recommended weight for something is 135 pounds, no one will look down on you for using 85 pounds or 25 pounds if that's where you're at. The important things are that you come consistently and work to the best of your ability. Everything else will take care of itself, regardless of your starting level.
It definitely helps to have a good athletic background, but Crossfit does an amazing job of welcoming beginners. Honestly, I can't think of any other community that does such a good job of simultaneously pushing the most advanced to their limits while still welcoming beginners.
Most Crossfit affiliates have an on-ramp program that will get you, no matter where you're starting, to the point where you can participate in full workouts.
It's also a bit ironic that starting strength will teach him the proper mechanics for most compound lifts, and then Crossfit will turn around and teach him how to work as quickly as possible with an often times alarming disregard for form.
If anything, I'd look into barbell complexes as a way to prepare for Crossfit.
Your statement about CrossFit encouraging a lack of proper form is patently false. That is a common, and false, criticism of a great fitness program.
CrossFit encourages you to work fast because intensity is correlated with power and results. Power -- what we want to build a capacity for -- is simply work over time. Results come more quickly to intense training because the body has shown to adapt faster to (relatively) intense stimuli. crossfit.com is covered in references for the interested.
Form is a key part of these movements, but learning a proper squat or clean is the endeavor of a lifetime. No one is perfect at significant load here. CrossFit teaches a balance of these elements that maximizes fitness in the athletes. Injury due to improper form or overtraining is contrary to what CrossFit wants to achieve.
Some people take things too far. Some people not far enough. CrossFit simply wants you to push your relative limits each time you do a WOD. That is how you get better. You're never going to be a great race car driver taking practice laps at 30mph.
There is more to say, but I'd challenge you to find a good affiliate and try it out. Experience is a grand teacher.
In my experience, Crossfit trainers are good at coaching form. Their top priority is getting you to do the movement and get a good workout, but when somebody has bad form, they coach them a lot and make sure they use light weights or no weights at all until their form is good enough to lift safely. I always had terrible deadlift form and wasn't able to correct it until I got some coaching at Crossfit. They fixed me up quickly, got on my ass when I got sloppy, and within two months of starting, I was lifting more than my previous deadlift PR -- 45 times in a single workout. (Granted, my deadlift form was atrocious. I was squatting 40% more than I deadlifted and had basically given up on it before I went to Crossfit.)
The better your form, the more you can safely lift, and the more you can lift, the higher the work rate you can achieve. That's the logic that drives the Crossfit trainers I've worked with. Crossfit isn't consistent from location to location, though, so what you say may be true.
Server error unfortunately - this is something I'd like to see though as I basically stopped working out completely for the past four years of my start-up experience. I literally started running again last week, and it has already made a difference in my overall happiness.
Having just moved to SF, I knew I had to get back to a gym, so I started looking around and was shocked at how expensive the prices were. Upwards of $100/month for anything decent, which is way out of my budget.
I just started P90X, I'm on day 5 and everything cost me $90 and I own the equipment, rather than paying a high monthly gym cost. I probably get better results and spend less time traveling to/from the gym because I can do them from my apartment and they're demonstrated on video. I managed to find the following off Amazon, all for under $90: pull up bar, push up holders, 5lbs whey protein, 300g creatine, iPhone arm band, yoga mat, resistance bands.
Another suggestion - check out Never Gymless by Ross Enamait. It's a fantastic resource for people who either don't want to go to a gym or just those of us who work really late some days and don't want to miss a workout.
Stay on it! The first few weeks are the hardest. I'm just finishing my first 90 days and it has been a life changer. I could only do 1 or 2 pullups at first - I cranked out 100 pullups (in sets of 15 to 20) last week.
Start lifting weights. As someone else suggested, Starting Strength is a good place to begin with. Get someone to coach you so that your progress is kept under control and you don't hurt yourself with bad form.
I've been using the BodyMedia FIT (http://www.bodymedia.com/) to get detailed stats about my fitness level -- calories burned, level of physical activity, sleep quality and duration. As a data geek, it's made all the difference in my motivation to stay fit: I feel a level of control and certainty about my fitness decisions, now that they are informed by data.
Scott Hanselman referenced http://www.fitbit.com/ (hardware for $99 instead of $150 to $250) and http://www.loseit.com/ (tracking software currently free in beta instead of $13/mo) in a recent blog post about continuous improvement measurement.
That's cool, but the BodyMedia is in actual contact with your body. The determinations it makes about calories burned factor in body temperature and galvanic response. AFAIK, the FitBit is a wireless pedometer.
True, you do have to spend ~$7/mo for the subscription, unless you hack it with Python (there is a module for interfacing with it over USB.)
I suggest buying Vibram shoes and start running gently. My minor back pain went away and it feels great. Gotta ease in the calves and lower legs though.
I second that. I had problems with shin splints and sore knees running which seemed to go away once I switched to VFFs (Bikilas). You must take it slow and really focus on your running form to avoid hurting yourself though. Also, in my experience, running in VFFs will not result in you going any faster (probably a little slower), but definitely more comfortable.
I plugged TacFit here before, and I'll gladly do it again. "A martial arts training masquerading as a fitness programme". A bit on the pricey side (1-off cost for an impressive box-set of digital training materials), but no gym fees or expensive equipment.
Can you tell us more about TacFit? What kind of results did you get going through it? Are you still doing it now? How much of it is well packaged information that's free online and how much is "proprietary" stuff you won't find else where?
All fitness advice boils down to "just do it, then do it again" but intensity makes it a whole different game. I enjoyed the article but I'd love to see more on how competitive athletes "up the ante" in intensity.
Me: generally fit, bicycled from Canada to Mexico last fall, climbed for years, weight trained off and on for more years, did a lot of yoga from 2005 - 2008. Right now, I go to a gym every other day, (almost) no matter what.
I'm currently focusing on muscle. I've reduced my workout to simply doing squats, bench presses, and pull-ups. I've gained 20 pounds in six months. This is way better than any previous cycle, when I had much more intricate, varied workouts.
Here's the thing, though: the absolute fittest and most prepared for anything I've ever felt was when I was doing yoga 3 - 5 times per week.
Yoga? Yeah, yoga. The first month is absolute hell. After that, it got better. Over a few years I bumped up more and more until I was going five times per week. I was more prepared for random climbing, hiking, and cycling adventures from that than when focusing on any of my other activities. Of course, a lot of it had to do with finding teachers who consistently taught difficult classes.
Additionally, if you're stressed, the whole yoga 'mindfulness' thing really works. I'm not spiritual at all, but it really had a terrific calming effect on me, and was invaluable when I was having a stressful week at work.
Disable the shower at your house so you have to shower every morning at the gym. While you are there, fit in a few sets and a run on the elliptical. I've been doing this for at least 7 years and I've got the body to show for it. (no my shower at home isn't disabled, but it is in my mind).
I'm not anti-exercise and I've worked out a lot in the past, but I've found that being skinnier makes being active easier and more fun. Moving sucks if you're carrying an extra 50-100 lbs. around. Most skinny people don't really get this.
So, I've focused on nailing the diet and that works for me. I basically didn't exercise more than once a week so far this year, but now that I'm down quite a bit, I am naturally finding myself to be more active.
In the long run both exercise and eating right are incredibly important, so if you're overweight and want to be more active, get rid of the extra weight and you might find yourself exercising more by default.