Ok, so you have made the decision to better yourself and become the physical and mental embodiment of everything that is good in this world. Now what do you do?
I am going to give some very basic guidelines for what you should be looking to do in the gym. Programming is an art that needs to be specific to the individual’s goals, but I am going to give you some ideas that will work basically 99% of the time. If you are brand new and just getting started, they will work wonders.
For the most part when you are in the gym you want to focus on big movements, the ones that will give us the most “bang for our buck” so to say. Examples of these movements would be any form of squatting, pressing, or deadlifting.
I am not going to explicitly say you must back squat, bench/shoulder press, and deadlift because without a knowledgeable coach to teach you, you will more than likely just injure yourself. That being said, if you feel capable of teaching yourself, there are many resources available for the self teaching of the lifts. The book Starting Strength although a very dry read, offers an extremely detailed overview of how to perform the lifts and many things associated with training and would be a good place to start. Do yourself a favor and do not drink the milk as recommended in the book, just eat more protein.
Let’s say you don’t feel like reading a textbook on training though. Take whatever movements you know yourself to be proficient in, and try to get a squat, press, and pulling movement in each workout. This can be a front squat, dumbbell shoulder press, and barbell rows, or the traditional back squat, bench press, deadlift. I honestly don’t care what movements you choose if you are brand new to this whole thing particularly if you have no desire to do a lot of homework on the topic. Pick big movements, get a squat, press and pull every workout.
For gods sake warm up, this is a topic in and of itself, but I am a huge proponent of mobility work (a future article will be done on this). Google “Kelly Starrett” or “Mobility WOD” and use those to create a nice warm-up for yourself, all the while improving your mobility. When starting to do your lifts on a barbell or dumbbells, do a few warm up sets of the movement, for instance if you were looking to squat 225 for your 3×5, then you might warm-up with, 45# (the empty bar), 95#, 135#, 185# all for sets of five, maybe only 3 reps on the set of 185, you can also do more reps on the first set if you would like. Play this by ear and don’t be stupid.
In terms of sets and rep schemes three sets of five (3×5) is a generally good rep scheme for any movement you are looking to get stronger in and you should default to this if you aren’t sure how many sets and reps you should do. That being said, if you would like to include some hypertrophy focused exercises such as curls (all of the crossfitters just winced), three sets of ten can be used (3×10) to a better effect. Use the same weight for all 3×5 or 3×10 (also called sets across).
When determining how to add weight, you need to make consistent and small gains, and over the long term it all adds up. So if you are doing big barbell movements; five pounds a week or workout, depending on how difficult you found the previous training session (in terms of maintaining good mechanics), would be a good amount of weight to add.
Limit yourself to three to four training days maximum and two days as a minimum. Make sure to not do the same lifts day after day, perhaps instead of bench pressing every day, switch between bench pressing and shoulder pressing, the same goes for your squatting and pulling movements.
Along the path to physical enlightenment, you will eventually run into obstacles, namely injuries and plateaus. Injuries are such a large topic it will need to be saved for a future article. In terms of “plateaus” though. There is a very simple approach I would like you to use. If you find you cannot hit your required reps for the day, maybe only getting three or four reps on the last set. Take the current weight you are using and cut ten-percent off of it and start again. Do it only as you stall on a specific lift.
One last thing, with all of this strength training, we must make sure not to neglect our conditioning. Make sure to do some sort of metabolic conditioning work at least once a week, ideally two times a week. This can be as basic as going out to your local track and running 4-8 100-400m sprints. Avoid doing long slow distance forms of “cardio” and stick to high intensity, short (less than ten minutes), interval work. If you are looking to shed some extra poundage, doing a fasted walk for 30-45 minutes a few times a week in the morning will also help.
So there you have a basic approach if you are a total virgin to being in the gym. This is just the training portion; diet will be covered in a future post. This is not scripture and should not be taken as the “ideal”, it is just a good starting point. I encourage you to develop a passion for taking care of yourself, make it an obsession, and you will force yourself to learn the necessities of how to lift and how to treat your programming.
If you have any questions feel free to ask on twitter @thedanimal1991 or on the facebook page.
Maybe you have spent the last six months to a year spending a lot of time at strip clubs and drinking and have lost motivation to take care of your body. Perhaps you’ve spent most of your time on the couch eating potato chips covered in rice as the main staple of your diet and smoking a lot of weed, why would you start to work out and eat right?
First I would encourage you to do a mental exercise. No matter what your situation is, extrapolate your current habits over the course of 10-30 years. If you think they may potentially result in you being a drug addict, obese, poor, or dead as the result of a heart attack, shit needs to change.
Start with the blatantly obvious, dial back your recreational drug use, honestly you should just eliminate this entirely, but do it over time so it isn’t so difficult.
Then I would like you think about something that you would like to improve about yourself. Maybe you’re a little thick around the midsection. What would make you happier, pounding all those big macs and beer or having a divinely inspired physique? Wouldn’t it be worth it alone to be comfortable in your own skin so you aren’t embarrassed to take off your shirt off or to make it so you can leave the lights on when you are with your lady friend?
When I was younger and just beginning to train and exercise one of my first goals was to be able to take off my shirt when running and not be self conscious about it. So after a few months of lifting running and eating a decent diet, I no longer mentally had these concerns. I cannot begin to explain how liberating it is to achieve these types of goals that do so much in terms of improving your confidence and mentality.
This applies to everyone as well, women, men, skinny, fat, think about all the things you should be doing to take care of yourself. They may seem boring or too hard, but once you realize the potential impact it can have on you mentally and physically, it becomes very easy to eat right and get to the gym.
It is important when thinking about diet and training to not think of it in temporary terms, almost everyone I know that fails to take care of their body will start to be “healthy” and do the right things for 1-3 months, and then it all falls apart because of one excuse or another. Looking good and being able to perform well at life is not something you should want temporarily.
So as Johnny Pain would say, make a decision to improve yourself. Because when you make a decision you divorce all possibility of an alternative outcome. Stop praying, wishing, and hoping, and start deciding.
There are many different ideas as to how someone new to training should approach it. Some believe that you should first have a base of conditioning and then get stronger; others believe you should be strong first and then become conditioned if you are so inclined.
Getting strong first tends to be the better recommendation. I can tell you from personal experience when I was competing in gymnastics and crossfitting, although I could do pull-ups for days and had the lowest body fat I’ve ever had so far during my life, from an aesthetic perspective I looked like shit. Though I was lean and what some people might call ripped, I had not developed a solid base of musculature to resemble anything mildly impressive, to top it off I could hardly squat two hundred and twenty five pounds.
One of the main motivations for me wanting to make the people I coach strong first is the development curve. In order to become strong it takes months and years of consistent and hard training, the bonus is once you form a base of strength it takes a long time to go away, and if you ever do stop lifting, once you get back on it the strength you once had comes back at a rapid rate. On the flipside, it comparatively takes a very short amount of time to obtain a high level of conditioning, and it is lost very quickly. To get it back you will have similar challenges as to the first time you were attempting to reach that level of conditioning.
There are instances when working with an individual who is significantly overweight that they may already be somewhat strong, so an emphasis on conditioning may be needed, though strength training certainly would not be neglected. Of course the program the person is following should always be focused on the individual’s goals.
Getting strong and packing on muscle is almost always conducive towards someone’s aesthetic goals, most of us guys just want to look like monsters, whether you want to be a 265 pound monster or a 200 pound monster is really the decision that has to be made. For women I have yet to meet one that doesn’t want to look sexy, what girl doesn’t want nice curves with a conservative level of body fat? And strength training lends itself well to developing this type of appearance.
If you are someone that is involved with crossfit, you should get strong to. Think about how easy a 95 pound thruster will be if your front squatting at least 315 and pressing bodyweight? To excel at these types of metabolic conditioning workouts the weight needs to be so light for you that the only thing limiting your performance is your ability to breathe.
Plus, why not take advantage of the slew of positive health benefits strength training has? Stronger immune system, higher bone density, more musculature to support vulnerable joints like the knee thus reducing the likelihood of injury, and more sexual experience with the opposite (or same, who am I to judge) sex ?
In the end Strength is king. This is true for most everyone, particularly the older crowd. So, get to the gym, get under a barbell, and make a decision to become the person you have always wanted to be.
Many people that have an interest in physical performance and aesthetics come from a background that has people on call 24/7. If you are involved in law enforcement or fire fighting or you are just working the night shift at a “normal” job, eating enough good foods while at work, night or day can certainly be a challenge.
I am going to assume you have two things for the purpose of this article; you have access to a microwave and refrigerator while at work. With these two things you have a great deal of options when it comes to eating at work, late at night or not. If you are thinking right now “damn, I dont have a refrigerator where I work”, that’s fine, buy yourself a nice portable cooler and get some ice packs.
To start and this applies even if you don’t have a microwave or refrigerator, there are always pre-packaged foods. I am a huge fan of the Met-Rx meal replacement bars, they are big enough to put a dent in your hunger and get some protein in there. The only two complaints I have when it comes to protein bars is that a lot of them contain forms of soy protein which is not ideal, and they tend to have a good bit of sugar alcohols which are going to make you a little bit gassy. But you are on the night shift anyway right? So it won’t matter if you stink the place up. This is one of the poorer choices in terms of food quality, but they are convenient and the right ones are tasty.
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to pre-cook your food. Bodybuilders are famous for this, cooking a week’s worth of chicken among other meats at a time. This is probably the best route to go. This way you can bring a Tupperware container of chicken and rice (or vegetables for the paleo crowd) and you have a nice meal to throw in the microwave and you are set. I love chicken, but obviously this can be applied to all sorts of things such as beef, fish, or turkey. Basically anything that could be cooked at home.
And last but not least, there are shakes. Preferably whey protein shakes. Take 16 oz of milk or water depending on whether you’re looking to grow or not, with two scoops of protein powder and ¼ to ½ a cup of oats, and you’ve got yourself a very fast and portable meal.
So let’s say if you are looking to put on significant amounts of mass, where eating needs to be a priority and you’re working an 8 hour shift. One meal replacement bar, one pre-prepared meal from home, and one shake. That is 3 of your meals for the day knocked out while you’re at work. Or if you’re not a fan of the bars, bring another shake or prepared meal instead of having the bar. Make it easy on yourself, just get the food you need to achieve whatever your goals happen to be.
Consistency with respect to diet is one of the biggest things people struggle with, it isn’t easy, but once you get in the habit of doing these types of things it becomes difficult to live without them.
Stay tuned for this week’s video which will be out this weekend. There will be a lot more on diet in the weeks ahead.
[in-teg-ri-tee]
noun
1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.
3. a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship’s hull.
Integrity is a word that has lost its meaning. Nowadays it is little more than a punch-line for politicians and a quality tarnished by phony administrators who are supposed to possess it. If you were to ask a kid about Integrity they may very well laugh at you.
So what is Integrity? It is easier to begin with what Integrity is not rather than what it is. Integrity is not a mindless adherence to religious and militant values. Integrity is not necessarily pursuing “the American dream”. Integrity is not complacency. Integrity is not close-minded. Integrity is not sedentary. Integrity is not unintelligent. Integrity is not specific to any race, sexual orientation, or gender; it is only specific to individuals. Integrity is not appeasement. Integrity does not care how wealthy you are.
People who value and possess Integrity know the ability to push yourself is one of the most admirable things there is in life, with no judgment passed on what you are pushing yourself towards. Whether it is pushing yourself in training for a new personal record, pushing yourself to mend an old relationship with a loved one either friend or family, or pushing yourself to grow as an individual through certain experiences, these types of actions are the ones that make day to day life worthwhile.
Welcome to Integrity Athletics. Here the best information available on training, diet, and programming will be brought to light, in addition to a plethora of lifestyle content. A goal of this site is to focus on covering the issues and topics you the readers want covered. So I encourage you to send any questions or topics you would like covered to integrityathleticsgym@gmail.com all will be answered in one form or another promptly. I would like to stress the fact that the scope of the site will not be limited to training only related topics. I am more than willing and I will opine on topics ranging from lifting and starcraft to drugs, sex, and money. Because really, what else is there in the world? This site is dedicated to being entertaining and educational.
I, like all of you enjoy having content from sites on a regular basis; right now the plan is to have at least one video and one written piece a week as a minimum. There are some things in the works right now that you can expect in the not so distant future such as shirts and other merch. I am also contacting some of the most respected individuals in the strength and conditioning community to contribute to the site.
Welcome and stay tuned, 2012 is going to be a great year.
