Insane Man's Blog About Insane Exercising INSANELY TO THE EXTREME: Blog #6
If anyone is actually following these blogs I apologize for the time gap between entries. I have been busy with work and other things
Note: I'm going to try and remember all the things I had written in my draft previously before it was erased, but hopefully I will be able to get my original point across in this post.
So what I wanted to for this particular blog post was provide supplemental detail when it comes to properly exercising. They are essentially tips and tricks I learned along the way in order to maximize the effectiveness of my workout. Some of this stuff might be a little repetitive from the previous blog post, but here I am going into greater detail on specific aspects for exercising.
Learning How to Breath: Breathing is an obvious important aspect to exercises and activities - it's how we live. The way you breath during exercises adversely affects the effectiveness of your exercise. There are different ways to breath for the two primary types of exercises, and I am going to cover both. I had mentioned the methodology of yoga in my previous blog post, and I wanted to explain how they place significance in the action of breathing during an exercise. In yoga, the act of breathing, stretching, and meditation are all intertwined together in their attempt to essentially become a more "wholistic" person, at least that's the practitioner's goal. What I had gained through yoga was that the act of inhaling and exhaling at certain parts of a stretch allowed me to exert more energy during the exhale than during the inhale. Meditation became a means of letting your mind not focus on any possible feelings of pain. Breathing, itself, is a two part action; you inhale to intake air, and you exhale to expel carbon dioxide and other unused gases. Several things happen during this two part process the affects the way the body can work. During an inhale your brain is involuntarily saying that your body is in need of oxygen. So what happens during inhalation is that your diaphragm muscle expands so that your lungs expand and maximize oxygen intake. Deoxygenated blood is eager to make the "carbon dioxide-oxygen" exchange in the lungs so then a larger amount of blood is circulating around the lungs more so than during the exhale (and even more especially when you take a deep breath). Thus, less oxygen-rich blood is available to inhabit the muscles in need of it. The act of exhaling removes the carbon dioxide in the lungs. The brain tells the body that the newly oxygenated blood must be carried throughout the body to places in need of it, particularly those that are currently under the stress and strain of exercise. The diaphragm retracts, which decreases the volume of the lungs. This tells your body that you are transferring the oxygenated blood throughout your system. The whole process repeats itself every second in the blink of an eye. Your goal is to manipulate yourself at the correct moment in the correct way so as to use the oxygen.
So during your exercising regimens there are going to be two primary types of exercise you'll be performing. It would be either cardio or muscle workout. Breathing during a cardio workout is different from a regular muscle workout because during cardio everything in your muscle is working all at once. During a cardio workout you're breathing should match the rhythym of your pace. You have to find that rhythym for yourself because not everyone's is the same. As for weight lifting the process of inhaling and exhaling should be performed based on the point of energetic exertion. Exhale at the point of the exercise where you exert the most energy, usually when the weight in question is being lifted. Inhale at the points of least enegy exertion, or the period which you are lowering the weight. Also, when I say lowering the weight I don't mean to instantly drop the weight, but lower it slowly. Lowering the weight is as much as part of the exercise as lifting it. Be slow about it anddo your best to concentrate on breathing while doing so. At this point it should make some sense as to why you should exercise in this manner.
What It Means to Improve:
Now that you have your regimen down and everything is going peachy with exercising you need to start making improvements toward each exercise you perform. When you stick to the same weights, the same repetitions, and the same exercise day in and out for a prolonged period of time then your body simply adapts to it. When I say that I mean that you essentially peak; at that specific weight and that number of repetitions under your current diet your body can no longer improve beyond those conditions (I will touch upon diet improvements later). At this point, your mind begins to suffer fatigue itself; you'll end up feeling like you are in pain when, really, you're just cramping from muscle overuse and lack of streching of muscle fibers. This means you need to increase the regimen.
So how do you increase the regimen? First of all, you need to analyze your limits carefully , and you need to establish numbers to go along with what it means to "level up." What it means to level up is that you set certain goals you need to be able to achieve before you either 1) increase the weights 2) increase the repetitions. You have to set the "initial goals" and the "ideal goals"; when you achieve the "ideal goals" that is when you are ready to move up in terms of weight/repetitions.
"Initial goals" are what you intend to accomplish in terms of set structure. For example, my chest regimen consists of me wanting to do 3 super sets: 1) weight: 200lbs, 4 sets of 7repetitions 2) weight: 225 lbs, 4 sets of 7 repetitions 3) weight: 210 lbs, 4 sets of 7 repetitions. This is what I look forward to doing, but the fact is that achieving this would take a long time, and would be difficult in that the weight differentials are too close to make a difference. The reality ends up being that I accomplish the following in terms of 3 super sets: 1) weight: 200 lbs, 4 sets of 7 repetitions 2) weight: 225 lbs, 1 set2 of 7 repetitions, 3-4 sets ranging between 5-7repetitions 3) weight: 205 lbs, 2 sets of 5 repetitions. If I attempt to achieve that intial standard my mind and body will end up going through the fatigue and cramps of constant repetitions. So in order to gauge whether or not I improve I set the ideal goal. For this regimen the ideal goal involves me being able to perform at least 2 sets of 7 repetitions in the weight: 225 lbs. portion, and then being able to perform the last super set to completetion of a total of 28 repetitions at that weight. If I can sustain that for 2-3 days of exercise then I will feel that I am ready to move on to increasing the weights, which usually involves adding 5lb weights to each side.
Even for the repetition based exercises there will come a point where when you get through the entire regimen you'll feel like you are capable of doing more reps. That is also another, more obvious, signal that you can increase the repetition numbers. Mind you, all of this coincides with sustaining a healthy diet and wellness. You can't really rate yourself after illness or injury; those periods of time after illness or injury are needed to recover back to where you left off.
What it all biols down to is that you have to set checkpoints for yourself. If you are still feeling capable of doing the exercise regimen even after the checkpoint then it is more than likely that you can move on to the next level. In fact, I urge you to move on to the next level; staying at the same level causes lethargy. If you refuse yourself to improve then your body gets used to the exercise, and you mind develops phantom fatigue due to the lack of stretching occurring on the muscles.
The one thing I suggest you defintely keep is an exercise journal. Keep track of how money reps of an exercise you do and at what weights all while tracking the timeline. Personally I don't do this because I tend to remember what I did and when I do it. Still, for many it is helpful to see how much time you have dwelled on an exercise to acknowledge that it is time to improve.
Note: I'm going to try and remember all the things I had written in my draft previously before it was erased, but hopefully I will be able to get my original point across in this post.
So what I wanted to for this particular blog post was provide supplemental detail when it comes to properly exercising. They are essentially tips and tricks I learned along the way in order to maximize the effectiveness of my workout. Some of this stuff might be a little repetitive from the previous blog post, but here I am going into greater detail on specific aspects for exercising.
Learning How to Breath: Breathing is an obvious important aspect to exercises and activities - it's how we live. The way you breath during exercises adversely affects the effectiveness of your exercise. There are different ways to breath for the two primary types of exercises, and I am going to cover both. I had mentioned the methodology of yoga in my previous blog post, and I wanted to explain how they place significance in the action of breathing during an exercise. In yoga, the act of breathing, stretching, and meditation are all intertwined together in their attempt to essentially become a more "wholistic" person, at least that's the practitioner's goal. What I had gained through yoga was that the act of inhaling and exhaling at certain parts of a stretch allowed me to exert more energy during the exhale than during the inhale. Meditation became a means of letting your mind not focus on any possible feelings of pain. Breathing, itself, is a two part action; you inhale to intake air, and you exhale to expel carbon dioxide and other unused gases. Several things happen during this two part process the affects the way the body can work. During an inhale your brain is involuntarily saying that your body is in need of oxygen. So what happens during inhalation is that your diaphragm muscle expands so that your lungs expand and maximize oxygen intake. Deoxygenated blood is eager to make the "carbon dioxide-oxygen" exchange in the lungs so then a larger amount of blood is circulating around the lungs more so than during the exhale (and even more especially when you take a deep breath). Thus, less oxygen-rich blood is available to inhabit the muscles in need of it. The act of exhaling removes the carbon dioxide in the lungs. The brain tells the body that the newly oxygenated blood must be carried throughout the body to places in need of it, particularly those that are currently under the stress and strain of exercise. The diaphragm retracts, which decreases the volume of the lungs. This tells your body that you are transferring the oxygenated blood throughout your system. The whole process repeats itself every second in the blink of an eye. Your goal is to manipulate yourself at the correct moment in the correct way so as to use the oxygen.
So during your exercising regimens there are going to be two primary types of exercise you'll be performing. It would be either cardio or muscle workout. Breathing during a cardio workout is different from a regular muscle workout because during cardio everything in your muscle is working all at once. During a cardio workout you're breathing should match the rhythym of your pace. You have to find that rhythym for yourself because not everyone's is the same. As for weight lifting the process of inhaling and exhaling should be performed based on the point of energetic exertion. Exhale at the point of the exercise where you exert the most energy, usually when the weight in question is being lifted. Inhale at the points of least enegy exertion, or the period which you are lowering the weight. Also, when I say lowering the weight I don't mean to instantly drop the weight, but lower it slowly. Lowering the weight is as much as part of the exercise as lifting it. Be slow about it anddo your best to concentrate on breathing while doing so. At this point it should make some sense as to why you should exercise in this manner.
What It Means to Improve:
Now that you have your regimen down and everything is going peachy with exercising you need to start making improvements toward each exercise you perform. When you stick to the same weights, the same repetitions, and the same exercise day in and out for a prolonged period of time then your body simply adapts to it. When I say that I mean that you essentially peak; at that specific weight and that number of repetitions under your current diet your body can no longer improve beyond those conditions (I will touch upon diet improvements later). At this point, your mind begins to suffer fatigue itself; you'll end up feeling like you are in pain when, really, you're just cramping from muscle overuse and lack of streching of muscle fibers. This means you need to increase the regimen.
So how do you increase the regimen? First of all, you need to analyze your limits carefully , and you need to establish numbers to go along with what it means to "level up." What it means to level up is that you set certain goals you need to be able to achieve before you either 1) increase the weights 2) increase the repetitions. You have to set the "initial goals" and the "ideal goals"; when you achieve the "ideal goals" that is when you are ready to move up in terms of weight/repetitions.
"Initial goals" are what you intend to accomplish in terms of set structure. For example, my chest regimen consists of me wanting to do 3 super sets: 1) weight: 200lbs, 4 sets of 7repetitions 2) weight: 225 lbs, 4 sets of 7 repetitions 3) weight: 210 lbs, 4 sets of 7 repetitions. This is what I look forward to doing, but the fact is that achieving this would take a long time, and would be difficult in that the weight differentials are too close to make a difference. The reality ends up being that I accomplish the following in terms of 3 super sets: 1) weight: 200 lbs, 4 sets of 7 repetitions 2) weight: 225 lbs, 1 set2 of 7 repetitions, 3-4 sets ranging between 5-7repetitions 3) weight: 205 lbs, 2 sets of 5 repetitions. If I attempt to achieve that intial standard my mind and body will end up going through the fatigue and cramps of constant repetitions. So in order to gauge whether or not I improve I set the ideal goal. For this regimen the ideal goal involves me being able to perform at least 2 sets of 7 repetitions in the weight: 225 lbs. portion, and then being able to perform the last super set to completetion of a total of 28 repetitions at that weight. If I can sustain that for 2-3 days of exercise then I will feel that I am ready to move on to increasing the weights, which usually involves adding 5lb weights to each side.
Even for the repetition based exercises there will come a point where when you get through the entire regimen you'll feel like you are capable of doing more reps. That is also another, more obvious, signal that you can increase the repetition numbers. Mind you, all of this coincides with sustaining a healthy diet and wellness. You can't really rate yourself after illness or injury; those periods of time after illness or injury are needed to recover back to where you left off.
What it all biols down to is that you have to set checkpoints for yourself. If you are still feeling capable of doing the exercise regimen even after the checkpoint then it is more than likely that you can move on to the next level. In fact, I urge you to move on to the next level; staying at the same level causes lethargy. If you refuse yourself to improve then your body gets used to the exercise, and you mind develops phantom fatigue due to the lack of stretching occurring on the muscles.
The one thing I suggest you defintely keep is an exercise journal. Keep track of how money reps of an exercise you do and at what weights all while tracking the timeline. Personally I don't do this because I tend to remember what I did and when I do it. Still, for many it is helpful to see how much time you have dwelled on an exercise to acknowledge that it is time to improve.