(no subject)
So, I came away with rules. Things to eat. What sort of workouts they thought I could do. I signed a waiver to get into the gym at work.
Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who is pretty much god among bodybuilders -- said you've gotta let the muscles rest for 48 hours after working them, but the problem is that you want to work out all the time -- not just for routine, but because it helps people keep feeling like they're pushing themselves. It's basically the bodybuilder's dilemma.
So here's how you solve it. You have three different workouts which all target different muscles. You have arm day, you have leg day, and you have core day.
This wasn't a problem, so I got to work. Two weeks later, I realized stupidly that I didn't establish any sort of baseline, so I did a bunch of squats, pushups, and situps to see how many friends of mine could do. That turned out to be pretty useless -- I was surprisingly ahead of all of my friends with those exercises. I expect that's more an indicator of my starting level of fitness rather than my routine.
I had to think about what I was really trying to achieve. It's nice to say that you want to look cut. It's nice to make points of stuff like that, but it seemed a little disingenuous to me. There's a point where everyone gives up -- either by biology, time, motivation, etc. -- and it seemed like if I made my goal to look a certain way, then I'd lack a reason to keep going once I reached that point.
That seemed wrong. I mean, I know that when it comes to bodybuilding, I'm essentially being a tourist. But that doesn't mean that I have to act like a tourist. I want to buy into it, so I told myself that I'd stop when I decided that all the lifestyle changes felt normal to do.
Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who is pretty much god among bodybuilders -- said you've gotta let the muscles rest for 48 hours after working them, but the problem is that you want to work out all the time -- not just for routine, but because it helps people keep feeling like they're pushing themselves. It's basically the bodybuilder's dilemma.
So here's how you solve it. You have three different workouts which all target different muscles. You have arm day, you have leg day, and you have core day.
This wasn't a problem, so I got to work. Two weeks later, I realized stupidly that I didn't establish any sort of baseline, so I did a bunch of squats, pushups, and situps to see how many friends of mine could do. That turned out to be pretty useless -- I was surprisingly ahead of all of my friends with those exercises. I expect that's more an indicator of my starting level of fitness rather than my routine.
I had to think about what I was really trying to achieve. It's nice to say that you want to look cut. It's nice to make points of stuff like that, but it seemed a little disingenuous to me. There's a point where everyone gives up -- either by biology, time, motivation, etc. -- and it seemed like if I made my goal to look a certain way, then I'd lack a reason to keep going once I reached that point.
That seemed wrong. I mean, I know that when it comes to bodybuilding, I'm essentially being a tourist. But that doesn't mean that I have to act like a tourist. I want to buy into it, so I told myself that I'd stop when I decided that all the lifestyle changes felt normal to do.