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In the Home Gym

Thread Starter
TS
Monique

Monique

bounceswoosh
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Also your rowing form matters, if you're going to spend time on it, learn the basics (just like skiing, but no need to get as obsessive!

My trainer taught me proper form in the "before times." Mine is probably not perfect, but it all starts with the legs, not the arms. Arms are more like the final crack of the whip, just the follow through after pushing with the legs.

I use a Garmin watch to record my workouts. It's terribly inaccurate for my heart rate, but it does give me stroke counts and whatnot. At this point I probably have close to 20 years of workout history on their Connect system.

My lifting is going really well, too. By which I mean, I've managed to avoid injury and joint issues so that I'm still making progress on all the three major lifts. I'm working my way back up to the 600 pound club.
IMG_20220602_205846__01.jpg
 

Tony Storaro

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My trainer taught me proper form in the "before times." Mine is probably not perfect, but it all starts with the legs, not the arms. Arms are more like the final crack of the whip, just the follow through after pushing with the legs.

I use a Garmin watch to record my workouts. It's terribly inaccurate for my heart rate, but it does give me stroke counts and whatnot. At this point I probably have close to 20 years of workout history on their Connect system.

My lifting is going really well, too. By which I mean, I've managed to avoid injury and joint issues so that I'm still making progress on all the three major lifts. I'm working my way back up to the 600 pound club. View attachment 170516

Careful with that deadlift-the easiest way to get carried away with the weight and screw your back. Dont ask how I know.
And always use a belt, please.
 
Thread Starter
TS
Monique

Monique

bounceswoosh
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Careful with that deadlift-the easiest way to get carried away with the weight and screw your back. Dont ask how I know.
And always use a belt, please.

Have you talked to an experienced trainer about that? Use of a belt does not actually prevent injury; with proper form and breathing, it allows you to brace your diaphragm for a modest increase in performance. Please don't rely on a belt to guard against injury caused by bad form (possibly caused in turn by a weak core).

I encourage anyone pursuing heavy lifting to find a good trainer to teach them form and to develop reliable, relatively safe programs to meet your goals. There are a lot of very aggro training programs online designed for young men using aggressive.. let's call it supplemental nutrition. My trainer spent a lot of time both teaching me proper form and developing programs that made me feel like a boss but didn't let me push myself too hard. Very much "less is more.". But once you've learned how to lift properly, you should have the know-how to avoid accidentally screwing up your back lifting a 20 pound box of books off the floor. Of course, bars are designed for lifting - anything in the real world is a little trickier because it's not as easy to grip securely. Thus my back hurts after rebuilding a flagstone wall, not generally after doing deadlifts.

You can hurt yourself doing damn near anything if you're not careful, including deadlifts and stepping off of curbs. If you ask me to give you advice from my person experience, I'd say, please be
careful with skiing; it's the easiest way to let your ego get ahead of your ability and tear your ACL, or bust your noggin. Both of which I've done, and the knee will never be as good as it was before. The noggin, well, I hope it's still as functional :)
 

socalgal

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Have you talked to an experienced trainer about that? Use of a belt does not actually prevent injury; with proper form and breathing, it allows you to brace your diaphragm for a modest increase in performance. Please don't rely on a belt to guard against injury caused by bad form (possibly caused in turn by a weak core).

I encourage anyone pursuing heavy lifting to find a good trainer to teach them form and to develop reliable, relatively safe programs to meet your goals. There are a lot of very aggro training programs online designed for young men using aggressive.. let's call it supplemental nutrition. My trainer spent a lot of time both teaching me proper form and developing programs that made me feel like a boss but didn't let me push myself too hard. Very much "less is more.". But once you've learned how to lift properly, you should have the know-how to avoid accidentally screwing up your back lifting a 20 pound box of books off the floor. Of course, bars are designed for lifting - anything in the real world is a little trickier because it's not as easy to grip securely. Thus my back hurts after rebuilding a flagstone wall, not generally after doing deadlifts.

You can hurt yourself doing damn near anything if you're not careful, including deadlifts and stepping off of curbs. If you ask me to give you advice from my person experience, I'd say, please be
careful with skiing; it's the easiest way to let your ego get ahead of your ability and tear your ACL, or bust your noggin. Both of which I've done, and the knee will never be as good as it was before. The noggin, well, I hope it's still as functional :)
:golfclap:
 

Tony Storaro

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Have you talked to an experienced trainer about that? Use of a belt does not actually prevent injury; with proper form and breathing, it allows you to brace your diaphragm for a modest increase in performance. Please don't rely on a belt to guard against injury caused by bad form (possibly caused in turn by a weak core).

The problem with deadlifts is that it is too damn easy to go to real big weights. At one point in the past I was lifting more than 400 and went to some crazy weights squatting.
What did that give me-absolutely nothing at all apart from injuries.
I found out that it is WAY better to row with lighter weights and more repetitions than to deadlift. And also I found it is best to leave the squats as the last exercise after leg press and extensions so that the quads are already tired and hence-the weights are kept in check.

And then I discovered road cycling and decided I do not want to lift weights anymore.:roflmao::roflmao:
 

François Pugh

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Living room from the "IDGAF" school of interior decorating.
20220605_134500[1].jpg

I just started back up lifting weights, after stopping last spring due to concussion, after starting up last Feb to gain back lost weight due to diabetes, after stopping due to shoulder injury, after starting due to long enough since last shoulder injury, after stopping due to shoulder injury, after....

I leaned how to lift from a power lifter many (years) decades ago, but stopped due to wanting to concentrate on Karate. I do three sets of 10, with between 30 seconds and 1 minute between sets. When I can do three sets of 10 without too much struggling, I add weight to the bar. Interesting set of dumbbells; I added 5 lbs each time I got stronger, worked my way up to 35 lbs and was shopping for 40 lbs when I fell and separated my shoulder skiing and had to start back at 5 lbs. Now at 15 lbs, shopping for 20 lbs. Notice, last time around I was too cheap to buy 2 dumbbells, when I could just alternate hands. I will get pairs for symmetry this time. I could do 20 with the adjustable weight dumbbells, but the size makes them more awkward.

I do weights after a warm up with some physio exercises for legs and hips (recent injury) and crunches/reverse crunches/ and diagonal crunches/reverse crunches for damaged obliques (ancient injury). For now I'm just doing bench press, curls, skull-crushers, and rowing, but will add more later.

I alternate lift days with rest days. Professionals alternate leg days with upper body days, I am told.
 
Thread Starter
TS
Monique

Monique

bounceswoosh
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Joined
Nov 12, 2015
Posts
10,561
Location
Colorado
Living room from the "IDGAF" school of interior decorating.
View attachment 170663
I just started back up lifting weights, after stopping last spring due to concussion, after starting up last Feb to gain back lost weight due to diabetes, after stopping due to shoulder injury, after starting due to long enough since last shoulder injury, after stopping due to shoulder injury, after....

I leaned how to lift from a power lifter many (years) decades ago, but stopped due to wanting to concentrate on Karate. I do three sets of 10, with between 30 seconds and 1 minute between sets. When I can do three sets of 10 without too much struggling, I add weight to the bar. Interesting set of dumbbells; I added 5 lbs each time I got stronger, worked my way up to 35 lbs and was shopping for 40 lbs when I fell and separated my shoulder skiing and had to start back at 5 lbs. Now at 15 lbs, shopping for 20 lbs. Notice, last time around I was too cheap to buy 2 dumbbells, when I could just alternate hands. I will get pairs for symmetry this time. I could do 20 with the adjustable weight dumbbells, but the size makes them more awkward.

I do weights after a warm up with some physio exercises for legs and hips (recent injury) and crunches/reverse crunches/ and diagonal crunches/reverse crunches for damaged obliques (ancient injury). For now I'm just doing bench press, curls, skull-crushers, and rowing, but will add more later.

I alternate lift days with rest days. Professionals alternate leg days with upper body days, I am told.

Love your gym! DH has repeatedly pointed out how much room and height there is in the "focal point" living room. I refuse. But it does mean that the dining room has been taken over by a full gym ... Fancy custom dining table, and a horse stall mat four inches away to demarcate the gym.

I am entirely too familiar with having to stop and restart from scratch due to "stuff." The older I get, the more "stuff" seems to happen.

As for frequency of workout, there are a lot of factors. My trainer used to have me do three days of big lifts a week for three weeks, then a rest week. DH said he'd never heard of that, but he was pretty sure it was simply my trainer trying to mitigate my enthusiasm by allowing me to push hard, but enforcing downtime. For about the last year, I'd been doing two big lower body (+deadlift) days and two big upper body days, but still a rest week every fourth week. I found myself sore all the time, even through most of the rest week. This gets to "the older you get, the more recovery you need." Now I am doing alternating upper or lower body every day, but only one big exercise each day. It seems to be great for my upper body, inconclusive so far on deadlift and squat numbers. I count hikes and MTB as leg days. Paddling is sort of a low key upper body day since I mostly faff about and dangle my legs in the water.

I tried a HIIT Rowing plan yesterday. A mere twenty minutes, with more than half that spent on rest and warmup/cool down, bit dang, it wrecked me. Squat Pyramid was rough after that. Sore as hell today. Not doing that combo again!

Is that a tower speaker in the background?
 

SkiMore

Getting on the lift
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Enjoying reading this thread and it's good to hear how you are all staying strong and flexible to improve your skiing. It's a huge factor as we age. For legs, one thing important for me is to add in some single leg exercises to try to even the strength between the right and left. My right leg is stronger than the left. There are a lot of single leg exercises like Bulgarian split squats, isometric lunge and hold, lunge step ups, and Bosu stuff. They also help with single leg balance.
 

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