If I go to the gym, will I lose weight?
It all depends on what you want. You can lose weight if you don’t eat, but lose weight along with your muscles without ever achieving the shape you want. To achieve your goals, you need to build a diet and exercise routine, and monitor your sleep patterns. Many people don’t understand this when they come to the gym: they train, go away on the weekend, and start again on Monday. You need to competently rebuild your body, and not run away from the gym a month after starting training with the words “I can’t do anything!”
Conclusions after three months of training.
I believe that I trained actively. Didn't pick it up. Nevertheless, it didn’t work out to get “A Beautiful Torso in Three Months” (I have such a book), as some authors promise.
I'm happy with the result, but not very happy. I would like to see more muscle growth. Perhaps I have restrictions related to nutrition, age and the desire to maintain running shape. Most likely, if I had significantly reduced running, the result in muscle mass growth would have been higher.
Working out in the gym did me good. He has clearly become stronger and this is noticeable even in everyday life. I continue to train.
I think by summer it will be possible to structure my diet so that I have 12-13 percent fat.
How do you analyze your progress in training? I look forward to your comments.
When are the first results visible?
With proper training, you will notice very good results within a month. There is an opinion that the first results can be seen only after three months, but practice has shown that this is not so. In three months, if you follow the diet, sleep, wakefulness and training regime, you can simply change yourself beyond recognition.
Fitness training results
The word fitness does not imply the word “result” at all.
The result means “return of diligence.” Zeal means “if you were gloomy and angry, but walked”
Fitness is training “according to your well-being,” “according to your mood,” “for yourself,” “when you have time.”
American scientists have found that 95% of fitness club visitors train with a load that is insufficient for positive physiological changes.
This is fitness: enjoyable, fun, but ineffective.
Create a training program for a week for free
Is it possible to “pump up” only the butt and abs?
Requests to work separately on certain muscles come from girls every day. Remember once and for all - you need to work on all muscle groups so that progress is gradual. We can focus on what you need, but we will have to work on everything. Every second person in Krasnoyarsk walks with a hunched back due to sedentary work, and a month after classes, people who initially did not plan to specifically train their back straighten their shoulders and hear compliments. And then the questions “Do I need to train my back if I only want to pump up my butt?” does not arise - I like the result.
Strength exercises at home
Each exercise develops a certain muscle group, your task is to correctly distribute the load on all the muscles of the body, that is, you need to adhere to a certain system, a training program that will help develop muscles proportionately and make the body stronger.
For leg development
- front thigh - squats with dumbbells
- biceps berd - deadlift with dumbbells on straight legs
- quadriceps, gluteal muscles, hamstrings - lunges with dumbbells
- buttocks, muscles of the back of the thigh and quadriceps - stepping onto the platform
Developing a strong and broad back
- for the lower back muscles – deadlift with dumbbells
- for the latissimus dorsi - pull-ups on the bar with a wide grip (4x8, 3x12, 5x6, ladder)
- dumbbell row
For the development of pectoral muscles
- pectoralis major muscles - dumbbell press lying on a horizontal bench
- middle and inner edge of the pectoralis major muscle - arm raises with dumbbells lying on a bench
Exercises for developing hands at home
- mass, volume and strength of the biceps - lifting dumbbells for biceps while sitting/standing
- triceps mass and strength - reverse push-ups
- biceps and brachialis – hammer with dumbbells
- middle (peak) of the biceps - concentrated biceps curl
- inner (outer) part of the forearm - extension (flexion) of the arms at the wrists with a dumbbell (forward/reverse grip)
Triceps muscle development
- Bent-over/overhead dumbbell extension/standing dumbbell French press
- triceps/pectoralis major/front deltoids - dips
Exercises at home to develop strong and broad shoulders (deltoids)
- front and middle deltas – dumbbell press while sitting on a bench/ lifting dumbbells in front of you/ Arnold press
- rear delts - bent over dumbbell raises
- middle delts - dumbbell lateral raises/standing dumbbell raises
Exercises to develop powerful trapezius at home
- top and middle of the trapezoid - shrugs with dumbbells standing/sitting (in place of dumbbells you can use weights -16, 24, 32 kg)
Exercises to develop your calves (gastrocnemius muscle)
- muscle volumes, relief of calves - raising on toes with dumbbells in hands
Exercises to develop your abs at home
- oblique abdominal muscles - oblique crunches
- Lower Abs – Hanging Leg Raises/ Hanging Knee Raises/ Reverse Crunches
- upper abs - crunches
The above list of exercises that can be performed at home with just dumbbells must be streamlined, that is, you cannot do all the exercises at once in one day, as many beginners do out of ignorance ( you will get overtraining
Powerblock Kettlebell Push-Up
Is it possible to go to the gym and achieve results without changing your diet?
I hear questions like this often. Many people are ready to go to the gym every day, but at the same time they want to eat cake. A simple example: two cakes are 10 thousand calories. If you want to lose weight in such a “sweet” mode, you need to spend 15 thousand kcal per day - and this is simply unrealistic, since you will have to train about 10 hours a day.
No one forces you to give up sweets: once every ten days you can allow yourself a so-called cheat meal - eat any one dish. Understand, this is not a diet, not just “chicken, buckwheat or greens.” Start small: go to bed on time, drink water instead of coffee and tea, eat often, but in small portions - gradually you will get used to not eating unhealthy foods and notice the results. There is no need to suddenly change everything and perceive proper nutrition as a stigma. Introduce restrictions gradually and in two months you will completely rebuild.
Analysis results after 107 days.
107 days have passed or 3 months and 15 days. On February 19, 2020, I did the second analysis. During this time I conducted 55 training sessions in the gym. This was easily calculated by logging into your personal account on the fitness club website.
Not all workouts were purely strength training. At first, I went crazy from the abundance of exercise equipment, the presence of two gyms and a swimming pool. Sometimes I went to the gym instead of running. I tried exercise bikes and a treadmill. To be honest, I didn't like it at all. Monotonous and stuffy.
After a couple of weeks I calmed down. I did strength exercises in the gym three times a week. And I ran about three times a week.
What did I do in the hall?
At first I got used to it and looked around. I did exercises on the shoulders, back, and chest with a barbell and dumbbells. I did not separate training by muscle groups. I tried to load my whole body. I trained for pleasure and by intuition. As for the exercise equipment, I used the upper block and the bench press platform. I did pull-ups on the horizontal bar and pumped up my abs.
To be honest, I did what I wanted. But he didn’t snatch it. I always left the hall tired and happy.
At first, I literally passed out after training. A strong zhor appeared. I added oatmeal and buckwheat to my diet. Then cottage cheese and eggs. There were still a lot of vegetables and fruits.
Gradually everything returned to normal. My appetite has decreased and my extreme fatigue after the gym has gone away. He recovered well. I skipped to the next training session.
After a couple of months, I began to visit the CrossFit area more often. I trained with weights, did pull-ups and learned power-ups.
The reflection in the mirror changed, but not very noticeably. The shoulders seem to be rounded. Overall I like the torso better. But at the same time, the waist did not decrease. And I gained 1.5-2 kg in weight.
Yes, strength indicators also did not stand still. Bench press from 40 kg to 55, pull-ups from 10 to 15. Clean and jerk 24 kg weights from 1-2 to 15 times. Despite the fact that I didn’t work on the pushing technique at all. How he pushed a 24 kg weight could be seen in the periscope. Of course, these are small things for both the bench press and the clean and jerk.
But for me this is a great success. It seems to me that now I’m picking up what I didn’t do in my youth. Back then I didn’t really strive to become stronger. And now there is a desire for the opportunity to make up for lost time.
These three and a half months passed very quickly. And so I signed up again for bioimpedance measurement of body composition.
And this is what happened.
Now on the first page at the bottom there is a graph “Body Composition History”.
Added 700 grams of muscle, lost 400 grams of fat. I was pleased with this result. So it’s not in vain that I went to the gym for three months. It seems like you could build more muscle in 3 months. A beginner should gain 1-2% of their body weight in the gym (opinion of world fitness expert Alan Aragon). Those. for me 0.6-1.2 kg per month. Considering my limitations and goals, I think I have made good progress in three months. Although externally, as I already said, the changes are very minor.
What will I do next? I registered for a triathlon again – half Ironman. Start in July 2020. Therefore, now I started swimming and running more.
At the gym, I spend most of my training in the CrossFit area. There are a lot of weights, horizontal bars and a barbell. Training on simulators is not very interesting to me. The most important thing is that the gym fits tightly into my training schedule. And I can now judge from the classes in the gym and their results from my own experience.
Do I need a coach?
Undoubtedly. You don't know how muscles work. You can squat perfectly in front of a mirror, but do it incorrectly and you won’t achieve results. Apart from the coach, no one will point out your mistakes. Why do people come to the gym and leave after a month? Because they do the exercises incorrectly, waste time, but do not see results.
Not everyone has money for a trainer, but if you come to the gym, take a couple of lessons so that they at least explain the technique of performing basic exercises and write an individual program. If you have forgotten how to do an exercise, go to any trainer, don’t be shy.
About the training mode
Before lockdown, I went to the gym five times a week: four strength training sessions and one day of swimming in the pool. There was almost no cardio training in my regimen. And although strength training also actively engages the heart muscle, lung capacity developed only through swimming. That is, a minute of jumping rope put me in a pre-infarction state.
Out of fear of losing shape in self-isolation, I decided to exercise every day, but very quickly realized that it was better to rest on Sunday: I devoted it to bath procedures. So I came up with a regimen of three strength training (with dumbbells and kettlebells) and three high-intensity training (more repetitions, less rest, without much weight). At first, intensive training consisted of exercises with elastic bands, but now I have switched to classic CrossFit programs. This decision came after the installation of a simple sports complex on a suburban site, which included a horizontal bar, a ladder, a monkey bars and parallel bars.
The introduction of CrossFit training has improved not only my endurance, but also my breathing technique: now oxygen gets to the muscles faster at the right moment, and the jump rope hardly makes me lose my breath even after 500 jumps in a row.
As a result, I began to look differently: from being slightly inflated due to the water in the muscles of an athlete, I became drier and more toned. It got me thinking about what I would rather like: being strong but not very ripped, or looking toned but losing on my barbell gains. I don’t know how to check them, but I definitely understand that there are losses. For example, before I could do reverse grip pull-ups eight times, but now I can only do five. One thing is reassuring: there are no former athletes, and after a break you can restore your performance to its previous values and move on. An important condition is that when returning to the gym, be sure to reduce the load and start with at least 40% of the previous values, so as not to get injured.
Results of training in the gym
Try to compare the growth of your heart to the growth of your muscles. When it comes to natural bodybuilding, skeletal muscles grow as slowly as myocardium.
If you do everything right, your muscles will grow by 50-60% in 3 years.
For a man my age, the normal amount of muscle in his body is from 40 to 50%. For me it's about 30 kg. In three years of training you can build 17 kg of muscle.
Can you imagine how different a man who has 30 kg of muscle in his body is from a man who has 47 kg?
Create a training program for a week for free
