Newbie w/ ?s about gym vs. training at home

[makedah]

I'm so glad I found this site -- I've been reading it all day. Sorry for such a long post!

I'm 29, 5'8" and 184 lbs (size 16/18). I don't know BF% (getting that done soon), but when I had it done when I was heavier, I was only borderline overweight. There could have been an error (the nurse didn't know what she was doing!), but I also strongly believe that I have more muscle mass than other women my size. My immediate goals are to gain some strength (especially in the upper body) and muscle mass and lose some body fat. I'm especially looking forward to being able to do 10 'big girl' pushups -- right now, I can't do ANY! In terms of weight, I'm just looking to become 'average' sized instead of overweight. Once I'm there, I'll reevaluate my goals. I love to lift!

I'm a compulsive eater, but I've only been overweight sice I became sedentary 5 years ago. My max weight was 206 in may 2000. I lost 20 lbs with cardio, (high volume) weights and changes in diet, but then I hit a plateau that I've been on for a year. I was alternating The Firm workout videos (they combine aerobics with weights) and running for 30 min to 1 hr or doing recumbent bike for 1 hr to 1.5 hrs. A few months ago, I started feeling overtrained and burned out and for this and other reasons, I started slacking in the workouts. Then, I had BR surgery (3/11) and was unable to workout for two months.

I did the machines and step classes at Bally's (yuck!) back in '94-96 and although I stayed pretty firm, I didn't see the results that I think I should have. I wish I knew then what I know now! After reading a lot and thinking about my own strengths and weaknesses, I've decided that higher-intensity strength training and less cardio than I've been doing would be a better option for me.

For the past two weeks, I've been training at home with a routine from Krista's weightlifting site. I'm going to be tweaking it to see what suits me (I'd love to get feedback on this.) I've lost some strength after slacking for almost a month and then recovering for two months, but here's the weight I used last time.

Three day routine

LEGS
squats 3x10 (2 12# dumbbells)
lunges 3x8 (no weight yet)
SLDL 3x10 (2 20# dumbbells)
one-legged calf raises 2x8 (how essential is this exercise for someone with naturally muscular calves?)

CHEST/SHOULDERS/TRIS
bench press 3X10 (2 12# dbs)
bent-arm delt raises 3x10 (1 set w/ 8# dbs, 2 sets w/ 10# dbs) (OHPs hurt my right rotator like the devil!!! I tried them again Thursday and regretted it all day)
dips off Reebok step 3x8 (but last time, my rotator hurt so badly, I could only do 5 with poor form!)
lying tri press 2x8 8#
ab crunches 3x10 (on floor or ball)

BACK/BIs
deadlift 3x8 (unweighted barbell - approx 30#)
one arm lat rows 3x10 10# db
robo row 3x10 unweighted barbell
bicep curls 2x10 10# db
back hyperextensions (on the floor -- will probably suspend these until breasts are less sore) 3x8


I have dumbbells (the ones I use now are 10, 15 , 20) 2 adjustable dumbbells (loaded to weigh 12# now), a barbell that needs to be replaced, and a few very light (#5, #10) plates. I'm a grad student living in grad housing and I should be moving out of here in a year or so, so not only do I not have room for big equipment, I don't want to spend a lot of money on moving it later.

I'm shopping around for gyms, but its very slim picking on this end of town. And compared to what I've read in many threads here, our local gyms are fairly pricey. The one at the top of the list now has a $200 init fee and $43/mo. I've read that I should look for the 'crappy' (as in minimalist) gyms, but I live on a yuppie side of town and the way that my city is laid out, it could take me 30-45 min. to get to a cheap gym if one indeed existed in this town -- I just plain wouldn't go, ESPECIALLY since it snows for at least half the year here. I'd love some tips on what to look for when I tour three gyms this week . I know generally what to look for (clean locker rooms, variety of free weights, etc.), but I'd love some info on the finer points. I've combed the threads with "gym membership" or "join a gym" in the titles, but they don't give tips for newbies.

I've already ranked one gym low on the short list because the receptionist couldn't (wouldn't?) give me rate info and because I'd have such restricted hours to get a tour -- the tour only lasts 15 minutes, mind you! And the website doesn't say a THING about free weights!! It just gives pics of cardio classes and the racquetball and soccer courts. Grrrrr!!!!! But I said I'd go and look anyway -- they might have a primo weight room that NOBODY USES!!!

The other option is to workout free at one of my school's gyms, but they are SO crowded, even at 6:40 a.m. -- I know because when I get there at 6:40, there's a line! And the cardio equipment always gets packed. I used to go to the biggest gym and I had to race folks to the cardio room to get one of the 3 working treadmills.

Another question: Generally speaking, when can I expect to 'outgrow' lifting without racks, benches or cages? I know I can keep buying dumbbells and plates, but mainly I'm concerned about racks/cages for squats and bench press. At some point, doing dumbbell bench presses on my Reebok step isn't just going to cut it, right? And I know there will be a point where I can squat much more than I can put on my shoulders (I was already getting there when I was still Firming.). I don't want to cheat myself out of results! I guess I'm wondering how much time I have left for working out at home with weights and no racks or benches.

 

[makedah]

The recommended rep range for most things is 8-10 or 6-10 (lots of stuff in Chest day is listed as 6-10). Put another way, I'm at the top of the rep range for almost all the exercises at this point (except those blasted dips!). This past week, I either increased weight or reps for all exercises.

What do I eat? Ahem...Er-um...well, I uh...ahem...

To put it plainly, my eating habits suck! For a while I was doing well except in times of crisis -- chicken breast, fresh tuna and salmon, ground round, lots of veggies, flaxseed daily, whole grains. But recently, in all honesty my diet has been in the toilet -- snack foods, desserts, fast food and a few veggies. Partly because of stress reasons, partly because of laziness (let's face it) and partly because I've made a drastic change...

For the past two weeks, I've been trying to become a vegetarian. I don't have ethical problems with the consumption of meat. I have problems with factory farming (animal cruelty, use of drugs, etc.) Also, for the past couple of months, I've been unable to cook chicken -- the meat I ate 90% of the time. It just grosses me out! I don't have a good base of veg recipes yet, so I've been eating crap (well that's one of the reasons...).

At any rate, I've been thinking for the past few days that I should start eating fish again - I'm lactose intolerant and just plain don't like dairy products other than hard cheese and ice cream (lucky me). I also don't really like eggs - so unless I'm going to eat them boiled all the time (omelets are OUT), I'm out of luck. So, I've been eating CRAP - perhaps also to make my transition easier? (As in: I can't have a pork chop, but boy oh boy it's open season on potato chips!) Today, I've even started considering going back to meat if I could buy from sources that I trusted. (I want the critters to have been happy until the day they got offed! I don't want 'em to know what hit 'em!) I'm considering this because I REALLY don't like beans all that much (I've tried with tofu and I just can't do it), fake meat is expensive and monotonous and my diet has actually WORSENED since I decided to go veg... Somehow, I just don't think that eating nachos bell grande (hold the meat) all the time is the right way to go!

In short, I know I've got to change what I eat...

 

[makedah]

What is more important to you as a short term goal...getting lean, or adding mass/strength? It's very dificult to do both at once.

I've read this. I've also read that beginners often lose some fat while building strength, but I don't know if "beginners" in that context only means folks who are going from sedentary to lifting. In terms of what's more important right now, I'm really torn. I'd LOVE to lose some of this excess fat, but I think I want to work on strength/mass for a while.

This raises another question for me. I hear this a lot (difficult to build muscle and lose fat at the same time) - so how do weightlifters lose fat? Do they "hold" at their current strength level why they work on losing the fat?

You are lifting way too lite to add strength or size. Women are notorious for underestimating their strength. Next time you do bicep curls, go for 20-25lbs and see what happens. If that means going to a gym, then there's the answer to that question.
You can probably squat at least a barbell (45lbs), and I bet you could even do 135 (two plates). Sounds to me like you need a challenge! Lifting heavy won't mke you "big," not getting rid of the fat on top of it will.

I'm not worried at all about getting 'big,' but I think you're right that I tend to underestimate what I can do. I worry that I won't have enough energy left to finish the workout if I go really heavy. How do you deal with that? This particular time, I wanted to start out 'easy' because I wanted to ease back into exercise after the operation. I'll push it at the next workout.

 

[lilchit]

im a newbie and a fitness dumbass to boot, so heres my two cents for what its worth. when i found this board i was fat, and i was working my ass off, and i was getting nowhere.

but these ladies really know how to manipulate their bodies. i started a clean diet with high protein and carbs from veggies instead of breads and starches along with high intensity weightlifting. (as opposed to buns of steel/tae bo and crap food) my workouts went from an hour and a half to 20 mins and i am eating twice as much, twice as often. and crap food now TASTES like crap food.

the fat seemed to just fall off in a matter of months. and there was alot of muscle under there. i was shocked. the diet thing may prove to be very worth it if you try it. and its been alot easier than i thought it would be. especially when you see results coming so fast.

you sound dedicated to this, and im sure youll do great. just trying to give you a leg up.

 

[Gladiola]

I would not be concerned with not being able to simultaneously lose bodyfat & gain muscle - it is possible to do them at the same time until you are VERY lean (16% is very lean - well, not in the world of BB competition - but on the whole).

"one-legged calf raises 2x8 (how essential is this exercise for someone with naturally muscular calves?)"

I personaly don't bother with them.
1. I have naturally big calves & don't have any particular desire to get them bigger (so my time is better spent elsewhere)
2. They get worked when I do aerobics (I'm an instructor)
3. There is no risk with not working them (Don't have to worry about an imbalance) since they're worked other ways.

"(OHPs hurt my right rotator like the devil!!! I tried them again Thursday and regretted it all day)"
Definitely look into strengthen & rehabilitating that rotater cuff so it doesn't prevent you from lifting & become a long-term problem.

"I'd love some tips on what to look for when I tour three gyms this week"
I do think what you listed was pricey for a gym. If it's more of a hassle to get to the gym, don't bother. You can do lots at home. Even though you may be able to do more at the gym - if you're not going to go (or dread the drive) then your home workouts are better than NOTHING, right??
At your school - could you look into the varsity weight room? It may be possible for you to work in there when there are no teams training there - & then you won't have to worry about crowds (it'll have more equip too!)
As for touring gyms - be sure to go at the time you will workout to see how crowded it is then.

"Another question: Generally speaking, when can I expect to 'outgrow' lifting without racks, benches or cages?"
The biggest thing that will be a problem will be bench & squat. Otherwise - if you have weights, & enough weights, then if you are overloading your muscles (working them more than you ever did before) you will get stronger. So outgrowing isn't an issue (only for those lifts where you could get squashed).

"At some point, doing dumbbell bench presses on my Reebok step isn't just going to cut it, right?"
You are at quite a disadvantage to not be able to squat heavy (I had a whole thread on what to do when you have no squat rack!) But for pec development, you're fine. Keep doing push-ups, move to decline when you're strong enough, get some tubing & run it under your step for flies & bench.

 

[makedah]

Thanks so much for the feedback! Forgive me for gushing at this point – this is the only place I can talk about this stuff!

I’ve decided to go ahead and join a gym. The gyms on campus are free, yes, but they’re hard to get to (parking is a bear!) and just too busy – even the gym that the teams use. That gym probably does have better equipment, but it closes every time there’s a sporting event because its close to the arena and stadium. Plus, at all the gyms on campus, they only have group showers! I’m not ready for that yet! What I need in a gym is good weights equipment and easily-accessed cardio machines for when its too inclimate to run outside (which is at least half of the year here). I’m not particularly interested in cardio classes, although I wouldn’t mind trying a few from time to time.

MY GYM-HUNTING ADVENTURE
That gym with the $200 init fee? I’m not even going to take the tour since I toured 3 other gyms today and the only one that had an init fee was the Y, which has no contract and that fee was only $50! I’m glad I spent some time reading here Sunday because it helped in giving me good questions to ask about the gyms I toured. I was basically looking for a gym with a decent selection of free weights and cardio equipment. I didn’t want to have to worry about getting a treadmill or being limited to 30 minutes (too much stress!). The Y ($35/mo) had a friendly staff and it wasn’t a meat market (after my years at Bally’s, I just can’t deal with that!). But their weights/cardio section was quite small - the size of my tiny apartment. They did have a squat cage, though! I was told that there was sign-up and 30-minute limits on cardio machines.

Another gym ($43/mo) was huge and nice-looking (not quite frou-frou, but nice). I drooled over the ENORMOUS cardio room – they had about 100 machines in there, including about 15 treadmills. NO sign ups, no time limits – and since elliptical trainers are the hottest thing now, treadmills are wide open! They clearly put a lot of money into cardio – they even had a separate flyer devoted to their 15 weekly spinning classes. Conversely, their free weight and weight machines were fairly old (which doesn’t make them bad, per se, but it was quite a contradiction) and they only had one squat cage for such a huge facility! The woman who took me on the tour didn’t even want to take me into the free weight room even though it was the first stop! She just pointed from the outside, barely slowing down. I had to tell her I wanted to go in. I couldn’t see the other side (a big mirrored wall almost bisects the room) of the room, so as we walked around the divider, I asked if they had a squat cage. She said “A what?” I recognized it before she did. "I never come in here," she said. To be sure, I asked the guy who was doing what looked like roman chairs (?) on it if that was the squat cage. He said “Yeah, but the Smith machine is much better for squats.” Hmm, I see. I told the woman giving me the tour that I understood that this was a controversial issue – but she didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. She seemed tickled that I knew such things. At that point I asked her what she did to workout. I think she said she did cardio classes, but I do distinctly remember that she said she “had a few ladies” that she did machines and cardio with. She’s a trainer?! If you're a trainer, it's one thing to teach women machines if that's what they want. It's quite another to have no idea what goes on in the free weight room! The low opinon of that gym that I had when I got on their website (not a word about weights) and when I called (the gym that wouldn’t tell me the rates) got even worse during that tour. And as I read (here or elsewhere) if the staff is preoccupied and less-than-helpful NOW, what will they be when they get my money? I won’t be joining there. However it’s perfect for folks who only want a place where they can do cardio.

The gym that I believe I will join appears to be the lowest-budget one (it has an older, decidedly not-flashy building and I’ve never seen ads for it). It costs $38/mo. It has a larger cardio suite than the Y, and there’s no sign-up and no time limit. Of course, it doesn’t have nearly as many cardio pieces as the above gym. But the guy giving me the tour (who turned out to be the owner/manager) said they cap membership so that they don’t have more members than they can adequately serve. The free weight area was twice as big as the machine area, and although this gym was FAR smaller than the cardio gym, it had FOUR squat racks and 3-4 bench press stations. I asked about dip stations, they had two of those plus two assisted dip machines. And get this, the only person in the free weight area was a woman and she was buff! At the end, I asked the manager what he did to workout, he said he did the free weights (a ha!) and he was a professional racquetball player, so he played in the courts a lot. The lap pool was the smallest of the three gyms, and although I didn’t give a rip about pools, I’d actually consider getting in this one because it was shallow enough that I could stand in it at any point. The gym had a couple of young people and several older people – not a meat market – at least not during the hours I’d be going. I’m thinking I’ll join this one because I felt comfortable there, the owner/manager was nice and not pushy and it seems like it’s the best facility for me to grow in my weightlifting.

As a side note, I found out that my insurance company will give me $100 every six months if I go to the gym 10 times a month (I and the gym report refrequency to the ins. co). So I could get $200 a year back off the cost of my gym membership. Pretty sweet deal!

 

[Arioch]

The free weight area was twice as big as the machine area

This is the sign of the superior facility.

it had FOUR squat racks

Gladiola, take note.

“Yeah, but the Smith machine is much better for squats.”

Never train anywhere that has this attitude.

While many campus gyms are pathetic, they are mainly for the majority of the students there who are simply living off of their parents for another four years. Many schools will have a varisty gym or two, or gyms dedicated to a particular sport (only the best have these), and with summer approaching, only a select few athletes will be using them, so there is an opportunity for you to use one if it is available.

 

[makedah]

You are lifting way too lite to add strength or size. Women are notorious for underestimating their strength.

I just wanted to say thanks for the kick in the booty! I wasn't able to work out for a week because my acid reflux laid me low (doesn't allow me to eat and I just sleep and moan all day). But today was back/biceps day and I added 20 lbs to my deads, went from 3@ 10# to 15/20/20 on my rows and went from 10# to 15# on my bicep curls. I had to drop the reps to the lowest in the range (6 instead of 8 on deads and 8 instead of 10 on the rest) and I had to take longer between sets, but that's okay. Right now I feel like a dishrag, but it's great!

 

[makedah]

Yeah, I think I've finally seen how I've been holding myself back and its a shame! So no, I don't think I'll be hanging out here for long.

About the GERD -- I've had it since about February. The doc thinks it was because of the massive quantities of ibuprofen I would take during my period. Now, I see that it's also because of stress and consumption of caffeine and extremely fatty foods (pizza!) and eating BIG meals. I'm on prescription Zantac, which I now take only as needed. So I'm going back on it for a few days until my tummy gets settled again. The problem with the meds is that it doesn't help once you have symptoms -- you have to head it off at the pass.

 

[litloak]

Hey, Neighbor! Whereabouts in WI are you? I was going to tell you about my home gym and tell you it's the way to go but it sounds like you've found a great gym! And the insurance deal sure is sweet! I'm glad you made such a great find. I hope it works well for you.