Tons Of Energy Now! Home Gym - Need Equipment And 'how To' Guidance

[Zpol]

So I barely survived with my life. Now I'm mostly better. Muscle fatigue is completely gone! In fact my muscles feel like they want to move; it's almost weird. I'm no longer experiencing DOMS from long walks, heavy cleaning, or light yoga. No longer experiencing nausea and heartburn from exertion so I think I want to add in some weight lifting/strength training. I've read this type of exercise can help further balance hormones and metabolism if done safely. RP has mentioned the benefits of having a reasonable amount of muscle mass. My muscles feel (and look) like they have all atrophied due to my extended illness.

Is there a home gym set-up that can reduce the stress of the eccentric movement?

Is there a strength training book or video series that RP would approve of?

I'm thinking low rep / high weight would be best, no more than 15-20 mins per day (including rest between sets) 3x per week, intermixed with some low level yoga (not the hardcore stuff).

Currently I do 30 to 50 mins of walking at about 3 mph, 4 or 5 days a week, which I will continue to do because I enjoy it. Also hatha yoga occasionally.

Will need to start very slowly with weight training.
I can't make it to a gym to work with a professional due to time constraints.

I'm female BTW if that matters.

Anyone have some tips or suggestions?

I'm prepared to make an investment, possibly a Bowflex or other set-up.

 

[YourUniverse]

Olympic lifts are basically purely concentric and strengthen the muscles most commonly weakened by modern life (back, glutes, shoulders). You can easily implement their use with kettlebells. Pavel Tsatsouline is a great resource for this type of training.

Hill sprints or sled pushes are great ways to concentrically load the lower body.

Medicine balls can be a great concentric addition if you have a wall to throw them against. They can work the chest or shoulders concentrically when thrown forward or upward. They can work the abdominals concentrically when thrown using a twist.

 

[Zpol]

Olympic lifts are basically purely concentric and strengthen the muscles most commonly weakened by modern life (back, glutes, shoulders). You can easily implement their use with kettlebells. Pavel Tsatsouline is a great resource for this type of training.

Hill sprints or sled pushes are great ways to concentrically load the lower body.

Medicine balls can be a great concentric addition if you have a wall to throw them against. They can work the chest or shoulders concentrically when thrown forward or upward. They can work the abdominals concentrically when thrown using a twist.

Thanks! I hadn't thought about those things.

 

[x72]

hi there. start w/ some bodyweight only stuff in the meantime.

push ups
squats
lunges etc

then progress to the weights.

power rack is the best way to go if you have the space

 

[danishispsychic]

I like the Water Rower.

 

[Teres]

Out of the two olympic weightlifting movements done at competition only the snatch can be purely concentric. During preparation many movements are implemented, some entirely concentric (various pulls & release from floor or boxes), but eccentric work can be tricky to avoid.
If the olympic lifts are of interest, the set up should be..anywhere one can affort to drop weights on the floor without causing damage. Also, the olympic lifts are complex movements and one should play with them quite lightly if not under supervision. Not to scare anybody off. I don't know a person, man or woman, who does them and doesn't look and feel good.

@Zpol I just did a search in google to see what Bowflex is, and I saw..if I saw what you have your eyes at. It's entirely up to you, but if you have made up your mind to buy equipment, I did not see anything you can do with such home gym that would not be possible with some squat/power rack designs, except some rotational work with cables, which can be done with some elastic resistance bands that any sports shop has for sale. Instead of lat-pull down with a cable the home gym offers, with a squat/power rack you could do pull ups, if you want. Instead of leg extensions a home gym offers, which you can do anyway on a high enough bench and a medicine ball (or few kilograms of sand in a bag) on your upper feet, with a squat/power rack you can squat, safely on top of that if you don't make compromises with the form. You can even squat hugging a longitudinal bag with sand in it, but that's in the DIY category.

If you have a good squat/power rack with a pull up bar on it, and you get a set of gymnastic rings, and you hang them off of the pull up bar, the things you can do cannot be provided by any machinery.

 

[Mastemah]

Mostly concentric work. Pavels first Kettlebell vid is free on Amazon Prime.

Its not about avoiding all eccentric work like its poison its about not emphasizing eccentrics. Minimize them.

Jerks, snatches, swings are great.
Sprints.
Sledgehammer and tire.
Hiking.
Throws.
Easy sled/tire work.

But also moderate bodybuilding type training. All things I have asked Peat about.

If you use older Soviet training methodology, can can just practice throughout the day.

Pick a weight you can lift 8-10 times and do it 3-6 times. Rest 5-10 minutes between sets if the same lift.

this means you could do two exercises ROUGHLY alternating every 2.5 to 5 mins.

My clients do this.

Jerks and Front Squats one day
Swings/Snatches the next.

They may do a couple sets after breakfast, a few more after work a few while watching tv at night.

Train 2-7 days a week.

Other odds and ends here and there.

This kinda work allows one to accumulate a lot of total work over a day/week with less stress.

For your purposes long term
2 sets a day of each exercise 5 days a week is the same as 5 sets twice a week but easier on your body.

This method starts easy and slow but allows you over months to do more than ever with less stress.

 

[theLaw]

Good resource (they're fans of Peat as well):

NuStrength

 

[schultz]

Buy a barbell and some bumper plates.

You can do deadlifts and drop the weight each rep. That single lift is probably enough for most people, but you could add shoulder press and pushups. You could technically press the weight and drop it, but I would want a lot of space if I were going to do that personally.

 

[Homo Consumericus]

Get some bands of different strengths. They de-emphasize the eccentric, are lightweight, and don't take much space. If you have somewhere sturdy to attach to, you can use them in a similar way to cables at the gym (in addition to the many ways they can be used unattached).

 

[Runenight201]

In my opinion the best type of exercise is that which stimulates the mind on top of working the body. Practically all sports, rock climbing, dancing, exploring, etc.... are all very health promoting so long as one doesn’t push themselves past their body’s limit. Weight lifting just to weight lift ultimately became very monotonous and boring to me. There’s a feeling of strength which is nice, but ultimately it only allows one to demonstrate feats of strength. The human body is capable of so much more movement and skills, and exploring those realms has been much more generative and fulfilling. However, certain activities require a certain amount of strength, so it makes sense to strength train to eventually be able to successfully engage in activities of interest. This is the best goal of strength training in my opinion, because it serves a higher purpose, rather than just being an end in itself.

At a beginner level, tremendous strength gains can be made with simple movements, which can be accomplished by learning some calisthenics and perhaps some bands, and light weights. Patterns such as squatting, crawling, pushing, pulling, can all be done with bands, a bar, the floor, and various household objects to change the level of difficulty to that which is appropriate to the individual.

personally I wouldn’t worry about focusing only on eccentric vs concentric movements. The human body will be required to do both in every practical scenario, and only training one at the expense of the other is limiting yourself. I would instead of think of things in terms of fatigue and muscle damage. If a given training style if overly fatiguing or damaging the muscles, cut back on that type of training and do something differently. Eccentric movements are more stressful, but that shouldn’t mean to eradicate them all together, but perhaps not do a workout solely surrounding eccentric movements. I use to do push ups all the time, before realizing that they fatigued me greatly, and I felt much better working my arms by picking up random objects around my house and doing some band work.

Blood flow is also huge. Any movement will move blood to the surrounding muscles and joints to allow it to happen. Certain movements may require so much blood that it will take it away from your head and cause you to feel terrible and lightheaded. One only needs to look at YouTube fails of deadlifters passing out to see an example of that. I consistently feel best when I do light resistance training incorporating my entire body so that blood flow gets evenly distributed and my entire body is alive with energy.

light jogging should never be overlooked as well. We are at our core primal animals that use to cover vast expanses of land daily. Light jogging through strict nasal breathing stimulates the body and should warm the body up with CO2, as well as provide vibrational shocks throughout the body which will help push food through the digestive system and send blood around to all the extremities. It can start as simple as 5 minutes of light jogging, and the better and healthier one feels, can be extended up for very long periods so long as one has consistent nutrition coming in. Since light jogging is only aerobic in nature, it is not stressful, and I have found it to be very generative.

There is a true joy in moving our bodies freely and creatively, as we were designed to be capable of doing. If you watch videos of cows or horses who are locked up for the winter, and then they are given a huge patch of grassy land to run around in, they’ll begin to start jumping and leaping with such exuberance and joy that one would usually see in a child. Playing fetch with a dog is similar. The only time my dog is truly, truly happy, is when I play fetch with him or take him on walks. We are meant to be capable of and engage frequently in lots of movement!

 

[Zpol]

Awesome! Thanks for all these tips. I have a lot to learn when it comes to strength training. Glad to know the Bowflex is not necessary or even that a great of an option (they are pricey).
Basically..
-Kettlbells
-A power rack (easy to find used on eBay)
- resistance bands
- Soviet training method
- Olympic lifts and dead lifts, possibly if i get a gym membership and trainer
- get some tips and maybe a free consult with Kitty at Nustrength
- light cardio (brisk walking or jog) with nose breathing
- and of course focus on enjoyment and feeling of accomplishment

This helps so much.

 

[Pulstar]

Muscle fatigue is completely gone!

Hi Zpol, what was the most helpful in reducing this fatigue?

 

[Zpol]

Hi Zpol, what was the most helpful in reducing this fatigue?

The muscle fatigue was a symptom of a greater illness so I had to slowly heal from that illness. But I can give a basic recap of how I healed from it...
- I was already taking a combo of T3/T4 for hypothyroid, I continued that
- was already eating a RP inspired diet minus foods that directly caused allergy and intolerance symptoms and continued that
- I was not getting direct negative symptoms from well cooked starchy foods but I quit them entirely and within a couple weeks I was in significantly less gut pain and was able to up my total calories, I started eating lots of extremely ripe organic bananas and dates to replace the starchy carbs
- I started taking 30 capsules per day of amino acid supplement called Amino PRO by Impower (the only good one out there), then switched to haidut's mixture from his 'Amino Acid supplementation for people with poor digestion'. Supplementing AA's was crucial in regaining my health, my digestion was pretty wrecked an I could not eat enough or properly digest enough protein.
- overall diet wise, I kept trying to up my calories, maintaining a macro ratio of about 40 to 50% carb and 25 to 30% each protein and fat.
- started using high quality cascara every night
- I got nutrient testing done by NutraEval and some by my physician, including homocysteine which was high indicating methylation issue. Also diagnosed with too low ratio zinc to copper (iron was normal low). I carefully supplemented vitamins with the help of my doctor. I'm taking small amounts of Energin and B12, allithiamine, and Inositol. Also zinc and selenium; these two were really huge in my healing but they are dangerous to overdose so I am getting help from my doctor with these.
- I tried various types of first generation antihistamines for pancreas and gallbladder issues, Dramamine (dimenhydrinate) works the best for me without negative side effects (I tried famotidine, cyproheptadine, Benadryl, and ketotifen but the were all a no-go). I also take Zyrtec which I'm weaning off of.
- I am taking haidut's Kuinone and magnoil as well.
- I have a SPERTI vitamin D light which I stand in front of 5 mins per day. This was also crucial to my recovery.
- I focus in on my breathing several times per day, especially if I feel stressed (slow it way down and breath from the diaphragm, mouth closed, tongue touching roof of mouth, nose breathing). This is highly effective at stopping a stress response.
- also raised the head of my bed several inches, this helps with sleep
- I quit gelatin and collagen entirely and use only bone broth and/or glycine to balance muscle meat
- a few other things that probably helped; use oxobrite in every load of laundry to kill mold on clothes (mold on clothes is a big issue IMO), never hold cell phone close to face, limit proximity to all electronic devices, use battery operated alarm clock, stopped using a hair dryer, etc.

That was probably a longer answer than you expected. Hope something in there helps you. Fatigue is hard to overcome.

 

[Pulstar]

Thanks @Zpol