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right-hand-child
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20 Jun 2010, 11:40 am

ok so ive been working out and doing taekwon-do for about a year and a half now and im pretty happy with myself so far. i just need advice on my workout (captain obvoius strikes again)

so heres my basic workout (by the way as of now i only do workouts that dont involve weights, other than training velcro weights i wear, although i plan to buy some when i get some money together):

about noon a bit after i have lunch or finish school:

-one set of 30 pushups
-either 40 sit-ups or two sets of 15 crunches with about 15-20 second intervals
-wall squats for about 60-80 second (in case i got the terminology wrong, i mean holding a -squat position on a wall)
-one set of 25 pushups
-maybe one more set of 15 crunches...sometimes

so yeah i do that whilst wearing a set of 1kg weights on my arms and a set of 1.5kg weights on my legs. im kind of seeing results, my upper body, my core and my legs are all getting an ok workout. just wanted to hear your recommendations, i've heard that its dangerous to neglect working out on a particular muscle, so i was wondering if my workout is a bit imbalanced.

any advice would be apreciated, thanks

p.s.
as of now i wont have the money to get lifting weights for a while so dumbels and other kinds other than velcro weights are out of the question for the mo.



Last edited by right-hand-child on 20 Jun 2010, 12:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

mechanicalgirl39
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20 Jun 2010, 11:57 am

If you do sit-ups/crunches you should work your back muscles too, so when your abdominal muscles get stronger they won't pull your spine out of its normal posture. You can do that by doing back extensions (basically reverse sit ups, you lie facedown and arch up using your back muscles).

You also might want to work on your obliques, since you use those to get momentum when you twist your hips when punching. You can do that with a variant of a normal sit up where you come up then arc from side to side instead of just lying back down (sorry, I don't know the proper term). Windshield wipers or side planks are good too.

Good luck :)


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iniudan
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20 Jun 2010, 12:08 pm

I don't see cardio in your workout, if you got a pool around where you live I would say natation would make a very good cardio, for not only it is good for that but swimming make about all muscle work, so should fill the gap for muscle you don't focus on.

Pool access doesn't cost that much (at least around where I live, it like 75 buck and I get a full year access to all the pool of the city)

If you live close to a college or university try to see if there is public time access to their pool also (for my city the public time of those is included along the city one)



dustintorch
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20 Jun 2010, 4:33 pm

It's hard to give advice on your workout because you haven't specified what you want out of it. If you want to lose fat, then cardio is the best way. If you want to gain muscle, then doing reps with high weight is the best way. If you want to tone then what your doing is good, but I would say you need to do more. I'm a little obsessive about my gym routine, so can help but first I need to know what you're trying to do.

Let's say you want to tone up. If it were me I would:

(this is a workout without weights since you said you don't have them yet)

-30 to 40 pushups with your hands even with your shoulders and your elbows pointing outward, away from your body. Or until your muscles fail and you can't do any more.

-Same, with your hands place farther out. The farther out your hands are placed on the floor during a pushup determines which muscles you are working.

-Same again, with your hands in line with your shoulders and your elbows staying close to your sides to work triceps.

-Then I would do at least 10-15 minutes of ab work. My ab class does about 25-30 reps of sit ups and crunches in about 7 different positions. Thats about 210 crunches with small rests in between every position. Try to target your lower abs, upper abs and obliques. I would describe every position, but it would take too long. Maybe just look online for different kinds of abs exercises.

-After that I would repeat the 3 pushup exercises again to the best of my ability. If you can't do all the reps then that's ok, just try. Or if you feel like you need more then do more.

I don't know much about leg exercises because I'm a professional ballet dancer and that pretty much takes care of it for me. I don't ever work legs at the gym, just upper body. Hope I could help. BTW this is just what I WOULD do if I didn't have weights to work with. This is not my routine. My routine is at the gym with various free weights targeting specific muscles that I want to build, not tone.