looking for advise for the gym

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I'll be joining the gym again this week and would like some advise please.

Start slow, stay hydrated. Gatorade can be your friend but it has a lot of sugar and calories.

Cardio first, get the heart rate up to about 120 BPM for a while then I can move on to the weights.

Nothing too, too heavy. Just what I can lift easily for that mild tension and then move up.

See, I'm looking to burn calories and shed pounds. Anything I'm missing? Should I do any aerobics or something?

If loosing weight is your goal, you want to focus on the aerobic workouts. Like run on the treadmill as your primary workouts and do some general light lifting with high reps to tone your muscles and build some strength. Lifting will help you, but lifting alone will not shed the pounds, aerobic workouts is what will help you loose the weight. What I would do is go for a jog, or treadmill or exercise bike in the morning, it is important to be consistent with that, but listen to your body, then do your lifting everyother day or less, in the afternoon.

Also heart rate is totally dependent on you, so it is differnt for everyone. The only way HR can be used correct to mesure intensity is if you know your HR limits. You will only know this after you test yourself and get the feel for you HR limits. For me my anerobic threshold is around 175, for someone that does not work out and is unfit, there anerobic threshold could be 120, meaning you would be going to hard. Another word unless you know how to use HR, you are better off just starting out by going by how your body feels

Last edited by roadracer on 04 Apr 2009, 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I recommend 5 lb weights and the machine that does the triceps. Go easy on the knees, concentrate on the shoulders, biceps, and triceps.

My advice (for what it is worth) ...

--If you are trying to lose weight, diet is probably 80% of what you need to focus on. For example, it is much easier to not drink a 150 calorie soda than to burn off 150 calories through exercise.

--As for working out, ease into it and realize that your body needs to adapt to the new activities. For example, it is common for people to run a few times and conclude that they have problems with their knees, feet or ankles that prevent them from running regularly. Running coaches know that most of these people have pushed themselves too far, too fast and didn't let their bodies adapt to the new activity.

--No matter what you do, you need to keep trying to increase the intensity of your activity. If you walk on a treadmill for 30 minutes you will burn less calories than if you jog for 30 minutes. Jogging will burn less calories than running. Running will burn less calories than running on an incline. As you increase the intensity of any exercise (lifting heavier weights, pedaling faster, etc.) you will burn more calories and lose more weight.

--It helps to set a goal. When I was focused on getting in 20 minutes of cardio through jogging, it was a chore and I struggled to make it 1.5 miles (burning about 150 calories per workout). I didn't see much improvement. When I set a goal to run a 10k, I thought that 3 miles was a really long run and my first 10k was horrible experience. When I was training to run a half marathon, a 10k run became a common part of exercise routine (burning about 750 calories per workout).

Doing squats every week will increase your metabolism. Olympic style (full) squats are best. For cardio, keeping your heart rate at lactate 1 or less for a few hours will stimulate fat oxidation.

Moving up to heavy weights isn't as bad an idea as some people think. If you do just a couple sets of close to your max your muscles will throb for a couple of days and burn calories the whole time. Although make sure you have someone come up with a lifting schedule for you if you do that. Vary it out, some heavy some light, but if you're just starting it's probably best to start light. If you have any OCD it can be fun to watch the calories count up on a stairmaster or treadmill if it has a counter.

I'll agree with roadracer for the most part, i think you should focus on cardio if your goal is weight loss, but if you do lift weights i'd say go with fewer reps with higher weight (4 sets of 8-12 reps at a weight that will only allow you to complete those reps). the reason i say this is because you'll build more muscle, muscle burns calories, which in turn will help your weight loss. if you have more muscle you'll appear more fit, given the same amount of fat, than if you have less, so you won't have to lose quite as much fat to look as lean as you want.

I would recommend pretty much the exact opposite. your biceps, triceps, and shoulders are really small muscles, they can't burn as much energy or apply as much force as larger muscles like your quadricepts, and they're among the least important muscles for most sports for that exact reason. another aspect is the apparent increase in testosterone you get from working larger muscles. i can't comment on the validity of what i'm about to say (don't remember where i read it) but your body supposedly increases testosterone production shortly after resistance training, and this increase is greatest when you work your biggest muscles. more testosterone = more muscle + more fat loss.

i'd also suggest using mostly free weights as opposed to machines. I stay away from machines as much as possible because they don't work all the stabilizer muscles responsible for doing the movements they're emulating. while this is good for someone who needs to avoid a certain muscle because of injury, or a bodybuilder who's trying to increase the size of one specific muscle, for most fitness goals free weights are much better than machines.

now all this is going to be pretty much useless if your diet is crap. diet is the most important factor when it comes to weight loss. calorie intake has to be lower than calories burnt in order to lose any weight.

^This is totally true. Nutrition is the single most important aspect in bodybuilding. Dont eat any junk and lower your calories by 200- 500 every week until you start seeing results. Also try spreading your meals out throughout the day. Like, try to eat 5-6 small meals instead of 2-3 big ones. This will keep your metabolism going. As for the lifting, I would say focus on the main compound movements like bench press, military press, deadlifts, and squats. These exercises involve many different muscle groups and will help by burning more calories. I dont know how experienced you are. If you are just starting out, I would not recommend the above exercises until you learn the proper form, as you can seriously hurt yourself by using bad form. Getting a personal trainer wouldnt be a bad idea. But get your diet on track first of all. It will be hard, but it will definitely be worth it in the end.