Started doing simple dumbbell exercises recently and was curious about what others are doing.
Been trying simple neck exercises too. No weights, just chintucks and isometrics.
Please do share your experience/suggestions/opinions on the it and related topics like sports, calisthenics, general physical health etc.
Do you know any exercises that are rare? Or ones that seem special to your locality?
Regarding food:
How do you meet your protein or calorie goals? How do you track it? Especially food that is local to your place.
On a tangent:
Are there cool plants that are less known or that’d be useful if more people tried growing and including them in their diets? Do mention your locality or climate of the plant.
Strength training should be kept simple (I’m a former personal trainer and a current strongman competitor).
For health 2x per week full body is plenty For strength/size/performance 3-6x (with 4x being the best for most of the time) is ideal.
Ideally compound movements (movements using multiple muscle groups) should be the foundation of your training, and should come first in a session as they are often heavier/more complex. Examples are squats/leg press, Bench/dumbbell bench/chest press, Overhead/shoulder press, deadlift/Romanian deadlift, barbell row/seated row.
If you are making your own “program”/ doing your own thing, first make sure it’s enjoyable, then make sure you either add reps(hard), sets (hard), or weight (easier at first) over time (daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever feels sustainable) only switching out movements when they aren’t progressing/hurt/are boring for similar ones (e.g. replace leg press with hack squat).
And for a rule of thumb, choose exercises such that at least once a week (usually twice is better) you are doing something from each of these categories:
If you are new, 4 tough sets (not dying, but you have to put in effort) per week in each of these categories is plenty.
Rare exercises are usually either pointless, very niche, or should be viewed as a fun movement or warm-up (like dumbbell snatches).
You can use an app like Macrofactor to track food, but honestly if you track your calories over a week using a spreadsheet that might be enough for most people. Better for most would be eat more sources of protein (meat, tofu, protein powder, etc) and track your body weight every day. If you want to be more muscular, your body weight should at least stay the same, or go up slowly overtime (maybe around 1% per month), and if you want to reduce body fat your body weight should go down no more than 1% per week. These recommendations are in the context of strength training.
Eating an abundance of plant based foods ( like fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains) is a great idea. Definitely not in the form of like meat substitutes. The bigger variety the better, there are no “super foods”. But I grow something called Cape Ground Cherries. They are a weird little fruit that grow in husks, and tast like a sweeter, more fruit like tomato (I live in a temperate zone with a shortish growing season, 130-140 days, and hot summer’s).
I think that covers everything as generally as I can.
Thanks a lot. Especially noting the effort in typing out the detailed answer.