I’ve been lifting a couple of old Dumbells for the past two weeks as well as taking supplements (Whey, Creatine, L-Gluatime, multivitimin) and I’ve already noticed a subtle change in my biceps and the rest of my arms.
I’m not following a routine right now and I really want to. My main issue though, is that I don’t have a bench right now. Today I just bought a new weight set with two dumbells and a barbell. I’ve got about 110lbs of weight total to play with though I’ll obviously only be using a fraction of that for now.
I’ve browsed countless routines but they seem to all require a bench. Is there a known routine that is sufficient enough to give me a good chest,arm,shoulder,back workout that just doesn’t require a bench.
Is it safe/okay to do bench presses by laying down on a bed, for example? or even just laying on the floor?
I suppose I can do all kinds of things like deadlifts and squats now that I have my barbell but I’d like to keep things structured in a routine so I can keep track of what I’m doing.
So far all I’ve been doing when I workout is I will go on to bb.com’s exercises database and pick all the exercises for biceps, for example, and then pick a couple out of those results and then move on to the next muscle.
I doubt this is a good way to workout but I’m kind of lost here. Can anyone steer me in the right direction.
There is a great Charles Bronson (a murderer nutter) book on working with limited equipment, which he wrote while in jail (without a gym, funnily enough). I can’t remember what it is called but search for books by him.
[quote]theBigEnglishman wrote:
There is a great Charles Bronson (a murderer nutter) book on working with limited equipment, which he wrote while in jail (without a gym, funnily enough). I can’t remember what it is called but search for books by him.[/quote]
Yes, you can substitute floor press for bench press. You can put the bar behind your head and perform a pullover to get it into position, but I personally find it more practical to do floor presses with dumbbells.
Look up some of the programs in the “performance training” section of this site, or some of the bodybuilding programs by Chad Waterbury. Many of them don’t require much equipment.
I doubt that part about only using a fraction of 110 lbs, though. Many people can deadlift more than that without training. You’ll probably need to buy more plates before you need a bench.
Solitary fitness was the one, thank you. Why don’t you just fuck the weights and do some hard sprint swimming for an hour!
The best strokes are butterfly, front crawl, hard doggy paddle(not as fun as it sounds), just lying on your back and kicking hard with your legs, at a stretch back-stroke and you can warm up with a bit of breast stroke (again not as fun as it sounds) but not the sort you see middle-aged ladies do up and down, the sort proper athletes do. A brilliant full body muscle workout (if you know or preferably have been taught how to swim properly) plus cardiovascular (lungs and heart) thrown into the bargain. Best of all it’s really cheap with little or no (if you don’t mind perhaps been arrested) equipment.
…The other option is to fucking pull your socks up and earn some money (Gym stuff is really expensive I know), perhaps for membership of a good local gym, or swimming club!