They aren’t love handles; they’re hips! I can kinda see what you’re getting at though, although I think you are being more critical of your shape than most other people would. But hey, that’s what we all do.
Forgive me for not reading through your routine before I type this, but do you have some form of wide grip pull-up in there?That’ll be one of the quickest and most effective ways of developing muscle along your upper back and arms, along with a nice variation of deadlift styles.
I think any thought of trying to loose weight (fat) at this point should be put out of your head. When you get to the gym start lifting heavy - plenty of pulls for back & biceps, pushes for chest and tri’s.
Squats & deads too for your lower body.
Keep it simple but eat to put on weight - keep that protein intake high. It’ll go on as muscle not fat and you will have a killer back and arms.
I think any thought of trying to loose weight (fat) at this point should be put out of your head. When you get to the gym start lifting heavy
Bang on advice there. Don’t go listening to any PT dickhead at the gym induction who tries to keep you away from the freeweights. The weights are your friends
You haven’t got enough fat to lose to worry about it. As a newbie, you’ll tighten up and build muscle at the same time for a short while anyway - it’s called the honeymoon period. Damn, I wish I could have those newbie gains again!
Glad you two are backing me up here, it took a while to convince Laura that weights were the way to go, the magazines have spent too long corrupting the minds of women with the high rep low weight balls…
I think she has her induction tuesday so fingers crossed she gets squatting!
[quote]leeby wrote:
Glad you two are backing me up here, it took a while to convince Laura that weights were the way to go, the magazines have spent too long corrupting the minds of women with the high rep low weight balls…
I think she has her induction tuesday so fingers crossed she gets squatting![/quote]
Damn right they have. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had a hissy fir after reading the fitness shite in my girlfriend’s mags.
By the way, Leeby, the cheap gym I couldn’t remember the name of is Fitspace, www.fitspace.co.uk. £15 a month, no contract, city centre. No idea about the equipment, but it’s got to be worth a look at.
I’m in basford at the minute, think I’ll probably end up at this one http://www.cinderhillgym.com/
think its got everything I’ll need for a while, looking at the fitspace website they don’t really mention facilities and just gloss over free weights…
let me know if you go take a look though mate, can’t really beat that price if it has the right kit.
Well in between you guys flirting I just wanted to tell you that I am aching allll over and loving it. Any other good non-weight exercises you guys know of that are really effective?
Non-weight…temporarily until you get into a gym right?
Well, elevated press ups - basically feet on a chair, then a normal press up movement. Depends whether you have any strength there though, but give it a shot.
Body-weight squats…get your ass right down to the ground on each one, slowly down then power up.
Plank…you might have to Google it, but it’ll murder your abs for you.
There are a million and one more, but Seeing as though I tend to do weight-based stuff, I’m not as familiar as I could be. Lot of decent stuff here:
Don’t mistake body weight stuff for the real thing though. Your gains will be far, far faster once you hit the gym and get moving some iron around.
Between now and the time you get to the gym you can get away with push ups, sit ups, body rows, back extensions and free squats. That’s what I get my kids to do. Once you become more advanced you will want to find harder ways of exercising. There will always be times you want exercise but there is no gym available. Pull ups, glute ham raises, pistols, elevated push ups, etc are all harder and can keep you in shape between gym visits. Everyone should be capable of giving themselves a decent workout with limited equipment so these are good exercises to learn.
I can see solid hints of delts and traps in your back shot so I really can’t accept your “no muscle” claim. Kudos for being so tough on yourself though, that attitude will pay off in the long run.
Your arms are definitely lacking at this point though. Try dips between chairs or with a bench behind you for triceps. You can also hang or tie just about anything with weight on a broomstick and curl it for biceps work. Gallon jugs are great because you can change the weight by adding water or sand. You can also use the jugs by themselves for shoulder raises, overhead presses, etc. Make sure the caps are on tight though, we wouldn’t want to see you get all soaking wet! … (OK, Yes we would. 8^)
[quote]laura-lightning wrote:
Well thanks, I’m not being tough on myself, i thought I was just being honest.
I’m still working on the non-weight work as a warm up I guess.[/quote]
Laura, how you see yourself is important and if you don’t think you were being tough on yourself then that’s good enough for me. You are self critical and are doing something about it.
Fair enough, at the moment you don’t have the muscle size or tone of Jamie or Olesya but I really think that, like many other people on this site, you have the right attitude to match them eventually. Don’t do yourself the injustice of thinking you don’t look good now though. You look great (even with one hairy arm pit). You can however look awesome (just shave both each time - I find making sure the skin is well hydrated helps the whole shaving process).
I really can’t wait to hear how you take to the iron. You are so going to enjoy it!
My God, I’m away for one day and I miss semi naked photographs (who was the lucky one who took the photo), two guys flirting and a hairy armpit!
In my opinion, you’re right, you do have a little bit of a skinny body (judging by that photo only), but those love handles as you call them, if not hips, then chances are that they’re just puppy fat that should go when you start lifting.
When you get your gym induction on tuesday, be prepared with arguments as to why you shouldn’t do 30 minutes of cardio followed by some light weight arm exercises. I know the so called trainers in my last gym used to get the women to do cardio, followed by leg machines (bad girls and good girls, extensions and curls), chest and back flyes and biceps curls. And that was it. Hopefully you won’t get an idiotic trainer, but if you do, it may help to be able to argue your point.
Don’t worry, even if the gym guy does insist I should do cardio, I’m going to ignore him. Unfortunately you have to go through the inductions at gyms for health and safety reasons, after that I’ll do what I want, which will be a lot of weights!
WEll the shitty bastards! Went along to my induction but the guy had processed my details as if I were a non-student (even though I told him I was) and it was going to cost me £16 where a student only costs £5.75!
The next available student spot is on the 7th Feb! I’m gutted. Think I will ask my friends if I can borrow some weights they aren’t going to be using for a while.
I’m looking forward to being able to compare a couple of shots.