I thought we had a thread already, but I can't find it. Thus, this thread.
We have quite a few lifters/fitness people here who have decades of time "under the bar." My love of fitness started when I was about 11 years old. A massive Chicago Bulls fan, and Michael Jordan fan, I was everything basketball. I wanted to know how to get as strong, fast, and jump as high as they did. I researched everything about how the Bulls trained. That turned into wanting to know how other teams, sports, athletes, bodybuilders trained.
I've been reading, researching, implementing, training people, trial and error, weightlifting, recovery, nutrition, supplements, for nearly three decades. I've had injuries I had to work through and around. I've been a part of, or experienced, quite a lot fitness/health related over these years. As I've done all this I know what works, what doesn't, what's bulls***. I've worked directly with college athletes, been around professional athletes training and have been directly educated from some of the biggest, strongest, and fastest people on the planet.
In all these years of being involved in the fitness world, it really all comes down to a very simple foundation. Do something fitness wise, be consistent, and progress at a steady pace. If you want to just be a runner, start off walking/jogging intervals. Two weeks later, walk a little less and jog a little more. Work up until you're able to jog completely. The same goes for weightlifting. Lift some weights. In a couple weeks, lift more weight, do more reps, or do it faster. That's it. It's that simple.
While it is that simple, there are always revelations. One recent revelation for me is fasted cardio. That means doing cardio on a completely empty stomach, i.e., cardio in the morning. Doing that has enabled me to strip away fat while putting on muscle, I do two-a-days now, and keeping my weight rock steady. With my cat recently passing, I've been able to workout in the morning as well as at night so I can get in cardio in the morning and weight train in the evening. I do five two a days and two single session days. Normally this would be a lot of volume/frequency, but I've been able to keep my recovery very high doing it.
With going to the gym so frequently, injury, and recovery, are of the utmost importance. I'm doing a straight up bodybuilding single body segment routine. Chest/tris one day, back/bis (include deadlift variations and lunge variations) the next, shoulders the last. Doing it this way gives four days recovery per body segment. The routine is a standard 4x15 per movement and four movements per day, plus two tris or two bis, or throwing in calve raises between upperbody sets.
My recovery has been top notch thus far. One glaring omission, by design, and by requirement, is no squatting. One, with how much cardio I'm doing, adding squats would kill my knees. It would cause recovery to be severely hampered. I have a knee issue were I'm missing bone behind the kneecap and it causes a lot of knee discomfort and a lot of MCL tenderness. If I street run too much I get flair ups. If I squat too frequently I get flair ups. So, I have to work around it. That's where lunges and lunge variations come in. I had to choose, have to deal with MCL tenderness every day, or find a way to make it all work. As of right now, I found a way.
Well, that'll kick off UnionVGF's workout/weightlifting thread. If you have any questions, feel free to ask away!