If you're gonna quit the race if you get a small blister or cut, the following words may not help you. I ran Tough Mudder in Big Bear in July and got a solid finish (qualified for World's Toughest Mudder with a top 5%+ finish). If you get scratched up pretty easily, you may want to consider the sleeves. Otherwise you should be fine. I think I got a few scrapes here and there, but nothing bad. Depending on where you're running the course, you should be fine with road shoes. I wouldn't go out and buy trail shoes if you don't have them. I wore road shoes for my course and was fine with them most of the time. I don't think the type of shoe matters so much when its covered in mud. As far as gloves go, the monkey bars were overexaggerated in my eyes. I had some, but felt I would have been fine without them. If your hands aren't very callused, though, I would definitely grab a pair or you may get some gnarly tears. Definitely wear a shirt, shorts, and socks that wick water if you have them. It would be no fun being 10 pounds heavier the entire race with all the water soaked in. You may want to bring a gu or two or something if you have a sealable pocket during the race. My friends took them and say they helped. I don't know if it would have, I had a regular pocket and lost mine in the mud. Ultimately, as long as you're willing to push you're gonna do great. Out of curiosity, do you have a specific time goal in mind or are you just hoping to finish? And what's your training looked like? Edit: Oh, and by the way, getting electrocuted sucks.
My best recommendation would be a mix of what Freecorps and RGGT said (I think that's who it was). Work on your diet. Before you go to get groceries for the week make a list of what you're going to get. Stick to the list. If you don't have a giant bag of snickers in your pantry you're much less likely to eat them. If you don't already do this then start making your lunch at work (or school). My lunch usually consists of steak/turkey/chicken or some combination of those with some spinach and feta cheese and a little bit of dressing. If you go to get lunch during the day you're likely going to go to Taco Bell or something of that sort and have 1000 calories before you know it. This may be stating the obvious for you but just things to keep in mind. Even if you don't want to start going to the gym right away, definitely start doing something. Even if it's just going for a half hour walk at the end of the day. I say this less for the physical benefit and more for the mental. One, although changing your diet is a major step you may feel like you're not doing enough or won't know when to start exercising if you just start with a diet change. Secondly, one of the most common reasons people will say they don't exercise/work out is because they don't have enough time. This is because they don't make time. So go make time for your future work outs. Start with ten minutes if you have to, just start doing something so that as time goes on you're just making your workouts longer rather than having to start doing them. I ran track in college and worked out an average of 6/7 days for probably six straight years between that and after I stopped. Even for me if I take a few days off I feel myself getting lazy and not wanting to go work out, so ease into it so you don't get overwhelmed, but definitely start doing something.
I started a 20-rep squat program yesterday. I oddly felt it more in my calves then quads and glutes, and the weight needs to go up a little. I'm a little scared of pushing it too much and having to bail out since I don't have a spotter. Oh well, I felt pretty energized afterwords which really has me pumped to keep going with this.
If you're going to squat, you should learn how to properly bail should the situation arise. Same with olympic lifting. If you have a squat rack, just set the pins an inch or two below the bottom of your squat. If not, you need to bail. Just drop your hips to your ankles, roll the bar out of your hands, and let the bar roll down your back to the floor. Your wrists might get a little twisted, but it's better than crashing on your face.
On Friday I had my first lower body workout since my injury and did some volume work - 4x15 squats. I was barely able to walk yesterday and my legs are still sore today, but the workout didn't bother me at all from an injury aggravation standpoint and frankly it feels like the squatting may have been beneficial to my healing. I'm very pleased.
How much can mild dehydration impact performance? I had a pretty shitty day today and the only think I can think of that would have a negative effect is that I hadn't really drunk much liquid all day before my workout.
Performance definitely decreases when you're dehydrated. As to how much your performance decreased depends on the person and their level of fitness, training, etc. For example, playing rugby we've been conditioned to perform under fatigue and mild dehydration. On the other hand, some days are just bad days. Brush it off, eat, rest, drink, and hit it hard tomorrow.
Despite eating 4 times a day, I am about 10-20 pounds underweight right now. 173, 6'2". My diet is pretty much Mediterranean. Pastas, fatty and lean meats, greens, one serving of vegetables with each meal, occasionally whole grain bread, lots of dairy. How can I put on weight without weight lifting? I have two herniated discs in my lower back, nerve damage, and scoliosis. In my neck is another herniated disc. For the past week I can't stand up straight. Over exertion wrecks my body to the point where I can't walk; muscles pull ridiculously easy. Weights absolutely wreck me, pull me over instantly, strain my body. Soooo.... can anyone work with that? I do a core regimen with my own weight and a gym ball to help stabilize my spine, as well as 100+ push-ups and 20lb low rep curls one day a week to keep my upper body in some kind of shape. Every few weeks those push-ups and curls pull my neck, and my shoulders, to where I can't lift my arms. And, yeah, I'm in chronic pain. Over eating doesn't do shit for me, not with this metabolism. I saw a picture of myself tonight and I'm starting to get worried. It's bad. I look like I have AIDS. I worked out heavily before, peaking at 205lbs. So I know it's possible. Yeah, that's half way how I injured myself to begin with. Advice still appreciated.
I decided to start running and doing cardio because I was breathing hard after climbing some stairs. I started running what I believe to be a 5k (stupid Korean-language machines), and I'm doing it in less than 30 minutes at a lazy pace. Today, I cleared 25 minutes easily. My goal is to do the 300 workout and a 5k in less than one hour and today, I did something along those lines (I will never do 50 pull-ups in a day, much less in an hour) in an hour and twenty, including a 10 minute warm up on a rowing machine. My question: what's a good 5k time to start out with? Any advice on starting out with this as an element in my workout?
I don't know if there is any "good" time. Its varies based on fitness and person to person. If you cleared 25 min, you're rocking 8 min miles or better, which is pretty good, especially if you claim you haven't been running. If you want a goal, try to clear 21:30, thats what I always shot at when I ran a bit more seriously.
Whenever possible, don't run on a treadmill. Run outside, or at least on a track. Running a 5K on a machine doesn't equal running under your own power.
I need to add deadlifts to my routine, but I've never done one. I know the ideal answer would be "talk to a trainer" but I'm cheap as shit and their hours are generally when I'm in the office (seriously 24/7 gym trainer hours are 9-4 what the hell. Oh well, its an otherwise great gym). Does anyone have a good youtube video / guide / tips to performing them well without fucking myself? I'm doing the modified starting strength that utilizes pull ups and have been just skipping the deadlifts and using BS targeted machines instead and I want to switch to doing it 'properly'
I wrote a training program for my rugby team. Most of them don't lift, so I had to do a tutorial on the major lifts. This is directly from that program. The Deadlift This exercise is the big daddy of all lifts. When you properly perform a deadlift, literally every single muscle in your body is used. Increasing your deadlift will improve every physical aspect of your game. With that said, the description of the deadlift is just a bit more in depth than the description for the rest of the exercises. To properly perform the deadlift, approach the bar with feet slightly narrower than shoulder width apart. The bar should be over the middle of your foot. Reach down and grip the bar with the hands only slightly wider than the knees. You can use a mixed grip (one hand overhand, the other underhand) if you prefer. Then, drop your hips so that your the angle of your back is approximately 45 degrees. If you're in the proper position, the knees should actually be over the bar. Meanwhile, your shoulder blades should be on the opposite side of the bar as your toes. Concentrating on the toes on one side and the shoulder blades on the other will help force the hips into the proper position and help maintain the proper back position throughout the lift. The neck should remain in a neutral position (head not down or up), as should the lumbar spine (do not round the back). When setting up and performing the deadlift, your arms and hands should simply act as hooks that attach the weight to your body. At no time should you bend at the elbow. Bending the elbows during deadlifting is the number 1 cause of torn biceps. Once into proper position, take a deep breath and hold it in your diaphragm. This helps to stabilize the lumbar spine during the initial part of the lift. Initiate the lift with the legs, hips at the same time. Make sure to keep the bar close to your shins so it travels in as close to a straight line as possible. Your weight should be on your heels for the entire lift. If the bar comes away from your shins, it will force you to go onto your toes, which will in turn force to round your back. Rounding your back means injury. Notice how the legs and hips start and finish the lift simultaneously. Pay attention to how the low back remains neutral throughout the entire lift. Also watch how the bar follows my shins up until it gets to my knees. If your shins aren't scraped up at the end of a deadlift workout, you're doing in wrong. Check List: During the setup 1. Feet slightly narrower than shoulder width apart. 2. Bar over the middle of the foot 3. Hands slightly outside the knees 4. Sink your hips and keep your back flat (flat means flat like a board, yet at an angle, not parallel to the ground) 5. Knees over the bar 6. Shoulder blades behind the bar 7. Neutral head, neutral spine 8. Elbows locked If you stop the video at 12 seconds, you can see every point on the "setup" checklist. During the lift: 1. Take a deep breath and push your diaphragm against your abdominal wall 2. Initiate the lift with the legs, hips, and back simultaneously 3. The bar should travel up the shin 4. Drive through your heels 5. Elbows locked 6. Keep your back neutral 7. Legs, hips, low back, should lock out simultaneously. When performing multiple reps on the deadlift, make sure to reset your body position for each rep. Bouncing them off the floor might help you grind out a few more reps, but you're defeating the purpose. Our goal is to develop more strength by putting more force to the ground. Not taking a half second to reset your form each rep will be detrimental to this end. Do not increase the weight until you can properly perform this exercise. Injury is inevitable if you do not maintain strict form.
I just want to emphasize what he said here. If at any time during the lift something feels wrong put the bar down and reset. Don't be like me and try to correct your form mid-lift, that's how I ended up injuring my back.
I've been having a lot of knee troubles in the past few days- I was just walking along through the city when suddenly my right knee had a ton of trouble going down stairs. Every time it would bend down to take all the weight it would hurt like a bitch. It was only in the bent position, as I could stand on my right leg with no trouble. I'm fairly certain it was just a flareup of an injury I got while hiking which was likely the culmination of a lifetime of jumping sports and mountain climbing. It just sort of...went away today. What's weird is that now in both knees, the very tip top of the fibulas feels uncomfortable, as if both LCLs were being irritated at that section. Is this a normal stress that's sustained/ can be fixed by...something? It's not painful when I poke around on either of them. I'm assuming it points to some misalignment somewhere, but I'm not sure where that might be. Any thoughts?
That sounds like either an IT band or meniscus issue. It's most likely IT band. Foam roll, stretch and work on strengthening glut med.
This has probably been asked before. But I just started back to the gym after being off a month do to a back strain then, like an old man, injuring my back in a drunken fall. All of the weight I had been pushing is generally gone. Im back on MBP and before the absence I could bench 160X12 for three sets the first week. Today I was struggling to do the same reps with 140. I had been gradually increasing 5 lbs each week to what ever rep scheme was. For only being off a month I really don't want to start from scratch. What are the general ways to get back into the groove weight wise? Do you need to just gradually build back up or is there something that can be done?
Want to get big? Then quit being such a damn pussy about your "diet" "But that's not paleo!" you might cry. "But I want to be lean and my six pack brah!" Fuck off.
That article made my arteries harden just reading it. And the guys in the comments praising it and saying the McDouble is the key to their weight gaining. Good god. I agree with the general premise of stop bitching and eat more. And chocolate milk is a not so hidden post workout secret. But that shit was overboard.