5x5 is good enough for general ab wellness.
Yeah all compound lifts will hit your abs. Generally specific āab workoutsā are frowned upon.
Is that so? I had no idea.
To clarify, Iām looking for something that targets the ab area in addition to the 5x5. Iām not going to stop with that, just want to see if I can complement it.
Yeah thatās actually specifically whatās frowned upon. If youāre doing complex lifts right, youāre already crushing your abs. A separate ab workout that somehow doesnāt engage your other muscles would either be 1. ineffective or 2. treading on the rest time your abs need as a result of the normal lifts.
Aha, I get it.
So I should be covered with just the 5x5 huh
Supposedly!
I am a fat sloth though so what do I know from personal experience. Nothing.
Well, uh, you can do some crazy ab workouts. They all look fucking insane though.
Fun ones include: situps with your arms above your head. Situps with weight in your hands with your arms above your head. Throwing that weight to another person also doing situps for some uber macho precursor to Acro Yoga. Thereās also a lot of other things involving other things that are literally crunching or bicycling or anything that looks like a combination of situps, heavy things, and awkward positions. Canāt guarantee your safety, though!
Seriously, though, if youāre looking for core strength 5x5 is good enough. 5x5 plus a lot of crunches is great. This is the point where you just start feeling out how your body feels, tho. Or do the Bruce Lee thing and shock your abs for 6 hours a day while reading books on motivation.
If youāre looking to get cut and have six packs on six packs because you feel like you want to be as six packed as the people you want to lay then just stop drinking the beers. I can also give you my personal diet plan that you can carefully read and if you do the complete opposite you should be good to go.
On a side note, how do we bro out about this stuff without being bros? Physical health is great but my brain constantly goes to places like this and itās so right and wrong at the same time. 
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is it reasonable to do bench and overhead presses every other day, and pushups/planks/squats the other half of the time? or am i going to risk preventing damaged muscles from healing and getting stronger? i want this split to work, because one half requires me to go to the gym and the other half doesnāt, but iām worried my shoulders and back wonāt get any rest this way.
my achilles tendons didnāt develop right as a kid, and iām hoping that i can eventually get it to stretch out far enough that i can do a proper squat with my heels touching the ground. thatās been holding me back a lot. iāve got pretty good arms at this point, transplanted onto the body of a slowly melting wax candle.
Iād recommend you do those 2 days back to back and then a rest day, for a 3-day cycle, but
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I did this for a while and then quit because baby. But I am getting even fatter in the middle/more noodly on the top and that canāt stand so Iām restarting this terrible exercise regimen.
It is terrible because 1) I cannot go to a gym. 2) the home weight set I have maxes at 100 lbs for barbell and 50 lbs for dumbbell. 3) I have to work out in my basement, and I canāt stand up straight and extend my hands fully above my head.
Canāt benchpress cause whatās the point of benching 100 lbs. Canāt deadlift cause whatās the point of deadlifting 100 lbs.
Every other day, alternating A and B.
A:
100 jumping jacks
4x10ish pushups (yesterday I did 15, 12, 10, 8)
4x10 lunges 100 lbs (one set = 5 each leg)
4x30 dumbbell row (one set = 15 each arm) (I should probably just do a barbell row instead)
B:
100 jumping jacks
4x10 overhead press 100 lbs (while seated, thanks low ceiling)
4x10 squats 100 lbs (should probably do more reps)
4x10 bicep curl 100 lbs (stupid exercise but what else am I gonna put in there)
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Yeah if you want less noodley arms you should do more pushups and arm shit. Once I do a move in the fall Iām gonna start on the 100 pushup challenge. The fat middle is really just you eating too much.
Are you under 100lbs? If not you can just do pushups and get 90% of the same workout.
Yeah I mean I weigh like 260 probably a pushup is way more of a bench than a 100 lb bench.
Yeah but this is all I got. I have a bad upper body strength : height+weight ratio (thanks dad) so thatās really my limit on pushups. (The last set was 8 because it was to exhaustion. When I was doing this workout solid I could do 20, 15, 10, 10.)
Well sure no shit but when I was doing this regular I was burning more calories and had a slightly more buff upper. Slightly more upper + slightly less middle = a much better overall shape
Burning enough calories to look good is extraordinarily hard. A can of Coke is like 2 kilometers. If you eat a Big Mac you have to run for an hour. But the worst part isnāt that itās an hour running to get rid of a burger. The worst part is that you have no idea where your body will decide to remove those calories. Subtraction is determined mostly by the alignment of stars and/or usually comes from the places on your extremities (e.g. not your gut).
I have a friend who had a hard time with chest exercises. He got the most benefit from pyramiding. Ramp up your sets of pushups from stupid easy to very difficult within the span of ~5 sets. Iām guessing from your numbers you want to start aiming for will be 5, 8, 10, max, max. Tweak this so that as you do it every other or every third day (Iām guessing you know to rest) your numbers for max go up a lot. Eventually youāll be doing something like 10, 15, 20, 50, 40.
The āeasiestā thing to do is eat less or eat cleaner. Personally I think that sucks the joy out of life, but I am a person who values tickling my primal urges, so whatever.
Good luck dude. Also, uh, donāt worry too much about looking like youāre in good shape. Get buff enough to do the physically intensives things you want, slim down to wear nice clothes, and enjoy not being unhealthy. If I recall correctly youāre married. Just make sure boo is attracted to you and donāt stress too hard about whether your upper body is bigger than your lower body.
Dude I appreciate all the earnest advice but I know whatās up. This is my heavily compromised shabby fits my lifestyle workout. I know what itās good for and what it isnāt.
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this was a reply to me, right?
yeah pushups are still enough of a challenge for me and i guess they work more or less the same muscles as bench presses(ā¦? i donāt feel like googling this). i actually started doing bench presses as a way to work up to pushups, because when i started I couldnāt manage to do one. now i can do, like, ten. thatās still not great, but exponential growth is a thing with rep counts anyway.
i am somewhere between 160 and 180 lbs, i think (i havenāt checked in a long time and donāt know if i want to know), but thatās not terrible because iām 6ā3".
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oh, i was at 160 exactly today! damn. that is good, and iāve barely been dieting at all. i am sexy as hell
So Iāll see this as the health thread for a moment, not just strictly working out. Iām trying to quit smoking. As probably everyone and their grandparents know, itās the best thing you can do for your health. Iām having a really hard time. I started in February and itās really enoughā¦ Iām developing a cough and thatās where I draw the line. I just keep going back again and again for just one last cigarette. Itās terrible. Anyway. Iām posting this in hopes that itāll help me quit for good. Tell people about my goal. Supposedly that helps!
Another thing is I want to reduce my body fat. And as everybody and their grandparents begins to realize, working out doesnāt really help there. You control about 30 per cent of your caloric output but 100 per cent of the input. So what I want to try is to have a fasting day three times a week. I think Iāll find that the easiest way to control how much Iām eating. Given that I can stop stuffing my face on the fasting days and not overeat on the regular days. Today is the first fast day, actually. Wish me luck I guess??
Good luck. Tell us how it goes. Iāve been reading about intermittent fasting and I was thinking of trying it for a period.
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