Amateur 'guide' to fitness Diet and training equipment/ methods listed inside

[Aenima]

I decided that, since I do so much online window shopping for stuff I'd buy if I was a millionaire, that I might make some sort of 'guide' about diet, training and equipment. I'll add pieces to it as time goes by, and try to keep it as short and concise as possible.

Human muscular anatomy

The human body is an interweaving network of, among other things, muscles and tendons. These are crucial to absolutely anything you do, as even the most simple thing, such as twitching your finger, is made possible by the tendons in your hands, and jumping by the muscle tissue in your legs (and more, but I won't get into semantics)


So it follows that if you want to become fit or an athlete that you should know and understand the musculature of the human body. Learning about the muscles of the human body doesn't serve just to let you know the fancy names of certain muscles, it helps to explain the truth about the human anatomy that many people are unaware of, such as how your triceps are actually much larger than your biceps, something that every novice has learned at some point to their utter amazement. Have a look at these two links;

http://www.daviddarling.info/images/...body_front.jpg

http://www.daviddarling.info/images/..._body_back.jpg


They took up too much space to embed, but they give a fairly in depth understanding of the human musculature. Now that you have an understanding of what's where, using something like this picture here, you can learn that there are several muscle groups, essentially a collection of individual muscles mentioned together for ease of use.

http://www.thblack.com/fitness/muscle1.jpg

This link shows how certain muscles are grouped together; the illiotibial band, biceps fermoris etc are all referred to as the hamstrings; the anterior, lateral and posterior deltoids are all referred to as the shoulders/deltoids. Being able to recite the exact name of the muscle isn't necessary, but understanding what muscles are being referred to is, so make sure you've got that figured out. It isn't difficult, and chances are you already know most of them.

With that quickly written up, it's onto the next topic; diet.

Food; how it works and what to do to achieve your goals with it

Food is, quite simply, fuel for your body. Ever noticed how weak you feel on a long car journey or flight of several hours when you try to open a pack of sweets or chocolate bar? Or how, if you've been eating a lot throughout the day, you're able to push harder on the field and lift more on the bar? That's the wonders of food for you; our body uses it to as energy for the body's functions.

The energy in food is measured in calories, a term that you've no doubt heard of. The more calories, or energy, we have, the more energy our body has to recover from illness, injuries, or to repair muscle tissue broken in exercise (don't worry, that's a good thing) Each individual has their own caloric needs, which is dependent on many factors: genetics, metabolism, gender, height, weight, body composition etc, and as such the need in food varies. A 5'2 120lb girl that lives a sedentary lifestyle doesn't need the same as a 6'2 260lb boxer. If we take in more energy than our body needs per day, we build up a caloric surplus, which in time accumulates either as muscle (due to repairing muscle tissue) or fat if it isn't needed. Eating less calories than your body burns in a day means you begin to lose weight, and obviously eating the amount your body burns up keeps you at the same weight. That's why you see adverts about Special K's new 100 calorie per bowl cereal; it's essential to doing anything with your weight.

It isn't, however, the only factor. Three important nutrients we all hear about are:

• Protein. Made up of amino acids, this nutrient is necessary for repairing and building muscle, thus the market of protein supplements to bodybuilders. Found most richly in meat, but eggs and nuts are other sources of it.
• Fats- also a very important nutrient. Fats receive a lot of bad press due to their high calorie level, but are in fact crucial to being healthy as they help regulate the body's hormonal system, among other things. Nuts, fish and some oil are considered healthy fats.
• Carbohydrates- an easily used energy source favoured particularly by endurance athletes. Anything that was grown is loaded with carbs; pasta, bread, fruit, you name it, if it took soil, water and light to grow it, it has carbs. Sugar is also a carbohydrate.

For every gram of protein or carbohydrates in a food source, there are 4 calories. Every gram of fat has 9. The amount of calories in something is always determined by its macro-nutrients, as these are the real energy source that we use.

As you can imagine, diet is crucial to any physical endeavour. If the body has too little calories to hand, it can't perform as well as it could. If you don't eat enough good quality foods it'll have an effect on you. Thus, eating correctly is important, not just for changing your body, but for healthy living. To get a rough estimate of the calories you need, use the Harris Benedict equation;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris-Benedict_equation

It's not guaranteed to be correct, but it gives a good indication of what you need to maintain your body weight. Recording the weekly change in your weight is the best way to monitor progress. First thing in the morning, go to the bathroom and do your business. Once done, and with light clothes on, weigh yourself. Whatever the scales says, you need to write it down or make a mental note of it, and do it week after week. If you're looking to lose weight, a loss of about 1lb/0.5KG is what you should go for, and the same for if you're looking to gain weight. Any more and you risk either gaining too much fat in the process or being an energy deprived walking Skeletor, for weight gain and loss, respectively.

Next up, methods of training.

Comment and give feedback on this. Too brief? Learned much?

[Aenima]

Training - the bodyweight guy

A lot of people either don't have access to weights or are just looking into using their own body to train with. Luckily for them, the body itself is a versatile tool and can be used for just about everything. Unfortunately people have a misconception that bodyweight training, or BWT for short, doesn't help achieve results or is made obsolete by weights.

Go on, tell this guy that push ups and pull ups are for sissies. I'm sure he'd love to hear your opinion.

So, for the stay at home or out and about person who wants to use their body to get into shape, what can they do? Well, quite a lot of things actually.


Upper Body

1. Push ups

A very well known exercise; get in a prone position on the floor with your body supported by your outstretched arms and your feet. Your body should be in a straight line from your ankles to your head. Bending in the arms, lower yourself till your chest touches the floor and then bring yourself back up. Several variations of this pushing exercise exist, such as:

-Standard push ups
-Close grip push ups
-Wide grip push ups
-Elevated push ups
-Dips
-One handed push ups
-Handstand push ups
-Scapula push ups
-Clapping or plyometric push ups


Push ups strengthen your shoulders, chest and triceps, as well as your core as a stabiliser. They also strengthen the shoulder joint itself, especially scapula push ups.



2. Pull ups/ Chin ups (this one needs a chin up bar, obviously, but they're a sound investment)

Another well known exercise. Get under a bar and grab hold of it before pulling your body up so that your chin comes over the top of the bar.

-Inverted rows
-Overhand grip (pull ups)
-Underhand grip (chin ups)
-Palms facing one another (hammer grip chin ups)
-One handed pull/chin ups
-Muscle ups

Pull ups are hard. They're possibly the greatest test of relative upper body strength; you have to move your entire body's weight, not just some of it like on a push up. The biceps and, hell, most of the back are used with this exercise, making it a real upper-body builder. Done properly, they also help to address postural issues as well.




Core


1. The Plank

Get into the push up position, but instead of your arms being extended have your arms bent with your elbows supporting your weight and your forearms lying on the floor. And then....just stay there!

-Prone plank
-Side plank

A simple move that strengthens the abdominals, this doesn't even require any movement. Just get into position and hold it.


2. Leg raises


-Reverse crunches
-Hanging knee raises
-Hanging leg raises
-Dragon flag
-The flag

I put these in descending order of easiest to hardest. From learning how to engage your abs to crunch your hips and knees up, to doing it straight-legged on the bar, to flat out lifting yourself off of a pole so that your body is parallel with the floor, this is a good way to build up your abs.


3. Bridges
-Hip bridges
-Straight legged bridges
-Full bridges


The full bridge is that freaky move you've seen gymnasts do where they make themselves look like a coffee table, albeit an extremely arched one. This one isn't so much for your abs, but for your lower back. I can vouch for this, as it helps build strength in the lower back that makes squatting that much safer.



Lower body

1. Squats
-Wide stance parallel squats
-Close stance 'ass to grass squats'
-Jumping squats
-One legged squats AKA pistols

Quads, calves, hamstrings and glutes. Getting familiar and experienced with the bodyweight squat will not only make sure your legs aren't neglected, it prepares you for barbell squats should you ever do free weight training.


2. Jumps
-Vertical jumps
-Plyo jumps
-Broad jumps


Ever heard the phrase "White men can't jump"? To an extent, it's true; the Western lifestyle of sitting down throughout the day has completely killed our natural flexibility and power, something you'd know if you ever tried squatting. As you spend less time sitting down and start to strengthen and stretch out the muscles of your lower body your jump will increase, allowing you to one day either brag about being able to jump clear over little old people or being able to dunk.


3. Lunge jumps

Descend into a lunge and jump. While in the air, change your legs so that you land in a lunge on the opposite side. Rinse, wash, repeat. This will definitely be felt in your legs, even though it sounds very simple.


Whole body / cardio


1. Burpees

Drop down into a push up position, do a push up, jump to your feet and then jump again, drop back into a push ups position, rinse and repeat. Do these quickly and you'll get your heart pumping fast, your upper body working and your legs screaming at you.


2. Running/jogging

Pretty much a given that if you have your body to exercise with, you can run. Go for sprints or long jogs, either way it'll get your heart rate up.

Alternatively, if you want to run but don't want to go for a boring around-the-block style of run, I suggest doing suicides. If you don't know what these are, it's a simple concept. You mark 4 points in the ground in a straight line far apart from each other. We'll call them 1,2,3 and 4. You start at 1 and run to 2, touch the ground, run back to 1 and touch the ground, run to 3 and touch, back to 1 and touch, run to 4 and touch, back to 1 and touch. That would be a 'rep' or a cycle completed. And then you go again.

An example of what to aim for could be 5 metre distances between the lines. That way doing one cycle would be the equivalent of sprinting for 60 metres, and doing 26 cycles would be the equivalent of a mile. The number of points and the distance between them is totally up to you, the above is an example, but suicides are a true cardio killer, so give them a shot.





That concludes the body weight exercise section. As always, keep in mind that the body recovers the day after having trained, so continuous training isn't advised as it may interrupt your recovery. But with all the above, you have the means with which to train your upper body, your core, your lower body and your heart.

The end result of vigilant body weight training; a lean, functional body with stability.

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[Aenima]

Next up is gonna be Olympic style weightlifting and after that powerlifting style weightlifting. Feedback is appreciated as well, so if you're reading, leave a comment on what you think of it. Thanks!

[squatlover]

Appreciate the effort Aenima (shouldn't you be lifting instead?) but I think its a bit overcomplicated for twcenter users. For example: who olympic lifts here? Better to put down routines and diets that people can simply take aboard and use.

[Aenima]

Appreciate the effort Aenima (shouldn't you be lifting instead?) but I think its a bit overcomplicated for twcenter users. For example: who olympic lifts here? Better to put down routines and diets that people can simply take aboard and use.

True. To be honest I just felt like seeing how much I could get written and how helpful it was. That, and a project like this keeps me distracted from revision...