introductory workouts page

[CollegeApple]

hi all-

i'm a college student taking my first crack at the primal thing. i've already changed my diet A LOT since the semester started. i used to be sick all the time but haven't gotten sick once this year, even living with lots of other students in pretty close quarters, running on 5-6 hours of sleep a night, and generally maintaining an insane study/social schedule. so i'm sold!


that said, i'm finding all the fitness information between art devany's site, free the animal, and here a little overwhelming and was hoping someone could tell me how to get started at the gym (i do a fair amount of outside playing, but would like something structured to fall back on when the weather's nasty or i want to work out really intensely). i'm much more comfortable with machines so a basic machine routine would be awesome. anyone?


thanks in advance for any suggestions. new site is great!

[Grumpycakes]

Does that mean you're uncomfortable with free weights? If so, why is that? I'd recommend free weights over machines any day.


Learn and master the squat, deadlift, and the various snatches. Those are full-body exercises that are great for intense bursts. Use those to supplement regular body weight circuits and you won't need to be concerned with curling this and pressing that.

[Graeme]

Some machines are just too flawed to use,in that the body goes out of alignment during the movement.

I would stick to free weights adding chin-ups,pull ups, add in rowing or cycling on a stationary bike.

[Kash3600]

Personally for introductory to working out, i think the easiest way is to start out with a more experienced buddy, if they have been working out for awhile, you can learn from them, right? i've always thought any exercise is better then none, and if you start out that is great! you can begin to try new things and improove your workouts, i would advise starting out with compound movements that work alot of different muscles, this would give a beginner the most rapid gains in the shortest time i'd say, rather then using whole workouts for isolation of the muscles.

[iamcam]

So far i'm in agreement with most of these comments. Some of the lifts will be really hard to pick up w/o the help of somebody who knows what they're doing - mostly because there's a lot more than just picking up a weighted bar. But that said you could just as easily do shoulder and push presses, thrusters, and weighted squats using either a bar or dumbbells. Look them up on the web (especially youtube videos) and recruit a friend.


Bodyweight exercises are also really good because you can do so many of them just about anywhere. Mastering the squat is good advice as well - as you go you'll build the flexibility you'll need for some of your lifts.