I don't get it. You want the same studio but about 12% smaller??

soens
I don't get it. You want the same studio but about 12% smaller??

sharke
I used to see this beefcake guy in the gym who was the spitting double of Mr. T. I mean freaking huuuugggge. Haven't seen him for a few months. Then today this extremely lean & ripped guy asks me if I'm finished on the squat rack. I kind of recognized him but couldn't place his face. A little later, this old guy who I talk to in the gym comes over to me and says "you know that guy you were talking to earlier? That's the huge guy who used to come in here, the one who looked like Mr. T. He lost 100lbs."
 
Turns out his doctor told him he had prediabetes and that if he didn't do something about it, he would have full blown diabetes in the space of 2 months. So from that point  he just immediately cut out everything bad in his diet and engaged in a program of intense cardio. Now he looks like a cage fighter instead of a tank. Not an inch of fat on him. It just goes to show - you see these huge muscular guys in the gym sometimes and presume that they're fighting fit, but some of them are wrecks inside. Pretty sure a lot of them are destroying their bodies with too much protein as well. 

Totally agree. Personally, I've always trained to be in the best possible shape - to make up for my lousy joints, and to simply feel good. Doing so, I never put on as much weight and muscle as I could have otherwise. I over-trained (from a body building point of view) for some time too.
 
I used to do my gym routine AND 30 minutes of cardio 5 days a week, minimum. I've eventually brought it back to 3 gym sessions with cardio warm up (Friday, Sunday, Tuesday) and 30 minutes of cardio on Saturday and Monday. With an occasional extra 30 minutes here and there. That's when I started gaining some mass.
 
One of the first thing body builders will typically advise someone like me to do in order to gain muscle is to take it down a notch on cardio. To me, that goes against common sense - what's the point in looking like the Hulk if you can't even run up a few flights of stairs or lift something more than once. I see people do that - they literally bulk up during winter and then trim it down for summer - or beach season as they call it. How unhealthy can that be... Me I want to be top shape 365 days a year. It isn't about looking good on the beach!
 
I guess it's an ego thing - lifting 500lbs can be impressive, but it's also useless. I'll always put my money on the guy who can lift 250lbs a dozen times and run for an hour. 
 
I remember our last summer in NY, there was this guy on the bus - he was wearing a white spandex shirt and he looked like he had his shirt filled with ballons. It was absolutely grotesque and the poor fellow looked like he couldn't even scratch an eyebrow or the back of his head... 
 
He looked a bit like Michelin Man, but more bloated.

From my middle forties to middle fifties I trained incessantly. I was a bronze god...well, an alabaster Demi-god...alright, a pasty white guy in pretty good shape. Then I had a serious bout of allergy troubles that kept me from working out for about six weeks. That was all it took. Today I'm back at my fighting weight. By which I mean I'm fighting my weight. And losing. And the only cardio in my life is followed by logist.

Rain
Totally agree. Personally, I've always trained to be in the best possible shape - to make up for my lousy joints, and to simply feel good. Doing so, I never put on as much weight and muscle as I could have otherwise. I over-trained (from a body building point of view) for some time too.
 
I used to do my gym routine AND 30 minutes of cardio 5 days a week, minimum. I've eventually brought it back to 3 gym sessions with cardio warm up (Friday, Sunday, Tuesday) and 30 minutes of cardio on Saturday and Monday. With an occasional extra 30 minutes here and there. That's when I started gaining some mass.
 
One of the first thing body builders will typically advise someone like me to do in order to gain muscle is to take it down a notch on cardio. To me, that goes against common sense - what's the point in looking like the Hulk if you can't even run up a few flights of stairs or lift something more than once. I see people do that - they literally bulk up during winter and then trim it down for summer - or beach season as they call it. How unhealthy can that be... Me I want to be top shape 365 days a year. It isn't about looking good on the beach!
 
I guess it's an ego thing - lifting 500lbs can be impressive, but it's also useless. I'll always put my money on the guy who can lift 250lbs a dozen times and run for an hour. 
 
I remember our last summer in NY, there was this guy on the bus - he was wearing a white spandex shirt and he looked like he had his shirt filled with ballons. It was absolutely grotesque and the poor fellow looked like he couldn't even scratch an eyebrow or the back of his head... 
 
He looked a bit like Michelin Man, but more bloated.

I've talked to a lot of the hardcore weight guys in the gym about training and it's amazing how many of the older ones have a constant battle with pain and injury from working out too hard. Especially with the bench presses - it's not only a matter of them lifting too much weight, their range of movement is too wide. There's no need to bring the weight all the way down and you're only going to end up overstretching your chest. This is especially true when you're pressing with dumbbells and you can bring your arms down below your chest. I see guys doing that all the time and it makes me cringe. I spoke to one guy who had really damaged his chest muscles overstretching like that and he said that it got to the point where he couldn't even pick his 5 year old girl up without feeling intense pain. 
 
Upright rowing is another one. Really easy to put too much stress on your wrists and elbows and end up with chronic problems of the sort that's going to make it painful to play guitar. This, along with curling too much weight, is how I ended up with tennis elbow. I already had some tendon pain from years of playing Bach on guitar and these exercises just made it worse. It can take you months and months to recover. 

Pumping weights is a young mans game. Probably when I hit 40 I will buy a sporty convertible and dye my hair and start cranking the weights but until then- it just looks tragic - like Liberace plastic surgery.
 
I'd rather be in good general shape all the time than some muscle bound freak who can close the captains of crush grippers and spends all his time at the gym.

 

backwoods
Pumping weights is a young mans game. Probably when I hit 40 I will buy a sporty convertible and dye my hair and start cranking the weights but until then- it just looks tragic - like Liberace plastic surgery.
 
I'd rather be in good general shape all the time than some muscle bound freak who can close the captains of crush grippers and spends all his time at the gym.

You get out of it what you put in it, as with everything. It's a tool. 
 
If you do it to be in good shape, that's probably just what will happen. It's a great tool which can help make up for bad joints or put on some muscle which will help you burn the fat - which isn't strictly an aesthetic concern.
 
And it's only one tool - it doesn't replace cardio, not does it exclude a solid core training.
 
Pumping weight is just that - pumping weight. You don't have to become a freak, you know? Whether you're 14, 30, or 70, a man or a woman (because I know plenty of of ladies who use weights as part of their training), it can be part of a healthy life. 
 
If one cannot conceive of using that tool for anything but some pathetic purpose, that's tragic.
 
 

Ok. You go for it rain!

I used to be in top shape when I played rugby ( beep test and weights) but when I quit I cut down on food and took up cycling/swimming (looked ridiculous for a while). Think I have it sorted now.

Good luck on your fitness quest.

The guys whose fitness is really impressive is the special service guys. In NZ we have the SAS and u have various branches where u are. If I had my time again I would have liked to give it a go. YouTube search NZ SAS for a very interesting account of how hard these guys are. Something like 60 of the armies toughest guys apply and they get whittled down to a half dozen. It's not shown in the doco but I have heard that they actually water board the candidates. Days on end with no sleep, 40kg backpack and non stop walking.

I must admit I've toned down the workouts in the last year or so. I used to alternate interval training (cardio) with weight training for 6 days of the week, and I'd push myself to the absolute limit during 40 minutes of interval training. It was a minute of frenzied 180bpm mayhem alternated with 30 second rests and a 3 minute rest after 20 minutes or so. You have to push yourself to the point where you feel like any harder and your heart will explode. The last 10 seconds of each minute feels like an eternity. It got so I had a feeling of dread on my way to the gym because I knew how intense it was going to be. And although I got pretty damn fit after a year of it, it dawned on me that I was getting sick more than I used to. I think it was something to do with my immune system being weakened by so much stress and then getting changed in a locker room full of coughing, hacking and sneezing geriatrics  I also worried about giving myself a stroke. And I also wanted to start enjoying going to the gym again. 
 
So now I'll do a shorter 30 minute cardio workout that's slightly less intense. No more of the intervals - I got sick of timing them. I still work myself to the point where I'm sweating bullets and struggling for breath, just not to the point of near-heart-exploding potential-brain-aneurysm hell. And I've cut down my time in the weights room as well. No more 2 hour sessions. I think that's working out better for me as well because fewer injuries mean fewer missed days and steadier progress. I used to get these horrible neck strains from lifting stuff over my head and I'd be in agony for days. No more of that now (although I think the buckwheat pillow I bought helped a lot too). 

About 12 years ago I was still playing Softball league in A division and playing two-man beach volleyball at a AA level (AAA is Pro).  Then I had a rotator cuff injury not long after working through back and knee issues.  That pretty much ended sports for me (even playing darts was tough for a while).  Unfortunately, although I had stopped just about all manner of exercise that was beneficial for my body, I continued to eat at the 5,600 calorie per day rate that was required when I played sports.  So, my nice six-pack turned into a pony-keg...