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Gym Routine


olboydave

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There's one in Birmingham city centre by five ways. I've not been but a friend has and from what she said it's as you say, mostly cardio and machines with not much choice in the way of free weights.

 

Very cheap though. And the 24 hours could come in very handy for some people.

 

I'm intrigued to see what they have. According the website they've got pretty much every machine I could imagine using. Not sure about plates though....

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anyone got one of those clever wrist strap heart rate / calorie burner things?

 

im interested in one but dont want to pay more than about £30 cos im not convinced by it, just seen fitbit advertised on tv but thats £70

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  • 2 weeks later...

Went for a session at Pure Gym in North Finchley.

 

Pretty decent tbf. If you are someone that doesn't feel confident in going to a proper lifting gym then this could be a good choice. There's a mixed crowd there, decent variety of equipment and more than reasonable monthly fee.

 

What I will say though is their selection of free weights is very poor and a lot of the machines they do have just didn't give me the same pump as the free weight variations do.

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No not really.

 

Squats have actually gone up since christmas. Only deadlifts have suffered, but that's more through injury.

 

Don't get me wrong, I've stood still, I'm not adding to many lifts. But I don't feel like I've lost much strength.

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Well I'm back regularly in a gym about 3 weeks now.  But it's nowhere near as good as my old gym and obviously I'm a lot weaker after ~7 months away from any training, so the motivation is also a bit on the low side.  The gym has plenty of equipment but it all somehow seems to be the wrong equipment.  They've equal amounts of everything (machine/bench etc) but as we know, not all equipment is equal, so you end up with the good stuff being used and the not-so-good stuff empty.  Plus it's all located either side of a 25m swimming pool in the same area, which has 2 drawbacks.  The ambient temperature and humidity being one.  It's much warmer than a gym should be, and secondly the obvious smell of chlorine in the air is less than ideal for me anyway.

 

Slowly slowly catchy monkey and all that.  I'm pretending like I'm starting from scratch with the bench and the overhead, so I'm currently back at 5x5x60kg on the bench which is handy enough and the overhead at a mere 35kg plus the usual isolations.  I might give a light squat a go but I'm afraid to tweak my lower back which is why I've had to knock the deadlift on the head (which was my favourite lift :( )

 

All in all I'm happy that I'm back at it.  But it's somehow not the same as last time.

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Have you thought about learning the sumo dead lift? I mentioned before that I didn't dead lift for ages because of some lower back issues that would come back if I ever tried loaded carries or conventional dead lift. I've been doing sumo for a couple of months now and am (touch wood) pain free. In fact, if anything I feel a bit better. Obviously I've got no idea what your back issues are so it might not work for you.

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Have you thought about learning the sumo dead lift? I mentioned before that I didn't dead lift for ages because of some lower back issues that would come back if I ever tried loaded carries or conventional dead lift. I've been doing sumo for a couple of months now and am (touch wood) pain free. In fact, if anything I feel a bit better. Obviously I've got no idea what your back issues are so it might not work for you.

I haven't tried but I'll give it a looksee on youtube.  I assume it's a wider stance (see avatar :P) meaning less spinal travel.  If I could get back to doing 4 compound lifts : bench, overhead, squat, deadlift then I would be a very happy bunny indeed.

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Yep textbook stance and torso angle on the avatar :). I'd recommend Diesel SC and Joe Defranco videos on dead lift. Their tips on set-up, particularly taking the slack out of the bar, were gamechangers for me.

Do you not find that the OH press destroys your lower back? I'm not a huge fan of the movement anyway but I don't even bother trying it anymore. I build my sessions around the same compound movements as you - only switching the OH press for pull-ups (and I prefer front squatting to standard).

Edited by JB
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No not really.

 

Squats have actually gone up since christmas. Only deadlifts have suffered, but that's more through injury.

 

Don't get me wrong, I've stood still, I'm not adding to many lifts. But I don't feel like I've lost much strength.

 

What you eating Stevo? I assume a click or two would give me the answer but if you wouldn't mind saving me the hassle  :)

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Yep textbook stance and torso angle on the avatar :). I'd recommend Diesel SC and Joe Defranco videos on dead lift. Their tips on set-up, particularly taking the slack out of the bar, were gamechangers for me.

Do you not find that the OH press destroys your lower back? I'm not a huge fan of the movement anyway but I don't even bother trying it anymore. I build my sessions around the same compound movements as you - only switching the OH press for pull-ups (and I prefer front squatting to standard).

Regarding overhead. I probably put most of my concentration during that lift into pivoting my hips to get the initial lift off because if you don't do that then as you say the body almost automatically arches the lower back to achieve the same thing. So no I don't find it destroying my lower back but only because I'm very very careful to avoid it.

I'm just back from the gym now and it was a great workout. Overhead, sumo deadlift, lat pull downs and a few other isolations. I'll pair the bench with the squat on alternating days and see how I get on. Cheers :)

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Have you thought about learning the sumo dead lift? I mentioned before that I didn't dead lift for ages because of some lower back issues that would come back if I ever tried loaded carries or conventional dead lift. I've been doing sumo for a couple of months now and am (touch wood) pain free. In fact, if anything I feel a bit better. Obviously I've got no idea what your back issues are so it might not work for you.

 

You know that's not actually him in his avatar?  ;)

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