Weight lifting exercises

[brikis98]

thanks for the info mookow!

i'll give the deadlifts a try... they look like they'd work the whole back and legs.

i'm not sure if i agree about the situps vs. crunches thing. when i do a situp on the incline bench (where your head is towards the floor and feet are locked in up top), the first part of it involves a crunch (of the upper abs) followed by the lower abs pulling the rest of my body up. that is, it's a crunch and then some. if i turn sideways, it works the sides very nicely too. of course, for this range of motion, i can't possibly hold anything close to an 85lb dumbell, which is why my arms work quite well.

as for the T-bar, i didn't know it was called that, but i actually do use it as part of my back routine.

finally, i do work my calves, but usually only in the leg press machine. i can't do it seated because of the cramps, and i'm not a big fan of doing it standing, although i'll do that sometimes too.

i'll give the lying side laterals a try next shoulders day.

more advice is always welcome 🙂

 

[Kipper]

If you are scared of deadlifts try trap-bar deadlifts. The trap bar is that diamond-shaped bar you may have seen people sometimes use for shrugs. The technique and movement is the same thing as the deadlift you saw on the ExRX website except using the trap bar it's somewhere between a squat and a deadlift - you hit both muscle groups...and you usually don't come away with the massively scraped thighs that typically arise as a result of deadlifting.

Consider the stiff-legged deadlift as well...I personally elected to use this one because I find it hits my lower back better and since I have a weak lower back - you get the idea.

http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Glu...Maximus/BBStrBackStiffLegDeadlift.html

Edit: For back, try the uplift row and one-arm dumbbell row if you haven't done those already. Also, pullovers are helpful from what I've heard although I don't do them.

Edit2: Here's a few more you could do if they haven't been mentioned already:

Chest: Cable crossovers
Tricep: Weighted dips, putting plates on your lap and raising your legs on a second bench while you do dips on the first, close-grip benchpress, pulldowns with the rope, a straight bar, skull crush with a regular olympic bar or straight bar if you're using the EZcurl bar.
Bicep: seated dumbbell curls
Shoulders: Reverse flyes
One other thing you could do is fine-tune your form. Sometimes it's something you don't notice yourself that makes all the difference and hits your body that much harder - you're bending your back, curling your body, etc.

 

[Mookow]

Originally posted by: brikis98
thanks for the info mookow!

i'll give the deadlifts a try... they look like they'd work the whole back and legs.

i'm not sure if i agree about the situps vs. crunches thing. when i do a situp on the incline bench (where your head is towards the floor and feet are locked in up top), the first part of it involves a crunch (of the upper abs) followed by the lower abs pulling the rest of my body up. that is, it's a crunch and then some. if i turn sideways, it works the sides very nicely too. of course, for this range of motion, i can't possibly hold anything close to an 85lb dumbell, which is why my arms work quite well.

as for the T-bar, i didn't know it was called that, but i actually do use it as part of my back routine.

finally, i do work my calves, but usually only in the leg press machine. i can't do it seated because of the cramps, and i'm not a big fan of doing it standing, although i'll do that sometimes too.

i'll give the lying side laterals a try next shoulders day.

more advice is always welcome 🙂

You dont have to start out the crunches with 85lbs, obviously. You could start with 15 or 25lbs. The point is you get some nice options in terms of progressive resistance when using a DB. I like to use a weight that I can do maybe 20x for my first set, then I drop my minumum to 15x for the second set, and then for my third set I try to get as many as I can, but at least 12x. I actually started out using BB plates, but then it got to the point that 45lbs wasnt cutting it, I didnt want to use two plates, so I started fiddling around with where I held a DB until it was relatively comfortable. In my personal experience, to see any results, my ab training has to be brutal. As heavy as I can manage for 15-20 reps, and often those last couple of reps are so hard I have to choose between doing them and breathing.

If seated calf raises are giving you cramps, your soleus is probably pretty weak, as seated raises target the soleus. Try using lower weights and make sure you are getting full range of motion with strict adherence to form. Stretch between sets, too. As a last resort, you could try mixing the sets between other lifts. In other words, start your routine with a set of calf raises, go do your shoulders, do another set of calf raises, go do something else, etc.