This was supposed to go at the end of my last post, but it was running a little long. Basically, here is collection of writings about fitness from around the internet which I've found either useful, thought provoking, or fun.
Warning: the blog post features two pictures of women in bikinis. It's totally relevant in context, be in case that isn't safe for your work: be warned.
I really have to start here, because I think this is possibly the best article about fitness I've ever read. The internet, by and large, seems to agree with me. I'll keep me commentary on it to a minimum. Seriously. Go read it.
It's basically an ode to the principle of "the best workout program is the one which works for you".
This one (and the next one) is for you, H. You know who you are.
…you should do heavy squats, not cardio. Let's continue along that thread some.
I guess the takeaway here is that if you're female, lifting heavy weights isn't going to suddenly make you look like an Olympic weight lifter. If you work incredibly hard you might end looking a bit more like an Olympic heptathlete though, if you catch my drift.
Why do I care? It's not entirely un self serving. I personally think that healthy is more attractive than skinny. See also: The Rise of the Hard Bodied Woman and Alice Eve in Star Trek Into Darkness.
Okay, time for a little bit of comedy. Bro Science Life is a YouTube channel featuring a series of fitness / gym related comedy videos. I find most of them utterly hilarious (but then I used to think Ask a Ninja was hilarious as well).
I think I actually agree with all of that… except for the thing about not using small plates. Slow and steady wins the race.
Lastly here's a site a friend introduced me to, and which I've come to find quite useful. Basically: plug in your gender and weight, then your weight and reps for each of the four primary barbell lifts. It then gives you a theoretical one rep max, and places you on a scale from "Untrained" to "Elite". I find it to be a fairly useful progress tracking tool. Also: I like graphs.
Written on May 21st, 2013 by Nick Johnson. Tagged with gym-rat.