WI Crippler

I've got some equipment downstairs, along with a makeshift pullup bar I made. But I need dumbells, and its too expensive to buy each size, since its usually $1 a pound. So for a pair of 5,10,15,20,25,30 sets it would cost $210. And those are the light weights. It just gets progressively worse as you go.

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"Fatigue makes cowards of us all" - Vincent T. Lombardi.

independent_thinker2002

Try garage sales.

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WI Crippler

I found some once at one garage sale last year. Unfortunantley, the set was inconsistent. There were alot of single weights, missing their pair. Somewhere, there is a creature that has a house full of unmatched socks and weight sets.

donc

Sports authority has some adjustable Dumbbells that they advertise at around $350 ,I think, iI,ve never used them, but when they came out, I believe that they were around $500 hundred dollars. The set I have is hex dumbbells, from five pounds up too seventy-five. Needless to say the heavier ones look like new, while the 20,30,40, and 50,s show signs of wear.

I also have Universal multi station machine, as will as Olympic weights, I haven’t added up the total on the weights that I have acquired over the years but I would imagine that it adds up to over a thousand pounds. The Universal Machine has two, 200 hundred pound with stacks in it.

For cardio I/we have an elliptical plus, plus a recumbent bike. When we get a backache when using all of that sxxx, there is an inversion table that stretches the spin out nicely.

I bought the Universal off of Craig list got it right, this businessman had bought it, used it about three times,decided it was faulty, turns out he had the pulleys reversed, when I got it home and put it together like the directions said, it works as smooth as a commercial machine.

WI Crippler

This isn't really about ettitquette, but what really pisses me off is when I see people using horrible technique. It doesn't bother me when its some 45 year old lady with a FUPA and alot of giggly areas. Obviously she isn't going to be doing excercises all that efficiently. Nor am I talking about the guy who cheats just a little bit on that last rep or two.

I'm talking about the guys bouncing barbells off their chest, and guys doing standing arm curls by trying to throw their back out. Basically people just flailing about trying to lift as much weight as they can, technique be damned. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have perfect technique, but I do sacrifice the amount of weight I lift, in order to try and lift it properly.

donc

I remember this one guy when I belong to Gold’s gym, he would get in the isle and almost do a bridge as he was doing barbell curls making a complete fool of himself. Finely Hap the guy that owned/ran the franchise got tired of looking at this clown, came over and said hey dude looks like your heaving a lot of Wight lets see what you can do with you back to a flat against a wall. Needless to say the fulcrum didn’t do half of his previous PR.I wonder what happened to him, seems he didn’t come in after that.







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scourge99

Technique really doesn't matter as long as you're working your muscles. Everyone's body is NOT built the same so every machine or exercise isn't going to be optimal for every person. Additionally, lifting heavy weights builds muscle extremely well. If you want to build big bulky muscles then you need to exhaust your muscles through low repetitions and you do that by lifting the heaviest weights you can till exhaustion. Whatever strains your muscles the most without damaging your ligaments and tendons is what you want to do.

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Petty Desire or Grand Ambition?

reaganburch

There's a guy at the gym that I go to that does bench press and barely lowers the bar. He bends his elbows only a few degrees then pushes it back up... He asked me one time how to get his triceps built up and I had to tell him that his bench press technique SUCKED... I was actually pretty happy that he asked, because I didn't know how long I could take watching him before saying something to him.

I only bring the bench down to just a few inches above my chest... but power benching has always helped me build mass in my triceps...

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I am the Lizard King, I can do anything!!! - Jim Morrison

donc

Your way off here IMO, technique might not matter if your in your early twenties, and the body has plenty of healing power but believe me the body has pretty good memory, and a way of remembering the abuse inflected upon it. Training to failure/ exhaustion sounds logical; think it out a bit, you want to work a muscle in the area of 60 to 80% of output, sounds simple enough. The only problem with this line of reasoning is that most people don’t know, or have they thought in their noggin(speaking for myself unfortunately)that more, surely must be better, if 60-80% is good. Soooo…out the window goes Proper form, (gotta get that last rep in), who needs the little stabilizer muscles anyway? When the stabilizer muscles get ignored, surprise, surprise, they don’t develop, and the improper form is now the way the movement is done, it becomes natural, down the road a few years the neck starts have trouble turning, the walk is crooked, because one side of the hip is aching, cant stand long without shifting the Wight too the other side because of hip problem’s. Then you have your body’s recovery system. This type of training does it no good because it overstresses it, the brain starts seeing a series of emergencies, sending the appropriate alarms out all of which is of course is ignored because of the no pain, no gain, mentality installed by years of misinformation coming from well meaning coaches, and others; eureka, repetitive stress injuries, eventual, hip replacement/knee replacement, Osteoarthritis….

scourge99

My point is that proper form is like a guideline. They are usually universally the approximate way everyone should do an exercise to maximize muscle use and minimize stress on everything else.