Finally Hitting the Gym!

[meekus]

Puts on muscle. Gets rid of fat.

Heavy compound exercises burn insane amounts of calories in a short period of time, and excessive muscle regeneration also burns calories, hence lifting heavy is a good way to lose fat.

And yeah, it is about quantity, not content. You can lose weight by just eating chocolate, but that will harm your body in the long run.
The basic principle of losing fat= calories in< calories out. The quality of the diet IS based on the content though.


OT:
My favourite cardio would be skipping rope. Double or triple jumps for 60 seconds make me sweat my ass out, and dem calves burn hard afterwards. When warming up for lifting - you don't need to warm up your whole body by doing running or biking - before doing, lets say, bench, just do 3-4 light sets of 8-20 reps of bench so you prepare your benching muscles for a heavier load.

Not only that, you also prepare the central nervous system for the upcoming exercise. Personally I prefer doing 5-15 minutes of cardio for a full body warm up, then a couple of warm up sets before each of the heavier excercises (bench press, squad, deadlift etc).

[Kipling]

I don't know much about Jujitsu, but most Martial Sports require short, incredibly powerful bouts of maximum exertion, consistently over a period of time. If you look at the kinds of training that these athletes do - it's predominately high intensity, short, sharp, brutal interval training over rounds to mimic the flow of a fight.

My 2p would be to ditch the half hour of cardio in favour of high intensity interval or circuit training utilising sprints or low-distance runs at max (or near to max) intensity.

while a single fight is a fairly short burst of cardio, these soon add up. we usually go with 2x3 minute rounds, which in itself is knackering - but we do an entire tournament non stop, so the only break between fights is the other fights.

In my last comp I actually entered into the sparring in was the fourth fight of the first round, got into the semis, had a 1 fight rest, had to fight again, and then had a 1-2 minute rest while the judges were swapped round, I had to do 6x3 minute rounds going all out in the space of half an hour, and the decline in my fight game was noticable after the first fight. I want to improve on this, especially if I want to move towards the cage (something i'm still contemplating if I can drop the weight class)

I was hoping to do some HIIT, but the treadmills don't seem to have a setting for it, and I'm not sure if I can make one or not, I need to speak to someone at the gym.

---------- Post added 2012-11-19 at 09:59 AM ----------

Puts on muscle. Gets rid of fat.

Heavy compound exercises burn insane amounts of calories in a short period of time, and excessive muscle regeneration also burns calories, hence lifting heavy is a good way to lose fat.

And yeah, it is about quantity, not content. You can lose weight by just eating chocolate, but that will harm your body in the long run.
The basic principle of losing fat= calories in< calories out. The quality of the diet IS based on the content though.


OT:
My favourite cardio would be skipping rope. Double or triple jumps for 60 seconds make me sweat my ass out, and dem calves burn hard afterwards. When warming up for lifting - you don't need to warm up your whole body by doing running or biking - before doing, lets say, bench, just do 3-4 light sets of 8-20 reps of bench so you prepare your benching muscles for a heavier load.

Since starting this thread I've been talking a lot to a friend of mine who is very nearly a fully trained personal trainer, and he certainly seems to know his stuff. He suggested something similar about instead of doing the low weight high reps, doing 2-3 sets of 10 reps at about 80% of my 1RM - suggesting that building muscle will burn more fat, something about more having more muscle itself burns more calories? I asked some questions that he hasn't got back to me on yet, but it confused me a bit . . .

I have been tempted to try the skipping rope, although it was never something I was good at as a kid . . . lol

[Reqq]

I was hoping to do some HIIT, but the treadmills don't seem to have a setting for it, and I'm not sure if I can make one or not, I need to speak to someone at the gym.[COLOR="red"]

Try this one for starters:

400m gentle warm up jog
...
Set Treadmill to 6% incline and to the fastest speed you can maintain for a short period of time. Do 8 "rounds" of 20secs sprinting on the treadmill with a 10second rest between each "round". The speed might have to be adjusted each round but you want to maintain as high intensity as you can each round.
---
400m gentle jog.

[Kipling]

Try this one for starters:

400m gentle warm up jog
...
Set Treadmill to 6% incline and to the fastest speed you can maintain for a short period of time. Do 8 "rounds" of 20secs sprinting on the treadmill with a 10second rest between each "round". The speed might have to be adjusted each round but you want to maintain as high intensity as you can each round.
---
400m gentle jog.

I'll make a note of that on my phone and try it out when I hit the gym tomorrow evening =) thanks!