Weightlifting: Back to Basics

Thomas,
1 – interesting article! Lifting is a foreign world to me, but I’m finding it quite interesting.

2 – do you know of any good sources on bodyweight/handweight strengthening exercises/routines? I really enjoy exercising outdoors and would like to come up with a worthwhile strengthening program I could do at the park, esp if I were willing to schlep a dumbbell or two there. If I must join a gym I eventually will, I guess, but I would prefer to save the expense and enjoy the great outdoors.

The exercises I know are squats, lunges, planks and pushups. Other than that, I don’t know much! My bodyweight squat is awesome, my knee-style pushups are still really wimpy.

My level is I guess low-to-moderate … I’m not totally out of shape because I bike and hike, but a relative beginner when it comes to weight training. I’m also female … I tend to build lower-body strength decently, but have never managed to get a “critical mass” of strength in the upper body that would make those exercises build on themselves, so to speak.

Cool, thanks!! Looks like lots of good stuff there. I appreciate it because there’s so much out there it’s hard to know the good from the bad, and at the moment I can’t afford to hire anyone to teach me in person — plus I would be overwhelmed in trying to distinguish a good vs bad trainer anyway.

Thanks for the vote in favor of bodyweight stuff! I recently read Body By Science from the library after seeing it discussed all over the interwebs. I learned a few things I didn’t know about training in general, but the focus of that book is really gym-based, esp Nautilus.

Haha! My main reason is just overall strength. When I got out of shape a couple years ago overworking/undersleeping/undereating in grad school, I had all kinds of “overuse” injuries pop up, despite not really overdoing it, by normal standards (a couple full-blown tendinitis cases, and lesser muscle/connective tissue pain stuff). It was pretty awful until I found a female physical therapist who suggested that my joints were subclinically “hypermobile” and to *stop stretching right now* and start building strength, saying I would need slightly above-average strength to not unduly strain my connective tissue. Other PTs had preached stretching, which was making everything worse. That was almost a year ago! Took that long to build up my pre-grad school strength, but I think I could’ve done it a lot faster if I’d been eating unrestrictedly and abundantly, as advocated here. Once I started really, really eating a few months ago, my progress rate has virtually doubled, or so it seems subjectively. I’d been trying to eat “healthy” before, which in retrospect was maybe not enough calories/carbs to build muscle back.

Anyway, my butt’s pretty bulbous naturally (haha!) but I do need to progress the squat at this point so I think I will be adding some weight. Thanks!

Yeah, right! Perhaps once I am squatting a giant barbell or something! Power glutes.