Is this a good workout plan?

My brother could probably help you out with something simple and no-nonsense that you could do at home. He's registered here as mezzie.

I'm sure basketball, racquet ball, or something else interesting is much more workable than standing round doing sit ups all day.

Honestly, I'd add swimming in to your routine to tone yourself overall. Nothing works better for that. It's also pleasanter to sweat in the water than on land. Swim a mile a couple times a week or join a water polo team... Jmo, fwiw.

Pushups, pullups and situps, plus some cardio, are a fantastic workout all by themselves.

Pushups work the chest, shoulders and triceps, while pullups work the back, lats and biceps. They should be equally stressed for balance. If you only do pushups, with no pullups, you might develop a muscle imbalance and cause things like tendonitis.

Adding some kind of exercise for your legs is, of course, highly desirable. You can do bodyweight squats at home. I don't recommend running, due to its long-term knee-damaging tendencies. Ideally, you would do proper squats with a barbell, but not without GOOD instruction. Most health-club trainers do NOT know how to teach proper squatting.

I should also mention that "getting muscle tone" and "building muscle" are 2 distinct things.

"Toning" ones muscles actually just means losing body fat so the muscles are more visible. Altering your diet and adding cardio help with this.

"Building" muscle means making them larger so that when you lose fat, they look nicer (subjectively speaking, of course). In order to build muscle, you MUST train with progressive resistance. Staying at the same weight for weeks on end will NOT help build muscle. It will merely serve to maintain the muscle you already have built (not a bad goal for many!).

That being said, pushups are great at first, but eventually you'll have to graduate to something harder, like pushups with your feet raised. You can raise them higher and higher as the weeks pass. Another solution would be filling a backpack with books for added weight.

Pullups are similar. To increase resistance, you can hang some weight from your belt.

Situps, you can hold a weight on your chest.

PM me if you'd like any further advice

Thank you, mezzie! Very interesting. Since it's been a month and a half and I still haven't even started any kind of work out at all, unless you count drinking and smoking, I'm not doing so good with the health kick.

But I recently found out that there is a rec center that is opening in a week or so that's real cheap (I think it's about thirty bucks to join for a year), and pretty close to my apartment. I am definitely joining.

Glad to hear that

Maybe start a thread of your workouts and other activities? Might keep the motivation up!

I keep an on-line log of my workouts at another site. Sure keeps me honest.

Hey Kicky, how about doing yoga or pillates-yoga also?

Hi KC, it's great that you are starting to think about your health. I tried the health club bit for awhile…you start going regularly and then after a while it begins to become a pain to attend on a regular basis; that's why I do most of my workouts at home. I have a stationary bike and I do a cardio workout 30 minutes a day 5 or 6 times a week. I also practice with free weights, but nothing more than 15 pounds each (I just want toned muscles not huge ones.)

To start an exercise regimen you need to start out with exercises that aren't physically demanding on your body and then work your way up to the more strenuous ones. Most importantly learn some body stretching exercises or as they are commonly called "warm ups." These will help protect your body from aching all over, the day after a workout.

Purchase a book or magazine that contains the kinds of exercises that help tone the parts of the body you are interested in.

Don't exercise the same muscles everyday. The best way is to alternate days between upper body and lower body workouts.

Learn proper breathing; it is essential and makes repetitions much easier.

Try to exercise the same time everyday. Be determined and try not to procrastinate---exercise whether you want to or not. After 100 days of exercise your body will begin to crave it.

In a cardio workout, it is essential to sweat. If your body doesn't sweat, then it's not a cardio workout.

Hope these few tips help

littlek,

Yoga? I can't do that. I would get kicked out of the man club.

Actually I know niente di niente da Yoga. It just doesn't interest me for some reason.

Stick to what you know you'll do; otherwise, well, you likely won't do it...

Hey bro. In terms of free weights, what do you think of the military press? I've been trying it out, even though it's hard, but it seems to work most of the upper body and mid-back muscles I have problems with.

Pffft! Silly man.

Come on, Madonna, now known as 'Esther' does yoga. I don't think Kicky wants to go down that road.

Okie dokie. I guess you can go to a chiropracter when your backs go out.

I don't know anything about yoga except that it's not true strength training in the sense I defined above (no progressive resistance... you'll get stronger to a certain extent, but then you'll plateau and be merely maintaining). It will improve flexibility, and perhaps circulation and balance as well, though I've known people who have become hyper-flexible doing yoga, causing long-term joint damage.

Military press is a great exercise to do.

Leaving out dangerous motions like twisting and rotating, there are generally 2 options: pushing and pulling.

Pushing exercises include pushups, military press, bench press.

Pulling exercises include pullups, rows.

A balanced exercise program should have at least a pull and a push.

Next, you can think about planes of motion: horizontal vs. vertical.

Horizontal push: pushups, bench press.
Vertical push: military press.

Horizontal pull: rows.
Vertical pull: pullups.

For every push in your program, you should balance it out with a pull.

So a typical exercise program might be like one of the following:

1. Pushups, pullups

or

2. Pushups, pullups, military press, row

And of course, adding a leg (full body) motion is crucial for optimum health. Technically, squatting is a push and deadlifting a pull, though choosing one of those is generally enough, because they both hit so many muscles.

Military press primarily works: Shoulders (all 3 heads), upper chest, triceps. Furthermore, it stimulates supporting muscles such as: lats, biceps, abs, lower chest. All in all, a wonderful exercise, safer for shoulders than pushups or bench press.

Bear in mind that push-ups work only the pectorals and maybe the deltoids (shoulders) a little, and sit-ups work only the upper abdominals. You would have two or three muscles in great shape and no other muscle touched, depending on the additional sport you participated in.

Actually pushups also work the triceps quite strongly. They work the front deltoids strongly, and the other 2 heads of the shoulders minimally. Adding a vertical push will cover all the pushing muscles of the upper body. Pushups by themselves are still a fine choice for an upper-body pushing exercise if you were to choose only 1.

Sit-ups (or crunches), when done properly, work the entire abdominal wall (rectus abdominus), and to a lesser extent, the obliques (those muscles that wrap around the side of your body and are used for twisting). Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as the "upper" and "lower" abs, when referred to as distinct muscle groups. They work as a unit, so when the abs contract, the whole muscle, not just the upper or lower part of the muscle, is worked. A reason it often looks like the "lower" abs aren't being worked is simply because both men and women tend to retain fat in that area, covering them up, while the so-called "upper" abs are more visible.

As Brandon said, a workout containing only pushups and situps would be unbalanced as I described above.

I must disagree on one point. I have found that a huge number of sit-ups, whether on an incline or not, even done regularly, have no affect whatever on my lower abdomen, whereas a few leg-lifts a week produce quite a noticeable effect.