The biggest thing I’ve shown to those I train with at planet fitness has been getting them to realize that “heavy at pf” is not the same as “heavy”.
You may think 5p on a leg press is heavy when the bar only loads 9p, but when you’ve done a nine drop dropset starting at 18p stripping 2p per each drop of 20+ reps the one bar planet fitness model of leg press will never be heavy in your eyes.
It’s the same with the dumbbells.
75s don’t seem so heavy when you’re certain you’d press the 100s should you have access, and when you’ve had access to 150s before.
Everywhere you go people think 12, or 15, maybe 20 reps is high rep. They go something when you count for them and they find out they mentally tapped at 70 something reps and are physically capable of 100+.
As long as your mental is right planet fitness is just fine, “limits” and all.
I’m committed to making the place work. I’m not choosing to sign up to lift barbells for a much higher monthly payment right now.
I’m milking pf.
I’m milking it for every ounce of gains to be had!
I’ve got a long way to go on girevoy dumbbells. I’ve yet to hit 20 pullups, and my dips are not surpassed, nor even at my dip odyssey levels.
One could aim for sets of 100 on every stack. Do you know how strong that is. Sets of 100 on every stack.
Gotta get that farm boy strength double arm curling the 75s!
You can simulate stone lifting with a bear hugged stack of plates!
You’ll even be alright catching pumps, patiently waiting to get back to a barbell, making the most of what you have, where you are, in the moment!
Planet fitness is not limited when you’re walking in thinking “I’m making better gains here than everyone at the local hardcore place!”
Every guy I know with “back problems” or a “bad back” need not suffer from anything – they all are lacking in ass development, and would feel damn skippy should they but grow a muscular ass.
I Rx hip thrusts though any glute work will do.
I don’t hear any fitness chicks complaining about back pain, and there’s a reason for it.
They’re massively developing their glute size and strength, their lower backs and hamstrings less tight due to this.
Many would feel far better physically should they hip thrust a couple times a week, and stretch by touching their toes.
Health and wellness is all incredibly simple, minimal amounts of action regularly applied is all that is required.
Take care of yourself and you’ll be good. You’ve got the time – use it right.
You end up losing more time to developed problems not having taken care of yourself, than if you simply took 20 minutes twice a week to treat bodybuilding as prehab for quality a life.
Yes, 40 minutes of correctives a week is all that’s necessary to ALWAYS be a functional human without pain.
Glutes, back, and neck primarily.
The posterior is extremely important. Guys at the gym don’t often realize this, while the girls (even if it’s in pursuit of an instagram booty) tend to.
It’s basically training to maintain great posture, correct imbalances, and relieve overly tight muscles.
For guys it most often is boiled down to “dude, train glutes” hence Rx hip thrusts.
There are some commonalities in how the biggest and strongest eat.
“You still eat massive steaks, massive amounts of them. I remember regularly running into you at the store, and you’d always be buying bag fulls of these big ass steaks.”
I got a laugh, “not as much now. Probably ¼ of my meals are stew, ¼ homemade burgers, still mooing, and I drink a lot of milk. Always have. Milk has been my truest mainstay.”
“Yeah me too, I drink a lot of milk. I eat massive amounts of eggs. Tons of eggs.”
“I’m not big on eggs, do you drink them or cook them? I have phases where I use a lot of eggs, I mostly drink them in shakes with ice cream for flavor and milk or cream to blend.”
Later that same day a buddy told me he’s at over a dozen eggs each day, and ramping it up to bulk.
No ice cream in his blender to hide the consistency of snail, just rice cakes, eggs, and turmeric.
Except him
All the biggest and strongest I know eat big. They all consume relatively high amounts of protein, and for the most part eat mixed macros.
All can, but not necessarily will, put down food. The fact I can eat over 3000 calories in a go is how I get away with intermittent fasting while staying in the mid 200s.
Muscular size is built mostly from three sources :
•lots of meat
•lots of dairy
•lots of eggs
The three are the source of nutrition. After them calories are increased with everything and anything by personal taste.
Dude I know, almost got a pro card, probably 6’3″ 330 at his peak –
I ran into him at the grocery store, and razzed him a bit on the 20+ lbs of chicken breast that were the first thing in his cart.
“Yep, they’ve always worked for me.”
•lots of meat
•lots of dairy
•lots of eggs
I tend to tell people “you don’t want to know how I eat, unless you’re trying to bulk”.
I got that down pat.
•lots of meat
•lots of dairy
•lots of eggs
Figure your way with the three.
The variation is endless.
If you’re eating 3lbs of meat (and I call 1dz eggs = 1lb meat) with a gallon of milk each day…it’s impossible to be small.
I came across some 10,000 calorie “challenge” stuff online. What a joke.
That’s four feedings on a particularly hungry day.
1900 calories of food with a quart of milk x 4.
Probably less food as I’d be drinking juice in addition to the milk.
One arm pushups aren’t difficult, the necessary strength is that of a bodyweight bench press. How to do a one arm pushup – take away an arm, move the working hand towards your center line, and twist the working side shoulder towards the planted hand on the descent. Touch floor. Reverse up.
I don’t believe in the possibility of little stork legs, puny pink flamingo legs, a pair of stilts under a big upper body.
You’re never going to get too disproportionate.
The body doesn’t like developing that way.
Athletic legs may not be large, but they’re still athletic, and will support a jacked upper body.
I’ll go periods of time not doing much lower body work, however when I’m mentally into the gym with barbell access…well I’ve been nicknamed “leg day” in the past.
I’ve always found the pyschology of where I go mentally having trained legs well to make leg training matter more than upper body to me.
And it doesn’t take much.
I’ve learned this over the years with spotty, and/or without much weight access.
Wow! I remember getting locked out of the school weight room as a senior.
How deadlifts and squats improved my wrestling, throwing, and sprinting.
One set of 20-50 overhead squats, and later in the day you understand why the ancient greeks cared so much about a man’s muscular thigh development.
A set of 30 smith machine hip thrusts, adding weight each time, and you remember that YOU train effectively everywhere.
Oh man I’ve done situps and pushups at grandma’s to not take a day off.
You don’t know how many places I’ve truly done pushups.
In the moment it’s how you make the circumstance work for you.
Do I miss barbells?
Yeah.
But right now I’m still training. I always train, and you’ll see me improvising with people standing on my back, living on burpees, pullups, and dips when I train alone, and getting back into full body even though my gym membership is in the land of Captain Upper Body Man™…planet fitness.
My impression, never having been in the military, is that in boot camp you’re rushed to eat, and so active each day that you scarf down the couple thousand calories in seconds, your body using every gram of food provided.
My impression, never having been to jail/prison, is that you’re going to get between 1500 and 3000 calories in food via your two or three squares, and many are going to be using every gram of food provided.
Both environments are primarily no equipment training environments.
The calories supplied by the government are similar in both.
Both are environments where physical transformations are talked of amongst civilians.
How?
No one has ever starved to death on 2000 calories, though for many it’s quite low.
Enough activity makes you built, even if it’s not huge, enough activity will make you built.
High volume calisthenics and low calories…I can’t see it do anything but make you lean and strong.
Prison and boot camp both are designed for transformations!
At this point I wouldn’t bother prescribing weights in the majority of cases.
I’d rather you get wicked good at calisthenics.
Every body will be built – given enough calisthenics and a semblance of eating right.
Go do 10 amraps of pushups, dips, and pullups.
Heavy squats as a requirement is just internet propaganda of powerlifting identified weaklings.
You can thrive with no equipment.
Again go do 10 amraps of pushups, dips, and pullups. Do some lunges, bw squats, or burpees, and you’ll cover legs too.
Boot camp and jail/prison force you to diet, and have you train anywhere from a minimal amount to bonkers volume.
A lot of dudes just rack up massive workout volume in jail.
I’ve heard first hand accounts :
“Yeah, before I got gym privileges I worked out in my cell every day. Twice a week I did 1000 pushups for time, it got down to about ___ minutes.”
(It was under an hour.)
Another, a dude I never expected to work out, knew lunges, and told me he picked up doing them during his stints at the county jail.
It’s nice to be a civilian.
I get to have control over what I eat, how I train.
Still, I suggest everyone use the lessons of military PT and prison workouts for their own betterment.
If you’re not going to eat clean, do so much physical activity that you use every calorie you eat.
I’ve witnessed this and experienced it.
Lengths of time going without enough food can make you into a living breathing digestion machine able to process and run on EVERYTHING.
Human garbage disposal status.
I went from 195 to 215 in ten days off of an extra bread roll at school each day, wrestling season had ended.
A buddy at 5’9″ 165, who with a pill head mom lived off of the two school meals and a pack of ramen each day for a few years exploded to a muscular 185 in basic and tech school.
You can do a lot of activity on little calories. It makes you hard.
That’s in contrast to the elliptical riders with rolls upon rolls claiming to work out and who you know don’t eat anything resembling food.
Summer 2019’s “dip odyssey” was the bomb.
Burpees are a blast.
I love pushups!
I love weighted pushups!
Handstand work is worth doing.
And pullups are too!
Eat right and be very good a calisthenics.
Calorie level by goal, with calisthenics as a given.
Quiet and unassuming he’d come into the weight room, and go straight to the seated press station, it taken he’d press out of the rack.
He wasn’t picky.
Other than his appearance being much like that of Chuck Norris, what was noteworthy was how much he pressed.
Every 3-5 days he’d press 185lbs for 3-4 sets of 5-8 reps after a brief set at 135.
He weighed 180.
Roughly a 50 year old man, once or twice a week he’d come in and press a bit over bodyweight for sets and reps.
It’s the only bodyweight military pressing I’ve witnessed in person on a gym floor.
A guy I know of similar height and weight has told me he’s got 185/190, but he was late 20s at the time, and it wasn’t for reps.
“Chuck” has him beat on p4p as far as the military press.
Now I’ll have conversations on the gym floor. I’ve learned a lot doing so.
“Chuck” told me he’d been coming to the gym two to four times a week, and pressing once or twice a week for around 30 years at that point with very little straying.
In his eyes it was completely normal to have that level of strength…as it should be.
“Chuck Norris” was a lesson in consistency.
You train long enough you’ll be strong.
“Chuck” was pressing bw for sets of 8 off of naught but pressing and preacher curls.
Do the work, any programming will work, the secret is obvious…just do it.
