Show HN: Workout.lol – a web app to easily create a workout routine

Two options:

-- Accountability Coach

-- Personal trainer

Of the 2, personal trainer is probably better if you are new to the gym (been lifting 0-2 years) because they will also help you nail technique/form so you don't get yourself injured swinging around ego lifts.

You don't have to pay a lot for this either - don't get the $120/hr folks at big 24 hour gyms, find a private gym where one trainer might be working with about 6-8 folks at any one time. They will queue up each set of exercises for you, check your form and then do the same for someone else while you are doing the bulk of the work.

The place I go to charges $45 per 90 minute session for this and it's great. I don't need to figure out my workout, track my weights/reps for progressive overload or anything. They take care of all of that. I just show up, do the work and get on with my day.

Weight lifting done properly IS stretching. Full range of motion is a big deal for hypertrophy.

Static stretching is essentially worthless, and can actually be detrimental to performance: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/Fulltext/2014/05000/The_E....

The thing to do for weight lifting is do some light warm up cardio (5-10 minutes on your favorite hamster wheel variant - elliptical, treadmill, bike) to get your core temp up, then do a few warm up sets before big compound movements to improve blood flow to the target muscles and lubricate the joints.

Before doing your working sets on bench/squat/deadlift, do a few sets at a much lower weight. Like this:

Warm-up set 1: Start with the empty bar and warm up for a few reps there.

Warm-Up Set 2: 40-50% of your first set x 5 reps (if the empty bar falls into this percentage- skip this step).

Warm-Up Set 3: 60-65% of your first set x 3-5 reps

Warm-Up Set 4: 70-80% of your first set x 3 reps

Warm-up set 5: 85-90% of your first set x 1-3 reps

Warm-Up Set 6: 90-95% of your first set x 1-3 reps

Now do your working sets.

If you aren't lifting that much weight (bench press for example) you can skip a few of these and start at say 60-65% of your working weight.

Here's one that I came up with. Little science, but it's worked wonders on me.

Simply do 5 sets of 5 reps of the following exercises in groups. Do 2-3x per week as your schedule allows. You can super set the push/pull exercise, but not the leg. Take no less than 1 minute rest between the PP supersets, or the leg sets.

1. Bench press , Row, Squat

2. Overhead press, Pull up (weighted if need be), Deadlift

3. Bicep curl, Tricep press, calves

4. Abs, core, or lower back (1x per week)

Other details

- if the workout takes longer than you have time for, you can break up the 1-4 across more days (eg lift 4 or 6 days a week with pattern of 1&3, 2&4, 1&3, 2&4 (1&3, 2&4)

- add some weight every workout, even if it's the minimum 2.5 plates, or buy 1.25 micro plates to bring to the gym - once you are unable to add weight every workout, start to try and add weight every week - Every 12 weeks take a 1 week deload where you do 3x 10 reps of the above with about 50% of what you can actually lift

If you're a "hard gainer" continue with the above and for a 12 week block try the following tactics.

1. Eat a costco rotisserie chicken each day (or equivalent calories + grams of protein in any other food)

2. Add a Liter, Half Gallon, or Gallon of milk (progressively experiment starting small), Or equivalent calories and grams of protein

If you follow the above consistently for a year or two you will be ahead of something like 95% of gym goers. You might be behind optimal, but you'll be way ahead of most people.

Leangains is a relic of time. Martin Berkharn(the guy who made it) was a VERY prolific poster on the bodybuilding.com forums around 2005-2012 or something like that. The tone of his entire brand is born out of that forum and style of communication. You had to fight for your life on there if you wanted to communicate.

I'm not excusing his tone btw just explaining.

Then this is not the site for you obviously. Why would you want a excercise suggestion app if you only want to do these tree excercises?