Re: My first visit to the gym, how did I do?

On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 subsize32@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi all, I'm 19 yo male. I just got back from my first visit to the gym and my whole body feels like a sack of potatoes.

A good sign!

I'm not exactly overweight, just need to get rid of small gut, and tone up. Anyways, I did the bike machine for 30 minutes, and it told me I burned 170 calories,

I believe these numbers are usually pretty inaccurate.

is that good for beginners?

If it's true, it's half a mars bar. If you're interested in losing weight, you can get the same effect as this by eating half a mars bar less instead of going to the gym.

Do you guys even have mars bars? Subtitute 'generic chocolate bar' for mars bar above if not.

Then I went on to use some of the weight machines,

Don't do that. Use free weights. Except for pulldowns and rows, machines are fine for those.

I was only able to do 2 sets of 10 lifting around 40 lbs,

Without telling us what lift that was, that's kind of not terribly informative. Although i'm afraid 40 lb qualifies as 'virtually nothing' for almost any significant lift.

I guess I'll get better as I go along.

You guess right. At the moment, you're limited far more by coordination and unfamiliarity with the lift than strength; take a high-volume approach to lifting (three sets of 15 reps, say) for a month or so, and you'll find that you get much better at it. Then switch to a medium-volume approach (2 x 10) to develop your strength.

Also, for cardio which is the best and most effective to use? the bike, treadmill, stairsmaster, etc?

Whatever you're most comfortable doing - the more comfortable you are with the motion, the faster and longer you can do it. I would say a bike, rowing machine or elliptical crosstrainer is better than a treadmill, though, since the latter can be a bit hard on the knees. Playing squash is also good cardio, and potentially even more fun (personally, i hate it). Swimming's also good, and a rather useful life skill.

tom

--
We'll never win by being like them. Our best tactic is to be
better. Better necessarily means different. -- Jon Rentzsch
.