First off, this is a very long facebook post. Recently Ive received a fair amount of requests from people who want to know what workout I did to get in shape while on the ship. The short answer is I worked out twice a day, 6 days a week, doing cardio in the morning and weight training at night. I didnt diet particularly carefully but I also didnt eat like crazy. For those who want to know specifically what I did though, I cant really give an answer without describing my full workout. So Ive done that. For anyone who wants to know what my workout was, here it is: Probably should throw in a disclaimer: I am far from a fitness expert. This workout just more or less gave me the results I wanted. As I said, Id do cardio in the morning, and weight training at night 6 days a week. Cardio took me about 75 minutes, and weight stuff about an hour. So I was probably spending about two and a half hours, 6 days a week in the gym. So 18 hours a week. That’s a fair amount of time, but I had a lot of free time on the ship. If you wanted to do this workout on a busier schedule, I’d just alternate weight days with cardio days. So only work out once a day, doing cardio one day and one of the weight days the next. A note on the weight stuff: if you’ve never really done weight training before, start easy. Proper form is much more important than lifting heavy weights. Safety should always be the top priority. If it’s your first time doing a lot of weight training I’d suggest picking up a book on the subject or researching a bit online. The Encyclopedia of Body Building is a good resource if you want a comprehensive guide. It is very possible to hurt yourself, particularly with exercises like squats, or really anything that puts a lot of weight on your spine. Please be careful. One more note, Ive included videos for most of the exercises. I cant fully vouch for them. I had to find more than I cared to watch all the way through. They do all at least show the exercise, and some have pretty cool intros... yeah. All that said, here’s my 6 day ship workout schedule: Night - Weight Training I divided my weight training into 3 days. I call the days push day, pull day, and leg day. Push day is basically chest (your pushing weight away with almost all the exercise). Pull day is mostly back (your pulling weight toward you with most exercises). And leg is leg day. Leg day is the hardest, but in a lot of ways the most important. Never skip leg day. It’s always tempting to but don’t. NEVER SKIP LEG DAY. IM SERIOUS GUYS. LEG DAY. SERIOUSLY. Push day: Another note, my personal rule on reps is that with the first set, I aim for 12. Then I just try to do as many reps as I can in subsequent sets. You should be doing enough weight to be nearly burnt out on the 12th rep on the first set. If I go “heavy,” I aim for enough weight to be burnt out by the 5th rep on the first set. If you haven’t trained with weights before, burn out is just when your muscles go “nah,” and you can’t lift the weight anymore. You’ll feel it. Push day exercises: Bench Press 4 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=pFcU-d5uDmM Heavy incline bench 4 sets, 3-5 reps https://youtube/watch?v=DbFgADa2PL8 Dips 3 sets with body weight, however many reps you can do https://youtube/watch?v=sM6XUdt1rm4 Shoulder press 3 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=qEwKCR5JCog Flies 3 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=nLVxT8CKGQQ Tricep extensions 3 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=YbX7Wd8jQ-Q Shoulder raises 3 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=3VcKaXpzqRo Forward shoulder raises 3 sets, 8-12 reps (on both arms) https://youtube/watch?v=gzDawZwDC6Y Pull Day Pull Ups As many sets as it takes you to get to 50. You can fudge on this if you find getting to 50 is taking too long. That is to say aim for 20 reps over a couple of sets and slowly increase the overall number of reps to 50. I emphasize pull ups as they are a great composite exercise, and because if you can do pull ups easily, it makes the dangling ab exercises much easier. https://youtube/watch?v=QZF0Uz7rty8 (Please also wear this hat when doing pull ups) Bent over dumbbell raises 4 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=LktGPg-AkvY Straight back dumbbell raises heavy, 4 sets, 3-5 reps https://youtube/watch?v=-koP10y1qZI Straight arm back raises 3 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=LaaVZ7u0x2Y Back flies 3 sets, 8-12 reps. https://youtube/watch?v=evXOlgLTPCw Shrugs 3 sets, 8-12 reps. Sometimes I’d go heavy on these, so 3-5 reps. https://youtube/watch?v=qa32iQOmZlA Curls 3 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=uO_CNYidOw0 Reverse grip curls 3 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=SQOsKWSHTMo Leg Day I’ve always found leg day to be the hardest. So much so that I keep it pretty simple and relatively easy. Your legs are usually by far your largest, strongest muscle group. As such pushing your legs to the point of exhaustion is particularly difficult. If you find this leg day is too easy though, you could definitely add a few more exercises. Squats 4 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=Dy28eq2PjcM Weighted Jumps 4 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=Kux0656MQjU Straight Leg Deads 3 sets, 8-12 reps https://youtube/watch?v=OpzRX3slWjE Leg Extensions 3 sets, 8-12 reps (Ive only does these on machines) https://youtube/watch?v=YyvSfVjQeL0 Hamstring Curls 3 sets, 8-12 reps (Ive also only done these on machines) https://youtube/watch?v=F488k67BTNo Calf Extensions 3 sets, 8-12 reps (I also tend to do these on machines) https://youtube/watch?v=W-NU8NUS8lI And that’s it! Only 6 exercises. You may find it still takes as long as your other days as squats and legs in general can sometimes necessitate extra rest. You can also add forearm exercises in after legs if you want. I tend to neglect forearm stuff, but thats pretty much out of laziness. LEG DAY GUYS. SERIOUSLY. LEG DAY. Morning- Cardio Run for 35 minutes, the goal being to increase pace until you’re doing 5 miles in 35 minutes (7 minute miles). When I got on the ship I started around a 9 minute mile pace and eventually made it to 7. Sometimes Id run longer than 35 if I was feeling it. After the 35 minute run, do one of the other cardio machines in the gym for 10 minutes (spin bike, elliptical, stair master, whatever.) I sort of viewed this as a warm down. After the second cardio machine, do 5 minutes of sprinting divided into intervals as necessary. On the ship I would just crank the treadmill up to its max setting and try to run for as long I could, take a break, run for as long as I could, and repeat until I had done 5 minutes worth of sprinting (so like 5 minutes of hard sprinting over 10 minutes). Then I’d do my ab workout. I’d alternate between two different ab workouts from day to day. Ab workout 1: Dangling pole vaulter leg raises These are weird. I’d try to do 5 sets, somewhere between 25-35 reps in total. They’re pretty hard. You may need to build toward doing them with crunches and other less extreme ab exercises. Basically you need to get your core strength to a place where you can do them safely. These could be dangerous if done incorrectly. Here’s a video of what they look like (the ones right at the start of the video) https://youtube/watch?v=0O4syEJeg2Y Dangling leg extensions A bit easier, but you may need to build to them as well. If you can only do sets of one or two reps at the start, do sets of one or two reps at the start and build from there. I’d do 4 sets, and by the end of the contract I’d do about 15 reps in the first set. Here’s a video of what these look like: https://youtube/watch?v=G0ysNevIv0w Ab workout 2: Dangling Cork screws, 4-5 sets on either side: These are also weird and difficult. Again, build to them if you can’t do them at the start. Just do crunches that focus on your obliques, then start with sets of one or two cork screws on either side once you feel like you can do them with proper form. By the end of the contract I was doing sets of about 12 reps on either side (on the first set at least). Here’s a video: https://youtube/watch?v=hcvuVfTxRDE Crunches, 4 sets. Just good old crunches. 4 sets of as many as you can do. And that’s the morning cardio/ab workout. Do it six times a week, always running 35 minutes, but alternating between cardio machines and the two ab workouts. It would usually take me about 75 minutes in total (a longer workout than the weight stuff at night) And thats the routine! Heres some more info in case you want it. A note on diet: Ive heard it said that fitness is %20 exercise, %80 diet. Thats usually true, but its more important to understand why. The fundamental rule of weight loss is extremely simple. If you eat fewer calories daily than your body burns, you will lose weight. If you eat more calories than you burn daily, youll gain weight. So if you burn 3,000 calories a day and eat 2,000 calories worth of food a day, you will lose weight. If you want to keep it simple, just follow the golden rule: eat fewer calories daily than you burn. If you want to really understand nutrition though, it is of course a lot more complicated than that. Certainly outside of my depth. Id strongly encourage anyone who wants to lose weight or improve their health overall to really look into it. As I said though, I didnt diet particularly carefully and I still lost about 35 pounds in a little over 2 months. Thats mostly because I had sense of how many calories I tend to burn, and how many I was taking in. Not a meticulous understanding, but a general sense. With the cardio I listed above, I was burning about 1,000 calories. With the weight training and ab stuff, Id add in maybe another 400. As Im a fairly big guy, Id guess Im burning about 2,500 calories a day even if I dont work out. So basically I knew I could eat around 4,000 calories a day and still lose weight. 4,000 calories is a fair amount if youre avoiding fatty foods. I would also try to eat mostly protein, vegetables, and fruit. Id always try to avoid bread, anything made from flour, butter, excessive oil, and manufactured sugars. Basically just avoid anything thats overly manufactured. You want to eat natural, simple foods, i.e. animal protein, vegetables, nuts, and fruit. The average human, without working out, burns somewhere between 1,500 and 2,500 calories daily depending on size, metabolism, lifestyle, stress, whatever (theres a ton of factors). There are formulas you can look up to gauge how many calories youre burning daily on average. For a quick understanding of why diet tends to have a bigger impact on weight loss than exercise though, consider this. A Big Mac with fries and a coke contains about 1,100 calories. On a good day, In 75 minutes of pretty hard cardio I burned around 1,100 calories. So 75 minutes of hard work in the gym adds up to 1 fast food meal. Put another way, theres 110 calories in bud light. So if you go out drinking, say, 5 bears, thats 550 calories, or half of the calories I burned in 75 minutes of hard cardio. All that really amounts to this: consider how many calories youre burning against how many youre taking in if you want to lose weight. A few more final notes: Its very possible youll get burnt out working out twice a day, six times a week. I definitely did on occasion. Usually you need to push through it. If you skip a day, it tends to lead to further skipped days. I was very good at the start of my contract. I missed very few days in the first two and a half months on the ship. I was much lazier in the last two months. Coincidentally, I lost the majority of weight in the first half of my contract. Even if youre super dedicated though, things will come up. Just recognize why youre skipping a workout. If its something unavoidable, some life event, fine. If youre too exhausted, fine. Just be honest with yourself. If youre regularly too exhausted, its a problem. If theres always some event keeping you out of the gym, its a problem. If its the first day youve skipped in a while, its probably fine. If youre injured or have some sort of pain beyond soreness, definitely skip the gym. In fact, skip the gym and consider seeing a doctor. As I mentioned, dont skip leg day. It will be the day you want to skip the most. With all the leg driven cardio, your legs may already be very tired. If you are absolutely burnt out or in pain, dont hurt yourself. But if youre just tired and dont feel like it, force some motivation and do it anyway. Leg day is important because its full of big, body wide composite exercises. It increases your core strength and balances out the gains made in your upper body. Ive also heard many a gym bros say that leg day forces your body to release increased amounts of natural HGH. True? I dont know. But if enough gym bros just believe, maybe it just becomes true. So believe guys. Believe in leg day. The exercises Ive listed above are just the general lay out of my workout. I rotate the order of exercises with every workout, and I change how I do them. So if I do bench press first one push day, I may do it last the next. If I do heavy incline bench one push day, I may do it for reps on the next push day and do shoulder press as my heavy exercise. In general, I try to do at least one heavy exercise per workout, and whatever exercise I do first I consider the main exercise for that day (thus why I do 4 sets of the first exercise instead of three). The only exception to this is on pull day, I always start with pull ups. When I say I change how I do an exercise, I mean that sometimes Ill do an exercise with dumbbells, sometimes Ill do it with a bar, sometimes Ill do it with a machine (if the gym has a machine for it). When it comes to weight training, your basically trying to attack your muscles and force them to grow in defense. If you get too use to any workout, youll start growing less as your body will become too accustomed. I change things up so I dont get too use to any one workout. And thats all I got! I hope it helps. Of course exercise in whatever way works for you, and definitely work out in whatever way actually gets you in the gym or active generally. Just try to be consistent, aware of why youre doing what youre doing, and aware of the likely outcome. That is to say if you go to the gym and just do curls, youre probably not going to get superman abs. If all you do is the elliptical machine for 15 minutes, great, just be aware that it wont have a tremendous effect on your metabolism or weight. Lastly, if you find yourself on a cruise ship, be sure to occasionally or regularly eat tons of chicken wings and spin dip after midnight. It will have a negative effect on any effort to lose weight. Do it anyway. Hope this helps anyone who was curious!
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 20:17:15 +0000
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