Reptile Gym 101

Last few years fitness industry has risen from ashes. It is becoming mandatory to live "healthy" "fit" life, which is great, but while trying to do best for yourself people do a lot of mistakes, and I'm one of those people.
With this article I'm going to show you what I've learned from my mistakes while training, and I'll try to create a little guide for people who want but don't know how to start training and eating to help them in their life and health.

I only have 1 year+ experience in quality eating and few years experience in training but I've learned a lot and made so much mistakes that I think I have enough experience to talk about it.

This article will be divided in 5 parts; Eating, Training, Mistakes, Philosophy and Literature.

Eating

First you want to know how much Calories you need to take daily to get to your goals. Calorie is unit of heat energy required to increase one gram of water by 1 Celsius. There are a few numbers that you are going to calculate. Those are BMR, TDEE and Macros.

BMR

BMR(Basal Metabolic Rate) is number of Calories spent by your body in state of rest in 24 hours.
Example: I'm 179 cm and weight 78 kg. My BMR is 1880 kcalories.

Metric BMR Formula:

Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 * weight in kg) + (1.8 * height in cm) - (4.7 * age in years)
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 * weight in kg) + (5 * height in cm) - (6.8 * age in years)

Imperial BMR Formula:

Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 * weight in pounds) + (4.7 * height in inches) - (4.7 * age in years)
Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 * weight in pounds) + (12.7 * height in inches) - (6.8 * age in years)

TDEE

TDEE(Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is number of calories spend by your body in 24 hours based on your activity.
TDEE = BMR * your activity

Sedentary=Little or no Exercise/ desk job=>TDEE = 1.2 * BMR
Lightly active=Light exercise/ sports 1 – 3 days/ week=>TDEE = 1.375 * BMR
Moderately active=Moderate Exercise, sports 3 – 5 days/ week=>TDEE = 1.55 * BMR
Very active=Heavy Exercise/ sports 6 – 7 days/ week=>TDEE = 1.725 * BMR
Extremely active=Very heavy exercise/ physical job/ training 2 x/ day=>TDEE = 1.9 * BMR

As I exercise 5 times a week, my TDEE is 1.55*1880=2914 Calories daily.
Since I'm currently on cutting my I eat 2914-250 Calories daily, so I eat 2664 Calories daily.

Macros

Macros(Macronutrients) total amount of proteins, crabs and fat your body needs in 24 hours.
To learn more about macros check out this article.

I am currently on cutting/loosing extra fat so my macros are P40/F40/C20.
If you are gaining weight you add extra 250-500 Calories to your TDEE, and if you are trying to loose wright just remove 250-500 Calories from you TDEE and you will be all right!(Or you can use calculators I added below for that.)

To calculate this your can use: https://tdeecalculator.net/, http://mytdee.com or any other calculator. I personally use MyFitnessPal application .

Great thing is that it calculates calories/macros for loosing/maintaining/gaining weight. Reason why I use MFP(MyFitnessPal) is because it is also a food and exercise tracker, and you can see your weight thru time.

Training

Training is equally important as eating for loosing/maintaining/gaining weight. Most of the time I'm going to write about going to gym, because that's what I'm doing.

To start training all you need is clean shoes, shirt, shorts, socks, towel, bottle and bag to carry these things to the gym! That's all, you do not need no special equipment at this time! Do not spend $$ on special gym bags, weightlifting shoes(tho they are nice to have), or special clothing. First you want to see do you even like to go to gym, if you don't there are a lot of sports out there to learn and master, no sport is superior to gym and gym is not superior to any sport, it is just matter of mentality to live healthy and preserve health and your body, to be self-disciplined.

To start training, you want to know what kind of training would be best for you. Maybe bodyweight training is best for you and you don't need gym equipment to start training, maybe you want to train bodybuilding or powerlifting etc.. Let's say there is only bodyweight training, bodybuilding and powerlifting.

Bodyweight

Bodyweight training is based on using your own body as a weight during exercises, mostly develops upper body, but can also develop lower body muscles, but not as much as weights can.

Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding is based on weightlifting with mainly high amount of reps and moderate amount of sets 3-5, but main goal is not strength, main goal is gaining and maintaining big muscle mass of your body.

Powerlifting

Powerlifting is also based on weightlifting with low amount of reps 1-5 with high amount of sets 5+, goal here is greater strength and mainly contains only 5 exercises that work out whole body. Those exercises are: Squat, Deadlift, Bench press, Overhead press and Barbell row.

What to train and how much?

I train 5 times a week, and training consists of warm up, training one, two or three "big" body parts and 15 minutes cardio and stretching. I have experimented a lot with myself about duration of training and what I do is train every part for 30 minutes and then switch to another body part, so my training is about 90-100 minutes long. Last part of training is same as first part stretching, and probably the most important part along warm up.

My week looks like this:
Monday=>Legs
Tuesday=>Chest and Triceps
Wednesday=>Back and Biceps
Thursday=>Shoulders, Abs and Forearm
Friday=>Legs

I mostly do 4 sets of 6-12 repetitions and 3-4 exercises per body part, here I do big mistake and that is that I take small pauses between sets, mostly 30 seconds. I recommend 45-90 seconds rest between sets. I rest 30 seconds because I like to test myself a lot, while it is not the best idea to do that, I allow myself this mistake!

Mistakes

Fuck off Technique

I did this mistake xxxx times, it is something normal and something people do not care about until they get hurt. Ego lifting is what it is called, not caring about technique and caring only about number of plates you can lift is worst thing happening to your muscles, bones and ligaments. Get to know exercises you are doing, train with lower weights until you master the technique and then put some big weights on!

No warm up or stretching

Probably biggest mistake along not giving a fuck about technique. I'll put those two in egolifting section. Worst thing you can do your body is not warm it up in first place before lifting weights and then not stretch it after lifting. I don't think there is much to say. If you want to hurt yourself, don't warm up or stretch, then probably you will learn a lesson.

Overeating

Just a normal thing, in gym we call it cheat day! Overeating once/twice a month is allowable if you can control yourself and your portions, problem is when you start to do it too often, when you loose control and start adding unnecessary mass. With overeating comes laziness, worst thing ever! You loose will to train, to learn, to be better person, you loose what you were building some time. I'm not saying overeating is worst thing can happen to you, it's just thing that you need to control and know when to do it, if you even need to do it!

Fashion show

As I already wrote, do not spend big sum of money on training equipment. A lot of people go to gym like they go to fashion show... You do not really need 200$ shoes, 100$ shirt and shorts, there is no need for that kind of thing. No need for expensive smart watches or anything like that for beginners. You could go and buy 20-30$ heart rate monitor just to play with your heart and test yourself.

Overtraining and no sleep

Big mistake everyone does now and then is overtraining. Overtraining occurs when you do not let your body rest after training and you do not take enough food to repair your muscles. Overtraining is not something that comes and goes, it can damage your muscles and bones, you need to get to know your body and know when you are training too much and resting too little. Give yourself some time to sleep, I try to sleep 6-7 hours a day, mostly you can read that 8 hours of sleep is best thing, but for me with 8 hours of sleep i "oversleep", I get lazy, can't do a thing for a day. Overtraining also occurs when your ego prevails. Get to know your body and then you will know your limits and needs! Sleep is as important as training and eating, sleep + training + quality eating = great health!

Philosophy

My philosophy is that either you want to work out and eat better or you don't. There is no need to force anyone on anything if they don't want to do it.
I've lost almost 30 kg while eating better and training, and I feel great and full of energy.(I was also training before when I was overweight for long time, but didn't think about loosing weight). The idea is not to be professional bodybuilder or weightlifter, idea is to keep your body healthy, idea is to keep your mind and body healthy and connected!

Mens sana in corpore sano!
(A healthy mind in a healthy body!)

Literature

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Strength-Training-Anatomy-Sports/0736092269 (Maybe best thing out there!)
https://www.bodybuilding.com/category/training
https://www.t-nation.com/
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/