if I see a single so called "communist" out there whose lats are not just poppin, whose torso is not just fearsome, shaped like motherfucking bruce lee, with biceps strong enough to rip apart the police by hand, I'll know they're actually a fucking LIBERAL
just don't forget, no matter how buff you are, I'll still tell you to row
but I've already promised my body to my climber friends on the weekdays and my hiker gf on the weekends, and promised to train for a marathon
rowing sounds extremely fun though ngl
haha it's not fun but like with a high enough resistance I am building significant muscle and I can do it all inside. It's like I took 30 pounds from my stomach and moved it to my upper chest and shoulders and biceps
No. OP is having a great time and I love it for them, but if you want to look strong you've got to do heavy resistance training.
There is a tiny bit of pec activation in pulling exercises like rows, and it can be increased by using a supinated grip, like with a chin up. Not nearly significant enough to replace pushing exercises though.
I mean it does for me like if I put my hands together as if in prayer and lift them above my head and press inward my upper chest just bulges so fucking much and it's 100% from rowing. I've done more pushups than anyone I know but i neglected the shit out of that for like a year, so. Idk what to tell you.
Maybe it's from bad form but the entire region of my pectoralis muscles from like an inch above my nipples up to my clavicles abs shoulders has expanded like 3x in size
Part of it might be that it's easier to build up muscle you had previously
My new apartment complex has a shit tier gym but the nice things it has are a good cable machine and a lat pull down machine with a built in row bar. Buddy boy you best believe these lats are popping. Popping like they never have before!!
No but seriously tho I need a real gym membership or I’m going to start looking like Larry the lobster since I’m only working upper body. I can feel my leg gains fading away
You could probably easily do shit like bulgarian split squats since you don't really need as much load for them, at least until you get to a proper gym.
then it's okay if you don't wanna row you can do some other exercises <3
hell yeah! In the mean time I recommend limbering up your hamstrings and various other ligaments in advance so that you are less prone to pain issues I dealt with in the past 6 months
and you can always do research on what a good machine is during that time, I think I shopped for like a couple weeks but idk maybe could have bought a better one if I did more nerd reading
i got my rowing machine! 5 year old concept2 pm5 with 149km (basically brand new!) for $500 craigslist. they tried to negotiate me down at the end lmao. "so, we're asking $500, but..."
did a 1km today while watching some youtube. going to try and limit my youtube to while i'm rowing
Yeah that's hardly nothing on it in terms of mileage. Good job, glad you got such a good deal!
If using YouTube helps to keep you motivated then keep it up. Personally I need to listen to music though, my strokes per minute directly correlates with the beat and energy of the song
Alternatively, get a pair of rings for 20 quid and hang them off something. Begin your rowing journey early.
According to the principles of Democratic Centralism we've decided that you need to get a rowing machine and you're not allowed to not do that now.
I would settle for people pooling resources for community machines and sharing them, you only need it for like 30 minutes or so a day ya know? And maybe not even every day, even. Buy a machine and get you and your friends in better shape than you've ever been!! Or get a gym membership idk. There's options, but rowing is not optional!
they are torture machines and nothing anyone says can convince me otherwise
mmm yes today i will do 30minutes at 24s/m i love pain i love suffering i love it when my body screams at me to stop every second
you love it when you're done with it and go look in the mirror and realize you've become shredded
more like shidded because i shid my pants because of how much i'm dying on there
i used to row competitively so i used to spend hours on the rowing machine at a time im allowed to be a hater ok
some people enjoy excercise other people find it unpleasant and boring
Yeah that's all you need really. A floor and anything to do hang from, like rings or a pull up bar. All you need for gains. It's all I have and I'm making decent progress
Gymnastics rings for dips and pull-ups and jump rope for cardio will get you most of the way there for 30 bucks.
Listening to Parenti lectures, 25 s/m, legs, torso, lungs, and arms in perfect sync... yep this shit rocks
I should start doing rows. The only pull exercise I do regularly are pulls ups
If you can do pull-ups, then you could probably skip right to elevated inverted rows (if you have rings, or a bar at the right height)
You actually had me browsing craigslist for rowing machines last week.
hell yeah you can probably get a good deal on a used one. The concept 2 does seem much nicer (from pictures at least, I haven't used it) than the one I got and I think I've seen them like <400-500ish used. I guess it depends on how well you can haggle when you do craigslist stuff tho
That's kind of pricey for exercise equipment tbh. I used to gorb out on an elliptical trainer for a few hours a day until I snapped the belt but it's hard to justify half a grand. Really need to get back into doing pushups and running regularly but it's hard to keep myself interested.
I mean it does seem a lot nicer than the one I got and 500 is a lot but the one I got was like 240. It seems like a less big price increase when it's apparently something with big resale value and, being apparently a good brand, presumably lasts longer or has better features. Idk. I haven't used one lol. And the cheaper one I got hasn't had problems yet and it's been almost 6 months
what I used to do for pushups was just pick an arbitrary number like 20 or 50 and do that many every like hour or so. If you do a lot of them then it becomes okay to skip sometimes ya know but it gets you in the habit of looking at the clock and thinking "it's pushup time!!"
only 5 minutes??? You better be pushing that resistance up and nailing that form, "comrade"
glad to hear it tho lol
Yeah I honestly just started using the rowing machine. They're actually pretty popular at the gym I go to so it's a bit hard to get in some time, but I've been steadily improving. When I started in May I was doing 2-3 minutes, although that's also probably because I wasn't checking through resistance lol.
Yeah definitely check the resistance so you are doing consistent work and know when you're improving. I'm glad you started! It's a really great upper body workout, shoulders, pecs, back, lats, like if you do it a lot I swear your torso will change. Keep up the good work!
If you can swing it, pick up a few kettlebells. If you can only have one fitness tool in your home, I'd recommend a few bells. You can do basically anything you can do with dumbbells, including rows, plus a lot of bell specific movements like the snatch, high pull, swing and a few others that will also blow up your back.
Bags of sand or jugs of water have always, to my knowledge, been the cheapest alternative to weights. With those you could do bent over rows. I think access to a pool for upper body cardio would sooner be available to someone who doesn't have a row machine. Otherwise you'd need to start getting creative (build your own pulley system)
