We all know that health and nutrition are key factors in personal development, but the world of fitness is so over-ran with various fads, bunk nutritional advice, mysterious powders, suppliments, and other concoctions, that it can seem next to impossible to come up with a cohesive fitness plan to start out with.
The three things below are what I'm starting out with, and I added a couple alternatives for anyone who wants to begin a similar path but doesn't want all the intensity of bodybuilding. Although I'm trying to gain weight I'm sure that's not the case with everyone here. All feedback is welcome.
1. 100% vegan and raw foods based diet for better nutrition.
This was kind of obvious after I thought about it for a few months.
This chart helped a lot too. If we're herbivores, we're herbivores.. there's not much to argue about as far as that goes.
2. Olympic style weight lifting for strength and bulk.
There are only
two lifts in Olympic style weight lifting, the "snatch" and the "clean and jerk." Both utilize the whole body as a pose to isolating one or two particular muscles at a time. These lifts are considered much more natural than many other exercises, and they go back a long time, for example, the bench press only came into popularity in the sixties, but lifters in the thirties and fourties all used overhead presses as a measure of strength. These lifts are very popular overseas, but have not taken off in the US as much.
There are very few injurys in the sport for a couple reasons. First, technique is heavily emphasized from the get go: how much you can lift is always secondary to good form. A friend of mine has been lifting in this style for a year now and says he only now fully understands all the technical aspects that he needs to. Second, the weight that you press overhead is distributed over dozens of muscles, joints and bones while doing the lift. You are not isolating weight onto one joint or bone repeatedly, which causes wear and damage. If your body as a whole cannot lift the weight, well, then you drop it. On each attempt all of your muscles work as a team, and fail as a team, it's very difficult to blow out one muscle or joint with this approach.
It's ideal to work out only 2 or 3 days a week on this system; which is nice as I don't really want to burn hours upon hours at the gym doing a million isolation exercises. Since everything gets worked out at once you don't need to do the variety of things normally included in a fitness routine. Hopefully, a few hours a week will be enough to show results.
3. Traineo to keep track of my progress. This site is web two-point-awesome. *** The following aren't a part of my fitness plan, but I wanted to add them for anyone on here who doesn't want or can't afford to join a gym. Or if there is anyone here who, for some absurd reason, doesn't find the idea of pressing their own body weight overhead attractive. *** Kettlebells: An alternative to gyms. These exercises use the same motions found in the olympic lifts, like the snatch and the clean and jerk, and you can do the exercises at home with smaller, handheld weights. You are still working out your whole body at once and you aren't isolating particular muscles like you would be with a dumbell set or freeweight set.
Bodyweight exercises: Another alternative to gyms. Ross Enamait has a ridiculous number of bodyweight driven exercises in
two or three books he has self published. He's all about doing things the most natural way possible to get the best results, so there are a lot of funky home grown routines that you won't find anywhere else. His site is for any skill level, for example, there are easy pushups where you push off from a coffee table, to the entire opposite extreme: handstand pushups designed for a professional athlete.
I'll continue updating to let you guys know how the whole "vegan-bodybuilding" thing goes for me. Wish me luck!