Dumbbells

[Astray]

I don't know what it was called but I was shown this pretty good routine.

You start down at your sides. Bring them up like a regular curl. Raise elbow till it's parallel with your shoulder. Spread your arms. Go up with your bars. Curl till the weights are behind your head. Then reverse your steps.

If I remember it correctly.

[Fortybox]

[Hammibal]

Waterfalls. Pick the weight you feel is pushing your max that you can do clean reps with, and do 5-6 reps. 30 lbs for example. Then do the same with 25's. 20's, until you're down to basically your 2 or 5lb weights depending what your gym has. Your only break between sets is putting down the one dumbbell, and picking up the next. I usually do them at the end of the workout, thus the lower amount of reps. If you want to start with it, you could probably do 10 reps? You'll just be dead ass tired at the end.

[Wrathbringer]

I'm extremely ascetic when it comes to food already. I drank that zero calorie sparkling flavored water, 1100 calories of white rice with soy sauce (Kikkoman, not Kimlan. It's bad for you, use sparingly, but tastes best), and a multivitamin. Once every now and again (about once a month) I took a diuretic because soy sauce is basically all sodium. It helps if you don't eat breakfast or lunch, and I never have. That way when you do eat, you get two large nightly meals of rice and you're totally full for the entirety of the time your body expects you to be hungry. Just make sure you get the good rice, not some shit carolina long grain garbage from the bottom shelf of the grocery store. Go to the aisle with the asian food. They have the good rice. Nishiki is fairly high quality and fairly inexpensive and tastes very good. If you have an H-Mart (or other asian market) near you, get the rice with three ducks. That's all I know about it because I don't speak or read Korean. Three duck rice is the best rice.

It's definitely not the healthiest thing ever. You need protein eventually, so once every couple weeks I'd have sushi instead of straight rice. Oh, and you can find these stuffed portabella mushrooms at most grocery stores in the vegetable aisle. 6 stuffed mushrooms is about 250 calories, and make a good snack. Same with cauliflower steamed with buffalo sauce. You can eat an entire head of cauliflower and it's like 200 calories. That I did sometimes just because my rice cooker can steam vegetables at the same time.

Now that I'm back onto weight training there's a lot more protein in my diet, and calories for that matter, but I still eat rice just about every night. Cheap, goes with most vegetables, tastes good.

Edit: Oh, and I almost forgot. Alaskan Pollock (Imitation Crab meat). 3 bucks for a bag. Good protein. Filling. Tastes good. You can eat the entire bag if you want and it's only 300-400 calories. I did like half a bag at a time. The whole bag is big. Also, 24 pounds down is freakin' awesome by the way. Keep it up.

One last thing - If you find yourself craving real meat, those little pre-sliced ham things they sell at the grocery store. They generally slice them very nicely into 50 calorie slices in most brands. Once you open them they're good in the fridge for about a week. I ate a slice or two every now and again whenever I wanted meat.

Thanks very much for the insight.

[Stunseed]

Maybe I missed it, but didn't see tricep extensions ( seated, grab dumbbell behind the head, bend elbows and raise ) or lateral raises mentioned.

Some day last week on a lift day for me...

Breakfast
2 large eggs scrambled
1 oz onions and mushrooms sauteed
1 oz feta cheese

231 cals, 3 carb, 16 fat, 17 protein

Post lift
1 scoop powder
8 oz skim milk
6 oz greek yogurt

270 cals, 22 carbs, 1 fat, 45 protein

Lunch
Chef salad w/italian dressing

425 cals, 12 carbs, 28 fat, 31 protein

Dinner
6 oz chicken
1 oz jalapenos
1 oz cooked bacon
2 oz mango habanero sauce ( from Domino's )

270 cals, 33 carbs, 12 fat, 14 protein

Just shy of 1200 calories for the day but a little low on what I try to get in protein ( 107 vs 120-ish? ).

[Methais]

What are your favorite dumbbell exercises?

I've recently killed off a lot of my muscle mass with a low calorie diet combined with a lot of low effort cardio, so I'm building back up so I can pick stuff up like a real boy again. There are some good youtube videos on dumbbell exercises, but I'm going to generously call them "intermediate level" or better for the most part, meaning they're full of gym jargon which I neither understand nor have the inclination to.

So what'cha got? Aside from the normal bicep curls, barbell pushes and just picking them straight up out to the sides, whatever that's called, what do you do with dumbbells?

My favorite is to do at least 3 sets of 10 reps each of lifting a 10 lb. dumbbell with my boner.

[BriarFox]

I used to use dumbbells but switched over to kettlebells awhile back. Much better workout IMO. Swing, snatch, press, squat, renegade rows, etc., and you’re getting a whole body workout. Pushups, pull-ups, and deadlifts too.

[Stumplicker]

Maybe I missed it, but didn't see tricep extensions ( seated, grab dumbbell behind the head, bend elbows and raise ) or lateral raises mentioned.

Some day last week on a lift day for me...

Breakfast
2 large eggs scrambled
1 oz onions and mushrooms sauteed
1 oz feta cheese

231 cals, 3 carb, 16 fat, 17 protein

Post lift
1 scoop powder
8 oz skim milk
6 oz greek yogurt

270 cals, 22 carbs, 1 fat, 45 protein

Lunch
Chef salad w/italian dressing

425 cals, 12 carbs, 28 fat, 31 protein

Dinner
6 oz chicken
1 oz jalapenos
1 oz cooked bacon
2 oz mango habanero sauce ( from Domino's )

270 cals, 33 carbs, 12 fat, 14 protein

Just shy of 1200 calories for the day but a little low on what I try to get in protein ( 107 vs 120-ish? ).

Sounds pretty similar to a normal intake for me on a lift day, though I add about 400-500 more calories now because I'm doing a lot of cardio in between lifting. What kind of powder are you using? I'm using the whey powder with creatine and it's pretty awesome.

[Murrandii]

I mainly do triset (3 exercices for the same muscles without pauses)

For biceps, for exemple, hammer way (parralele to body), then switch to elbow on the side then sitten. You end up numbing your arm but MAN it's good

[Stunseed]

Sounds pretty similar to a normal intake for me on a lift day, though I add about 400-500 more calories now because I'm doing a lot of cardio in between lifting. What kind of powder are you using? I'm using the whey powder with creatine and it's pretty awesome.

Isopure Zero Carb. It's one of the few that aren't spiked with aminos/fake shit to get their protein intake, plus #diabeetus.

In flavor order I've tried :

Dutch Chocolate
Salted Caramel
Vanilla
Banana Split
Strawberries and cream
Cookies and cream

When I have the itch, I'll put 2 tablespoons of creamy peanut butter in with that Vanilla, and it's crazy good. 1 scoop = 25g protein and it's not super heavy where you feel bloated or shit nonstop after drinking. Syntha-6 has some low carb options as well, but it's composition isn't nearly as good as the Isopure.