Focused workout to deflabbify?

October 9, 2006 1:58 PM

I'm looking for a simple, focused set of exercises I can do to tone up and reduce flab in my chest, arms, and stomach.

I'm male, six feet tall, and 155 pounds. I'm not fat, but sort of a paradoxical mix of scrawniness and flabbiness -- skinny arms and legs, somewhat flabby stomach and chest.

About six months ago, I started running -- currently thirteen miles/week -- and improving my diet, all of which has helped, but now I feel like I need to add some kind of weight lifting / strength building routine to the mix.

Requirements:

* Something I can do at home, for 10-15 minutes, two or three times/week.
* No purchases of huge weight sets. (A couple of small hand weights would be ok.)
* Not interested in perfection; more interested in picking the fewest exercises that provide the best results with the least amount of work.

posted by medpt to health & fitness (16 comments total)

Buy some hand-weights - try them out in the store, see what you can do ten of. Buy the next 5lb up, and if you're flush, one more set up.

Situps or crunches.
Pushups
Bicep Curls
Squats

Hmm. Not sure how you'd best do dumbbell presses without a bench (a coffeetable, maybe?), but you'd want something like that for the chest.
posted by canine epigram at 2:06 PM on October 9, 2006

Wow, you're pretty much like me, except I'm a little heavier than you (175).

Start off just doing pushups, sets of ten or however many you can do alternated with sets of situps. I've noticed an overall toning of my arms and chest/torso. If you could rig up some kind of chinup/pullup bar, that would help too.

I'm like you in that I don't want perfection, just tone and a simple, no-nonsense way to get there.

One thing that really helped with situps for me was watching a Pilates DVD that my wife uses. The instructor demonstrated a way of positioning yourself back on the floor, knees bent, and push your lower back down to make it feel like the top of your ribcage is being pulled a little towards your pelvis. Once I do that, then I start the situps, trying to keep the small of my back pushed down the whole time. This has helped eliminate or minimize the lower back pain I used to get doing situps.

I would recommend at least trying (renting) a Pilates DVD. The one my wife has is from Crunch Gym, for what that's worth. I don't do all the excercises on it all the time, but it's helped me keep a good form while doing situps at least.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 2:10 PM on October 9, 2006

Yoga. Weights are dumb because if you're buying dumbbells, you either need to buy a $$$ set with interchangable plates (the PowerBlocks are awesome) or you get stuck with old dumbbells you may not use again.

Pushups, situps, and (ashtanga?) yoga should get you started.

You can do military/incline dumbbell presses with a narrow chair, but, if you're going the equipment route I'd seriously just recommend a gym or the Shovelglove.
posted by kcm at 2:19 PM on October 9, 2006

Shovelglove secondedededed.
posted by nitsuj at 2:24 PM on October 9, 2006

For the past few months I've been trying to firm up a bit. I've started doing this program at the gym, just doing one set of ten reps and leaving. Honestly, the results have been extraordinary. I used to go to the gym three days a week for about 40 minutes, now it's 15 minutes four days a week. There's lots of info on that site about making a good workout. Someone posted it here a few months ago. I should track them down and thank them.

My weight's maybe two or three pounds lower, but I've clearly lost a lot of fat and gained some muscle, and have been told that as well.

Also, I run every day and I've been eating mostly salad and fat free cottage cheese for the past two months, so I'm sure that probably has something to do with it. But you're working on that same stuff, so we're probably in similar situations.
posted by mragreeable at 2:55 PM on October 9, 2006

Oh, sorry, and most of what I do is with dumbbells, so I could do 75% or more of my workout currently with just a set of those.

That's where it gets a little tricky, as I use several weights, spanning between 30 and 65 lbs. Having a giant rack of them is pretty handy, obviously. Buying them all would add up, and you'd slowly obsolete some weights as you get stronger.

Still, I've become a believer in the low rep/high weight style of workout, and that's a bit harder without weights.
posted by mragreeable at 3:02 PM on October 9, 2006

I would also consider swimming instead of running. It's a good way to tone your upper body. Using hand paddles increases the shoulder workout.
posted by sic at 3:19 PM on October 9, 2006

I will second yoga -- it is a good workout and did a really good job for helping me get rid of flab (especially in my stomach and upper arms) last year.
posted by echo0720 at 3:39 PM on October 9, 2006

Don't forget Combat Conditioning. Excellent program.
posted by trinity8-director at 3:39 PM on October 9, 2006

Oh, as an add-on -- you can do yoga at home and there are a few good DVDs that allow you to build your program, so that it can be 15-20 minutes a few days a week (the one I use is called Yoga Shakti, I think).
posted by echo0720 at 3:40 PM on October 9, 2006

You can probably get the results you want with a few bodyweight exercises: squats (do them like in the diagram, but without the bar), pushups, pullups, crunches, and burpees. As a bonus, the burpees and squats will help build up your legs, too.

If you get to the point where you're not improving anymore, a weight set might be a good idea. You can get very affordable used weights at either Play It Again Sports or yard/garage sales.
posted by vorfeed at 4:05 PM on October 9, 2006

T-nation has some great programs using only body weight.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 5:12 PM on October 9, 2006

The Prison Workout.
posted by jahmoon at 5:34 PM on October 9, 2006

All of the bodyweight exercises suggested above are great, but it's good to throw some dumbbells into the mix as well (as has also been suggested). If you do, adjustable spinlock dumbbells are reasonably cheap and if you fall in love with weightlifting they're a lot cheaper to upgrade than... than whatever the kind which aren't adjustable are called. Just buy bigger plates.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 3:17 AM on October 10, 2006

My personal trainer had me using resistance bands, which I found harder than free weights. You can do all sorts of different exercises with them, and they generally come in sets with different resistances, depending in what exercise you're doing and your strength.
posted by pyjammy at 8:52 AM on October 10, 2006

Here are some cool websites with some bodyweight conditioning workouts/info: Scrapper's Bodyweight Conditioning, Dragondoor index of BW conditioning articles. Just as a general guideline, I would say that the more weight you can work with, the better. So while push-ups are great, use push-ups to progress to more difficult exercises like pull-ups, dips, one-handed push-ups, clapping-push-ups, and handstand push-ups. Those are all upper-body centered BW exercises that, if you work up to being able to do just a few of the last three, you should be in pretty respectable shape.
posted by HighTechUnderpants at 11:00 AM on October 10, 2006