jesse wrote:(really want to by a Trapbar to do deadlifts)
You don't need a trap bar. You need a standard Olympic bar, some plates, and the ability to deadlift at least 135 lbs. so you can use 45 lb. plates to get the distance from the floor to bar right. A nicety is having a rack with a low setting for the pins and something to stand on so you can load the bar at the level you're picking it up from; I've got that at the gym, but not at home.
A trap bar is kind of a specialized piece of equipment, and I wouldn't find it particularly cost effective. A standard Olympic bar is more versatile; I can use it for squats, deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, shrugs, bench presses, and military presses. If I were anal about working my chest from different angles, I could also use it for incline bench presses and decline bench presses. If I were brave enough to work my back that way, I could use it for good mornings. If I were concerned with big biceps, I suppose I could use it for curls. Some day I'm going to learn to do front squats with an Olympic bar, and once in a while I'll play around with trying to learn overhead squats. (Overhead squat = hold bar above head with arms fully extended, and keep it there while doing a squat. I find this more challenging with a bare bar than a standard back squat is with a bar loaded up to 160 lbs.)
The trap bar, OTHO, is basically useful for squats without a squat rack, a different angle than a standard bar for deadlifts, and maybe a different angle than a standard bar for shrugs. There's a trap bar at my gym, but it's never been worth my time to use it.
jesse wrote:To keep my lower back from creeping up on me, I get up an hour earlier each morning and stretch.
Back extensions, and lots of compound lifts that force me to use stabilizing muscles as well as the major working muscles. The back extension bench falls into the category of equipment I can't afford space for at home, but I can do a back extension with lesser range motion and greater demands on balance using a swiss ball. The erector spinae doesn't need a lot of attention, but I can't afford to neglect it entirely.
That, and I've learned the hard way to always stretch after a weights workout. If I'm only doing kettlebells, I can get by with just my upper body and back stretches; but if I'm doing leg work as well, I need the full set of stretches. That's maybe 12 or 15 minutes added to the workout, but it's absolutely necessary . . . no matter how much I dislike stretches. I can do that. Getting up an hour earlier each morning would be a non-starter for me.
jesse wrote:Diet-wise I'm trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup completely and that is...eh, not easy. It's amazing how many good foods you're forced to eat when you can't eat food with HFCS in it
At work, I'm on the rodent diet. In July, the company went to a policy of no food at the desk in an effort to control a mouse infestation. That's a trip downstairs to the cafeteria if I want so much as a cup of tea. All the easy to munch peanuts and chocolate disappeared, as did my stashes in the desk. Haul in my lunch each day, and haul the empty containers home. I lost 10 lbs without even trying. Now I'm trying to maintain the same discipline as the work rules relax with success on the mouse front.
At home, the grocery budget is one of the things that can be squeezed in response to other budget pressures. This has led me to learn to cook some stuff that's cheap, and by the way might be a bit better for me than the semi-prepared foods I used to buy more of.
The biggest challenge on the exercise front is time. I'm an office worker, with no meaningful exercise while I'm getting paid. There are only so many hours in the week. There's more stuff I want to do than there is time available. Sigh.
The biggest challenges on the diet front are boredom eating, stress eating, and social eating. I've struggled with these for years, and I suppose I'll be struggling with them for the rest of my life. I really need to finish
this book and figure out how to adapt some of the strategies the author recommends to my own life.
Patzer
