I need to 'ease' into lifting - is 30 minutes every other day @ my house enough?

And if that's enough... what exercises do you recommend?

I'm 6'1"... I used to weigh ~205.. since then I bought an elliptical machine and reduced the occasionally stupid meals I'd eat, replacing them with more sensible meals. I'm now down to about 180-182, and really don't need to lose any more weight save for possibly a tad bit of belly fat if I want to be able to have visible abs. I have the arms of a 12 year old girl, but very naturally strong and well built legs. I've always been good at soccer, swimming, running, etc but can't really jump head-on into lifting huge amounts of weight. I don't have current pics available but can take some tomorrow and upload them here if I remember.

Anyhow... I think the most important thing for me to STICK WITH IT is that I can establish a routine that doesn't require me eating huge amounts of the same thing every day, and only requires maybe 30 minutes of working out, at home, each morning before I shower and leave for work.

Do you guys have any general resources you could point me toward?

FWIW, this is the workout equipment I have at the moment.


Thanks for any suggestions you might have.

Kyle
 
A quick basic fullbody routine could be done. search full body routine or something like that for more info.

If you do for example

A1 Squat

B1 Bench press
B2 Bendt over row

with whatever sets and reps. it shouldnt take long. the B1 and B2 means you first do one set of B1, rest, then one set of B2, rest, then B1 again and continue until you are done. It saves time and is effective because when you work your upper back, your pecs must rest. the oposite of the muscle you are working rests ;) and instead of doing straight sets with 2 min rest between sets for each of the lifts, you can pair them and rest 1 min between each instead ;)
 
Depends on how intense your workouts are... I see two fans on your ceiling, I have visions of your barbell being lift into them lol. Be careful.:cool:
 
You should be able to get a fullbody workout done in about 30 minutes working out at home. Doing those every other day will definitely get you started in the right direction. Theres lots of full body advice on here so use th esearch and find a routine that works for you.
 
If you only have 30 minutes I wouldn't recommend a full body workout. Expecially if you are able to work out every day. You just won't get the work you need on each bodypart. Think about it, if you did a 5 min warmup and 5 min cooldown, you only have 20 minutes to lift. If you do one set every 2 minutes (including rest between sets), you could only do 10 sets. That leaves like 5 for upper body, 5 for lower. Don't expect your 12-year-old girl arms to respond too much.

If I hurry I can do a chest/back workout in 45 min. I would suggest doing a 3 day split, perhaps chest/back, arms/shoulders, legs/abs.
 
its a possibility splitting it up to save time and getting more work done. Id rather go with an upper lower, or something like that. Thing is, with splits, you do more volume, so it will still take as long. But what he could do is workout every day with a split that is put together in such a way that each musclegroup is hit 3 times at the end of the week, then he could keep the volume down and still do a split. However, if he were to do a 3 day split then, it would take 9 days to hit all groups 3 times. So then id rather recommend a "two day split" better known as an upper/lower or push/pull..

Ive never tried such an approach myself. And it could include some accumulated fatigue, you know, alot of compound lifts with rather few total off days to just give your system a rest.
 
Karky's first post was excellent. Try alternating days of:
A1 Squat

B1 Bench press
B2 Bendt over row

AND

A1 Deadlift

B1 Overhead press
B2 Pullup/Chinup

Skip the "warm-up/cool down" and just do a light set of 12-15 reps for each exercise as a warm up, followed by 3 sets of 8 reps for each exercise. Given that you will be doing 4 sets of 3 different exercises and each set takes about 60 seconds and you rest 60 seconds between sets that is 12 minutes of exercise and 12 minutes of rest or 24 minutes total, so you might actually want to rest a little longer between exercises or before your last set of each exercise or something to fill up the total 30 minutes...

And about "jumping headlong into lifting huge amounts of weights", just start with a weight that is pretty easy and gradually add 5 pounds every week or every other week and before you know it you will be moving some pretty bug weights, without making more than a minimal increase each time around.
 
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