Weightlifting for Kiwis - Discussion and support regarding the art of swole

Dean Pentel said:
Fellow iron lovers, have I already posted about active recovery days?

If not, I recommend you implement an active recovery day into your program. I run one on my 4th day (Thursdays for me) and it's been excellent in helping me feel much better and recovery more efficiently.

You don't need to do this if you're not hitting pretty damn hard as is. If you're really pushing yourselves, active recovery days, massages, and mobility work pay dividends. Keep lifting, bros. We're all gonna make it.
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What the heck is an active recovery day? Is this like activating your almonds?
Yes! Active recovery days are a common concept in fitness programming. Here's the breakdown:

Active Recovery Day involves low-intensity, gentle movement — the goal is to get your body moving without adding meaningful stress to your muscles or cardiovascular system. Think of it as "moving to recover" rather than "stopping to recover." Examples include easy walking, light yoga or stretching, a slow bike ride, casual swimming, foam rolling, or gentle mobility work.

A Normal (Passive) Recovery Day is simply rest — no structured exercise. You're letting your body do its repair work without any additional physical demand at all.

Why active recovery can actually be better than pure rest:
  • Blood flow — gentle movement increases circulation, which helps flush out metabolic waste (like lactate) and delivers nutrients to repairing muscles faster
  • Reduced soreness — that increased circulation tends to reduce DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) more effectively than lying still
  • Mobility maintenance — passive rest doesn't improve or even maintain range of motion, while active recovery can
  • Mental benefit — for people who train regularly, total rest can feel mentally frustrating; active recovery scratches the "movement itch" without digging deeper into fatigue
The key distinction is intensity. An active recovery day must stay at roughly 40–60% of your max effort or below — if you're pushing hard, it's just another training day, which defeats the purpose entirely. The moment it starts feeling like a workout, you've crossed the line.

Most serious athletes and coaches recommend a mix of both across a training week — maybe one or two active recovery days and one full passive rest day, depending on training volume.
Okay, so it's basically doing some low intensity exercising instead of laying down and rotting. I think I've been unknowingly doing something like this with my daily rowing routine. I have days where I go hard, and days where I take it very easy.
 
if you are going to set up a home gym, the one thing i recommend above all else is to make sure you get a rack/cage that allows for adjustable safety bars, so you can safely fail out of bench and squat reps without crushing yourself to death
do NOT squat or bench without safety bars unless you have a spotter with you who can bail you out in case of failure
 
long waters said:
Okay, so it's basically doing some low intensity exercising instead of laying down and rotting.
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Yep. 50% of my current max is my sweet spot. You should still do a good amount of movements. I found that especially with my back it helped out quite a bit. Keep in mind on active recovery day I'm doing at least 300 reps for my back alone.

It's also great for your shoulders.
 
ThePozzedOutCritic said:
'Ello Lads
Is it worth it to get a home gym set up if you're an intermediate/beginner? Also how much would it cost generally speaking? How much space would you need to set aside for it?
Thanks in advance!
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Having recently set one up (poverty spec), its cheaper to get a gym membership than to build a home gym unless you get basically everything free.

I got my bench for free, a cable machine for 85 bucks, my barbell, dumbbells and all my weights combined cost me something like 150 bucks. I have no squat rack so I need to figure something out for squats.

I could have paid a 15 dollar a month gym membership for almost 2 years for what I spent even with my insanely cheap setup. And I'll need more weight plates soon.

But its at home and I don't need to drive to the gym and back.

IDK man if you have a cheap gym nearby better off going there is my take on it.
 
VargReallyDidNothingWrong said:
But its at home and I don't need to drive to the gym and back.
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I think travel costs can add up in a year. Google ai says the average gym travel distance is about 4 miles and it takes 5-15 minutes. Let's go with 4 miles in 10 minutes, so 8 miles and 20 minutes there and back. If you're going 3 times a week, that's 24 miles and 1 hour a week. A year has 52 weeks, so that's 1248 miles and 52 hours. If you're getting 35 miles per gallon, that's about 35 gallons spent in gas. At an average cost of $4 a gallon (current month's average price apparently...), you're looking at an extra $140 a year spent on gas, and 52 hours.
With the gym membership at $15 a month, your total would be more like $320 a year and 52 hours spent driving. I'm not gonna say time is money, since you probably wouldn't be spending those 52 hours productively, odds are you might spend them shitposting on KF :lol:

On the other hand, one thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is that there is also an extra hidden cost associated with a home-gym that people might not consider. The opportunity cost for social interaction, or even making friends at the gym. Maybe you could meet someone and become good friends, maybe you'd motivate each other to lift more and not slack off. Or maybe the social pressure can motivate you to lift more. Maybe you see other fellas training hard and it inspires you to do the same. With a home gym, it's entirely up to you to motivate yourself and it's a lot easier to slack off and not push yourself. "Oh I'm tired today, I'll lift tomorrow instead". It's been many times that I've fallen for that. In the first year or so this probably wouldn't happen since you're all excited about your home gym, but after enough time passes, it's easier to get distracted. At the very least I can say it happened to me.
 
I hate leg extensions. Not the exercise itself, but the fact that having them means you either picking having 1 of them and its always full whenever you need to use them or you have 2 of them which means some broccoli haired kids will take all the 45 pound plates and put them on the machine so they can bend their knees in a 10 degree motion for the leg press but can't squat 135 pounds for a single rep
 
long waters said:
I think travel costs can add up in a year. Google ai says the average gym travel distance is about 4 miles and it takes 5-15 minutes. Let's go with 4 miles in 10 minutes, so 8 miles and 20 minutes there and back. If you're going 3 times a week, that's 24 miles and 1 hour a week. A year has 52 weeks, so that's 1248 miles and 52 hours. If you're getting 35 miles per gallon, that's about 35 gallons spent in gas. At an average cost of $4 a gallon (current month's average price apparently...), you're looking at an extra $140 a year spent on gas, and 52 hours.
With the gym membership at $15 a month, your total would be more like $320 a year and 52 hours spent driving. I'm not gonna say time is money, since you probably wouldn't be spending those 52 hours productively, odds are you might spend them shitposting on KF :lol:
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Not to mention there are no good gyms at $15 a month, just Planet Shitness which has precisely as many racks as he does.

Also please don't talk to me at the gym.
 
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Regrettably, I feel more motivated if there's a chance someone can see me slacking off. Ex: old guy at the park saw me doing pull ups and I talked to him for a bit, made a friend, then did another set of 12 I wasn't planning on just because I was in a good mood.

Going to a real gym is nice too. I used to spy on people with figures I liked and watch what kind of exercises they do. If it's like what I'm doing, then I know I'm on the right track. If they're doing the exact same thing as me at the same time (let's say squatting at adjacent racks), I feel a need to exceed their weight and reps if I'm not already doing it. A little competition in your head is healthy.

Took me about a year to get completely over myself and comfortable at a gym. Having a book to read on your phone is great between sets, but I tried to look out the window so I don't lose more braincells
 
Torque Wheeler said:
I feel more motivated if there's a chance someone can see me slacking off.
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I'm the total opposite. I'd better be able to motivate myself or else I feel like I wouldn't be able to do it otherwise. It's my strength, it's my workout, and I'd better have the discipline to keep at it.

Plus, I always have an open rack at home.
 
Dean Pentel said:
Fellow iron lovers, have I already posted about active recovery days?

If not, I recommend you implement an active recovery day into your program. I run one on my 4th day (Thursdays for me) and it's been excellent in helping me feel much better and recovery more efficiently.

You don't need to do this if you're not hitting it pretty damn hard as is. If you're really pushing yourselves, active recovery days, massages, and mobility work pay dividends. Keep lifting, bros. We're all gonna make it.
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Does beating it count as active recovery?
 
DSP's Tax Lawyer said:
Wow, did I never think I would find something worse than quarter squats but I think this is close. Some dude was on the dips and was just bouncing up and down. His arms never bent. His head went down and his shoulders moved back a little before returning to their position
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Scapular dips are a real exercise and fantastic for the muscles around the scapula especially if you're having pain in your shoulder blades. Every single post you make in here is you bitching about someone else exercising dude, you're not that smart. You probably just need to mind your own business if your first reaction to someone doing an exercise you don't recognize is to get mad and post on the Farms about it. Wait until you see scapular pull ups.
 
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mars said:
Scapular dips are a real exercise and fantastic for the muscles around the scapula especially if you're having pain in your shoulder blades. Every single post you make in here is you bitching about someone else exercising dude, you're not that smart. You probably just need to mind your own business if your first reaction to someone doing an exercise you don't recognize is to get mad and post on the Farms about it. Wait until you see scapular pull ups.
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I know what scapular pull ups and dips are. These were not that
 
Did some preventive maintenance on the cable machine I got a while back, she should be good to go for the next few years now. Doing my accessory day exercises today (lat pulldown, flies, tricep rope pushdowns, curls, shrugs, farmers walks to failure)
 
DSP's Tax Lawyer said:
Military press is a great way to humble yourself and tell you that you are weak as shit
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Personally I don't like front delt isolation because I think that doing chest training is enough, which is why I like compounds better, unless your chest and triceps can't handle more volume then it's better not to isolate, I apply this mentality in general where compounds are always better unless local fatigue can't take any more volume.
For front delts, for example, I like doing High Incline Dumbbell press (a 60 to 75 degree incline bench basically), your front delts will still fail first, but you will mess up your upper chest and get some triceps work too.

 
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