Form > Figures

Rising through the ranks on Fitocracy has been a fun way to get a little bit of extra motivation exercise, but there's a few things I don't like about it. Since Fitocracy, awards points based on weight and for duration exercises, speed, it puts extra emphasis on upping weight and doing many sets with few reps. But doing low rep sets with near max weight is a great way to break down your form and increase the chances of injury.

I've decided to generally avoid doing lifts at weights that I can't do for at least 4-5 reps and focus on form to avoid injury. The one exception is deadlift, which is just an exercise that works well with high reps. I keep my reps between 2 and 5 for deadlifts, but have been avoiding 1 rep maxes.

Pulling back a little on my max lifts and not seeing any new max PRs is a little disheartening, but I feel a lot safer and I don't have any real problems with my muscles or joints. I also feel that in the long run, avoiding near max level lifts will allow for greater progression.

Fitocracy

I joined a social networking site called Fitocracy last week as extra motivation to get workouts in and vary my activities. Fitocracy provides tools for you to log your workouts, which are shared publicly with other users. You can "follow" other users and get followers of your own, so you can get a sense of the types of workouts other people are doing. You can also give "props" (basically "like") workouts are make comments. The site awards points for each workout based on the difficulty of the exercises you perform, duration, weight and sets. As you gain points you also gain levels, which gives you something to work toward over time. Although logging workouts with a lot of different exercises takes some time, it’s a nice way to create a log to remember what you've done. The public aspect of the site and the gaining of experience and levels is good for motivation. It also keeps track of your personal bests on all the exercises you log, so you'll know when you hit a new max.


My main gripe with the site so far is the point system. It gives huge rewards for lifting a lot of weight and relatively piddly rewards for cardio activity and certain low weight exercises. For instance, I ran 2.75 miles in about 24:10 last week which netted me around 330 points, I noticed someone else had logged 1 squat with 500 pounds for around the same amount of points. I feel like the points should be adjusted so that cardio and lifting are equal and rewards should take into account other factors like weight, gender and personal bests.


Despite its flaws, it has been fun to track workouts and it has motivated me to incorporate more types of exercises into my routine to grub for points.