Soldier-orientated muscle/endurance workout & lifestyle
Soldier-orientated muscle/endurance workout & lifestyle
Peak exercise, routine, diet & health to condition your body for anything like a soldier.
Start slow and build your way up. If your aim is to lose fat and belly fat, this will greatly help with that while preparing the body for a combat minded conditioning.
This workout routine is high endurance and peak diet but specifically moderated for people who are either new to high endurance exercise, or have minimal experience with high endurance exercise.
Exercise:
3 times a week, full body work out, focusing primarily on upper body and legs.
If you are new to 3 times a week workout routine, start small with once a week and quickly build up till you reach 3 times a week.
Your main workouts will be:
Barbell bent over rows = lats (back)
Barbell deadlift = Traps (mid-back) & lower back
Above head dumbbell press or barbell press = Shoulders
Barbell upright row = Shoulders and traps
Dumbbell lateral raise = Shoulders
Pushups = chest & arms
Dumbbell curls = Biceps
Dumbbell hammer curl = Biceps
Close and wide goblet squats = Quads
Barbell squats = Quads
Barbell sumo deadlift = Quads
Barbell landmine row = Forearms
Barbell reverse curls = Forearms
Dumbbell row unilateral = Forearms
Dumbbell wrist curl = Forearms
You will want your workouts to be 3 times a week and to be roughly 30 minutes minimum or 2 hours max for optimum muscle growth and endurance. If you feel you will need to divide these up to a daily 30 minute schedule to hit certain muscles, such as one day for back, another for legs, etc. You are welcome to do that as long as you maintain consistency and give your body necessary rest time to those muscles.
If you want other potential workouts or want visuals to these workouts, a great website to check is MuscleWiki.
You should test the weights before your workout to see how heavy you can go while being able to do proper reps. Not knowing if your weights are too heavy or too light can lead to improper technique and worse, potential injuries.
You should also study the proper technique of these workouts. Doing a workout incorrectly can cause strain, potential injury, and even target a different muscle you wasn't intending. Also, you do not need to do all of the above listed, each and every scheduled workout. As long as you target the main parts of the body (arms, shoulders, back, legs) you did your necessary workout. If you can do at least some of what is listed above consistently in your workouts to target the main muscle groups you are aiming for, that is good. The aim is optimal muscle growth, NOT pushing yourself to muscle strains/injuries.
Ultimately on any workout you do, you'll want your reps within a set to be minimum 5 to max 9. If you can curl a dumbbell, squat a barbell, above head press, anything at least within 5-9 reps before you can't do another one, you're good. Anything higher starts building endurance, anything less requires less weight.
For all workouts and techniques, aim for 3 sets x 6 or more reps till failure. Failure being when you do reps till you physically can't. Reps till failure double muscle growth capabilities.
Resting:
Rest between sets: 5-7 minutes max
Rest after a workout: You must rest after a work out bare minimum of 24 hours and max of 72 hours. The muscles need rest after high intensity workout so they can heal and grow stronger.
Sleep: You need to get at bare minimum 8 hours of sleep for your muscles to rest and heal during that period of recovery. Sleep is the best thing for the body because the mind and body needs to recover from being awake for over 12 hours of activity.
Fatigue or pain: If you feel a lot of fatigue or pain after a run, walk, jog or workout. Take more necessary time to rest and recover. This especially applies to cardio or endurance training. Also look into seeing a doctor if the pain continues past a week and isn’t overwhelming. Any overwhelming pain that clearly isn’t just sore muscles should be checked. Also invest in necessary supplements and cartilage improving supplements, as cardio and certain workouts will have strong effects on your joints.
Diet & Health:
It isn't surprising that what we eat directly affects how we feel and our overall health. So because we are aiming for muscle growth and soldier like health, this is the diet I would recommend:
Avoid:
Intoxicants - drugs, alcohol, cigarettes.
Media addictions - addiction to social media, movies, games. These are fine when moderately or rarely consumed, but the dopamine from them can become strong addictions.
Sugar - Sugar can cause muscle deterioration. As elevation in blood sugar levels lead to muscle atrophy.
White bread.
Soda or other sugary drinks (replace with Celsius or Bang Energy for caffeine and low/zero sugar).
Foods & drinks to consistently consume:
Protein and lean proteins (beef and chicken for example).
Rice.
Eggs.
Honey.
Dates.
Vegetables.
Fruits.
Wheat bread (too much bread can increase fat, don't eat everyday).
Water and electrolytes.
Low sugar yogurt.
Jackfruit.
RXBAR Protein Bar.
Whey Protein powder.
Protein smoothies.
Get into the habit of cooking your own food and tracking calories/ingredients in your food. This will help maintain your calories and proteins your muscles will need. Cooking your own food will also allow you to get creative with your foods to make them taste amazing without relying so much on artificial flavors, sugar, or sugar alternatives that are harmful to the body.
If you want to track your calories and proteins in food you buy from the store or farmers market, I would recommend the Yuka app on IPhone and Android.
While yes you don’t need a completely clean diet to build muscle and lose fat, as we have seen from athletes like Michael Phelps, it does help significantly, especially when it comes to natural body-made energy, keeping pounds off, and feeling generally healthier. With that said, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy certain foods that might be fatty or unhealthy, what it simply means is to eat those kinds of foods in significantly lower consumption, or to workout to burn the fat obtained from them off soon after.
Cardio and Endurance Training:
Want to grow your calves and build your body endurance up? Your best friends are going to be cardio and endurance training like weighted vest running or rucksacking.
Your legs are your biggest and strongest of your muscles. Your legs and endurance must be prioritized more because they are how you get around and without strong legs or moderate/high endurance, you can't really do much, especially when you are gonna need it most during combat situations.
If you aren't use to cardio, start small. Do light jogs and walk more often. If you have a mile tracker, use it and keep track of the miles you cover. Again, start small, try to walk a mile or two. Build your way up to 3, 5, and then eventually 7 or 9.
Rucksacking is the practice of carrying a heavy backpack. A necessary practice for up and coming soldiers who will need to carry over 70 pounds or more on their body consistently. Start small if not use to it with a backpack of 30 pounds, then move up as your strength and endurance increases.
You want to do rucksacking walks a total of 2-3 times a month as a minimum; or weighted vest walks/jogs once a week.
And cover, at bare minimum, 1 mile daily if not use to walking a lot. 3 miles daily if you've been walking for 5+ months, and 5 miles daily if you've been doing cardio consistently for over 1 and a half (or more) years. The average necessary miles a healthy, physically fit person should be doing is 5 miles a day, or 5 miles every other day.
Remember to subscribe and follow my other socials; this is my uncensored webpage, as Linktree has censored some of my links:
https://islamicsocialist.systeme.io/socials
Subscribe to my Patreon to support my work:
https://www.patreon.com/IslamicML
Follow the Telegram:
https://t.me/islamicsocialist
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License