Iron Born Questions

[IronBornTobe]

First a little bit of background. I have done weights before on and off so not a total newbie. The latest weight lifting program I did was strong lifts 5 x 5 and I stopped it in Feb 2020. Due to Covid. I did not go to the gym at all and started gaining weight. I am 5'9" and am currently 179 lbs. I came to my senses when my weigh scale showed 189.6! Currently I am on a journey to drop to 169 to 165 pounds(likely to happen by beginning of Oct) and then start a good weight program. I am on a calorie deficit and am doing biking and walking to burn calories now.

I did my research and got a bench and adjustable dumb bell set (not the automatic one but where you load 1" plates). Stumbled upon Darebee and picked the IronBorn. I have a couple of questions on ironborn.

1. Do you use the same weight for all the exercises in a day? For example, I can probably do 3 times the weight for bent over row over bent over fly on day 2. Should I pick a weight and stick to it? I like to do it that way as I need not keep adding and removing plates :-).
2. What happens after I complete day 30? Should I start again and increase the weight? - Rinse and repeat - forever?
3. Just to get warmed up, I have been practicing the exercises with 7lbs on each side every other day- while I am on calorie deficit. (I am loading up on protein and reducing the carbs). Is there a place where there are videos of all exercises in Ironborn?

Thanks for all your efforts in putting together this wonderful website and the programs! Appreciate it!!

[Andi64]

Welcome to the Hive IronBornTobe
Congrats on the weight loss
@1:
Change the weights. Doing biceps curls, bent over rows and farmers walk (Day 18) with the same weight does not make sense. A good indicator for the right weight usually is, if you can do the last rep of each set in good form, but just, so almost to fatigue. Adding and removing those weights is the fate of us poor sods who can not afford (or do not have the space for) a 20 part chrome plated dumbbell set. I use springs like these. With those changing works pretty fast. Keeping a journal is highly recommended, so you know how much you lifted when for which exercise.
@2
Darebee is mostly a calisthenics site, so most programs are body weight based and the free-weight/kettlebells based ones (Ironborn, The Gauntlet & X-press Tone) are rather late additions.
Nothing wrong with restarting the program with more weight or shorter breaks or on a different level, I think the question came up here quite a lot. Like here and here.
If you want to stay on the Iron Islands for a longer period of time, I can recommend https://exrx.net/ . It is also free, ad-free and has a helpful community. They are more specialized on weight training.There you find a ton of information, like workout templates to make your own programs.
@3:
Warming up with lighter weights is great.
The video library does not cater to the weight exercises (yet?). See @2 for reasons. Again: exrx.net has a library for most exercises with video.

Good luck and all the best.

[IronBornTobe]

Thanks Andi. This is very helpful.

[CaptainCanuck]

IronBornTobe The training plans are less structured than the programs and allow you to pick and choose exercises that you would like to do, between workouts, challenges or even individual days from programs (or off site material as well of course). You might look into that after Ironborn. There is also ExpressTone, another dumbell program, and The Gauntlet, if you want to try out kettlebells.

[J_o_h_n]

IronBornTobe


Welcome to Darebee. I love this site. So many possibilities.

I recently finished Iron Born. At the suggestion of another posting, I did Iron Born and High Gear together. The programs are not really intended for stacking like this, but these two worked well together. The great thing about programs is you don't have to think about what to do - just open to the day you are on, complete the workout, check it off.

With Iron Born and High Gear behind me, I haven't decided on my next program, but it will probably be the Gauntlet. Right now, I am changing up my routine by filtering for workouts of interest. I found some over the weekend I thought would lend themselves to doing some of the exercises with my TRX for a change of pace. Nearly every workout can be adapted in some way...add weights, perform elevated / declined, add / subtract reps, add / subtract rest.