Nifty little discoveries

Ok because I can't actually afford a personal trainer being that I'm a broke college student I spend a lot of time trying to find electronic substitutes thus-far this is what I've discovered.

sparkpeople.com The great thing about this sight is that it literally does everything for you if you need it but it also allows you to completely customize your workouts and pick and choose exercises from a lists of what seems like hundreds of exercises separated by upper and lower body and core. It give you the same capabilities for nutrition plans. It even has a sister site with healthy meal recipes. The main downfall for this sight is that it doesn't have the best capabilities for progressing your workout intensities as you become more fit. It also does give the best plans if you're female and trying to put on muscle. However it does allow you to rotate your work out very easily with just a click every 6 to 8 weeks as you should. I found it's a great starting point but should be used for more extreme muscle building goals.

onlinefitnesslog.com This site is much more simpistic and is exactly what it says it is, a log, nothing more. This is great for people who have a better handle on how to put together workouts and knowing what their body needs and simply lacks the organization, such as myself. It provides meal and exercise logs as well as the ability to track your progress sets your goals and talk to other people using the site through the forum.

In my opinions perhaps combining the best aspects of each site would be best. For example I personally have a pretty good handle on planning my work outs but struggle more with nnutrition. So i've been using sparkpeople for planning meals and have simply been using the fitness log to log my meals and plan my work outs myself.

Update

Ok so, because my camera is currently in gainesville with my mohter, about an hour away I decided to take some photos with my blackberry which of course means they're not going to be fabulous quality but they'll have to suffice until such time as I get my hands on my camera. I guess also for the sake of progress, I'll critique them to point what what needs to be improved in my opinion and how much.

Alright so horrible picture I know but nonetheless you kinda get the idea, so not for the critiques. Oh and I tried to get a shot of my back but that just wasn't workin out...
anyway ok i suppose I'll go bottom to top, first of off I know it's not really visible here but I really want to work on the muscle tone in my thighs, they're muscular but don't have any real definition. My butt is pretty good my only goal there is "the bigger the better" :) Obviously my lower abs still need quite a bit of work but they've definitely slim down a bit I just need to pack on the muscle now. My upper abs I'm almost happy with my upper abs they just need a bit more definition i also need to slim down just a teeny bit in the love handles area. hmm let see what else, my arms are getting there but i still wanna be a bit more "ripped" I guess, I kinda wanna get to the point that I don't need to flex to see the muscle.



well...there ya go there's my progress thus far, tomorrow one of the trainers at my gym who really seems to love his job wants to go through a work out with me and I'm thinkin he's also gonna check on my body fat percentage and what not so I'll know numerically where I'm at tomorrow :)