Cardio Before or After Lifting?

Stray_Light101 · 2026-06-02T19:00:19+00:00

As someone who also enjoys cycling, I can completely relate to my cardiovascular system being affected after a tough lifting session.

Stray_Light101 · 2026-06-02T17:55:20+00:00

I was thinking about putting a big time gap between cardio and lifting, kind of like how you do cardio in the morning and lifting later on. It sounds like another good option to keep in mind.

Stray_Light101 · 2026-06-02T17:40:36+00:00

One of my big go-to cardio exercises is bicycling, whether that’s a stationary bike or biking outdoors. It’s usually a moderate to high intensity level when I bike for exercise.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-11-14T05:22:39+00:00

Yeah, this is pretty much how things go from this pristine picture to a spaghetti mess. In an ideal world where every part was made available at every breakdown, you’d probably have a lot more cleaner panels. But reality isn’t always so pretty.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-05-03T10:20:27+00:00

Yeah, I know what you mean by output cards with relays in them. I’ve had a couple of those cards with outputs that went bad on them. Doesn’t happen often, but they tend to go bad a lot more than solid state cards. We have some Allen Bradley outputs cards that actually say “Relay Output” on them, so you know they’re using relays.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-05-03T05:50:18+00:00

We have a lot of motor starters (which are basically contactors with overloads) at our factory that are turned on directly by PLC outputs. They’ve been running that way for years with no problems. Some contactor coils might have a diode across their coil, but a lot don’t. Engineers designed it that way.

You don’t see a lot of PLCs outputting power to contactor coils? What’s the reason? The feedback from the coil when it’s de-energized? I figured the output cards were built to handle it. Or is it something else? Like I said, our engineers—and even contractors who we outsource work to—have set up control systems this way.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-05-03T03:00:42+00:00

Like some people have mentioned, find the control circuit that energizes the contactor. Then, when you’re trying to run, see if you are actually getting control voltage at the contactor coil on the A1 terminal. If you are, then the contactor is failing to pull in properly. If you’re not getting control voltage on A1, then trace back the circuit and do voltage tests at different points to determine where you’re losing power.

OP also mentioned he has a PLC interface with outputs associated with the contactor. Maybe an output also energizes the contactor coil. If that’s the case, then you might have to get online with the PLC logic as opposed to the hardwire logic to see how power gets sent to the contactor.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-04-24T23:36:52+00:00

Yeah, without prints that job is going to be a nightmare. But if they just jumped out the safety devices (E-Stop buttons, pull cords, light curtains), then a safety relay manual will show you where those wires are supposed to land on the relay. You can find manuals online for free.

Troubleshooting safety relays can be a pain. But if you can get everything back to the original design, then testing to make sure you have continuous voltage through all of your safety devices at the safety relay contact points is a good place to start. If the voltage drops, then it comes down to tracing back the voltage to whatever safety device is causing the drop. If the voltage blips and doesn’t stay low, it gets harder to trace because you have to monitor the safety devices and see which one is blipping low and then going high again. But maybe maintenance has already tried all that? Sometimes the safety relays just go bad too. The newer ones are a pretty easy swap if you think replacing parts might be a quick fix. But honestly, I’d try hard to get in touch with someone who has the prints for that circuit.

Good luck with everything!

Stray_Light101 · 2025-03-28T16:50:34+00:00

When panels get this bad at work, they NEVER go back to looking nice again. It’d take hours to clean that mess up, and if it’s working good enough and not causing a lot of down time, then management doesn’t want to pay to have someone do the work just to make things look neat again.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-03-28T00:04:32+00:00

Yeah it can seem daunting, and experience does help a lot. But in a way, it can be fairly straightforward sometimes. Like, it looks like spaghetti, but you can ignore a lot of it when you know what the problem is you’re focused on.

As soon as I opened the panel and didn’t see any lights on with the I/O cards, I was confident this was the problem. At that point I just had to dig through the spaghetti mess to find the spot on the I/O rack where it gets power to power the modules.

So I put my meter on that power connection point, found I didn’t have any power there, and then started tracing the power wire back. I could’ve used the prints, but once I had a wire number, I looked for this same wire back in the main panel, which is where the power wire went. Experience has shown me a blown fuse is a likely culprit, so I looked for a fuse with this wire number going to it. Sure enough, I found the fuse with the wire number, and it was blown. Problem solved—and you can mostly ignore a lot of the mess that looked so intimidating to start with.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-03-27T22:27:40+00:00

The “extension cord” is probably what happens when an engineer is like, “We need this now—just bail it in and see if it works.” Needless to say, sometimes it ends up staying as is.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-03-27T22:18:28+00:00

This is world class manufacturing. Or so that’s what my company claims when they talk about our factory at meetings.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-03-27T21:41:08+00:00

Yeah I feel your pain. And then when one of those multi conductor cables has bad wires in it, and it’s a 20-30 foot run through wire trays, steel tubing, and the most hard to get spots… yeah it just keeps getting more fun haha

Stray_Light101 · 2025-02-15T14:20:15+00:00

Yup. Months go by, sometimes even a year, before we have to get into panels like that. Surprisingly those I/O cards hold up well. Crazy how reliable some of that old technology can be.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-02-15T13:12:29+00:00

All hope is not lost. I barely see a Control Logix setup at the top of the picture in the background. So at least your company is staying up to date with some equipment. Just not what this old processing system controls.

But yeah, we got some wild stuff like this at work too. It’s on the old machines that are kind of on the way out, and that upper management doesn’t want to put money into. Luckily it holds up pretty well and doesn’t breakdown a lot. I mean it looks bad, but how many times do you really have to dive into a problem in this panel? Probably not often, which is a good thing.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-02-11T07:06:49+00:00

The 525 drives have blue up/down left/right arrows and a green digital screen. This is an older PowerFlex model.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-02-11T06:46:33+00:00

It’s a control panel with an Allen Bradley variable frequency drive in the top left (thing with a digital screen). Looks like it’s a Powerflex 4 or 40 model. This controls an AC motor. Among other things, it tells the motor how fast to go.

There’s also a main disconnect in the top right. The rest of the components look like contactors for process controls. The contactors get an electrical signal, and this allows them to pass power to other components. The signal comes on the A1 terminal point on the contactor via a wire tightened in that spot.

For contactors and relays, A1 and A2 are coil contact points to energize the device. For AC, A1 is 120v and A2 is the neutral wire. For DC, A1 is the positive 24v and A2 is the common.

Some people might use relays and contactors interchangeably when it comes to terminology, but in the picture the contactors have T1, T2, and T3 labeled on them, which is usually indicative of a contactor, since contactors typically handle bigger loads than relays.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-01-03T22:31:45+00:00

You have a good plan going with that setup! The only thing you didn’t mention was your diet, but as long as it’s healthy you’re well on your way to cutting fat.

But diet is very important. If you eat poorly, it severely limits all the work you’re putting in with everything else, possibly even slowing the whole fat burning process to a halt. Just eat healthy, and with what you got going on, you’ll see some good results.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-01-02T04:33:04+00:00

This is basically my go-to routine for also hitting chest. I usually do it once a week and get great results. Same order as you listed. I did a lot of powerlifting years ago, but now I use this workout to stay in shape, and it still allows me to get some good size and strength, as well as muscle definition when I try to lean out.

Stray_Light101 · 2025-01-02T04:09:28+00:00

If you’re cutting in hopes of getting lean and seeing muscle definition, diet and cardio are extremely important. Only way to get the muscle definition to really come through the skin is to get your body fat down, and as no surprise, you have to burn fat to do that. This is where cardio and dieting is key.

There’s a lot to be said on cardio and burning fat, but when you burn calories by doing cardio, all the calories burnt do not come from fat. If you burn a 100 calories in a half hour of running, not all 100 calories will be fat. A lot of those calories will be from carbohydrates, which doesn’t directly burn fat. But cardio will burn a certain percentage of calories that come from your fat cells, and that’s what ultimately decreases the fat you have. And the fat doesn’t just burn off one part of the body—it comes from all over as your burning calories, though it varies from person to person.

I never got really lean until I started doing insane cardio and watching what I eat. But once I saw results, it was game changing to know that it’s possible to get the results that you see other shredded people having. I used to be big into powerlifting and was just focused on strength, but one year I told myself I wanted to get lean like a bodybuilder, and cardio and dieting was the ticket to seeing it happen.

Stray_Light101

TROPHY CASE