"A" is for, "Hay! What happened to 'B'"?

I got sick and so I missed two days of running and one day of lifting. I felt better so I got back into in today. And boy was it a good day.

Squat 3x5 190

DB Bench Press 60 4/5/4

Deadlift 1x8 200, 1x5 205

Dips 3/2/2

Curls 3x5 32.5

Oh man, I did not fuck around in the gym today. It took me about 50m to be done with the entire routine, including the extra set of deadlifts. I felt good.

On squats I just pounded them out. For the first time in a while I wasn't focusing on form and just got under the bar and pushed the fucking weight. As a consequence I had my best form since early December and just blew through all three sets with at most 3m of downtime between each set. I don't know what it was about today, but it felt great.

DB Bench Press was the only lift where I didn't meet or exceed expectations. I did 3x5 at 60lbs with Jeff on Sunday, but just couldn't do it today. No real worries. As you can't increment by 2.5lbs each time I'm expecting days like this. That said, it still felt great doing the sets and I think the failure was mostly due to not taking enough rest between my warmup sets and my first work set.

I have reached nirvana on deadlift. They just felt great. I was supposed to increment to 195 today, but pushed it to 200 since I was feeling so damn good. I blew through the warmups and then just didn't feel like stopping at 5 on my first work set so I did 8. Then I bumped the weight up to 205 just because. I even did these fine and the only reason I didn't do 210 is because I still have shit to do today and wanted to be able to walk.

Dips felt great. Getting that third dip in on the first set put me at half-mast for the rest of the workout. I almost expected to bottom out and just get one rep on the third set, equalling my volume on Sunday, but HTFU and got two in.

Curls were curls. After next week I think I'll bump up to 35lbs DBs.

"A" is for "Awfully Glad to Make Progress Again"

Squats 3x5 190

DB Bench 3x5 60

Deadlift 1x5 195

Dips 2/2/2

lolDBcurls 3x5 32.5

Woo! I made progress on everything except curls today and I'm very very happy about it. Part of it might have been showing Jeff the ropes so I was on my A game, but I think most of it came from eating properly beforehand. I had a banana and a whey shake with milk instead of water before lifting and I think having a solid meal helped a lot.

I'm tired as fuck now, so sleep time.

Why "Starting Strength"? A Squatting Introduction.

The questions are inevitable: "Yo man, why aren't you doing a bodybuilders routine?", "Why do you go so low when you squat?", "Why do you only do a 3x5 on everything?", "Why not more benches and curls?", "Don't you know you can't get heeeyyyuuuuuuuge doing squats? You gotta do lots of upper body work!"

I can answer all of these questions, and more, but bear with me while I explain a bit about "Starting Strength." The title is fairly self explanatory. Starting strength is a program designed to put the most amount of mass/strength on a person in the least amount of time, considering the given that they are a newbie to weight training. The good news about being new is that you will make an incredible amount of progress in a short time if you put work in. The bad news is that most people have no idea what to do in the gym, and need some direction and help.

The core of the routine is the squat. You do it first thing, every time you work out. This is important for a few reasons. First of all, a great deal of the mass you want to build, is right in those skinny ass legs of yours. They have the most growth potential out of all your muscles. (Do you want to look like that the rest of your life?) Second of all, the squat serves as a great general warm up. After a good squat session, you should be breathing heavily, sweating, and asking where all the lights went. Thirdly, put your ass under the bar and start squatting already.

The squat is done DEEPLY. In fact, if you have to ask "How deep?" then you aren't going deep enough.; you want your hips to be below your knees. You drive from the heels, and push the bar as hard as you can from your heels, and your hips. You stay on your heels the entire movement. The back remains in a neutral position all the way down and all the way up. Yelling is optional, but entirely understandable given how hard it gets to do this when pushing some serious poundage.

Increase the weight ten pounds every single workout until it becomes impossible to do and you have de-loaded three times. After that you should be at roughly 1.5 times your bodyweight.

Any other questions or concerns about the squat you would like me to address? Bar placement (protip: rear delts or traps are both acceptable places). I would be more than happy to answer any and all questions in the comments section.

W4D3: Success and On to Week 5!

So I did 22 laps in a bit less than 21.5 minutes, meaning that I cought up with the time/distance numbers for week four! So it's on to week 5 now.

Situps 10lbs 15/15/9

Hyperextensions 3x8 22.5

"A" is for "Alex Slacked On Updating"

So as I sit here morose having consumed a crappy PB&J sadwich, I feel I should catch up before heading up to the ARC to finish week four of C-to-5k.

So here's Tuesday's "A" workout:

Squat 3x5 185

DB Bench Press 3x5 55

Sumo Deadlift 1x5 190

Dips 2/1/2

Squats: Continued frustration

DB Bench Press: Felt great

Sumo Deadlift: _)_)======|) ~o ~o ~o

Dips: I'm glad to be doing more than one rep on more than one set again.

Nothing really to note except that the gym was in a particularly bad state of douchebaggery. I don't even have the will to type out about how bad it was. I take solace in that one of the guys who work at the gym is a kindred spirit to Joe and I. After three years of working at the ARC he's basically fed up with all the fuckers who roll 100lbs dumbbells into the corner for someone (him) to go pick up after them.

You might be hearing more from him soon!

Here's Wednesday's W4D2 of C-to-5k:

22 laps in 22 minutes. This is still a little slower than the time it should be taking, but I tightened it up a bit in addition to getting in  bit more distance. I'm also fudging by half a lap here, but as my backpack weighed about 35 pounds all day I'll excuse it.

Sit-Ups 10lbs 15/15/10: Oh god I finally made some progress. See above reaction to Sumo Deadlifts for an accurate portrayal of how I felt.

Hyperextensions 3x8 22.5lbs: I decided to cool off by two reps on this. I think the ten reps might have been a little much on a primarily lower-back exercise.

Thursday was "B" for "Bitches Leave Dumbbells Fucking Everywhere":

Squat 3x5 185

DB Overhead Press 3x5 42.5

DB Bent Over Row 3x5 70

Pullups at 76lbs assist 8/7/5

Squat: I think the running is killing my progress here, but oh well. I care more about that then squats right now.

DB Overhead Press: Actually with dumbbells my feet have been pretty close together so it's more like a true Military Press. This continues to be hard, but it feels good.

DB Bent Over Row: Jesus Christ doing three sets at 70 pounds is hard. I was very much cheating at the end of the sets, especially on my right arm. I'm going to stay at the weight for at least a week since the next increment is 75 pounds.

Pullups: Sweet, sweet progress.

W4D1: And Hello Pain

Week 4 is this:

• Jog 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes)
• Walk 1/8 mile (or 90 seconds)
• Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)
• Walk 1/4 mile (or 2-1/2 minutes)
• Jog 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes)
• Walk 1/8 mile (or 90 seconds)
• Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)

In doing the time I ran 1.82 miles. So I failed pretty hard on actually keeping up with the workout :( Hopefully by the end of the week I'll be doing better, if not I'll stay at week 4 until I can do 2 miles in 20m. I might have made it since I lost track of how many laps I did twice, but I don't think so. I'll try and do better counting them next time.

Accessory work was exactly the same as it was in the last entry.

"B" is for, "Busting Out Rows"

Squat 3x5 185

DB Overhead Press  3x5 40

DB Bent Over Rows 70

Pull Ups 8/5/3 76 assist

Squats are actually starting to feel good again and I was happy to get through a full working set at 185. I'm going to stick there this week and start incrementing up five pounds each week on Squats.

Press was tough, but it always is. Not really all too much else about it.

Rows are where the real story is today. Joe and I have been switching everything over to dumbbells and how far we went with rows today was just fucking stunning. At about 35lbs the dumbbells started to feel heavy, but when you're spending a day finding your weights you keep incrementing up until you actually fail during a set. I predicted around 45 and Joe concurred. We went to 70. Jesus Christ. This doesn't just mean we managed 70, this means we did about 55 reps total on each arm. So basically it was 1x5 like this: 22.5, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 52.5, 55, 60, 65, and finally 70. Eleven goddamn sets. So ya, we're both feeling a combination of amazement and exhaustion. I just can't describe how awesome it felt picking up a dumbbell that is the same weight the barbell was when I first did rows. Really. Wow. It was just amazing.

As a consequence, Pull-Ups didn't go as well as they should have, but who cares?

Nothing else really exciting except to say that doing Dim Sum with Willa, Chammara, Anthony, Andrew, and Joe was totally amazing. That's the first time I've had Dim Sum and it was delicious. Chicken feet are tasty, but a bit too much work for the "meat" and tripe is....eugh. Both flavor and texture just did not do it for me. This was more than made up for by the rest of the meal which was amazing however. I'm really looking forward to more foody experiences with Willa, Andrew, and Joe.

W3D3 Goodbye Easiness

Week 3, Day 3 of http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

17 laps in 18 Minutes, so 1.55 miles

Sit-Ups 15/13/7 10

Hyperextensions 3x10 22.5

Monday I start on week four. This is a pretty huge jump in the total amount of running and since I'm sticking with time instead of distance it'll be interesting to see how it goes. This last workout doing time I ended up running further than if I was measuring by distance so I'm curious to see if that continues. The second three minute run this week was just brutal, but part of that might have been the dry-ass weather we're having combined with drinking last night.

Joe Just Came and He Doesn't Even Know Why

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3051749&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/recipes/bacon-explosion/

"A" is for, "Absolute Shit"

Which is pretty much how I felt about Squats yesterday.

Squats 180/185/185

DB Bench Press 3x5 55

Sumo Deadlift 1x5 185

Dips 1/2/1

DB lolCurls 3x5 32.5

I tried 190, but just failed miserably on it and my form on 185 wasn't that great either. This might just have been a bad day in general, but everything else felt fine so I have no real clue as to what the hell happened. I probably just need to come to grips with the fact that two weeks of sitting on my ass has set me back a few weeks on squats and quit QQ'ing about it so much and just harden the fuck up.

Bench went well. 55 pound dumbbells are heavy, but manageable. I'm not sure how I'm going to increment up since they only go up in five pound chunks from here on out. I'm thinking of doing something like 55/60/55, 55/60/60, then 3x5 at 60 for a week. We'll see how it goes.

Deadlifts felt amazing again. I think I've got the form on Sumo about right so now it's just a matter of incrementing five pounds every workout until I hit a plateau and then just increment weekly after that, kinda like I did with Squats. I have a feeling my deadlift is going to stay in close step with squats though.

That second rep on the second set of dips hurt like hell, but felt really good. I was doing 2/2/2 before I left and it feels good to have made some progress again.

I incremented curls up a notch. They hurt like hell once again so that's a good thing.

B is for, "Basically, I Think Joe is Going to Explode."

Tuesday January 6, 2009

Squat 3x5 175/180/185

DB Overhead Press 40

Bent Over Row 3x5 135

Pull Ups 3x8 82 pounds of assist

Bonus "Alex was a slacker yesterday" running post of what I actually did today!

W3D2 of http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

Weighted Incline Sit ups 10 15/13/6

Hyperextensions 3x10 20

Squats were still pretty rough, but they were better than Sunday.

Weight finding on DB overhead press went well. I need to check form videos on it though to make sure we're doing it right, but much like bench it seems like it would be hard to fuck up.

Joe and I wanted to switch over to DBs for bent over rows too, but the New Year Resolution crowd were on the benches and the DBs were all fucking over the place. Goddamn.

Nothing exciting on the pull up front. It's the hardest thing I'm doing aside from overhead press, but slowly and surely I'm making progress on it.

Now, about the title of this post. At for the first 2-3 weeks of Fall quarter there were a bunch of assholes in addition to the usual brosef contingent. Joe and I have learned to never expect bars to be unloaded after use, weights to be in the right place, or to not have to wait up to ten minutes to get access to a squat rack because some brohem is doing wrist curls and needs the bumper bars. We're used to it. Even Joe (angry little man that he is) has learned to just shrug it off and laugh about it.

But Jesus Fucking Christ. Goddamn. Goddamn. The fucking New Years resolution crowd is the worst. Fucking plates and bars littered everywhere, crossfit douchebags "using" a squat rack for the entire duration Joe and I were there (they were also fully set up before hand), and nothing but standing rows, curls, and bench press to be seen in the whole fucking gym.

From the tenor of the above paragraph I think you can tell that even I was pissed.

I want to focus on the crossfit douchebags for a moment. In all fairness, the guy who we usually see in there gets his shit done in about the same time it takes Joe and I to use a rack on B days where we do squats and then overhead press back-to-back. He's also doing his entire routine competently and efficiently. I can dig that and I've made peace with his rings taking up a rack.

The douchebags that were there this time though are a different story. Not only were they being inefficient as fuck, but the more experienced brohem was trying to teach his buddy (who I overheard was totally new to crossfit and possibly lifting in general) how to do overhead squats. These are where you clean and then overhead press the bar and then do squats. It is the most gnarly, hard ass, highest chance of injury version of squats there is. Having a total beginner doing these was pretty fucking shady not to mention that for the actual squat portion of the exercise they were both only going to a half-squat at best. It was pretty damn sad.

I think that 70% of the New Years Resolution crowd will thin out by week 4, but until then Joe's going to be taking more than a few cool down walks and counts to ten.

As a last note, I've gained about ten pounds since this time last month. Weight doesn't matter much, but only to a certain extent. At 10+ pounds where I wasn't working out much so it can't be muscle it becomes an indication of a problem. I'm not going to do anything drastic about caloric intake yet, but if the weight keeps going up over the next few weeks despite starting up the (kinda gnarly for a fat dude) workout schedule I'm going to have to start slashing calories even if it means slowing my gains on running/lifting.

W3D1 How I Came to Go to Bed No Later than 12am

So I'm going to start blogging my running too. Here's what I did today at the ARC's indoor track.

Warm up walk consisted of walking to the ARC. This is 20-30m depending on how much I'm slacking.

90s Jogging (I did this at a pretty quick clip to get the blood moving)

90s Walking

180s Jogging

180s Walking

Rinse + Repeat

Inclined Weighted Situps 10lbs 15/11/10

Hyperextensions 20lbs 3x10

Stretching

So between that and Monday being by far my longest class day I'm pretty fucking beat right now. I'm hoping this doesn't blow out lifting tomorrow, but it shouldn't.

"A" Is for, "Alright, Back in the Saddle."

Squats: 170x1x5, 180x1x5, 185x1x5

Dumbbell Bench: Incremented to failure at 55

Deadlift: 1x6 180

Dips: 1/1/1

I learned something today. I learned that while taking a one week break at the end of each quarter is going to end up being a good thing, taking almost two weeks off without even running is not. Squats fucking killed me today.

I knew after the last time I was in the gym I needed a break, but the set today at 185 felt almost as bad as my third set of 200 that last time. My plan right now is to use this week as a "recovery" week and do incremented sets like what I have listed. Tuesday I'm planning on sets of 175, 180, and 185 then sets of 180, 185, 190 on Thursday. Next Sunday I'm going to do either 185 or 190 back on the 3x5 set schedule depending on how I feel.

Joe and I are switching to dumbbell exercises for everything except Squats and Deadlift this quarter. We figured this will give us a chance to change it up a bit on our muscles. So in that vein we both did a weight finding session to fix our working weights in. We were both pretty shocked by making it into the fifties. I ended up failing on my fourth rep at 55 and while Joe got through the whole set, I think the primary reason for that is I also had done a set at 52.5 because I honestly thought that's where I'd fail at.

Deadlifts felt fucking amazing once again. I put on my sweat pants just for this exercise so that I wouldn't be worrying about scraping my shins with the bar. This was so goddamn liberating I can't really describe it. I could put all my focus on doing the lift with my for perfect instead of having to worry about keeping the bar off my shins so I didn't pull a Joe and scrape them up to the point of bleeding all over the fucking gym.

Dips were...odd. On the one hand I was blown out tired and some muscles I wasn't even aware of were being used in the DB Bench since that allows for a much higher ROM (Range of Motion) than Barbell bench. My last dip took me about 20s to go up from. I just refused to fail and it hurt like hell.

Anyways, that's about it. I'm really hoping that this helps me sleep tonight and that I don't get a bad case of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness; basically this is when you can barely walk and can't lift your arms over your head) tomorrow. That would be a shitty way to start off the week.

Two weeks without my lover

Starting lifting after a forced two week break is not a fun experience. A one week break is about all you need when it comes for your bodies ability to recover from a workout, and two weeks is getting into muscle wasting territory- specially when combined with inadequate protein consumption.

Today, my lover the gym kicked my ass. It's hard for me to lift my fingers to type this. I need food and a deep tissue massage. Unfortunately there is only one of those things in my future, and it's not looking like Helga and her massage table are going to be coming to my residence anytime soon.