Workout A - 11/29/12

Squat: 135 x 3 x 5

Bench: 115 x 3 x 5

Deadlift: 155 x 1 x 5

The last rep of each work set of squats had a little bite today, but nothing to struggle with.  My form felt good although I feel like I should be sitting back a little bit more.  Bench was not difficult at all; it was rather boring.  Ditto, deadlifts.  I hate two day rest periods right now.  Feel my seething disposition, the pure essence of my discontent.

Okay, that was fun.

Body weight

I should probably start including my body weight in some of these posts.  Ideally I'll see about a pound a week increase.  If not, I need to increase calories.  It's somewhat difficult to accurately gauge weight gain on a day-to-day basis since so many factors come into play that cause weight to fluctuate.  So, I try to weigh myself 4-5 times a week, keep as many variables constant as I can, and track an approximate average in my head.  When I started this in early November, I was around 171 lbs.  Right now my mental average has me at about 172.5-173 lbs.  That's a little slow, so if I don't see a jump in the next week, I'll probably bump up my daily caloric intake by 200.

Workout B - 11/27/12

Squats were incrementally harder, and I noticed my form getting kind of sketchy because I wasn't too focused.  OH press was not really challenging, but when I didn't focus on form they got a little tougher.  Rows were easy.  Lessons from today?  I need to find certain form triggers, or a progression of thoughts in my head as I'm doing these.

Squat: 125 x 3 x 5
Press: 85 x 3 x 5
Rows: 95 x 3 x 5

Next time I do the press, I'm going to add 5 pounds rather than 10.  I know this will be the lift with the lowest weight overall, so 5 pound increments now will help keep linear progression going as long as possible before micro loading begins.

Workout A - 11/25/12

Pretty much the same as last Thursday, but for workout A.  The weights weren't challenging.  Squats went up 10 lbs, but that's about it.  Hopefully starting this light will get me a few more weeks of linear progression by the time I exhaust the program.

Squat: 115 x 3 x 5
Bench: 105 x 3 x 5
Deadlift: 135 x 1 x 5

Workout B - Thanksgiving morning

Glorious pre-Turkey Day workout?  I think so!  Dropped weights to approximately 70% of my 5RM as per Rippetoe with the hope that I'll be able to keep up linear gains as long as possible.  As expected, this was pretty light and not a challenge. My heart rate only felt somewhat elevated after the squats.

Squat: 105 x 3 x 5
Press: 75 x 3 x 5
Rows: 85 x 3 x 5

I'm off to consume massive amounts of wine, turkey, and all the other goodies this day has to offer.

Start #2

On Sunday I repeated my first workout, meaning I didn't increase any of the weights as I would normally.  I did this mostly because I haven't been able to stick to the program so far due to the free trainer session, and had another coming up.  I figured another baseline workout would be good since I had no idea what I'd be doing today with the trainer.  Anyway, here's Sunday's workout:

Squat: 135 x 3 x 5
Bench: 155 x 3 x 5
Deadlift: 185 x 1 x 5

The trainer had me do a bunch of deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, chin ups, dumbbell rows, cable curls, and upright cable rows.  Not bad for a pull workout, but obviously not what I'm going to do.

I'm really looking forward to starting (again) with no interruptions on Thursday.  Oh, and eating massive amounts of food and drinking a lot of wine since it's Thanksgiving.

Robert Redford approves of all of this:

A diversion

I veered off course a little bit today, but not by choice.  I get two free sessions with a personal trainer at my gym as a part of their sign up package, and today was the first.  It was annoying not being able to follow my plan, but it was definitely beneficial since he was able to fix a couple flaws in my squat and deadlift form.  I couldn't even tell you the weights we did.

Anyway, I'll do a normal workout Sunday and then use my final trainer session Tuesday.  After that I can finally get on track.

The right state of mind

Today was my first "Workout B", where I do squats, standing overhead press, and Pendlay rows.  For the squats, I added 10 pounds to the weight of my first workout.  I don't think I mentally prepared myself for the first work set, because I very nearly failed on my last rep*.  I was probably a bit sloppy with form too.  I tightened everything up for the second and third sets and was able to complete them without reaching the brink of disaster again.  Trying to increase the weight every workout is going to be... magnificently painful.

Since I didn't know my work set weight for the OHP and rows, I worked my way up slowly again.  I really didn't feel like I was very close to my 5RM on either exercise, but that's okay.  My form was good, and I know it'll ramp up fast and I'll be suffering properly soon.

Squat: 145 x 3 x 5
Press: 85 x 3 x 5
Rows: 95 x 3 x 5

The entire lower half of my body feels obliterated.  This is good.

*I was definitely distracted by the amazing "scenery" at my gym.  Damn... I love it of course, but I'm going to have to make sure I get into the right state of mind before my sets.  Less gym bunny watching mode, more unadulterated hatred of iron mode.

Day 1

It all begins here I suppose.  While I did build up some base of strength over the last six months, this is the start of the real training.  Workout A: Squats, bench, and deadlifts.  I really had no idea what weight I’d be doing my work sets at, so I worked my way up slower than I usually will during warm up sets.  I purposely didn't go up to a weight that I felt was my true 5RM, but I got close.  Form and technique was paramount, and the weight will ramp up fast, so no big deal.  I’m not going to bother divulging the warm up sets; just my work sets.

Squat: 135 x 3 x 5

Bench Press: 155 x 3 x 5

Deadlift: 185 x 1 x 5

Ever see a person who benches more than they squat?  Now you have!  That shouldn't last long, but it definitely shows just how ineffective my apartment’s gym is (and only able to squat with 50-pound dumbbells).  I had no delusions of iron pumping grandeur, and overall this is kind of what I expected as far as weight.   Using various 1RM calculators, my total weight for the big three movements--maybe I should call them the Trio of Glory from now on--should be around 535-560 lbs.  Weak.  I have a LOT of work to do.  But again, this was expected, so if nothing else my motivation has increased by at least 17%.  Maybe even 19%.

The Plan

Alright, let’s briefly go over the plan here.  I’m going to be following a program that is a slight modification on Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength barbell training.  Why?  Because it’s proven, tried-and-true, gets results, really brings home the bacon and fries it too, etc., etc., etc.  If you want details, click here.  But the gist of it is training three days a week, alternating between two different workouts, which I’ll creatively call Workout A and Workout B.  The core exercises are all compound barbell movements, and eventually I’ll add in some accessory work.  Here it is:

Workout A

Squats: 3 x 5

Bench Press: 3 x 5

Deadlift: 1 x 5

Dips: 2 x 8-12

Abs

Workout B

Squats: 3 x 5

Standing Military Press: 3 x 5

Pendlay/Bent Over Rows: 3 x 5

Chin-ups: 2 x 8-12

Abs

However, at first I’ll just be doing the first three in each workout until I stop progressing and need to stress the body a bit more.  Pretty simple stuff.  I'll stay on the program until it stops working and it's time to move on to a more intermediate level program.

As far as nutrition goes, I’m sticking with what I've been doing, which is roughly 3200 calories and 170+ grams of protein a day.  As long as I hit those, I’m happy, although I do try to keep my fat intake around 75-85 grams a day.  If you really want to know why, watch this and this.  I don’t have much more to say about nutrition without going into a lot of boring detail.  I might increase the calories right off the bat, but we’ll see how my weight gain is.

I don’t plan on making an entry after every workout.  I don’t really have much of a plan for this, period.  I’m just going to let it ride, baby, go with the flow.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’m predicting something between useless drivel and winning the first Nobel Prize in Blogging.

So there it is.

The Beginning

Greetings.  This blog is going to serve as a way for me to track my progress down the salubrious path to my weight lifting goals.  For the humans other than myself who are reading this, you may be asking, “and just what are those goals?”  Well, there’s actually just one at this point in time.  My goal is to reach a cumulative 1-rep max of 1000 lbs in the three big powerlifting movements: Squat, bench press, and deadlift.  Notice how clever my blog title seems now.  Alas.

Why is this my goal?  I’m not entirely sure, but I like goals, and it seems like a decent choice.  It’s certainly not unobtainable, and certainly not trivial.  On a deeper level, I’m doing this because in the last six months or so, I've really gotten into this stuff.  I've always been into some sort of physical activity and exercise.  In Middle School and High School I was a very competitive cross country mountain bike racer, to the point where I was nationally ranked as an 18 year old, fully sponsored on a national level team, and training to turn pro.  Then college happened, and I decided to be social and maximize fun and merriment instead of being a disciplined athlete.  I had lifted weights in the off season to supplement my racing training, and during college I lifted multiple times a week.   Since a post-college lull, I've been lifting consistently about four and a half years.  However, until earlier this year I always did whatever I felt like, rather than following any sort of program.  For some reason still unknown to me, about six months ago I started reading up on weight lifting, body building, proper nutrition, exercise science, and the like.  There was definitely a snowball effect as the more knowledge I got, the more I craved.  It’s interesting stuff!  I started a simple novice program in my small apartment gym and coupled that with finally eating right (“right” for the purpose of supporting my weight lifting endeavors, at least).  In the first four months I made more progress than I had in the previous four years of just “doing whatever” and eating what I thought was a decent diet.  I went from roughly 150 to 170 pounds without much noticeable fat gain, and I was lifting quite a bit more than I ever had.  But at this point my apartment gym had outlived its usefulness, and it was time to finally get back in a real gym.  That brings us to today.

That was probably more detail than anybody cared to read, but aren't you happy you know so much more about me now?  Note: If you answered “no”, then you are probably a mean-spirited individual and I’m glad I wasted the last minute of your life.  You will never, ever get that time back.  But this has indeed been far too long of an intro post, so I’ll end this nonsense now.

Good day to you.