Body builders are the devil

I’ve switched up my routine for exercising since I hit my goal for the year a few weeks back and since I’m not quite able to go workout like I used to since the place I went to go workout is up for sale.  I did just day one of my routine that my bodybuilder friend built for me last Saturday and boy it wasn’t too bad.  I’ve singing a different tale though for sure for the past three days.  Super sore.  Sore in specifically the areas I worked out, which were my chest and triceps.  It’d be sweet to have ripped triceps this time next year. 

Tonight I’ll be doing my day two workout, which should be legs.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  Freaking bodybuilders…spawn of satan…telling you…making me so sore.

Ya so its the next day now.  I look like my legs are broken.

This is what happens when you write goals down...

It may not look like much, but the chart that follows is a big deal.



What you're looking at is the culmination of my lifting goals being reached for the year.  When I started out I had goals to squat 250lbs, which I accomplished on 10/28/13.  Today during lunch I accomplished my other goal of bench pressing 225lbs.  I lifted 190lbs 7 times for a one rep equivalent of 228lbs.  Interestingly enough today, 190lbs, was the first day to go up in weight and I subsequently also lifted 185lbs 7 times and 180lbs 7 times and so at my next session I'll be going up in weight yet again.

I wonder how much of the ease with which I was lifting had to do with how excited I was to be trying for my goal or technique or both.  Who knows.

Pretty cool stuff.  Now to think of what next years goals will be.  My brother and I have discussed systematizing goals and so really that'd be the best way to go about it.  One thing that I think would just be cool is to do 225lbs, which is two 45lb plates on each side of the bar while benching.  It'd be cool to do that just once, but hopefully several times.

I don't think I've ever been this strong in my life, which is also pretty cool.  28 and as strong as I've ever been.

They're opening up a franchise planet fitness in my town and so I may sign up there. I've also thought about looking into barstarz to see if that is something I ought to do.  We'll see and I'll let you know.

Thought I’d give a one time rep a try

Currently I’ve been estimating my max weight via a rep calculator, found here http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/OneRepMax.html. 

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to try and see if I indeed could lift as much as the calculator says I could.  First up was squat.  Currently doing 205lbs 6 times equates to 238.  I put 235 on there.  With my wife watching I went down and…came back up.  And fairly easily surprisingly.  I thought it was too easy.  Then I thought that I wasn’t really too far off from trying for my goal weight for one rep, which was 250lbs.  So I put that weight on as well.  After a quick gut check I went under the bar and lifted it up with a bit more strain then the previous rep.  Then I went down slowly, made sure I touched the support bars and then…got it back up!  Bam!

I was pretty pumped and turned to my wife and said some noise or something that was legitimately sincere AND macho.  I was excited to have knocked out my goal on squat for the year. 

I then got everything set up for doing my current one rep equivalent for bench.  Got it up and came down slow and was actually able to bring it back up a couple inches, but that was it.  I set it back down on the support bars and then went home. 

All I have left to wrap up for the weight lifting goal then is to reach 225lbs on bench, or 190lbs lifted 7 times.  Last time I lifted more than just the one rep I graduated onto a higher weight.  So next time around I’ll be working on finishing 185lbs 7 times, 180 7 times, and 175 7 times.

Pretty exciting cause once I’m done with reaching those goals it’ll be time to change my routine a little bit to work on other areas of my body that I want to improve on.  I may find a way to get a pass to our local rec center as they’ll be able to accommodate my desired workout routines better than the current setup I’ve been going to at my brothers.  We shall see!

Lifting update

I figure since I’m doing a fair amount of posts I might as well do an update on lifting.  I’m still going!  I’m pretty close to reaching my goal for the year in bench and squat.  I think I’ll reach it by year-end.  This is because I just need to finish the 205 sets on squat and then do it for 210.  Bench is very close to graduating from my current 180 sets to 185 and then once 185 is done I’ll have to finish with 190.  I had my first kid on the 12^th and so I didn’t lift at all during that time except for one session with my arms is all.

Surprisingly and thankfully I still get pretty good and sore.  It sucks of course, but it is the good kind of sore and it isn’t the debilitating kind you get when you very first ramp up working out again so I guess there is the silver lining in this whole thing.  While I’m getting stronger it is just too bad I’m not totally ripped ha ha. 

I decided that when the baby came I’d throw out eating healthy and have packed the weight back on.  Instead of throwing out the good food that we paid good money for as well we’re gonna finish that food and then I’ll be back into eating healthy again so that is good.

I’m going waste time right now cause I want to and can though I know its not good for me by writing this blog post.

I had an interesting conversation with my brother about the businesses/lives we’re currently leading.

I’m a wimp.  This morning I was at least and was very uncomfortable about it.  I didn’t realize I was being one until I was talking to my brother about it hours later.  What I’m referring to specifically is that I was learning some things about how to get inside my customer’s head and the wimp/victim inside of me was saying, “I’ve never been a great salesman.  I’m not sure this stuff will work for me.  I’m not going to be successful in business.”

How lame is that!?!?

As with all addicts, I consider myself to being addicted to being an employee and being small and not successful in business and to those previous thoughts I had, one of the first very crucial steps is to recognize you have a problem number one.  Number two that it is a big problem.  And number three that I’m the only one who can deal it and me alone.

Lucky for me I have conversations with my brother and wife and dad and others that help me see this stuff that I’m doing/saying to myself and can help me change it before it does more damage that it already has.

I know this is going to be a very uncomfortable thing to admit again and again in the future that I’m a wimp in business and need to replace it my inner herculean beast, but I already know what the alternative is if I don’t, i.e. being crapped on as an employee and with no equity to make the getting crapped on portion bearable, and that is not acceptable to me and I won’t stand for it.

That was a big part of my brother and I’s conversation, i.e. making excuses for not being successful in business.  He’s got a girlfriend.  I’ve got a kid on the way.  He’s working out (tired) and so do I and so we don’t want to expend even more energy on things we know we need to do.  I’ve already cut out having a tv.  He’s doing bomb.com things with his health and personal introspective life.  I could keep on going, but the point is we’re always going to have many easily available and seemingly legit excuses (lies) we’ll be able to tell ourselves for why we’re not successful.  I have another kid.  He gets married.  Interest rates are too low.  Interest rates are too high.

I don’t want to admit that even blowing just 3-4 hours on weekend playing my mom’s ipad mini is an issue even though I hardly ever play video games.  I don’t even have my own financial freedom yet via cash flowing assets or a hoarded pile of money that even with the most extravagant amount of spending would not be dented.  Why don’t I?  Cause I don’t want to be accountable for the time I’m spending on that stuff and do things I know are better.  I also don’t want to admit that I’m vastly exaggerating the amount of down time I really need when I do stuff like that and simultaneously want to be successful in business.

One thing I’ve had rumblings of is that I don’t want to be constantly checking out doom and gloom stuff as far as finance goes.  I know its going to come crashing down.  I don’t need to know the minutiae though of how rising interest rates exposed the London Whale fiasco and subsequent speculation about what fiasco is being hidden by the even bigger interest rate rise we’ve seen since.  That is one self truth telling thing I’ve had rolling around that I haven’t vocalized till today.

Instead what I’d really like is to be analyzing my own businesses growth and financial numbers.  So there I go.  I’m going to stop checking out finance stuff all the time.  I need to detox from it.  What I’m going to do is only run a custom macro I have saved in my excel to find out what I really need to for my investments and that will be it.  I’m going to do this detox for a month and see how life is.

Workout update

I’ve been going up slowly still.  See chart.

 

One thing that has been bugging me recently is that I can’t feel this bungee cord I’ve stretched across the rack when I go down on my squats and its been bugging and I’ve felt its probably been affecting my form.  I decided to raise the safety bars up a notch to use that as my measuring stick, i.e. once the bar clangs against those then I’ll know I’ve gone low enough.  I think it worked. 

Redoing some squats and with me NOT focusing so much on whether or not I can feel the bungee I’m now focusing on my form.  When I did that many different muscles were being worked out and it felt much better that way.  I think I may see some pretty decent gains once I get that down.

Weight Lifting Update

Two weekends ago I worked for my father-in-law for a few hours on a Saturday morning.  The work wasn't too bad until the end when I was hunched over for quite a bit of time scrapping a wood deck.  The problem with that is that a few months back I was lifting and I didn't hear a “pop/crack” per se, but I knew my muscles had just experienced an issue.  For a couple weeks after that my back was huuuurtiiing.  It had since recovered, but then was acting up again after helping him out scraping away.  So I took one lifting session off last week and just lifted once with yet again more progress so that is nice.  Here is my chart of progress. Two Fridays ago the wife and I met up with some friends at the park.  One of Ashlee’s friends has competed in bodybuilding tournaments and what not and so I asked her for any tips or perhaps some resources she could point me too, which she did.  She mentioned that bodybuilding.com is a good resource.  She then asked about my routine and what I was doing and what I wanted to accomplish.  I said my goal is to aim for 250 on squat and then 225 on bench.  

She then mentioned that the body doesn't really pick and choose how it wants to look and so essentially the best thing to do is to do a complete body workout.  She stated that there are four main areas to work on that one could do in four separate days.  She then offered to even write it up for me for what I should do and on what days. This link is to download the workout she crafted for me.


  Feel free to use it and let me know how it worked for you.

My plan is to stay the course on what I’m doing now to get to my goals and then once I've reached them I’ll start working out this workout she gave me.  This will be several months I think before this happens cause my bench seems to be taking longer than my squat to go up in weight, which is fine cause I’m total weak sauce and haven’t consistently lifted weights like this since middle/high school.  Also by then my kid will be here and me and the wife are contemplating getting passes to the local rec center so she can exercise and walk around the indoor track if she wanted to during the dead of winter.  It doesn't hurt that this place has a huge pools and a steam room, basketball courts, and racquetball courts, etc so those passes would probably get a bit of use throughout the year beyond just my workouts, but we’ll see what happens.

My work is also building out some new rooms and one of them is supposedly going to have a gym, but it may just be some ellipticals and a few free weights so we’ll see if that is any good.  If it is a good thing though that’d be awesome to save some money and workout before/after work of even potentially during my lunch hour, which would help me avoid traffic jams.

Some unexpected events becoming enjoyable due to being in shape

If you read this blog you know I work out twice a week or I owe my brother $10.  Since I’ve implemented this bet I haven’t missed except one workout session cause I tweaked my back nicely working out once.  I’m not going to do an update on my progress, though I am making it even with just my last session showing me needing an increase in weight in both bench and squat, but I wanted to do a short post on surprising things that have happened with working out consistently.

First off: a 5k.  My brother invited myself and others to join him on one he signed up to run.  I’ve run a marathon before and knew I probably needed some training runs to make it through w/o stopping.  Due to general laziness and procrastination and packing to sell my first house to make $17,090.10.  I did not do ONE training run.  Not even one WALK.  I did however, jog the whole 5k w/o stopping once due to being winded.  I did stop once to retie my shoelaces.  I credit this to my legs being in good enough shape to handle it.

Fireworks.  We have this amazing spot we go to each 24^th of July to watch fireworks and to get to the spot we have to hike uphill probably about ten minutes at a good 15-20% incline.  I remember last year my calves being goop/wobbly, but this year…nothing.  I think the next day though my calves were a little “sore”.  It wasn’t a painful sore, just a tired sore.

Recovery time.  When I first started I was sore for days after working out.  Now I’m not sore nearly as long.  I worked out Friday night and it is Monday afternoon and I’m not feeling any sort of soreness anywhere, which is fantastic.

There’s my post.  Maybe if I have some more interesting experiences where I’d expect to be sore, but wasn’t I’ll add them here. 

Lifting update w/chart

My current squat is sitting at 180*7 reps, 175*7, and 170*7.  Today when I go to lift I will be trying for 185*7, etc.

My current bench is sitting at 165*7 reps, 160*7, and 155*6.  Sooo close.  May be able to hit 7 reps on all sets today.  We shall see.

Lifting Update

So I've started squatting using a bungee cord to help signal to me that I've gone low enough in my lift. I back up...hold on a second.

 If you're interested in squatting I would give a few tips.

One when you get under the bar flex your neck muscles by kinda scrunching upwards your shoulders. This form seems to take A LOT of pressure off of my neck. I had always wondered how those huge dudes were able to do so much weight and with that one simple step it makes way more sense, is way more comfortable, and you kinda feel huge honestly. It feels like your this behemoth carrying a huge log or something impressively heavy though this may not be the case while you’re making your initial big gains/progress, but that doesn’t really matter as long as you have proper safe form.

Next step is to always un-rack and then re-rack the weight facing into the back of the rack. Maybe people already know this and have been doing it for years, but I hadn’t been and I’ve lifted weights every so often. This way you can properly do step one and two so that when you put the weight back you don’t EVER miss the racking position. Not that I ever have and if I did it would all just fall to the safety cross bars, but hey if we can avoid it then why not ya know? Now back to where I left off.

 After un-racking I step back and go slowly down till I feel the bungee hitting my leg/buttucks. I’ll have to somehow get the video my brother has of me doing it on his ipod on here sometime. I may have mentioned this previously, but when squatting your going to want to squat all the way down to where your leg is ideally just below parallel. This works the full quad and hammy, which is what you want. If you don’t go this low, stop it you lazy fake sack of weight lifting woosiness. This is part of my real world preparation, like for reals. If something is stuck and I need to lift it and I can only lift it if it allows my leg to already be three quarters of the way extended then I’d be all set up to about 250 lbs. If it any less than that I’d be totally hosed hence why I’m going so low into my squats.

 Other “form” notes. When grasping the bar, make sure your wrist is unbroken. This will help with proper alignment I find. Another note is to have your legs at about shoulder length apart and feet slightly pointing outwards.

 I used to use a belt cause I was afraid of hurting myself again, but have stopped so that I can build up my core muscles. This last squat session saw me do 165*7 as my first rep set, which equates to a one time equivalent of 198, a 1% increase on the year or two pound increase from my first lift this year of doing 185*3 for a one time equivalent of 196. I assume I’ll make some good gains though here in the coming weeks now that my form is much better and my strength increases legit.

 My bench…funny lil story. Monday when I lifted I knocked out my first two sets and thought they were really easy, which I was excited about. Then I went to adjust the weight for the final/third set and realized I was doing 5 lbs less than I should’ve been the whole time for each set.

I finished out the set then cause it was too late to start over with my muscles being sapped mostly already. Come yesterday though, boom, I was all set and knocked out all three sets at the proper weight starting at 160*7. Nice. That has my bench up on the year 45 lbs, 85% of goal, 31% increase from my first go at it at a laughable/pathetic 135*4 on 1/5/13. There you have it.

 I also printed out some exercise routines for my arms so that ought to help me one, do them and two not get too bored doing them.

Lifting update

So the bungee worked out pretty well and I think I found the appropriate weight level to start out at for my squats. I started at 185 and knocked out 7 reps no problem. That translates into a one time max of 222 lbs so I'm not too far behind where I thought I might be. Next time I lift I'll need to have my wife or brother check to make sure that the spot I have the bungee at, currently the second hole from the bottom, is low enough to have me going parallel or just slightly below parallel. The next two sets were 5 lbs less each and I was only able to do 3 or 4 of each so that is good. Then my bench I did 160 7 times, which equates to a one time rep of 192. I struggled on the subsequent sets so I'll be at that weight for a few weeks I think. While I was watching the nba final's game last night, which was amazingly good by the way, I did some arm curls and tricep exercises and shoulder exercises and forearm exercises as well so hopefully my arm strength helps on bench and helps me look better/more defined.

Lifting update

Son of a biscuit. So I went and lifted last Friday after work and FINALLY got my bench up 5 lbs. I should say I finally finished my set on bench press of 155X7, 150X7, and 145X7. Now I'll bump it up to 160X7, 155X7, and 150X7. That'll probably take me a while to master. I'm thinking a few weeks or so. On the squat I hopped on there and promptly threw I think 230lbs on there. I did a semi squat and thought to myself, "This is stupid." With the bench press it is really simple. You lift it off of the rack, lower it till it touches your chest and then you fully extend and rinse and repeat. With the squat I was frustrated cause I was and always have felt frustrated that I couldn't really tell that I was going low enough so I said enough is enough. Bungie Cords! That is my solution. I'll either place them where the spot bars go and once I've hit them with the bar going down I'll then go back up or I'll span them across the back of the rack and feel for when my arse touches it and then go back up. As I'm writing this I'm thinking the back way will be best so that I'm not looking to the side and tweaking my neck/back alignment in anyway. I fully expect my ill gotten gains to be erased as reality to how pitifully weak my hammys are sets in and I can only do a fraction of the weight I was doing before. This weekend we went and bought a set of these adjustable barbells so I don't have literally FIVE sets of weights, but just one compact one and so I'll now start doing arm exercises. I also tested them out before I bought them and I bought them used and saved about 50% vs buying new. Don't buy used if you can cause weights are weights and don't really wear out. I haven't quite figured out what I want to do as far as a routine goes. So I'll need to figure that out. With arms/shoulders/neck/chest/lats there are a lot of exercises to do and so maybe I could do one a day or so. I should also make a bet to do them so they actually get done. Who wants to be my payee??? I'll even go all paypal on someone and pay up that way if they want for my peeps in Russia and what not.

Official weightlifting goal/update…with a Chart!

So yesterday I mentioned I was going to try going deeper into my squats with more weight.  Well…I did it!  I went up only 5 lbs though instead of my usual 10lbs cause I was worried I wouldn’t be able to finish my sets if I went deeper.  So currently I am very close to my squat goal.  Using this calculator, http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/OneRepMax.html , my one rep max is showing as 240lbs, i.e. 200lbs X 7 reps.  I’ll try next time I lift to try and match my goal for the year of 250lbs.  Using the calculator that would be 210 lifted 7 times.  I think I could do that actually without too much trouble.  It would be the later reps/weights that might be the issue. 

So my next workout, hopefully, will consist of lifting 210 X 7, then 200 X 7, then 190 or 195 X 7.  It would vary on the weights sometimes that I go down to cause sometimes I just get lazy with not wanting to have to find the exact number of plates to put on the bar and what not.  Year to date I am 22% stronger or lifting 44 more pounds.  I’ve lifted 240lbs, which is 96% of my goal of 250lbs.

Squat

Body Weight	Untrained	Novice	Intermediate	Advanced	Elite
165	110	205	250	340	445

Bench

Body Weight	Untrained	Novice	Intermediate	Advanced	Elite
165	120	150	185	255	320

My bench goal…is a different story lol.  My year goal is to reach 225lbs on bench.  I’ve pretty well flat lined for the past week as you can see from the chart.  Although it’s been a little weird cause I didn’t lift due to Memorial day and soreness from playing volleyball with the family.  Who gets sore playing volleyball by the way?  That just makes me kinda chuckle cause when I think volleyball I think relaxing sunny day with playing in the sand AND I was less sore after running a 5k a month or so ago then when I finished playing volleyball for an hour or so this past week.  Anywayssss…enough of my woosbaginess.  Then Wednesday I was able to help my brother and sister-in-law move into their new place so I only lifted on Friday.  There caught up on my lifting for this past week.

So currently my next time doing bench will be lifting 155 X 7 reps, then 150 X 7 reps, then 145 X 7 reps. Yesterday I couldn’t quite get that done.  I think I was a rep or two short on the last two sets.  What is crazy to me is looking back to my excel spreadsheet and just January of this year I could only bench 135 X 3.  That is it!  I remember doing it too and about passing out.  Anywho just crazy to me.  Glad to be stronger that is for sure.  Year to date I am 27% stronger on bench, or am lifting 39 more pounds.  I’ve lifted 186lbs, which is 83% of my goal of 225 lbs.

Just for the uninitiated/curious/people who think I might be obsessed/total dooshbag as to why I’m tracking everything so meticulously.  At the first of the year I would go in and work out and just throw weight on the bars and not remember exactly what I had done the last time I lifted and that was just annoying/frustrating cause I realized I was wasting my time and didn’t really have a good baseline to go off of.  So there is that and plus tracking just makes you more disciplined.  Just try tracking your TV watching hours and you might just “ship your pants” with how much time you (I) waste watching TV.

The following is what that one rep calculator site defines for the different weight abilities.

Untrained - An individual who has not trained on the exercises before but can perform them correctly.

Novice - An individual who has trained regularly for up to several months.

Intermediate - An individual who has trained regularly for up to a couple years.

Advanced - An individual who has trained multiple years.

Elite - An athlete competing in strength sports. Keep in mind, the standards shown in the tables do not represent the highest level of strength performance possible.

UPDATE #2

I lifted yesterday and...got my squat goal done for the year!  Using the above calculator I'm squatting 252lbs.  I'm not exactly sure what my next weight will jump me too, but that is pretty cool.

My bench however actually went down.  By down I mean my second set remained the same I think with 6 reps and my third set went down from 6 reps to 5 reps.  What the freak?  I said to myself that perhaps I needed another day of recovery to get really good and rested or perhaps I need to switch around my exercises???

Currently I'll squat first and then I'll bench.  Switching would probably help as I'm sure there is some wear on the shoulders doing squat stabilizing the weights whereas if I did bench first and had even more tired shoulders/chest muscles then that doesn't really matter cause I don't really need those to stabilize the bar when I'm squatting anyways if that makes any kind of sense.

I also wonder if I've already rapidly approached the point that my brother mentioned happened to his more experienced weight lifting buddy/friend who hit a plateau on his bench.  He then worked on his shoulders to strengthen them and once done his bench started shooting up again.  I'll have to see what next week's workout looks like cause when I did my first set yesterday it seemed easier than the previous exercise in the week.

Weird workout results, but whatev.

Lifting update

I can't exactly remember what numbers I put up on Friday for bench and squat, but they're up slightly since I last posted on weight lifting.  I want to really try and dig in on squat today.  Go really low down as by so doing I'm not sure if I'll be able to do the weight I have been, which is ok cause I want the gains to be legit.  It'll suck and seem like I'm digressing, but I want to do it.  I'll let you know how it goes.  I want to start working my arms too.  I need to find some barbells me thinks.  I looked at a couple of the self adjusting numbers where it is just one bar, but with a click of a button it can do many different weights...well...for the 50 lb ones was like $300 bones so I'm gonna look online to see what else I can find.  I'll also need a program.

Strength

            This year I said I wanted to get stronger.  I made New Year Resolutions to lift 250 lbs on squat and 225lbs on bench.  I want to do this for self confidence and for the coming collapse and being able to shoulder the load of potential manual labor that I’d be faced with with gardening and chickens and defending my family and myself against potential crazies.

            On January 5^th of this year I lifted 196lbs on squat using one rep equivalent calculators and 147lbs on bench.  Yesterday, May 20^th, I lifted 210 lbs on squat and 180lbs on bench.  Ytd (year to date) I’m 84% of my squat goal and 80% of my bench goal.  I’m up 14 lbs or 7% on squat.  I’m up 33 lbs or 22% on bench.

            That’s pretty good I think.  Often people can’t quantify things in their personal life aside from perhaps their finances.  I feel good so far about the progress and saying I’m overall 14.5% stronger than when I woke up on the first of this year.  What is weird is that I don’t actually feel stronger or look much different, but when I see that I’m putting on bigger plates I guess it kinda sinks in that it is happening. 

I currently work out at my brother’s place and he has started working out too this year and is doing very well too.  It’s been useful to get tips from him and just know that he is working out cause I don’t want to get too far behind him lol.  He and I also made a bet that if I don’t work out twice a week I owe him $10 I think.  If you want motivation to work out…make someone a bet.  A buddy of mine did the same thing with his dad.  His bet is that if he doesn’t finish the Insanity program that you see all the infomercials on all the time then he owes his dad 18 holes at Thanksgiving Point’s Golf course, which is like $100 I think.  If he does complete Insanity then his dad owes him the round of golf.

            Anywho just wanted to do a post about this.