Mitch’s goof off space

Jeez, haven’t written in a while?  Well I’ve kept up the good eating and gym habits, so I haven’t regressed at all, but also not extreme enough to really transform beyond my current stats.  I’ve been pushing my shoulders more so I can see some increased size there which I really like.  A side affect of my good leg workouts is that my hamstrings are huge compared to this time last year.  Sometime soon I want to get serious on diet and see if I can shed what’s left of my stomach, though I wish I could put on more mass.  Frustrating to ceiling at 155 pounds!

I like to workout efficiently, so I don’t spend a lot of time idle in the gym.  So, I don’t really tune into the muzak being pumped out (I don’t bring an mp3 player because they too easily get in the way on certain exercises).

But there’s one song that always cuts through my intensity, and it is that awful Avril Lavigne song ‘Hey You (I want to be your girlfriend)’ or whatever the title is.  Seriously, this thing was popular at some point?  It’s almost embarassing to hear.  The only time it is ever close to being good is when it was mashed up with ‘Walk it Out’ and the far superior, earlier version of the same song ‘Mickey You’re So Fine’ (find it on the Best of Bootie 2007 cd, an excellent mashup project: http://www.soop.ca/bootie/bestofbootie2007/17%20-%20Lobsterdust%20-%20Walkin%27%20Out%2
0Yo%20Girlfriend.mp3)

I have an Old Navy shirt that I love, it’s got those seamless shoulders (the seams connect to the neck and run across the clavicle to the armpits) and is made of a very fine, thin cotton (which unfortunately loves to stain easily).  Well, in American clothes I usually wear a size Small so that the shoulders of the garment actually fall on my shoulders.  The side effect though, as that I have grown in musculature, the shirt has become tighter across the chest and in the arms.  In fact, the short sleeves fall right over the center of my bicep.  Now, I’m not someone you look at and would think has big muscles, but my arms have now taken up all the slack in the sleeves!  At once both satisfying and embarrassing, because I don’t want that shirt to be a ‘muscle’ shirt.  I will admit though, that one of the big perks of getting in shape has been the chance to wear form fitting gear and have it look good.

I’m often indecisive in picking out what to eat, especially when my choices are confined (like lunchtime at work.)  Today I picked up two different slices of pizza from a decent italian place down the road.  I got through once piece, then nearly half the other, and gave up - pizza has lost nearly all of it’s appeal to me.  The taste and aftertaste is just so strong - and the feeling afterwords, it’s like pouring sludge onto gears in a machine.  I just feel kind of nasty on the inside.  So I think I’m done with pizza and pizza-derivative foods for a while.  The gourmet stuff, like Urban Flats, on thin wheatbread is okay though.

The bench area of the gym - of probably most any gym - is an interesting place.  There’s really no hiding what resistance you’re betting on lifting; with the machines there’s a certain amount of discretion as to how much you’re pushing; not so with the benches.  I think this tends to keep away a certain portion of the membership which is a pity, since free movement compound exercises are so effiecient.

Anyway, at my gym we have 2.5, 5, 10, 25, and 45 pound plates.  I have usually had to use some combination of the smaller plates for my bench press, but now I can do 3 real sets of the larger plates.  A minor thing, but I feel like I’ve ‘moved up’ a notch.

I am totally cameraless right now, or otherwise I would be tempted to take some progress pictures.  My ’stack’ I think has been doing well for me and I’m pretty pleased with my upper back and shoulders, and my chest isn’t too bad either.

Yes, we are all impressed that you have maxed out the leg press machine with nearly every free 45lb plate out there, and use crappy form to do those little half presses where you only come down about 45 degrees.  You are a super he-man, and we are all awed.  Now, if you want to make some real progress, take like one seventh of that weight and do free standing full squats with it.

I realized I make noise during the last rep or two of certain workouts.  Specifically squats and sometimes bench press.  Not loud, but… loud enough to be heard within a ~15 foot radius.  Strangely, I think part of why I do it is so that I feel like I really am exerting myself - so it’s mental?  I don’t think I bother anyone with it but still, I want to keep it reigned in consciously, no one else really wants to hear that.

Poor performance today, a nice headache brewed in my left hemisphere and made high intensity reps pretty much impossible about half way through.  Frustrating!  Still, I got most of my workout done, and for the latter part concentrated on more reps at a lower weight to stop spikes in blood pressure making my head pound.

I have a pretty good idea what caused it too: my worst sin regarding bodybuilding is not eating enough/at the right times.  Lunch at 12:30pm, and then I should have had dinner right after work, but I screwed around and went to the gym on a very empty stomach.  I have got to eat more, and more often.  How do you do it?

What a great workout.  I just moved to a new place, that’s about a mile from the gym, so I’ve taken to jogging there sometimes instead of taking the bike.  Got in a good back and bicep workout, just started taking some supplements so I have that whole "they must be working, so I’ll workout harder" thing going on.  When I finish up I walk outside to one of Florida’s famous intense rainstorms starting to build up.  The heavens open and I find myself jogging home in a heavy rain - not torrential, but enough to soak me through and through.  It was great!  In my head I’m totally singing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ as I go.  In the distance the clouds have broken, so there’s a beautiful sunset filtering down.  I get to my house and just stick outside a bit, it’s still so warm that it just feels like a shower now.  I admit it, I totally shouted some self affirmations out loud - whatever the world can give me, I can survive.

Hope you all had a good workout if that’s what you did today, and have a fun weekend!

We guys love the bench press.  It’s a simple exercise that’s easy to work till failure on, with an extra dash of danger/embarrassment if you can’t push out that last rep.  One thing I’ve noticed is how wildly different everyone’s capacity for work with chest movements is.  I think the muscles of the chest are easy to conceal and don’t scale in size regarding strength in a linear way.  I’ve seen guys push out some impressive weight who had unremarkable chests - always makes me a little unsure of myself, like I’m not *really* training hard.  But I am happy with what I have so far, since I came from so very little.  I was never a big kid, and at my thinnest the muscles of my chest were probably just millimeters thick.  Now at least you can tell I have pectorals.