ChiMike’s BodyBlog

It was hard to do, but I just deleted out one of the goals that I had set a few weeks ago.  Maybe it was a little ambitious in the first place, but I had set goals to increase chest, arms and thighs.  I had a weekly routine that had me hitting my chest twice, and the second day was a lighter, pumpy kind of days that hit the arms pretty well too.  After a few weeks chest and arms were coming along nicely, but I was getting nowhere on the legs. 

So, I’ve readjusted my short term goals to focus on chest and arms only.  I’ll keep doing legs (along with everything else), but I’m going to wait until I hit my other goals before focusing on making real gains on legs.  For a part-time lifter, it just doesn’t seem realistic to make significant progress everywhere at once.  I’m going to plan on targeting one (or, if complementary of the first, two) body part(s) at a time, and hope that while I target one, I can maintain (or at least not backslide too much with) the others. 

What kind of experience have other people here had pursuing specific gains?  Have you had better success targeting one area at a time or do you go for it all over?

This time last week, I was sort of demoralized.  I’m working through a 10 week program to build mass on your chest (a la Muscle and Fitness, January) and had been pretty fired up because I had been working through 6 reps on bench at a weight that was higher than I thought I could handle (even though I thought it was out of my league, I figured I would go with the 85% of 1RM that the program called for, and, much to my surprise, I was just able to squeeze out the last rep).  Anyway, last week, same program same weight, but I just ran out of steam before I had finished the set - couldn’t get more then 4-5 reps.  I was worried the 2 weeks before were a fluke, or I had peaked or something like that. 

I went back into the gym today a little unsure of how it would go, and was glad to find myself with a little more energy and the ability push out those few extra reps.  I guess some days you can be just a little off.  It’s easy to feel like everything should work pretty scientifically and mechanically (hit "x" reps at ___ weight once and you should be able to maintain the same or add a little the next week), but there are so many variables that go into how you feel and how you function that it just doesn’t work that way.  So if you have an off day, don’t be discouraged . . . a better one is just around the corner!

I had my chest workout earlier today, and I’m pleased because I finally got past what, objectively speaking for many of the people here, is not a huge accomplishment, but for me had been a big mental barrier for a long time (as long as I’ve lifted).  When I was in high school and college benching 4 plates (225) was always sort of beyond me.  I was always in pretty good share, but just didn’t have it in me to grind it out with more than one of the big plates on each end of the barbell.  I would keep at it and push myself but always look at the guys who were pushing out sets with multiple plates with, if not awe exactly, at least a little bit of envy.  It was an accomplishment for me to start with 135 as my warmup.

I’ve been gradually getting stronger over the last few years and had crept up to doing reps at 185 and more recently felt like I was really pushing it with reps at 205 (45s + 35s), but 225 was a barrier that I had built up to be beyond me (when I looked at BB’s  1RM calculation as well in excess of 225, I thought it just wasn’t right, because I just couldn’t visualize myself pushing up 4 plates).  Anyway, I was starting with a new workout plan today which had me doing a certain number of sets/reps at a % of my 1RM, and when I did the math for the bench press, I saw the ominous 225 come up.  Thinking that I just couldn’t manage that, I was ready to make my own adjustment to the plan and drop those sets down to 205, but for some reason, just before starting, I felt inspired to go for it.  So I did, and was very pleasantly surprised when the first rep felt *heavy* but manageable.  I was able to finish the workout at the prescribed reps/sets/weights, which felt great.

I will be the first to admit that hitting a specific weight or lifting with 1 plate or 2 plates or 3 plates or more is superficial at best.  I’m just feeling good because I got past a personal barrier that I had built up too much.