ChiMike’s BodyBlog

Recently, I have felt like I have stalled out on my leg workouts.  I had been adding weight and griding out sets, but not feeling like I was getting anywhere.  I decided I needed to change things up a bit.  On my first set of each exercise today, I dropped a fair amount of weight and focused on how the area I was tagerting felt throughout the entire movement, which was made much easier by the fact that I wasn’t putting quite so much effort into just moving and controlling the weight (for example with squats).  I gradually ramped up the weight on each subsequent set, but made sure I was engaging each group in a way that felt right . . . full, deep squats; leg presses that started really low and compact; lunges that kept the tension in my glutes and hamstrings rather than up my my knees, etc.  Overall, I had less weight loaded up on my various sets than I have in a while, but I felt (and am still feeling) everything so much more.  I’ve hobbling around since I got out of the gym, and it feels great.  So, everyone once in a while, don’t worry so much about how much weight you’re loading up for each exercise and go light enough so that you can really focus on how you are moving the weight that’s there.  If I’m this drained, something must have gone right!!

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.

Not that I expect many people are reading this, but I’ve been using the workout tracker and think that it is generally a good tool.  To the extent that you want to track overall volume, it can be misleading if you enter the weight for a single dumbbell or cable stack when you are doing movements involving both arms (for example, if you do a set of 10 dumbbell bench presses with 50 lb dumbbells, it will track the volume as 500, not 1,000, which is the accurate number, given that you are pressing 100 lbs overall).  I’ve started entering the total weight (dumbbell or cable x2) for movements where I’m moving both side together (presses, cable crossovers, etc.) or entering two separate sets of information with the single side weight (one for left and one for right) for movements where I alternate (concentration curls, cable lateral raises, etc.).

I know it’s a random thought, but that’s what blogs are for right?  I’m currently trying to bulk up, but I’m finding I’m not very good at it.  I’m fairly new at this, but think the basic concept is pretty straighforward . . . eat more (not anything you want, just more, clean foods with good protien) — lift hard — put on muscle (& weight).  It would be great if all the gains could be pure muscle with no body fat, but you’ve got to provide nourishment to create all that new muscle, and it seems pretty hard to divert every calorie exclusively to the muscles; some creates a little fat, right?  The punch line is, after achieving the gains you want in muscle, you change the diet, adjust the work-out, lose the fat and are left with more chisled muscle that you had before . . . have I said anything that’s wildly wrong yet? 

Here’s the rub . . . during the bulking and before the cutting, it seems sort of inevitable that the waist expands a bit.  At least mine does, and every time my waistband starts feeling a little tight, I back off and never get that far in adding on the mass.  I’m confident that I would lose that little bit extra around the waist once I started cutting, but I still have to get dressed for work in the meantime.  What to people do . . . have two sets of pants, one for bulking and one for cutting?  I know it’s a pretty obvious solution, but I had just never contemplated an expanded wardrobe as one of the costs of taking this seriously.  Gym, yes; protien, yes; more food, yes — I just had never thought about the cost of having two sets of pants!

It’s hard to eat clean!  This is not news to those of you who have done and are doing it (Chicken Tuna has written as well as anyone about the discipline and though choices you need to make every single day), but I had to write a quick post to highlight the difference between exercising regularly (which certainly has an impact on your life and lifestyle) and living the lifestyle, which is something else entirely. 

A few months ago, before I had gotten myself into a consistent lifting routine, I thought the dedication to lift regularly was the hard part.  Since then, I’ve gradually split my body parts over 4 different days, and, honest to god, each one is my favorite day.  As my time to workout gets closer, I get excitied to get into the gym, get intense and push myself hard.  The lifting is the easy part.  The toughest part now is making the jump from generally being in pretty good shape to living and eating in a way that will allow me to get the most from all of the work in the gym.  I don’t think I’m in bad shape - in fact I think I’m in pretty darned good shape, which, combined with the fact that I’m working out regularly makes it really, really easy to have the extra slice of pizza (yes, I’m not even close to contemplating dropping pizza form my diet).  When the dad at a birthday party of one of my kid’s friends offers up a piece of birthday cake, do I say no?  No, at this point I still smile, say thanks, take the paper plate and dig in - and I’ve got three kids (two in grade school, where every kid gets invited to everything) so this adds up!!

Anyhow, I’m coming clean that I’m a looooooonnggg way from going totally clean.  Small steps at this point: substituting carrots for potato chips, bag of almonds in my office instead of the vending maching, things like that.  Hat’s off to those of you who life the lifestyle both in and out of the gym.  For the time being, I’m going to have to be satisfied with knowing the difference between good food and bad food and being able to make the good choices some of the time — just can’t go cold turkey yet!

 P.S.  If anyone has good tips for little adjustmets here and there - good choices off of "typical" menus, etc., please share!!

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