Sirtitan’s BodyBlog

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything here.  I have been getting back into the swing of things after the flu.  I’ve been including cardio in my routine in the last several weeks (about 6 - 12 miles running).  I’m nowhere near my cardiovascular peak of last summer, but I’m still exceedingly fit (resting pulse 51bpm).  I need to buy a new journal.  Someone thought they were funny when they decided to rob my journal at the gym.  I was on the donkey calf raise machine and then went to the treadmill and left my journal by the calf raise machine.  Needless to say, it was gone when I was done with my cardio.  I hope whomever finds it will at least learn something from it.  In about a week or so, I will start logging in my meals.  I’m going to start getting strict with my diet so I can be cut for summer, although this year I will not comprise strength for cuts.  I will restrict calories just to the point where I don’t lose strength.  I am considering carb cycling this year, but I need to educate myself further before I try it.  Hope everyone’s fitness has been improving this year.  Keep it up.

Here’s to 325 bench, 425 squat, and 525 deadlift by year end!

This has been an eventful month highlighted by a week of the flu.  Normally I wouldn’t of gotten sick, but there is a tendency at my job for people to come in sick.  That is the biggest drawback with companies with a policy of coupling vacation, sick, and personal days all into one category.  Everyone is reluctant to stay home unless they’re dying thus rendering a ripe workplace for the flu virus to spread.  Here’s the few workouts I was able to do this month:

2/2/08:

Squats: 135/10 225/10 315/2 285/5 255/9 135/10

Bench Press: 135/10 230/9(+1 f) 260/3(+2f, +1N) 225/6(+1 f)

Chinups: bw/9 bw/8 bw/7 bw/5

2/4/08:

Arnold Press 30s/10 55s/10 65s/6(+1f) 70s/2(+1f) 55s/8

Incline db bench press 80s/7 90s/3(+1f,+1N) 75s/8 65s/11

Pullups: bw/10 bw/8 bw/6 bw/6

Machine donkey calf raises: 150/14 165/14 180/12 195/12 210/10

2/6/08:

Deadlifts: 135/10 225/10 315/10 405/5 315/10

Close grip bench press: 230/7(+1 f) 260/3(+1f,+1N) 225/5(+1f)

2/11/08 (the day I felt weak at the gym and I ended up waking up sick the next day):

Squats: 135/10 225/10 315/2 285/3 255/4

Incline Barbell bench press: 185/6 135/10 155/6 135/9

Pullups: bw/6 bw/6 bw/6 bw/3

Farmers walk: 70s/ 1/6th of a mile in 3 sets

2/20/08 (back from sickness and feeling weaker than ever)

Bench Press: 135/10 225/8 205/8 185/8

Incline Bench Press: 135/9 155/4 135/7

Incline db bench press: 65s/7 70s/5 60s/9

Pullups: bw/7 bw/5 bw/3

Donkey calf raises: 140/15 220/10 300/10 220/14

2/22/08:

Squats: 135/10 225/10 315/1 255/6

Close grip bench press: 135/10 225/8 225/6

Chinups: bw/9 bw/6 bw/4

If you’re in your late 20s or early 30s you can probably remember watching GI Joe as part of your morning cartoon schedule, albeit without the inclusion of the female population.  Each and every episode concluded with various scenarios where youngsters were met with some type of difficult problems to address ranging from issues concerning safety and integrity.  And every lesson ended with the famous line: “And knowing is half the battle!”  But they never did tell you what the other half of the battle is, did they?

Last time around my discussion was about knowledge and confidence, but that was in essence only “half the battle”.  So what’s left after knowledge?  What other factor can possibly deter confidence if you’ve sat down and studied your content knowledge?  Only one word comes to mind: Execution!  Yes execution, that’s it!  You can read books, have someone preach to you about how things are done, but when it comes down to it, you really haven’t completely garnered knowledge until you’ve actually made attempts to execute.  This really applies to anything from school to sports to scoring a date.  You could memorize an entire encyclopedia on said topic, but it doesn’t end there.  The application of the knowledge: execution, will ultimately determine success or failure.  Someone can show you how it’s done, but you won’t completely know until you ultimately do it for yourself.

1/22/08:

Squats 135/10 225/10 315/2 285/4 255/7

Pullups bw/10 bw+45/3 bw+50/3 bw+25/5

Chinups bw/7 bw+25/5 bw/6

1/23/07:

Close grip bench press 135/10 225/9(+1f) 245/4(+1N,+1F) 225/6(+1N,+1F) 205/6(+1f)

Arnold Press 55s/8 60s/6 65s/3(+1f) 50s/9

Barbell Curls 80/10 95/4 60s/about 15-20 reps doing 1 rep back-n-forth with training partner

Lateral Raises 20s/15 25s/10 30s/7

Farmers Walk 75s/120M 75s/120M 75s/90M 75s/30M

Standing Calf raises 250/10 300/7 350/3 270/7

Donkey Calf Raises 220/10 300/8 380/8 400/5 250/11

1/24/08:

 22 minutes (6min warmup,2min cooldown) of hiit cardio on treadmill 6.6/10.0

Confidence… to some it’s embedded into the fabric of their nature.  They are seldom deterred by failure and hardly ever let the beliefs and attitudes of others influence their convictions.  My thoughts today however center upon the origins of confidence.  Is it a byproduct of success?  A nurturing characteristic one is taught?  Or is it just an instinctive ability?  Obviously, if you’ve been analyzing my beliefs, you’d immediately conclude that confidence is the result of a combination of these exogenous variables.

 
Some are injected with confidence as a result of positive reinforcement through successful trials in activities of interest.  This is just basic human nature.  If you’re good at something you’ll rarely feel reluctant to develop your skills further in that particular craft.

 
Nested within this hypothesis, is an innate confidence within oneself to never be a victim of discouragement.  Again, this issue ties in very closely to the aforementioned factor and mostly closely sides with nature rather than nurture.

 
Others are taught confidence in their abilities through the simple eloquence of illustration.  How often do you see those with close mentors succeed in perfecting their technique in various professions?  It is through this particular observation that I am convinced that it is knowledge that ultimately creates confidence.  When you are empowered with knowledge you’re more likely to stick to your ideas, principles, and techniques in your execution.  A mentor provides this knowledge to his/her protégé.  From this point of view, it is knowledge that develops confidence.  There are other examples.  Some gain knowledge on their own through trial and error or a more elaborate scientific method.  Those with mentors, however, achieve this task with minimal failure. 

 
I have shared some extensive discussion on failure and its causes and resulting effects.  But it seems like the ultimate root of all of this beyond confidence and knowledge is ultimately drive and desire … where does it comes from, why does it sometimes die out, and how some never seem to run out of it.  Think about this I will.

In the latter part of my lifetime I have come to the realization that failure isn’t necessarily a negative outcome.  Failure teaches us lessons.  Failure either leads to adaptation or to terminal failure AKA quitting.  Failures are integral in the fabric of success.  Not until recently have I nurtured failure.  I’ve embraced failure and it’s actually made me hungrier for success.  The key is to learn something from your failures.  Some of us have schooled ourselves in the iron dungeon.  You learn that those 5 x 5 programs day in and day out don’t work for you.  You become more conscious of your own body’s mechanics and learn that you target your own chest more direct with the close grip bench rather than the regular grip.  You don’t follow those unrealistic routines in the pages of Muscle & Fitness, Flex, or any other “supplement” profit driven publication.  It doesn’t stop there does it?  To me the gym has become the experimental lab of life.  I get to test thought methodology on a micro scale and implement the lessons learned in other facets of the daily absurd pastime known as life.  I’ve ruminated over similar thought processes in health and seen how they are connected to obligations such as finances.  It’s all too commonplace to want to lose 20 lbs. in 3 weeks or go from performing no daily cardio to running 25 miles a week.  It’s as unrealistic as trying to save thousands of dollars for a new car in just a few months.  Extreme changes require extreme efforts and most mere mortals cannot undertake such tasks.  Failure is all so common in these undertakings.  But rarely anyone is taught a lesson here: to accomplish anything worth having requires undeviating devotion and non-complacency.  And the weight room taught us that to increase the probability of success changes should be executed progressively:  “Life by the inch is a cinch.  By the yard it’s hard”.  That’s the basic lesson of life.  Why are we so reluctant to embrace it?

Failure… It’s frightening isn’t it??? …especially when you spend hours, days, months, & years preparing.  What’s more discouraging is some put in so much effort and lose while others succeed with just a mediocre performance.  But you can’t measure effort can you?  You can’t see effort.  The only person who can feel it is you.  So you’d be inclined to think that the difference between success and failure is like flipping a coin.  But it’s not a gamble.  Yes, on any given day you can win or lose due to unforeseen circumstances.  But what am I trying to get at:  To never quit!  Quitting is guaranteed failure.  I’m a firm believer that if you work hard consistently and learn from your failures, in the long run you will succeed at whatever it is you are trying to accomplish  (assuming your goals are realistic).  I like to tie this in with one famous theorem in math:  The Central Limit Theorem —>  Basically, in the long run, everything converges to it’s true mean.  So how do we minimize the anguish associated with failure?  How do we set ourselves up for success? Goal/Objective setting is the first thing that comes to mind.  In grad school I had a professor who always said, "Life by the inch is a cinch.  By the yard it’s hard"  When you set goals that are attainable and are inches within reach, your probability of succeess increases drastically.  Then you set the bar alittle higher after each successful trial, you add some more weight on the bar, you cut some more sugar out from the diet, you run an 1/8 mile longer.

I quote Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday: "Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the f-ing difference between winning and losing!"

Yesterday’s workout was tough.  Two hours are sleep isn’t nearly enough for a mere mortal to have a good workout.  That was no excuse to just give up, and in the end I set a new 18 month PR and inched closer to my all-time best on the bench press hoisting 295.  I tried 345 yet again on the squat and failed, but I cranked out two very good subsequent sets that were progressively heavier than my last squat workout.

Squats 135/10 225/10 345/fail 285/5 245/10

Bench Press 225/9 295/1 225/9(+1f) 210/9(+1f)

Donkey Calf raises 200/10 280/9 340/8 260/7

Standing Calf raises 250/6 300/5 260/6

What has gone wrong with nutrition & society?  Everywhere we go, someone is trying to sell us food or beverages laced with magmanumus amounts of sugar, hfcs, trans fat, and other potent toxins.  It’s like walking through a live food casino, where the odds are stacked heavily against your favor, even worse than the gambler’s ruin inherent in regular casinos.  Society in general is losing it’s discipline, and it’s not just in nutrition but in other facets of our lifestyles as well.  There is still hope even when the odds are against us!  I was moved by the mother who sold the car she had bought her son for Thanksgiving, after finding an open bottle of booze in the vehicle.  It’s good to hear that there’s still some out there who are instilling positive values into their kids.  It’s mind-boggling how many children are severely overweight in society.  Who is to blame?  The food industry, who lobbies with excessive amounts of $$’s into Washington to enable them to retrieve addictive unhealthy ingredients in their cost of production.  Or is it the government officials whose pockets get enlarged with lobby contributions.  Or, is it the parents, who have long forgotten how to teach their kids proper composure and discipline.  I blame the parents more than food corporations.  They should be setting an example for their kids.  "This is what you are supposed to eat and this is not what you’re supposed to eat."  It’s that simple.  Are you gonna leave it to the under-funded education system or the media to teach your kids?  Your kids are your biggest investment!  I wouldn’t leave it to anyone else to teach them basic values and principles.  Did you know those who look healthy and are lean are promoted and get paid significantly higher than their overweight counterparts?  Yes it’s true (statistically significant, p-value <0.0001), I learned this during my thesis work a few years ago.  And what ever happened to kids playing outside?  What parent thinks playing Nintendo Wii is a substitute for some good old-fashioned hide-and-seek?  Granted there’s been plenty of times I was hooked on video game rpg’s like Final Fantasy, but we went to play outside all the time.  My parents thought something was wrong if I couldn’t go outside.  So today… Parents I’m calling you all out to take the lead!!… don’t fail on your most prized investment, your kids!!

I woke up today with excessive energy from the minute I jumped out of bed.  This is unusual considering that on most other days I don’t get a spark of energy until after my shower.  My appetite is through the roof today.  I ate about 600 calories worth during breakfast (excludes the Trac and Xtend I had upon waking).  I just finished lunch and that was easily 800-1000 calories (arroz con pollo & sushi).  I felt no inhibition considering I’m bulking and I am down to 201lbs a week after being at 203 for two weeks.  My strength has just been surging workout after workout.  Last night I set another 18 month PR of 290 on the bench.  My endurance on the latter sets of my workout exercises have also increased.  If you look at the numbers over the course of the last month and a half you’ll notice plenty of late sets for a given exercise where I was hitting a wall at the 6th rep.  I unfortunately can’t isolate the effects of the variable changes to my nutrition and workout regimen over the last 1.5 months.  How much of my improvement is coming from having a trusty workout partner?…  how much improvement from the increased protein intake from Isopure?… and how much of an effect from supplementing with 6-9 daily doses of Xtend (branched chain amino acids)?

Bench Press 225/9 290/1 215/10 205/9 (+1 f) 205/8

Incline DB bench 75s/10 80s/8 90s/3(+1f,+1N) 65s/8

Arnold Press 55s/7(+1 f) 60s/5(+1 f) 50s/8

The New Year is well upon us.  We’re already one week in and the gym was actually more clustered than on the 2nd.  My training partner and I had to wait a good 15 minutes for a free barbell and space to do deadlifts.  This was preceded by a 15 minute drive within a several block radius to find parking, where an unforeseen occurence with a fixed object belonging to Mother Nature caused a minor laceration to my 18 year old jeep. 

Why does the advent of the New Year strike such desire by many to get into shape and eat healthy?  I mean , why not some other arbitrarily important date like the day after your birthday, or the first day of winter, or the first day of spring, or the day after you meet or talk to someone inspirational?  The dawn of the New Year always lights a fire in people’s hearts.  Is it the media? Is it fear? Why this sense of carpe diem every 365th day?  I love reading the stories about how all of you got started.  From those that were just sick and tired of looking and feeling aweful for the former part of their lifetime, those who found soltice from eating disorders in the world of fitness, the mother who after the birth of her children found the fountain of youth through this healthy lifetstyle,  the teen who was tired of being picked on and found confidence to stand up for themselves in the iron, and those most dearest to me: the ones who found harmony and put an end to chronic emotional anguish through physical conditioning.  They are the ones I relate to best because I’ve been there.  I’d like to think it was that Muscle & Fitness I picked up at the age of 13, but I don’t know… I’m not sure that was truly the catalyst.  Maybe I was looking for a physical pain that could match or surmount the pain I was feeling inside?  Maybe that was the type of pain that made me release the other pain?  I found tranquility and harmony in the iron.  That’s when it all started… and here I am 14 years later ruminating on how it all started.  When will you get started?????

Here’s the workout… inching closer to my deadlift PR set 11 years ago!

Deadlifts 135/10 225/10 315/8(purposely stopped at 8 to conserve energy for the next set) 455/1 385/5

Farmers Walk 100s/60Meters 100s/60M 100s/80M 100s/60M

Standing Calf Raises 260/9 310/6 360/4 250/8

Donkey Calf Raises 180/10 300/9 400/8

One resolution I’ve made for the new year is to improve these bodyblogs.  I don’t just want to let you in on my workouts.  I’m going to let you all in on something more this year.  I hope you all enjoy reading them.

Why do we decide to workout and eat healthy?  What drives us to want to change? This is something I’ve ruminated about many times in the last year.  It really isn’t just about cosmetic work.  It’s about seeking the best within us.  Working out and counting calories comes easy because you can measure progress at any given time.  Our latent characteristics are quite difficult to measure and quantify.  You can’t exactly measure an improvement in your character or principles.  But I’ll tell you something : the iron and a clean kitchen do improve all aspects of your life.  The ability to stick to something, to stick to your guns day in and day out, to keep going even when the lactic acid is piercing through your muscles, to walk past the vending machine at work and not even give it a second glance:  that develops character, that builds moral fiber, it shows the world you’ve got guts, that you can make things happen.  That’s what it’s all about.  The world frowns upon us, but we make it happen!

My 2nd workout of the year was tough to start.  I think I still had mojitos in my bloodstream when I woke up.  It was tough to get the Metrx and coffee down my throat in the morning, but after the warmup set on squats I felt revitalized.  I tried maxing out on the squat again this workout, but unfortunately it didn’t happen. 

Squats 135/10 225/10 345/fail 275/6 235/9

Chinups bw/12 bw+50/4 bw+75/3 bw+35/6(+1 f)

Close grip bench press 225/8 255/3(+1 f) 210/8(+1 f)