StrongerGeek’s BodyBlog

So today was leg day.  I started out with Squats, as always.  I always put the thing I hate the most first.  That just the kind of guy I am.  At dinner, I always eat my wife’s beloved Brussels-sprouts first for the same reason.  I didn’t feel like doing anything heavy.  My upper back and left ankle just didn’t feel up for it.  So my squats were:

• 45lbs x 20
• 95lbs x 20
• 125lbs x 15
• 145lbs x 12
• 165lbs x 8

It didn’t exactly kill me, obviously, but I’m still not used to doing that many reps, so I still got some burn out of it.  The first two sets were really just getting me warmed up.  I walked to the gym at a reasonable pace (a ten minute walk) but I really didn’t want to just jump into the heavy stuff without giving my body warning.
You know I watch some people squat and they have these very narrow stances.  I just simply can not do that.  Is it because I’m inflexible?  Or is it because I’m such a tall person (6′4″)?  Several people have said I have a ‘Powerlifter’ stance (to which my standard reply is now, “Yes, but not a powerlifter weight.”)  I find my legs must be fairly widely spread, and my toes are angled away from center at a 20-30 degree angle.  Is this okay?

Next I did my regular non-squat leg stuff.  3 sets of calf-raises, 3 sets of leg-extensions, and 3 sets of leg curls.  Then at the end, I think I invented (or likely reinvented) a new kind of squat.  I was planning on doing some dead-lifts, but I just wasn’t up for it today.  So I took a 50lbs dumbbell, intending to doing a very light dead-lift like thing with it for a lot of reps, just for kicks.  But it ended up being something very different.

I ended up holding the dumbbell horizontally, with each of the meaty parts in one hand.  I then did sets of squats like this.  My back form was good.  I went super deep.  It was great.  I loved it.  I did 3 sets of this with 20 reps, 20 reps, and 15 reps.  My legs were nicely sore at the end.  Of course it was only 50 lbs, but it was at the end of the workout.  I keep reminding myself of something I read somewhere.  The real bodybuilder has a way of making a light weight feel heavy.  I need to remind myself that I’m not there to impress anyone.  I’m there to keep my body healthy as I enter into middleage…
So anyway, this was a great end to my leg workout and I have every intention of doing it again.

I’ve done pretty well this year.  I’ve given up processed foods.  I’ve pretty much given up sugar.  I’m eating 5 or more vegetables a day.  I have fairly balanced macronutrients.  I’m exercising.  But I have a vice.  And that vice is…  drumroll please…
Diet Soda

In March I decided to give it up entirely and I did for about 4-5 months.  At the time, I was drinking about 40 oz. a day of diet coke.  But It has crept back into my life again, and now I’m drinking 12-16 oz. a day of the stuff.  I know it’s not good for me, but I keep drinking this crap.  Why is that?  It is my one remaining diet badness.

Well.  I was going to rest until Saturday.  But I was feeling antsy yesterday after 3 days off, and then my wife administered the coup de grace by telling me I definitely wouldn’t be able to get to the gym on Saturday, and likely not Sunday either…  So today I started my new 4 day a week schedule.  Today’s workout : Upper Body + Abs.  I threw the abs in there at the last second.  I want to go back to just doing light cardio on ‘off’ days.  It was okay.  Nothing exciting.  My right shoulder was a little sore.  I think I’m going to go easy on the presses until it calms down.  This happened once before, and going light for a week made everything happy.

One of my goals when I started all this was to be able to do 10 unassisted pullups in a row by year’s end.  For me pullups have always been the measure of my physical inadequacy.  In school I remember we had to do pullups, pushups, and situps every year for some official test in gym class.  I could do the situps, I was mediocre at the pushups, but I could never do a single pullup.  Not one.  And of course kids being kids, I got no small amount of abuse for this.  Thus I guess I have this notion burned into my pysche that if I could just do a ton of pullups, I would somehow finally become a real man.
I’m pretty tall (6′4") and thus I carry a fair bit of weight (200 lbs or so) without the nice set of muscles to go with it (yet) I’m afraid.  Thus pullups have been a real challenge for me.  When I started lifting this year, I could barely do one.  Now, my personal record is 7.  Today I did 6 and it pissed me off.  I figured after my 3 days of rest, I’d be all ready to at least match my record.  So I’m at 6/7 pullups.  Can I get to 10 by December 31st?  I have three months and change to go.

Wish me luck.

Well, I decided I’m indeed in overtraining-land and I’m taking the week off…

I finally made my decision based on my overall soreness and the fact that I’ve had some serious insomnia over the past week.  My current plan is to keep my diet up religiously this week, do lots of stretching and flexibility exercises, and maybe take an easy swim in the gym’s pool once or twice if the mood takes me.   Then I’ll launch into the 4 days a week training plan starting Saturday if all goes well.  My last real break was the first week in August, so this isn’t so bad.  Just a week and a half earlier than my original design.

It was strange not to go to the gym today.  Instead, I walked leisurly over to the deli and got a tuna salad sandwich (on Rye, thanks for asking) and ate it at my desk…  Weird.  Almost like the old days.

Today was an upper body day.  It went well.  I set my record on the pec deck today.  145 lbs x 11 reps.  But my right shoulder felt a little sore after.  I need to keep an eye on that.  I tend to push things a lot harder on the weekends because I have more time.  Workdays, I only have about 45 minutes to get the job done.  I typically lift for an hour and fifteen minutes on weekend days.

I took at long critical look at myself today in the mirror at the gym.  In many ways, I’m pleased with my progress.  But honestly, I have to say, I’m worried I’m getting a little unbalanced.  My legs look way weaker than my upper body.  Both are improving.  But my upper body has far outpaced my lower.  My first reaction was, okay, I need to lift legs three days a week.  But I can’t.  Frankly I think I’m flirting with overtraining already.  After some soul-searching, I’m going to cut back to lifting 4 days a week from 5.  My current split is

#1: Arms/Shoulders

#2: Legs

#3: Chest/Back

#4: Legs

#5: Upper Body

I’m going to go back to just having 2 upper body days and 2 lower body days a week.  Honestly, I just don’t think I need to have a separate Arm and Chest day.  My arms are shoulders are both great.  My chest and back are quite a bit weaker, but I will concentrate on them in the upper body days.  Sounds crazy to reduce lifting to make my legs stronger.  But I think, honestly, I’ll have more in the tank on the leg days if I do this.  Maybe less is more.
My non-lifting days are not really days off.  Currently I do abs and cardio on my two days off a week.  I will still do 2 days of this on the new schedule.  That final day ‘off’  I don’t know.  Maybe I really will take it entirely off, of maybe I’ll make it a swimming day.  I haven’t decided yet.

When to start this?  Hmmm.  I think I’ll do one more week on the current schedule and then make the switch.  I might even take some days off to rest before starting in…   Stay tuned.

There was diet badness today.  I went to my hometown for an away soccer game for my son.  And after the game, we all went out to the pizza joint I always hung out at in high school.  I couldn’t say no.  I had 2-1/2 slices of pizza.  God it was good.  I’ve been pretty good for the past two months.  This is only my third diet violation in that time.  The other two are sordid tales involving an undisclosed amount of homemade banana chocolate-chip ice cream…  Shhhhh.

You know, I just don’t think my leg workouts are doing it for me.  I’m making some progress.  I squatted 175 for 11 reps today which ties my record.  But I’m just not sure I’m working things the right way.  After my arm workouts, for example, my arms are simply fried.  I know I did good.  After today’s leg workout, I feel it, but it’s just not the same.  My calves are good and blasted, but my quads and hamstrings, not so much.  I’m thinking of (at least for one of my two leg workouts a week) of actually lowering my squat weight significantly and going for a much higher set and rep range.  I don’t know…

Have I mentioned that squats suck?

I used to be the bagel king.  Every day at work I would consume two or three bagels with cream cheese on them.  One or two for breakfast and one for lunch.  When I went on my superdeduper diet starting at the beginning of this year, I totally cut out bagels all together.  Now I have rediscovered them in a healthier context.

I was reading about breads maybe a month ago somewhere.  It was talking about better breads (whole wheat, etc.) versus bad breads (white, etc.).  I think the basic criteria were suger content and glycemic index more than anything else.  Anyway, what bread should popup to the top of all the good lists, but Pumpernickel?  You know what?  I can do Pumpernickel.  I love Pumpernickle.  It’s my second favortie bread.  (Rye is the best bread ever, if you didn’t know…)  So I started eating Pumpernickle bagels at work.  (We get free bagels here…)

Now, I’ve given up on cream cheese (I miss cream cheese damnit… a lot…) so I’ve been eating the bagels plain.  Okay.  Not a big deal.  But today I discovered that I can spread cottage cheese on them and it’s pretty good.  Now don’t get me wrong, cottage cheese is no cream cheese.  But it tastes way better than a plain bagel, and you know what? That stuff is really good for you.  Holy cow.  Cottage cheese has a freakin’ ton on protein in it.  Who knew?

So there’s a funky little device at the gym that you can type in your weight, height, sex, and age into, and then hold on to some special handles, and it tells you your body fat percentage.  I had tried it maybe eight weeks ago and it told me I had 17.8% bodyfat.  Since that time, I’ve been very good with my diet and have gone to the gym religiously.  For kicks today, I tried the device again.  My body fat?  17.8%.  It took all my willpower not to throw the damn thing across the room.  Sigh.

Today was an abs/cardio day.  I walked to the gym, as always (it takes about 10 minutes).  I did 25 minutes of midsection work, and then I hit the elliptical for 20 minutes.  A quick shower and the walk back to work…

You have stumbled on my first blog post.   (Lucky You).  Here I plan on recording my adventures in trying to become buff.  At various stages in my life I have been a runner, a cyclist, a swimmer, a walker, and an Ultimate Frisbee player.  I have one brief adventure with weight training when I was in grad-school.  For about two years I worked at it and got mildly buff, I suppose.  But not really.  So I’ve never been sedentary.  I’ve always done something.  Just never very seriously.

Well my happy little world took a turn for the worse when I messed up my foot last year.  A bunch of steroids, a set of crutches, and six months of a sedentary lifestyle led to… my first gut.  On January 1st of this year, after a night of heavy eating and drinking, I woke up feeling absolutely lousy.  And I decided then and there that this was going to change…  I know, I know, New Year’s resolutions suck and nobody sticks with them, but here I am nine months later still going at it, so thhhhhpt.

I’ll talk more about my history in a bit.  I’m sick of it.  Let’s talk about my workout today, instead.

Today was Chest/Back day.  Back pisses me off.  Not because it’s the hardest workout.  (God knows, my two leg days a week are waaaaay worse.  I hate leg day.  No let me rephrase that.  I hate squats.  Leg day would be fine if I did no squats.)  No.  Back pisses me off because I rarely feel like I really worked my back out.  I always end up feeling like it was just another arm workout.  I have big biceps.  I am tall and pretty skinny.  I have a smallish chest, small forearms, etc.  But I have always had pretty big biceps.  Why then, do I feel my biceps puttering out before I feel like I’ve really worked my back?