StrongerGeek’s BodyBlog

Ugh.  I just took three days off because the day after deadlifts my back was so incredibly sore.  And not in a DOMS, good pain kind of way, but in a jeez did I herniate a disc kind of way.  Sigh.  I lifted again last night and was okay (I squatted 3 x 205 x 8 without major back issues) but I’m very tempted to give up on deadlifts entirely.  I just don’t need to be whacked out of commission like this every time I do them.

Today’s workout was ho-hum.

I deadlifted today, doing two set of 95 lbs x 5, then 3 sets at 125 lbs x 5.  I’m trying to balance my desire to ramp up the weight quickly on these, with a desire not to mess my back up.  So I added only 10 lbs from last time.

I also continued my slow return to regular pullups, doing three sets of ten with 82 lbs of assistance, super-setted with pushups.

Nothing else of note today.  I did incline presses, calf-raises, leg-extensions, leg-curls, and a little forearm work.  This, the middle workout, is my easiest workout of the week, at least until the deads get heavier and I lose the gravitron.  The first and last of the week are much harder because I squat, bench, curl, and press on those days.

Today was workout #4 on the new full-body scheme.  And what a great workout it was.  I feel great today.  Let’s see.  What to report?

I squatted 3 sets of 195 lbs x 8.  I’ve scaled back the weight and upped the reps a bit on this to give my back a break and concentrate on going deep.  They felt very good today and I was easily below parallel.
I benched 160 x 8, x 6, x 5.  The bench seems to be coming back, slowly.  I managed to get up to 185 x 4 about a month ago, and haven’t been close since.  Today felt good, though.  I’ve upped the reps here too, at least for a while, to see how that feels.  I and one of my gym rat friends, who is almost always there the same time as I am, have started spotting each other on the bench as a matter of course, and I’m grateful for that.

I set a one-rep-more-than-last-time PR on DB rows with 70 lbs x 10.

Calf-raises.  Yawn.

On curls, I’m still stuck at 95 lbs x 3 x 5.  I can’t get that last rep on the last set.  I did worse today than last time, but I didn’t have much rest either.  Next time.

Overhead press.  I finally have enough weight that I couldn’t finish the last rep on the last set of 3 x 5.  So now the work begins at 80 lbs.

That’s all I have.  Oh, except, my shoulder feels really good, which is the best thing of all.  I think it’s time to bring back the real pullups soon.  (I’m still doing them with assistance now).   I’ve been patient long enough.

Well today was the second workout of my new full-body plan.  First thing on the menu : Deadlifts.  I was very happy today with deadlifts.  While I still didn’t lift anything heavy (115 lbs) the victory was in finally feeling comfortable with the lift.  This lift has taken me forever to master, but this was the first time I just did it from start to finish and at the end felt I did things correctly.  Finally.
The next lift I want to learn is the Power Clean, really as a stop along the way to doing a clean-and-press.  I think that would fit nicely with my new full-body workouts.

I hit the abs today.  I borrowed an idea from Tony and did 3 sets of "bridges".  Man they aren’t as easy as they sound.  I probably held them about 40-45 seconds per set, although I didn’t have a timer to check.  Not only did they work my abs, I also felt them do nice things to my lower back.  I have ongoing low-grade pain in the right side of my lower back due to sacral-illiac issues, and I found after these 3 sets it was noticeably less sore than usual.  Very Cool.  Thanks, Tony.
After that, I absolutely hammered 20 minutes HIIT on the elliptical.  It was crazy.  I felt a little bad actually, because to the right of me was a 70+ year old woman, doing her completely commendable, but very calm workout, and to the left was a guy my age who must have weighed 350 pounds going ever so slow, casually reading his magazine.  And then there’s me in the middle huffing and puffing, making a scene, while sweat is just pouring off my body.
So I tested my heart-rate on the very last sprint and it was about 185.  I’ve never worried about it going too high before, but now I’m starting to wonder.  How do you really decide what is too high?  The stupid charts they have at the gym are obviously far too cautious with this.  Hell they don’t want my heart-rate over 145.  That’s crazy.

Today was the first day of my new full body workout scheme.  While my motivation level has been rather high, it seems I’m just dragging when I actually get to the gym.  I needed to shake things up, and hopefully this will do it.

Today I did light squats : 3 x 185 lbs x 8.  I’ve been doing a 3 x 5 program and I got up to 250 lbs with it, but I want to back off a bit and rest my back for a while.  I’m going to work back up to the same weight with 3 x 8 and then go from there.

Then I benched, which was a disaster!  I was trying my second attempt at 3 x 180 lbs x 5 and couldn’t even complete the first set of it.  Ugh.  I at least got the first set last time.  I think I didn’t give myself enough rest.  Next time.  I bench again on Friday.

Next was one-armed DB rows.  These were good and I set a PR at 70 lbs x 9.

Then calf-raises.  Yawn.

Then curls.  I tried for 3 x 95 lbs x 5.  I got the first two sets down fine, the third set I only did 3 reps.  I’ll try again Friday.

Finally I did 3 x 75 lbs x 5 on the overhead press.  These are finally starting to be a little difficult.  I have taken my time ramping up the weight on these, both to learn the lift and to make sure my shoulder does okay with them.  I am enjoying this lift very much and it’s a great way to end a workout I think.

So that’s it.  It was strange to do full-body instead of a split.  Instead of one-half of my body being sore, my whole body is sore!  Actually, that’s a lie.  I feel great today.  The lower-body portion was a little lame compared to the upper-body, but I think that’s mostly because I ramped the squat weight back so much.  My only real disappointment was the bench, which I will return to with a vengence.

So I went to the gym today for a lower body workout.  I was planning on going light on squats, but when push came to shove I decided to go for a PR instead.  I squatted 250 lbs x 5 today.  It was pretty intense, and I decided after one set that it would be too hard on the back for me to do 2 more sets like that.  So the next set I did 225 lbs x 5 and the 3rd back down to 185 lbs x 5.  I squatted 250 lbs once many months ago for a single rep.  So getting 5 reps at this weight was a thrill.

Even with this success, the workout was kind of lame.  I really feel like I’m dragging in the gym these days, especially on leg day.  Today I did my short leg workout and it still took me over an hour to finish.  It’s got me thinking again about moving back to a full-body routine.  3 or 3-1/2 days a week of full body.  It’s about time for me to shake things up, and I really need a change.  This coming week I’m going to design a new workout and see what I come up with.

Stay Tuned.

Upper body day today.  I went for 180 lbs on the bench.  The goal was 3 sets of 5.  The first set I completed with no help.  The second, I asked for a spotter.  He touched the bar on the last rep, but I think I can honestly say I finished the rep myself.  He was just being a bit of a worry-wart because I took a little too long to rack the bar.  The last set however, I would have never gotten rep 5 off my chest.  I now have my work cut out for me…

What else of note?  I got 3 sets of 5 at 90 lbs on the curl, which I was excited about.  I failed to get this last time.  Now I’m going for 95 lbs.  That’s my pre-injury weight PR from last year, although I think back then I did 8 or 9 reps and now I’m only going for 5.  But still, I’m excited to be almost back to full strength on that lift.

I continue to ramp up the overhead press slowly.  I did 3 sets of 5 at 70 lbs today.  I think I’ve really gotten the form down on these.  I’m happy.  I also did 3 sets of pullups with 94 lbs of assistance, supersetting with pushups.  Damn it, I can’t believe last year I was doing 10 pullups with no assistance and now 10 reps with 94 lbs of help is hard.

Nothing else of note.  The back is feeling a lot better and I’m excited to hit legs tomorrow.  Last Thursday I did a pretty light leg workout because of the back.  I only squatted 185 lbs.  I’m going to go for 225 lbs tomorrow and see how that feels before going back for the PR attemps next week.

See ya soon…

So I did an upper body workout today.  It was mediocre since my back is still a bit sore, although much better than it was a couple days ago!  The highlight of the workout was I benched 3 sets of 175 lbs x 5.  The funny thing is that I meant to lift 170 lbs, and even wrote than in my log, and then I realized I had done the math wrong, and had actually done 175!  What an idiot… Anyway it was hard and the last rep was tricky.  I think I need a spotter from now on for my bench.  I’m not a big fan of spotters, but better safe than sorry.

I did incline presses after.  I don’t know if I had tired myself out on the bench or what, but I really was waaaay off my best.  On the second set I could only do 5 reps on 60 lbs dumbbells.  Normally I get 10 on that set.  Jeesh.  I’ve also been doing supersets of pushups and assisted pullups after my benching.  Pushup were good.   I’m excited to be almost entirely shoulder-pain free on these.  In fact I’d say my shoulder felt awesome today overall.  I’m still going easy on the pullups, this time with 100 lbs of assistance, 3 sets of 10.  Nothing hard.  I still do feel small twinges on pullups.  Patience.

I’ve been increasing my barbell curls steadily over the last month or so, successfully doing my 3 x 5 program… until today I finally hit the wall.  I couldn’t complete my 3 sets of 90 lbs x 5.  Now the work begins.  I am still very slowly increasing my (overhead) presses.  I love this exercise.  It just feels good on everything.  Arms, shoulders, back.  Everything.

My diet has been insanely strict for the last couple of weeks, except for last Saturday night where I ate all sort of bad things.  I have lost a couple of pounds in this time, which I wasn’t terribly thrilled about (I’d like to gain another 10 pounds eventually) but I measured my BF% today and gadzooks, it was just under 13%.  Woah!  That means I lost 2 pounds of fat!  I didn’t lose any muscle at all!  I’m still not convinced it wasn’t a fluke of the BIA device.  I’m scared to check it again because I don’t want to burst my bubble.

I know people go through bulk and cut phases, and apparently so do I.  What I find interesting is that I don’t seem to explicitly choose to be in one phase or the other.  My body does it for me…

My Back feels a lot better today, but I’ve decided to take today off too.  One more day to be sure.  This will be hard for me because the guilt is already growing. But tomorrow I’ll get back to the routine with a good upper-body workout.  Patience.
Yesterday’s diet was excellent and I plan on continuing that with today…