UpAt5am

I just discovered the workout tracker, which didn’t exist –to my knowledge — when I was last posting here with any regularity.  I’ll post my workouts there.  I will do my Friday workout today, since I had a virus yesterday and was in a hotel room with my family.

20 min. stair mill

3×12 crunch

3×12 hanging leg raise

Squat 150 165 180 180

Standing military 65 75 85 95

Deadlift 170 185 200 215

3×20 seated calf (45 lb.)

The military press was not a challenge, but I have not done them in a while, so I started cautiously.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve done deadlift with a sumo stance (hands inside ankles) and with a left-overhand right-underhand grip (since I’m left-handed, it feels more comfortable).  Starting today, I will do four sets with every combination of both stances and grips.  It felt weird and required more concentration, but it didn’t get in the way of completing the lifts with good form.

Here’s to a more symmetrical approach.  Too bad I can’t play golf from both sides of the ball…

Stair Mill 20 minutes

3×15 crunch

3×12 hanging leg raise

Squat 150 165 180 195 210

Bench  150 165 180 195 210

Row 120 130 140 150 160

3×8 weighted hypers

3×12 hanging leg raises

Wow, it’s been a long time… since I blogged here; I’ve kept up with the training.  To a maintenance level, anyway.

I’ll make a modest re-entry now and just post my workout.  I’m back to a sort of 5×5 workout.

Squat: 145 160 175 190 205

Bench: 145 160 175 190 205

Row: 115 125 135 145 155

3×8 barbell curls: 75 85 95

3×8 dips: +25 +30 +35

After a "vacation" consisting of horrible food, one weight workout in nine days, and basically being held hostage by relatives, I am back, not only working out (as I have been all along) but keeping track of it.

I plan to go back to the BSB type workout and see if I feel overtrained like I did before.

Once again, I am actually waking up at 5 am or before.  In order to balance work, home commitments, and exercise, I was working out at 7 p.m. or so at a downtown gym that was nice but not convenient.  My wife and I just discovered a nearby gym that is spectacular and very quiet in the early morning.  (In my old city’s Y, there might be 30 people trying to fit their weights workout in at 5:30 in the morning!)  So it was no problem at all waking up at 5 am this morning.  In fact, I was up at 4:45 without the alarm, rarin’ to go!

I came across a very nice blog entry by a user named FiTMuscles that gave 30 tips for burning fat.  I looked at some of his other entries, though, and all the entries sounded… too good.  Turns out that this article about fat burning appeared in the June 2007 issue of M&F!  And, what do you know, FiTMuscles is no longer an active member of the community.

Anyway, it’s a nice article.  Here’s an offsite link to it:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0801/is_6_68/ai_n19187624

I don’t think this is equivalent to scanning the article and passing it off as my own.  I’m happy to remove the link, though, if the powers don’t like it.

I’m trying to implement the morning cardio, the BCAAs, the L-carnitine, and some of the other tips.

It has been more than two months since I last weighed myself.  I don’t think I even knew where the scale was for most of that time, with the move shaking everything up.  I weighed 199 at the end of June, and this morning I weigh 194.
I spent a few months on a 5×5-type workout but started to get bored with it.  It can’t be beat, I think, for adding mass and lift poundages, but I started to feel bored and a bit blobby.  Also, I felt that I was using all my energy on my workouts and leaving none for those unimportant peripheral things like, oh I don’t know… work, family, house chores, etc.

Now I’m back to a BodySculpting type workout and trying to be more conscious about what I eat.  When you do a 5×5 workout, you really need to eat everything you can get your hands on.  I will certainly go back to it when I get bored with BSB or feel like my lifts need a jolt.

As part of this change, I want to record again how my lifts progress while monitoring my weight.

I want to bring the emphasis on the basic lifts from 5×5 over to the BSB workout, while maintaining the schedule of BSB.  My main beef with BSB is these rinky-dink secondary exercises it has you do.  I like the variety, but I still want to lift heavy weight.

Hope everyone is working out hard and enjoying life.  All the best!