bradl’s weight training

Non-training
We went to The Tech Museum (San Jose) to see the Star Trek exhibit this morning. TV (and movie) nostalgia. It includes a replica of TOS bridge. That is interesting to see. For example, Uhura sat right behind Kirk. She’s the communications officer, but has to turn around to see the main communications view screen. We weren’t allowed take any pictures in that exhibit, but they would take our picture for us in the bridge and in the transporter room, then we can buy the pictures for a nominal fee. We didn’t. There was the time-display arch/ring from "City on the Edge of Forever" (the episode with Edith Keeler and "stone knives and bear skins"). There was also a hallway and a cabin from TNG. The exhibit included maybe fifteen or twenty costumes plus different gadgets, e.g., phasers, communicators, and ship models from the different shows.

The gift shop had tribbles, so the ten-yo daughter had to have one of those, being a stuffed animal. It makes the tribble purr and screech.

Just for the record, I don’t like to travel, especially for work, as in do NOT like to travel, so this upcoming trip does not bring anticipation of seeing new things, etc. It brings dread and we’ve been there five times already.

Yesterday was shoulder day. From Diver_Dave’s and others’ suggestion of doing more rotator cuff warm up, I added Cuban press (DB external rotation) along with lying L-flys to my warm-up exercises. Apparently I should do them two days before shoulder work instead of on shoulder day, but I’ll work out that detail later. Upped the weight on DB overhead presses 10% and the other exercises were whatever I could handle for ~ten reps.

I bought 120lb of sand yesterday and our daughter helped me measure it into the inner bags for the training sand bag. We made five 20-lb bags and two 10-lb bags. I rolled the top and taped up each bag, only to find out that the dust in with the sand seeps through the bag fabric. Argh. I put each bag into a plastic bag and taped those to control the dust, then put 60lb in the training bag and closed it up. The booklet says 100lb is appropriate for my body weight, but that 60-lb bag seems heavy to me. Wuss. I’ll start with that.

Later today, I’ll be doing some packing and laying out log sheets for the dino workouts for when I return from the trip.

My lower back is sore on the right side today. The strain I had last month was on the left side. I don’t know if I strained it playing in the sand yesterday or from deadlifts Fri.

Yesterday was back and biceps. After the discouraging conclusion I made from my body weight and fat percentage, yesterday afternoon I was debating whether to just bail on the workout, what’s the point?, but did it anyway. Added another 5 pounds to the bar for 5 work sets of 7reps deadlifts, then 3sets each of lat pulldowns, cable rows, EZ-bar curls, and hammer curls with the weight I thought I could handle for ~ten reps per set. This was a new mix of back exercises this week, so didn’t exactly know the weights needed for this combination. I don’t know if I can add another 5lb for deadlifts next week. My back was wearing out.

This week Ledford sent his progression spreadsheet for the Bill Starr program to me, so I played with idea last night. Instead of using five sets of progressively increasing sets, it’s now two warmup and three work sets, per Kubik’s plan, and kept the 2.5%-per-week weight increase. I haven’t done weight increases that consistently before either. I try to increase the weight when I can, but those increases are not common. I have the fractional plates to make small increases, but haven’t used them. I still have to work out the details of what I will have time for in a session and buy the sand… and think about packing for the trip. Ugh.

After noticing the body weight change yesterday, I was encouraged. I actually gained some weight. That balloon faded after I measured body fat yesterday evening though. The bulk, if not all, of the few-pound gain was body fat, based on the increase ab skin-fold thickness measurement. It may not be accurate, but it’s marching upward ever since I started measuring it.

Considering that I think I gained some fat before I started measuring body-fat percentage, I conclude that about half (5-6lb) of the ~10lb that I’ve gained in the last year is fat, a 3-4% increase in body-fat percentage. Maybe it’s even more, but certainly not less. (I used to kind of have abs showing, but they are fading over time.)

Eating too much and not working hard enough.

I’ve always included the big compounds in the programs I’ve done. I know if I tried to do any more reps within the sets, my form would be terrible, risking injury, not targeting the right muscles, etc. One thing I haven’t tried is a program with low-rep sets, using "heavy" weights. The simple version of the dinosaur-training program is 5 x 5 with the basic exercises, like I wrote earlier this week. I’m doing that next.

so… I body weight I entered this morning is up because my body fat is up. That explains much of the weight gain. The caliper measures 16 or 17%, up from the last good measurement of 15%. Two percent is about 3lb. My weight is up 4lb. Close enough. I entered 16% on the body-stats page to be conservative.

The BB.com thing has been showing that I’m due to update my stats. My wife was awake early this morning, so pulled the scale out of the closet. I was thinking that I would hop on the scale, see that my weight hasn’t changed and not bother with the body fat and body part measurements. I was surprised to see that I gained a few pounds since the last weight posting two months ago. Now I have to do the other measurements to see what happened: where the fat or muscle has accumulated. The surprising thing was that I gained any at all. This week I have been thinking, again, that I’m going no where (even compared to others my age). I know, I know, "don’t compare yourself to others".

Anabolistic wrote a comment on my profile recently, "you gotta train insane or remain the same". Am I training hard enough, not eating enough, or both? My wife thinks I’m working hard enough, based on the noise coming from the garage but I don’t know. I push to failure or at least failure of form on every work set. I think I’m eating a lot, but if I’m not gaining a bit of fat, then I probably could afford to go higher.

I ordered a sand bag kit, which arrived Tues. The kit includes a training booklet, one outer bag, and eight inner bags to fill with various amounts of sand. When I get back from the work travel I mentioned recently, I’ll try out some dino-style stuff, so include the bag work with basic barbell work, but don’t have a way to do heavy farmer’s walk. Two fifty-pound DBs are the heaviest transportable weights I can make.

The dino-style program calls for 5 x 5 sets, with two of those warmup and the work sets stable. I haven’t done five-rep sets before, so have to figure out the work-to-failure issue. I guess the target is really 4-6 reps. The plan includes squats too, but due to my squat comfort level, I’ll struggle with increasing the weight on those against depth.

With the change from daylight savings back to normal time and not sleeping well, I was tired yesterday so didn’t feel like doing legs yesterday, but did it anyway. Under the bar for squats, I tell myself, "this is what I’m here for, do it".

Feel more awake today, even though the kid was up AGAIN a few times last night.

Non-training.
Sun late morning I went out to do some errands. I noticed a broken straw bale at the curb across from the nearby gas station and some straw in the road. It looked me like it fell off a truck and was moved to the side. There are businesses and apartment building in that immediate area, so I concluded there was no one there who would have put it there for gardening needs.

When I returned past there about two hours later, the bale was still there. Hmmm, we could use some of that for our (two) chickens. I went home, ate lunch, and told my wife about the bale. She was ready to go get it and bring it home. After I was done with lunch and brushing teeth, i.e., more time passed, she got out a lawn (big, heavy duty) trash bag and off we went. It felt like stealing, but she convinced me that it was okay, and we tied it up afterward. The broken bale was out there for at least three or four hours and we took about 1/3 of it. Later in the afternoon, while out for a walk that took me there again, the rest of the bale was gone. Don’t know if the owner claimed it or someone else took the rest. The bag of straw we now have will last us maybe two months and saves us from buying small bags at the pet store that last two weeks each.

Happy chickens.

Fri was back. I upped the deadlift weight 5lb, which was okay. Pullup performance was the usual.

Sat was shoulders. My right shoulder doesn’t like upright rows, so they and flys continue to be problem movements for me, which means stop both of them for a while at least.

As I mentioned before, I finished reading "Dinosaur Training" a few days ago. On Fri I wrote down some notes about the components of his basic workout. I have to decide whether to jump onboard, which means buying a sandbag to carry and hoist around. Rainy season is coming and the routine includes the farmer’s walk (walking while holding a weight in each hand) and the sandbag carry, but I don’t want the weather to be an excuse for not trying the training. In dinosaur training, most of the exercises people do in the gym are considered pointless isolation work, fluff. Squats, deadlift, bench press, standing press, bent-over BB row, and BB curls along with sandbag, grip, and ab work are considered the useful exercises. It’s a different framework from what I’ve become used to.

People are getting the idea that I’m a fan of country music. I have a four country CDs (best of Johnny Cash, Tanya Tucker, Steve Holly, best of Patsy Cline), and as I commented on Al’s profile, don’t have any cowboy boots, hats, or belt buckles. It’s just something different when the other radio stations aren’t playing BOSTON … there aren’t any Hawaiian stations here and my wife’s new car has satellite radio but not my ten-year-old one.

I don’t listen to music while I workout (at home), but people who do like upbeat stuff to get moving.

Music that do I like? Wide range of tastes. Classic rock, of course, like hmmm, BOSTON, Fleetwood Mac, Journey, Rush, (older) Tom Petty and the HBs, Elvis. NOT Jimi Hendricks or the Doors. Of course, not rap or hip hop. Some crooners like Sinatra, Dean Martin. "Classical", like Beethoven (symphonies and piano concertos), Rachmaninoff, other piano work, not so much Mozart. Not opera. Other instrumental work like Kitaro. Hawaiian music (Keali’i Reichel, Na Leo Pilimehana, Hapa, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole), including slack key guitar (Sonny Lim, Keola and Kapono Beamer, Gabby Pahinui).

Keali’i: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjW6bk01Bg8
Na Leo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =y8dz8V-e0js

Yesterday was chest and triceps day and I kept flys in there, but did them inclined with a low weight (20% down). The lower weight meant more reps to failure, but they still aggravated my shoulder. I was careful of the form of my arms and watching how low my arms went. The shoulder feels fine again today, but like last week, it hurt (though not as bad) when I slept on it last night. There is something going on there, but several years ago when I went to the doctor about it, he said there was nothing he could do because it’s an intermittent pain and I would have to come in when it’s inflamed, but make an appointment a month in advance. One of those "if it hurts when you do X, don’t do X".

Sat’s workout includes upright rows as part of shoulder work. That movement seems to be another bad one for me.

I’m almost done with Kubik’s book. Now I have to decide if I want to pursue a beginner’s form of that training, which probably won’t be until after the Puerto Rico trip, which starts in ~two weeks, but need to decide on ordering a sand bag. Kubik writes about 150-lb bags, I’m thinking 50-60lb is more my speed to work with, because I can handle a 50-lb bag of chicken feed without problems. Just add more sand as time goes on.

No segues into song today.