bradl’s weight training

Last night our daughter and I watched the movie "Chicken Little". In there the main character said, "today is a new day".

Today I was reading some of the April 2009 "Ironman" magazine. In there is a hard gainer article by Stuart McRobert about "today", titled "Over-40 Bodybuilder’s Golden Rule". In it he reminds us: "Each day is an opportunity to take a small step toward your goals".

"You can’t retake a day to make a better job of it. Each day is a one-off event. If you don’t get it right, you’ll have blown an opportunity for progress."

"You can’t change anything from the past, and you don’t know what the future is going to bring. The best you can do is get it right today."

"Take each workout one at a time. Make it perfect. If you can make one perfect, you can make the next one perfect and the next one and the next one."

"As far as your training, nutrition, and sleep go, keep your mind totally on one day at a time. That’s the golden rule."

I’m getting tired of the top hat picture, but don’t have a buff picture to substitute. That is months and months away.

One week into the new program, which as I wrote is similar to the old one, but starting at 90% of the old weights. Most exercises seemed a little easier than before. The exceptions were squats, which just felt difficult, and presses, which felt very easy. It wasn’t until laying in bed this morning that I figured out why the presses were easy. I was doing them with dumbbells and switched to the bar this week. I took the weight on the ‘bells and put it on the bar, minus the weight of the bar. The problem was I took the weight of ONE ‘bell, not two. Duh. I added a bit of weight each time, because it was so light, but not up to where it should be. When I do my accessory stuff today, I’ll swap in presses for side raises. I’ll probably drop the latter altogether per krgore’s comment that it builds muscular love handles.

My goal is not a "6 pack", so dropping an ab exercise is not a big deal. On the other hand it does free up some time for something else, which could be more aerobic exercise, which would be much better toward that 6-pack thing. More jumps maybe, and perhaps adding a step to force me to jump up a certain height, so I don’t get lazy.

Substituting the press is assuming I get time to do any exercise this afternoon. My wife has been out of town since Wed morning, which means I had short work days to handle school drop off and pick up and still workout, but also that I may be playing this afternoon. Our daughter’s playing by herself in her room now, but I just ate lunch, so now is not the time. The wife comes back this evening.

Anyway, I’m rambling now.

I haven’t posted the program of exercises that I follow. I started a somewhat changed program this week, but it’s pretty similar to the previous one because it’s built on the big basic, compound exercises. According to the hard gainer philosophy, I should only be weight lifting once or twice a week, but have broken the work outs apart due to time. There’s no way I could squeeze in aerobic or ab work on the same day as lifting. Without having breaks during the week, I may have problems due to over training but there isn’t too much repetition of the major exercises.

Everything consists of one warm up set (except L-flys which are done with light weights) followed by two work sets. When I am eventually moving more weight, I’ll need to add additional warm-up sets. In McRobert’s scheme, most exercises are done 2×8, except squats and deadlifts which are up to 2×20.

Mon and Fri then the next Wed, etc.:
- stretches
- warm up push ups and free squats
- squat
- incline bench (30deg)
- seated cable row
- seated barbell press (no support)
- lateral raise (dumbbells)
- shrug
- bicep curls

Wed then the next Mon and Fri, etc.:
- stretches
- warm up push ups, free squats, side leg raises
- bend-leg deadlift
- calf raise
- leg curl
- dip
- pulldown (later I’ll graduate to chin ups)
- barbell press
- L fly

McRobert does not consider a number of exercises, such as leg extensions, because the muscles are worked in other ways by the compounds. He also discounts other exercises as risky, e.g., behind the neck presses or pulldowns. He also prescribes such variations as shoulder-width, supinated (palm-facing body) pulldowns instead of the wide-grip pronated version. He’s conservative due to the potential for injuries.

On Tues and Thurs (and sometimes Sat), I do one set each of accessory things like a little aerobic and ab work:
- stretches
- tai ji
- jumping jacks
- standing jumps
- punching and kicking a standing bag
- weighted crunches on the floor
- back extensions on the floor
- weighted side raises
- a few yoga "core" exercises like cat / cow, boat
- reverse crunches on the floor
- (cable) weighted side bends
- grip work (Captains of Crush gripper)
- finger extensions (essentially spreading fingers to stretch a rubber band)

The goal with all this is building strength, particularly back, so if for no other reason, squats, deadlifts, side bends, jumping, etc. are in there.

Last night was my first workout after taking a week off for work travel. I had been weight training since Dec without a break.

The new weights are 90% of the latest numbers from before. I did one warm-up set at 75% of the new weight followed by two sets of  eight (2×8) for most of the exercises and 2×15 for squats. Everything was relatively easy, except for squats, supposedly they are supposed to be easy at the beginning of a cycle.

Over the weekend I read a blog post where the guy was wondering how many reps and sets he should do for maximum growth or strength. I didn’t have an answer for him, but it starting me thinking about the idea again. I’ve always been confused about the concept of a set beyond the meaning of a group of repetitions (reps).

If you do one set until failure (of form), that stimulates the muscles to become stronger and grow. In high intensity training for bodybuilding, that’s the plan. I can understand why you would want to do more sets: to squeeze more out of the muscles because they wear out "so easily", and can take more work, but why? If one set is all that is really needed to stimulate them, why more? Why 60s, 1min, 90s, 2min, etc. between sets? I know shorter times keep the heart rate up and less time for the muscles to recover, but is the intent to complete good sets to failure or to work on cardiovascular effort? More sets build endurance, but some trainers write that doing lots of sets, e.g., five+, means you’re not working that hard. If you’re dropping reps or changing weights in those, then that changes things.

The number of reps in a set also determines the total volume of work. I know that more weight with lower reps generally leads to more strength, but increase the risk of injury at the low end of one or 3-5 reps. Schemes use singles, 3-5, 6-8, 8-12, 12-20 reps, etc. depending on the body part and the goal. Is it really that much more beneficial to break the reps up with a short pause and do it again? I’ve been doing two sets, but there’s so much confusing information out there. Different trainers / writers mention different research where one set or two sets or three sets is best.

Then there’s the pump. The pump is bigger / stronger if you do more sets. The pump feels good though, so it brings satisfaction, experiential knowledge that you’ve done something. I’ve read that pumping up muscles is not directly related to stimulating growth. It’s just the working them to failure that counts.

The bottom line is what works for each person, but those (of us) with no experience would like something close to the "right answer" to start from to get a good start then just tweak things from there.

Wishful thinking.

I didn’t post anything this week because I was taking the week off from training because it’s been several months since I started and haven’t taken a break yet and I was on travel for much of the week for work.

I wrote "much of the week" because the trip was cut short due to a, um, problem with the equipment, so we came home early. An interesting part of the trip was that we were able to use our corporate partner’s corporate jet to fly the team and all the equipment. None of us had been in a corporate jet before. Very nice. We weren’t allowed to take pictures. No herding cattle through security nor being packed into neat little rows on the plane. We each had a couch and we spread out around the cabin. Every seat is "first class", even if it is a couch. I think I was the only one of the team of about ten who put anything (my coat) in an overhead bin. Lots of space. The flight attendants served food not snacks in boxes. Drinks were in glasses. The couches in the front of the main cabin were arranged around a low table, where the buffet was laid out. After dealing with cafes on site that served fried this and that WITH a mound of french fries and the only fruit available was tomatoes on hamburgers, etc., the platters from Whole Foods, including trays of fruit and a selection of Naked juices, was very nice. The biggest problem with the flights was that they were too short. There was no time to play with the Wii.

On the return flight the captain came on the intercom shortly after take off and asked if he should take a slight left and head to Hawai’i, we had enough fuel, all he needed was the go ahead from our project manager. The manager then went up to the cockpit and sat with the crew for a while. We all spent a little time up there looking around. The lucky ones took the extra seats for the take offs and landings.

Because the plane had external cameras and wide screen monitors fore and aft in the main cabin (we watched most of Top Gun during the flight), the rest of us could watch using the tail (way up there), belly forward or aft, or side views. The flight attendants said they liked the belly forward view to watch the take off and landing, but I liked the tail cam because it looked over the top of the plane and out to the landscape around the plane, while the belly cam showed the landing gear and the runway.

In front of the main cabin was two bedroom suites, but we weren’t allowed in there. Forward of those was another cabin similar but smaller than the main cabin, more like a working area with a desk and chairs.

After work Friday, I came home and worked on my workout program for the next cycle. It’s pretty much the same as the last one because it focuses on the compound exercises as before. I’ll start that Monday.

I haven’t seen an email confirming it, but things were going well this morning and the trip is on.

Today I squeezed in one more workout before the trip, which included squats. They seemed hard again today, even with the stance I used last time. It could be that I’m just working too much. According to McRobert’s books, I shouldn’t be doing as many workouts as I am and probably over training. I’ll be taking the rest of this coming week off because of the travel, so that’s my recovery period.

Each workout should add to my overall strength. They are supposed to be hard. As ricohitman wrote, we lift to "Be strong".

I’ll been using GNC’s Pro Performance 100% Whey Protein powder, but bought their Mass XXX last time I was at the store and opened the huge vat today. Today is a recovery day, so I’m trying it. The recommended amount is four scoops, which is 50g protein. The scoop is bigger than the Pro Perf one, so four scoops of that is a lot of something, which is carbs. I tried two scoops, to get the usual amount of protein I take at a time, ~20g, in this case actually 25g.

On workout days or other recovery days, I’ll see how I like it, if I notice a difference, so far it just seems like a lot of powder and it doesn’t mix well.

Anybody want to comment on the stuff? Thanks.

Sort of. Because I only did a half workout yesterday, I did my alternate day workout this afternoon, except I had also done my accessory (abs, punching/kicking the [floor] bag, etc. this morning) workout this morning. That’s probably too much in one day, but I’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

If the work trip comes off, I’ll have a week off, so I’m abusing myself now

I’m supposed to work on reducing stress, but I often am trying to squeeze in working out between coming home from work and heading to pick up our daughter from after-school day care. The last few weeks have been busy at work too, preparing for a trip. Last night we three were planning to go out for Valentine’s, avoiding today’s rush. I was home an hour late, so I was wrestling with bailing the workout, doing one set only and asking the wife to do pick-up duty, or doing the usual two sets and push back our dinner out until I was done. I went for the one set option. One warm-up set and one work set. It didn’t seem like a lot of work when I was done, but I did work to failure, so that’s all I could do.

One reason I was debating canceling all together was squats. After my experience last time of the weight bearing down on me, I wasn’t looking forward to that. However, in my warm-up, no-weight squats, I noticed that my feet were wider than I had been using with the bar, so I tried using the wider stance with the warm-up and work sets. No problem doing 20 reps with the same weight.

One complicating factor that I don’t think I mentioned was that several weeks ago when I loaded the bar with too much weight, I think I pulled a muscle. I thought that was gone yesterday, but last night in bed I was awake or woke up when it pulled again, SOMEHOW. Today it’s still there, annoying.

I was going to mix up my "program" a bit a few weeks ago corresponding to a work trip and make the travel a week off between cycles. The trip was delayed. With the slips this past week, it’s causing longer work days and the trip is delayed another day. Messes with my workout schedule. Assuming the trip actually happens this week, which the project manager says it will, that will be my break before the next cycle.

Did I mention I need to work on stress management?

My workouts don’t seem like much unless I’m actually in the garage doing the reps until I can’t follow good form and move that bar / dumbbells for another rep, i.e., failure. That’s as much as I can do, but still waiting for progress and growth as I plod along.