bradl’s weight training

The trainer has me on this four-day split routine of lots of different exercises, some of which are seemingly just for variety. When I’m on travel in Jul, I think equipment will be very limited and there’s no way I can do all that stuff. Time may be limited too, so four weight-training sessions a week may not happen either. I may not see her again before that trip due to other, local work travel, so I’ll have to come up with a limited program that I might be able to do with limited equipment. I bought the highest-resistance cord (with handles) I could find months ago for a different, but also remote, trip where I knew there would be no equipment. That trip never happened, so I haven’t tried the cords yet, but they may provide the bulk of my training for the new trip.

The additional standard plates arrived (10lb). The outside diameter is about 1/4-inch bigger than the other 10-lb plates, so they should be okay. These are for my DBs. The barbell is Olympic and I have enough plates for that, until I need more Olympic 45s, which is a long way off.

Yesterday was shoulders and traps day. It was okay. The shoulders work hasn’t seem so bad the last few weeks, when it doesn’t follow chest work, like it was on the three-day split. At the same time, it doesn’t seem like that much work.

Two of the traps exercises are barbell shrugs, followed by dumbbell shrugs. Given my limit on DB loading, you have probably already figured out I have a problem with the DB shrugs. Because it’s a standing movement, I used a 45-lb plate in each hand, but still had to do many more than 6-8 reps to get anything out of it. I don’t think I could hold two of those plates in each hand. With the extra DB plates I’ve written about, I still won’t be able to approach the weight I would need. A shrug bar, yeah, that’s the ticket then StrongerGeek and I could share it.

Later, after I picked up our daughter from after-school care, we stopped at the drugstore near the house. The parking lot was nearly full. "What’s going on?" That "strip mall" has a couple restaurants, other shops, and what used to be a grocery store. The grocery store space was empty for months and the parking lot there has been pretty quiet. The grocery store became one of those big, chain gyms a few months ago. When we were headed back to the car, a woman / SUV was sharking us and our parking space. Apparently the gym membership has grown and everyone goes to the gym after work. I’ll have to remember that when I have the urge to visit that drugstore around rush hour. My gym, while lacking some features, is at home, also lacks the crowd

In preparation for the big work trip, I have been stocking up on protein bars. Trying to find one that isn’t an "energy bar" so they don’t have so many carbs. I ordered some from BB.com and bought a fat caliper as long as I was at it. Simple, plastic thing. Not very precise, but it shows it’s accurate to 1%. I’ll spare y’all the measurement lecture about the difference. I measured last night and came up with about 15%, which is higher than I thought, but according to the table, it’s borderline between lean and ideal (for my age), and that’s what I expected.

Now I can measure every day and keep track

Seriously, once a week or two if I remember, but now I have a number to compare.

Yesterday afternoon was another trainer session. I did more work than in the previous ones, which was good. She was testing me to check my limits on different exercises, plus having me do some cable work since they have the equipment there. I asked her about intensity because she was watching the amount of my quivering to determine my limits and when I had done enough. She had me stop doing reps one short of when I would stop at home, based on her observation. She said that for an exercise that I was plateaued, I should go for more, but normally, stop short, which means not to failure.

I asked her about front cable pulldowns. They are straight arm from horizontal to the thighs, not higher. I had forgotten and had done them raised down to thigh.

We worked on front squats. She said they target quads and that would help strengthen my knees, but the weight would be much lighter than for regular squats. I practiced them with DBs, which was as awkward than using a barbell bar.

I asked about overhead presses too. She had barbell presses in the list, but I can only do those seated, so I thought I should be doing DBs presses standing in that case, like Tony had advised. She agreed with his advice. (Grammar lesson for today Jason [not that you do this, just that you notice my comments]: they are two different words "advise" and "advice".)

Speaking of lists, she said that if the Mon list is too long, just superset the exercises and that will make it go faster. I was supposed to figure that out? I did a withhold and didn’t tell her that I split it up instead.

At one point in the session she had me doing DB bench presses. There were four benches in a row. I was on one of the middles. The others were occupied by women doing some class. They had 5- or 10-lb DBs doing presses as well. I had 45s. When I was halfway up rep eight, I was embarrassed about doing those with them and lost the rep as I started a giggle. I lowered the DB to my chest, no problem. It was that nervous laughter thing. I didn’t explain the embarrassment to the trainer, just said I thought of something funny, which was sort of the truth. Strange what nervousness does to performance.

At another point she said I was strong. I know that’s a relative term, because based on her demonstrations, she’s stronger than me, at least on some things. I was getting a big head from that comment LOL Well, as far as I would anyway. It reminded me of the part where Rudolph said, "She thinks I’m cute", and flies after Clarisse talks with him.

Yesterday was "heavy" leg day on the new program. I didn’t even bother trying front squats. I’ll talk with the trainer about them today if I remember.

It’s considered heavy week because it’s 6-8reps instead of 8-10. The problem was I didn’t know how much weight increase to use. I’ve been doing 10reps on Tony’s program, so dropping to 6 is a big shift. I had to adjust upward, of course, but couldn’t on DB lunges. I’d have to figure out the space issue if I switched to barbell lunges. Like I wrote last week, until I get more 10-lb plates for DBs, I’m stuck at 36lb each or one 50lb. The DB bars are only so long, so 50 or 60lb will still be the limit to what I can pack on each of them. Hasn’t been an issue before. I looked around some for them over the weekend. Apparently you’re not supposed to want more than 5-lb plates on DBs, because the plate diameter gets large. The plate set I have has thick instead of large diameter. The stores had the adjustable, BowFlex SelectTech DBs, but that’s a "big" investment. I’ll have to think about that. Maybe more DB bars if I have more plates, so maybe that would mean fewer weight loadings. I’m NOT going to get a set of DBs of different weights like at the gyms.

I adjusted the weight up conservatively on squats to be careful with my knee and did the four work sets of six reps, after warm ups. Could I have done more than six or pushed more weight? Not sure. It was more weight than I have used before and those sixths were hard, but not brutal. I was thinking about my knee. I have been wearing the knee support, loosely, as a heating wrap for the last few weeks and haven’t had any trouble with the knee.

I may consistency issues on this program because of travel for work. I’ll see how that goes.

"Heavy" week has front squats instead of lunges on leg day, so I tried doing a few with just the bar yesterday afternoon. The trainer had me try them with one of those weighted, short bars. I had never seen them before, short, padded bar in different weights. There are two ways to hold the bar for front squats. Rippetoe says to hold the bar pronated with the bar resting on shoulders at the throat, elbow sticking forward. Every other reference to them (like BB.com), shows the crossed-arms approach. Rippetoe says the crossed-arms hold is okay for lighter weights, but we work with heavy weights, so don’t use it. The book has a number of sayings like that. Anyway, I tried both. I managed a few reps with each, but neither was very stable. I guess that will take practice. I’m thinking more lunges today instead of what is still an awkward movement for me.

Not sore from yesterday morning’s workout yet. If any soreness happens, it’s usually the next day.