bradl’s weight training

In light of my low performance on pullups, I decided to insert pulldowns along with the other movements: deadlift, pullup, cable row, BB shrug, pulldown, and DB shrug. My grip strength was failing on the DB shrugs, but I feel better about doing pulldowns than performance on that one.

Starting Wed, the focus of the program switches to intensity, so the weeks are 3*8, 3*6, 3*4, and 3*2. I don’t know about that 3*2. From the things I have read, that’s below the recommended rep count for safe sets. The program also doesn’t say anything about doing more reps for calves, which, for one, apparently should have a higher rep count.

At the party this past weekend, our daughter had a root beer. We don’t have sodas in our house, so normally she doesn’t drink that stuff, but this was a special occasion: a party. It did bring up the subject of sodas and teenage girls and osteoporosis when we were at the "pool" with several women / mothers. Their daughters are adults now, but didn’t drink sodas as kids either. They were surprised that I have osteoporosis, as everyone is. It’s kind of embarrassing because I’m young and the wrong sex in osteoporosis terms. I’m not sure why I mentioned it to them, other than we were talking about the disease.

It’s strange because my slimness and pectus excavatum are the types of body image elements that embarrass or make men uncomfortable in public, but I keep forgetting to worry about them

It’s the internal stuff that disturbs me. Maybe it’s a matter of being capable or demonstrating capability v. looking physically capable?

Yesterday’s arm workout went fine. I pushed too much on the fifth set of close-grip bench presses and tweaked my shoulder. Hard to tell if my shoulder is just burning or is hurting, but yesterday was too much pushing to get the reps instead of concentrating on good form and stopping when form was slipping. It seems okay today, but haven’t tried to stress it. Mon is back day, so no bench or overhead press work until Wed.

The BBQ party was good. It was in Livermore where it was 110F in the shade. We were all … appropriately dressed for the heat, so it wasn’t too bad. There was a spray bottle for misting, a mister stand (connected to a garden hose), and an inflatable pool (about the size of a hot tub, but filled with cool water). Those things were popular. One woman brought a solar oven, which she used to bake brownies. The temp in there was 300-325F. We used it to reheat our casserole dish too. I didn’t realize they became that hot. The hosts made milk shakes after dinner too, and by then the temp was down to only 100F.

Our casserole dish was a tamale pie: kidney beans, (fake-beef) soy crumbles, onion, green pepper, chili spices, topped with corn bread. One woman brought a potato and cheese casserole, which was on my list of things I wasn’t interested in, along with the brownies and milk shakes.

We were back home late, so no time to go for a walk or practice sitting before bed.

Last night was leg day up to five sets this time. It was some work, but doable. I was dragging on curls. I’ve written before that I was stuck on that exercise and it continues to be a weak one.

The biggest thing was the time. Five sets with breaks between them takes time. I had to leave work early just to attempt to get it done in time to go get our daughter. I finished the leg work, but not the abs work that was supposed to follow. I’ll do that this morning with the arm workout that is scheduled.

We have BBQ party plans at another couple’s house this afternoon, so need to work out this morning.

Yesterday was the beginning of five-set week, which was chest and shoulders. It wasn’t bad. My rep counts lost another one on the last set, still 6+ so that’s okay. Five sets of everything takes a long time.

However, back day was Mon, which included pull ups. My performance on those has not been stellar. What’s the point in doing them when the fourth set is only 2 reps? Next week set five will be about 1 rep. I’m thinking again about (five sets of) lat pull downs instead, then I can pick a weight that I can handle 5*8 or so.

I pulled my zafu out of the closet and have been sitting for a few minutes, ten, in the evening. Need to up that to fifteen. Don’t have time in the morning. Want to do more reading about Zen to refresh my memory, but there’s that time thing again.

At work my funding past Nov is questionable, so need to work harder on finding a new job.

I finally bought a pair of lifting straps and yesterday’s back workout was the first try with them. They eliminate the load on my hands like they are supposed to, so that was interesting, but at the end I noticed that my wrist was sore. At least for the last exercise, DB shrugs, the strap rides across the site of my carpal-tunnel-release surgery and scar so aggravated the site. Not good. Can’t wear them for that exercise and probably not for the others either. Better for my grip to not use them anyway.

The surgery was not for repetitive stress, but an injury.

Friday was leg day. Four sets. I upped the squat weight 10lb and did 4*10, but seemed like I was going too fast. Need to slow down. Those were followed by DB lunges, leg extensions, curls, and (standing) calf raises, then abs work.

I ran out of water during the curl sets, so had climb ALL THE WAY UP the mountain of stairs (7 steps) to get up the kitchen level.

My legs are still sore today.

Throughout Friday, my "bad" knee was hurting, burning pain below the kneecap, the usual spot, so I added another warm-up set. The body-weight only, the other warm-up sets, and the four work sets caused no aggravation. The next morning it was sore on the medial side. The muscle soreness started after that.

Yesterday was arm day. Did BB curls against the wall, i.e., door, to check for cheating. I do lean back, so need to watch that. Performance on all the exercises was not as good as the last arm day. Oh well.

My wife has been interested in getting a new car for years. The time has come. She knows a woman who had her car totaled last week, so now is the time. She wants to sell hers cheaply to that woman. My wife asked me the other day if I wanted to go test drive cars with her. I said no, because I have no interest in test driving her new car. It depends if she likes it, not me. See, now, that’s a lesson I failed to learn from that book I wrote about the other day. That female essence question was the test to see if my masculine essence was listening and I would go with her. Her question really meant that she would like to me to go with her car shopping, but I heard it too literally.

In the program I’m doing, the number of sets increases each week, starting with two. I’m up to four this week, but I was looking over the description to see if it said anything about the rep counts and failure. I’ve written that as the sets are increasing, my reps are decreasing. The goal is 6-10 reps, but they don’t spell it out. I was wondering if they expect one to keep some energy in the tank to get 5*8 that final week or something like 10,9,8,7,6? Which is preferred? No info. Solid eights means the first couple aren’t to failure, which is good for warming up.

However, I saw today that the description says, "In addition to adding sets each week, you should always strive to lift a greater load each workout".

I apparently (conveniently?) forgot that part. I don’t see how I could have done that when the reps are dropping. Maybe one extra pound each week.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is nutrition and getting protein without the carbs. People seem to eat a slab of some sort of meat with a vegetable and maybe a salad along with those. Vegetarian cooking doesn’t seem to work like that. The protein source, e.g., tofu, beans, eggs, cheese, is mixed in with something else like a casserole or pasta. That may make it a complex carb meal, but its still a lot of carbs. Yesterday, I asked our daughter what she might like for dinner and she said pasta. I don’t want pasta. I heated up a can of vegetable minestrone and added fake-chicken strips to it to make "chicken" minestrone, which we three had with salad.

A pile of those "chicken" strips could work as a "slab of meat". Veggie meatballs would work, as long as we forgo the pasta and have some sort of sauce for them. We need to work on that idea some more because I want to get away from the pasta dinner thing.

The stiffness and soreness last weekend wasn’t as bad as I suspected it might be. Some leg soreness, but nothing big.

We went to Lava Hot Springs, ID, for the weekend for my wife’s maternal family reunion.

I was hoping to have some time this week to write reasonable reviews of the following books, but a few words will have to do. While I’m not a philosopher, I do think about some things and am interested in more than just sets and reps in bodybuilding, but mind, body, and spirit, but not so much spirit.

I have continued with the current program, so this week I’m doing four sets of each exercise. That last set gets short-changed on reps. I’ll be dragging next week doing five sets.

Over the weekend I read "The Way of the Superior Man" by David Deida. It was disappointing. One of the things he wrote was the need for sexual polarity in a relationship for passion to continue. Other than that, you have to find your edge and lean beyond it, take risks.It was a lot of short chapters of pop psychology with very little technique or exercises for implementing his suggestions.

I also started Frank Zane’s booklet, "The Mind In Body Building" over the weekend and finished it Mon. It summarizes a number of techniques Frank has used over the years, like meditation, visualization, lucid dreaming, light sound machines (like his Mind Muscle Machine), etc. In these summaries there were mentions of other books to get more information, e.g., Carlos Castaneda’s books, books on lucid dreaming. The "energy" and light body stuff is out there, so I have to filter the content down into real, practical terms. While he did describe procedures, like beginning meditation, he left much of the other techniques for others to illustrate, which left me thinking that Frank’s book is a intro to all this and his experience, but it’s not a practical guide on how to implement these techniques.