bradl’s weight training

Our daughter has been sick with what is probably a cold, so I was home with her and her fever yesterday. She slept late. We played some games. She played on the computer. We played some games, etc. One thing she has liked to do lately is play store with her toy cashier register. Last weekend, not this past weekend, she wanted to play that game too. We played furniture store around the house. Yesterday, she let me chose the type of store, so I went fitness equipment shopping in the garage and bought most of the stuff from her. Her turn was grocery shopping, in the kitchen. Fever was reduced by the end of the day, so she’s off to school today.

During her computer time, I went down to the garage and did leg day. General warmup went okay, and included body-weight-only squats, but when I started warmups for squats. I hit trouble on the first loaded warmup set. The plan was to do five sets of 235lb x 6, so warmups were bar, one 45lb plate each side, 185lb, then 235lb. On that first loaded set, my lower back went ouch. Not badly, but it hurt. Since it wasn’t a lot of pain, I continued, carefully. Next warmup set. No problem, just the same back pain. Work set. Same. Finished all the sets. Same. Work sets were eight reps instead of the target six, but I didn’t want to up the weight. My wife says I strained it, that’s all, but it could take a few weeks to recover. Ugh. If I had a weight belt, would I expect to need it doing a "light" warmup set? I wouldn’t think so.

After squats, I moved onto the other leg work. Pain didn’t become worse through any of that, I just didn’t like bending over.

After that, I told our daughter no games on the floor. Any card or board games are at the kitchen table.

This morning I stretched in the morning like usual. I was slower than normally and my lower back hurt, but no sharp pains. Sleep was okay.

It’s "awkward" to put on socks and shoes, but otherwise it’s doing okay. I’m hoping the pain will go away in a few days.

The last few weeks, ever since I upped the weights for low reps (4), I’ve had a sore lower back, which was just hanging out. This new pain is more acute. Deadlifts return Fri. I don’t know if I’ll be ready for that In the meantime, I’m looking at supported overhead presses, etc.

On Sun, I figured out that Burmese style sitting for meditation is comfortable, but causes the knee of my inward leg to hurt a bit for hours afterward. Half lotus is okay on the knee, but uncomfortable during the session. Go figure.

Old age.

I attended the World Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness Championships in SF last night. The novices were considered as competing in the Bay Area Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness Championships. The latter would have been a better title of the show because there was nothing international about it. All the competitors were from the Bay Area. There were about twenty five or thirty of them, about half and half men and women, and I considered that a small event. There was only one woman in the "traditional" bodybuilding category. The other women were "bikini divas" or figure competitors. One of them had tattoos all over her back that she had attempted to cover with some tat concealer, but it didn’t work so well. One of the men had tats on both legs up the knees and almost covering entire torso. With the oil the tats looked like teal discolorations of his skin and distracting from the form he was showing. I don’t think he was wearing the brown goop that most of the competitors had. He had dark skin already, if I remember right, he was Hispanic.

When the MC introduced the only woman who was a "traditional" bodybuilder, she added that she was a dying breed. Women aren’t interested in that route anymore. This woman was fifty one. As part of the women’s posing of the figure competitions, they included a back pose where they stuck their butts out at the audience. Some of them had nice legs and a$$es shown to advantage in their half-thongs, but I thought that pose was weird. It’s probably just a standard pose, like the stuff the men do. I have seen pictures of guys in the standard or required poses, so there were no surprises there. The experienced men had polished, choreographed posing routines, which they executed with various degrees of flair, while the novices went through the poses, though some of those had some confidence. Wide range of comfort level, but they all started at the same point at some time.

Most of the music was loud and "let’s get ready to rumble" or party stuff, though there were two Michael Jackson songs (one was for a man) and a few mellow pieces for a few graceful men.

I was perhaps the only person in the (small) audience who wasn’t there to support a specific person on the stage. The venue was an auditorium at a middle school.

Was it worth going or would I do it again? Not really. I suppose it was interesting to see one of these events, but it’s not my thing.

Last weekend Joe DeMarco competed in the 2009 UPC Team Universe. He placed second in his class, but was third in 2007.

This weekend, i.e., tomorrow, I plan to attend the competition that I mentioned last week. I’ll report on that afterward.

This morning on my way to work I was listening to a talk of Gil Fronsdal’s. He’s a mindfulness teacher.

In the talk, Gil held up a single flower so people could look at it. He talked about the characteristics of it, then he held up another flower, then put it next to the first, and said that now he can do something he couldn’t do before: compare them. Seen next to the new one, the original is small. The small flower isn’t any less beautiful than it was before and hasn’t changed in any way, so it isn’t any less or different than it was, but now it’s seen differently, as the small flower. He then extended the small flower forward and held the big flower back. Which is the bigger flower? Does it matter what perspective you use? The flower is still the same.

I think that story is interesting, obviously.

I compare myself and my progress to others and want bigger numbers for my lifts. Are bigger numbers little things? ("Don’t sweat the little things.")

Being just a single flower is a big thing.

Last night I talked with the career counselor. It was a discussion of my education and employment history, so she can understand how I arrived where I am now. She’s going to send some evaluation test materials and next time we’ll talk about those and my work motivations and needs, something like that.

One of the questions to answer is "What are you doing when you can say to yourself ‘I like myself’?".

I need to pick up our daughter from school early today, so I stayed home today to burn a vacation day. This morning I spent MORE time pouring over my workout logs sheets in preparation to talk with DrJoe about them. His book outlines a five-day split and I want a four-day one, and me being a worry wart about this stuff, I wanted to hash it out with him, including how many exercises to include. How to stack body parts together and what exercises go with what body parts?

The four-day split I have done before had legs, chest-triceps, shoulders-traps, and back-biceps. The reasoning is that back pulling motions use the biceps too and chest push motions use the triceps, so if they are done together then those motions involve all those muscles, but only once a week and the accessory muscles can rest the other days. He recommends legs, chest-biceps, back, and shoulders-triceps because then, for example, the biceps aren’t worn out when it comes time to focus on them. The bottom line was that the different mixes work for different people. Try them both and see. The usual answer

Like the Crab wrote about today, all this fits under "the little things". None of the above really matters, but these things continue to annoy me when trying to figure out what do to in an exercise program. In the bigger picture, it’s all distraction from focusing on the things that really matter in life and why I don’t pay attention to personal preferences and my self, but instead try to find the practical and "correct" answer.

I completely forgot about the comparison issue.

Last night I did five work sets of squats, as decreed by the program for the primary leg exercise. I did the warm up bar, one plate, and 185 warm up sets with just the bar, but then used the Manta Ray on the bar for the first work set. For the second work set I used the foam pipe insulation and never looked back. It was sooo much better than the Manta Ray. It’s dense foam and not very compressible, unlike neoprene. I’ve read that some commercial squat pads are neoprene. Should have listened to you all in the first place, stu called it lagging.

When my back fills out, maybe I’ll be able to use the low-bar position and do without the padding, but for now, it’s the only thing that works relieves the compression pain on the shoulder bones.

I’ve been easily frustrated the last few weeks. Last night was no exception. Frustrated during the workout. Frustrated because I’ve needed to redo the new workout plan several times now. Not frustration due to  e  x  t  r  e  m  e  l  y    s  l  o  o  o  w  progress. I’m resigned to that one.

Worked up the full-body plan per the Scivation phase 3 program on Sat, then decided to junk it since it was pointless.

Worked up a three-day split using what I understand about DrJoe’s AAS method on Sun. Doing the leg day yesterday, realized it was too long and I was pressured for time trying to finish it.

Worked up a four-day AAS split last night when I could be relaxing on the couch with the family watching some of a movie, since I don’t need the next day of the workouts until Wed. I could request a routine from DrJoe. That would ease my confusion. My exercise selection is based on what is supposed to be "good", but that depends on who you listen to. Mixing things up in the AAS adds another element. This art stuff. Argh. When you study art, you generally work under a master for a while. In science you just learn the rules and go for it. Don’t know if this split is a good one or if it’s workable in my time available. Don’t know what exercises work for me. Progress is very slow, which makes it difficult to determine the cause improvements especially when they are small, so I just keep working through some set of exercises. The trainers that have given me routines have been, "here do this, it should do what you want". Tony’s plan was more focused for me and straightforward than those, but he hasn’t seen me train to see how things work for me either. Best he could do and I liked that one.

Seems like there is more and more stuff to do in the evenings and mornings. I rush off to work only to sit at my desk with dull projects that amount to nothing.

My attempts at meditation have been crappy lately too. No ability to focus.

Michael and Janet Jackson’s video for "Scream" comes to mind for all of this.

On a positive note, I have a phone appt with the career counselor this evening. That could be the highlight of the day

Well, the current program is getting annoying. Deadlifts and squats on the same day with heavier weights. Rep counts down to two. Yesterday, I mentioned that I won’t be able to do just two reps in good form on a number of exercises, so … why bother and risk injury, etc.? The next phase of this program is three different variations of full-body routines with one of more deadlifts and squats. I’m ready to move on.

I was thinking about trying x-reps next, based on reading about it in IronMan and Biigcal’s suggestion, but I haven’t read the ebook yet because I had "plenty of time" before I needed to think about changes. On the other hand, I am interested in DrJoe’s accommodation avoidance system (AAS) that we talked about on the phone consult. If I’m going to be in contact with him about my progress, which we haven’t planned, but I might do, I think I should be following his plan. His AAS is a split using three-week cycles where there is a primary and about four secondary exercises that follow it. The primary is the focus and is usually done 5sets x 6reps and the secondaries are usually done 3*10. The latter are mixed up each week. At the end of three weeks, a new primary and secondaries are selected. The old primary may become a secondary. After twelve weeks, you take a week off heavy training.

I’ve been doing four-day splits for a while, but leaning toward a three-day one like Tony designed for me back in Apr. DrJoe uses a five-day one. It’s always so complicated. Ugh. Three days may work better given upcoming travel and our daughter’s school activities. If I miss a one day out of three weights days, it’s not such a big deal to delay it because there are more rest days to take up the slack, but on the other hand, there are more rest days and it’s better/nice to be in the gym.

It’s been a while since I’ve taken and uploaded measurements and pictures. Within measurement error, the sizes are the same as back in Apr, except for forearms. I measured them both three times and came up with similar numbers each time. Assuming they were measured correctly last time (Apr), they have grow significantly. Adapting to back work without straps maybe.

I’ve had a little progress on lifts in the last few months, so maybe that will translate into size in "a few" more months.

The pictures, well, same old, same old, but they are consistent with the constant measurements

This post is all about training.

Today’s workout had deadlifts followed by squats. My back didn’t feel sore today, until after those deads. Squats before deads seems to be a better order.

For the squats and the calf raises that came after those, I used the foam pipe insulation we had in the garage. I cut the foam to wider than shoulder width and slipped it on the bar. It’s actually the right diameter. I could feel the weight across my back, but it didn’t dig into my skin in the high-bar position. I didn’t attempt the low-bar position. It had a little tendency to slide, but my hands were enough to hold it. For the work sets I only had 245lb (which is heavy for me at 3×5) on the bar.

The Manta Ray has a bit of that tendency to slide, but it stops on its own. The lateral balance is less stable because the Manta keeps the bar off the shoulders so has a smaller support base. I’ll have to try the Manta again for squats to compare more.

For calf raises in the "power rack", no question, the foam was a much better approach.

I’m supposed to be doing 8,6,4,2 reps as the four weeks go by. A later exercise today was skull crushers. Based on today’s deterioration of form at four reps, the weight that would in theory take me to 2 reps would be a weight that I will not be able to do one rep in good form. I’m thinking I’ll just stop at four reps and do that for two weeks, but maybe up the weights a little.

The World Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness Championships are in SF next weekend, Sat, 26 Sep. I bought a ticket to the main show, not the prejudging, this week. My wife has no interest in attending, so just one ticket. I’ve never been to a show, so it may be an experience. I’m open to meet any BB.com people there, but doubt anyone lives out here.

Nooooo, I’m not competing in it, in case you’re wondering. (The deadline has past, yeah, that’s why not.)