bradl’s weight training

This morning was the third dino-style training day: squat (5 x 5), BB biceps curl (5 x 5), calf raise, CoC grip work, weighted crunches, and reverse crunches. It’s supposed to be the Mon workout, but last I heard (before the PR trip) I’m supposed to be on travel later in the week, so want condense things so I don’t miss a lifting day.

I’m still faced with the squat confidence problem. In a few weeks, the squat weight will be back up to where it would be hard to do only five reps. In the past when I get to that point, I haven’t gone down to parallel like I would like, which means I’m more comfortable with a lighter weight, but with more reps. The idea is to go heavy though, which is a block I have to get over. I know how far to go down, but feel like I’ll get stuck in the hole. Unloading the bar and raising it is doable, but failing the set is the worst part.

This afternoon we three did a little geocaching. Our daughter volunteered to walk about 1/2 mile each way to my office while my wife went on an errand, then we walked a few caches. She didn’t complain about the hiking. It was only about a 1/2 mile total walking for those, but she did fine. Unusual for her and a good thing that she’s willing to do some exercise.

My wife has been watching her diet, walking more, doing some other exercise for the last month or so, and has lost about 13lb and some size. I really noticed the change when I returned from the PR trip.

Today was the second day of dino workouts: 5 x 5 deadlift, 5 x 5 BB overhead press, DB crunches, DB side bends, farmer’s walk with fat-grip 40-lb DBs. I could only hold the latter for 30s at time, which wasn’t much of a walk, so did it three times. The fat-grip made them hard to hold. I under estimated the weight for the BB press, so kept increasing it for every set, instead of two warm ups and three stable, work sets, so then had to revise the progression plan in the spreadsheet from Ledford and put the new numbers in the log sheet.

The progression means there are a few weeks in the cycle before getting back to the weight I was working with before, but "dino style" means heavy weights, which I think I’ll be approaching by that point. Deadlifts seemed heavy today already, even without using a fat-grip bar.

I bought a pair of "fat gripz" sleeves, which work well on the DB bars, but are a little small for the BB. A fat bar supposedly makes bench press and overhead press harder, but I tried a set of the latter with them and it didn’t make much difference. I can see how deadlifts would be harder, because that’s pulling, grip exercise.

I did a workout based on dino training today. It took about an hour. I’m not sure how fatigued I should be after going for a sandbag walk, but for a first day at it, maybe it was enough. I walked one block length (not all the way around) in a bear hug, over the left shoulder, over the right shoulder, bear hug, across the shoulders, and bear hug. A few of those included a overhead press for the transition, which reminded that I was supposed to do that each time.

Warm up with lying L-fly, standing external rotation, bar-only bench, light pulldown, then 5 x 5 flat bench, 5 x 5 DB rows, neck raises, sandbag walk. Didn’t seem like a lot of work, but the weights are a bit light at the beginning of the cycle. Need to walk farther next week

On the return flight, I finished Brooks Kubik’s "Legacy of Iron", a novel about old-time weightlifters. The story was kind of interesting, but was watered down with lifting statistics of various lifters from competitions of the day. A lot of name-dropping of real lifters there, but I don’t know about them or care about their stats, so that stuff was distracting. Info about their stories was interesting. He has a sequel to that book, which I’m somewhat interested in reading, but don’t want to plod through lifting stats again.

This first part is non-training and the last paragraph has some training info in it.

Last week Mon was the first day at the marine lab’s island. It’s pretty much the same as it was in previous years. Hot and humid, rainy, with lots of iguanas roaming around. I almost stepped on one, though I usually watch where I’m going.

I didn’t get much done that I had planned to do there or get a chance to get out for a walking break, because I was helping one student in particular with a problem related to this project. It was still working on this project, but not the stuff I planned. There were a few students wearing jeans and a shirt who wore sweaters in the computer lab part of the days, while I was hot all day in just a shirt, shorts, and sandals. The lab is air conditioned, but not heavily.

Anyway, not much to say. Just a week at the office, more or less.

We have been going to Puerto Rico to take measurements and pictures of a number of transects there in Nov since 2005. It’s a ten-day trip and we get back the Tues night before Thanksgiving. In previous years I have bought a Puerto Rico beach towel with dolphins on it for our daughter, but she has three of them so doesn’t really need another, but I bought another one anyway. Most of the tourist stuff is junk made in China, so nothing I really want to take back.

The last day down in SW Puerto Rico, we went to Cabo Rojo to visit Los Morrillos light house and the neighboring beach yesterday. It’s at the tip of land in the SW corner of PR. It was hot. We old folks left after a couple hours, but the graduate student with us stayed for a while with the other students from the lab that went too. We checked out the beach and sat around a little while then walked the path up to the lighthouse, but were then ready to move on.

The next day we drove back to San Juan to catch the flight back to California yesterday. Puerto Rico is four hours ahead of here, so I woke up really early this morning.

In the afternoons, I had a little free time before dinner, when I would stretch and do tai chi, but though I had the stretch tubing for exercising, I didn’t use it. After we arrived in San Juan, we walked around Old San Juan for a while and split up. After I did my little bit of shopping, I walked back to the hotel, which I see in Google Earth now was about 2.5miles. I took a shower, dressed, and went to the gym. The hotel was big, so had a big fitness center with something like four ellipticals, four treadmills, and two or three stationary bikes, but it also had some machines, a Smith machine, dumbbells (up to 50lb), and short barbells (up to 110lb). One of the machines was an assisted pullup/down and dip machine, which I had never used before. I pulled the pin on it and the kneeling pad floated up and down below my knees. A guy used it after me and I saw he folded the pad up. Duh. I didn’t know it did that. Anyway, I did a full-body routine, since I squeezed everything into one workout. The Smith machine made squats seem easier than normal. The Smith machine didn’t go low enough for deadlifts, so I had to use the 110-lb short barbell for deadlifts. I did five sets of sixteen, but on the other exercises, I used the 5 x 5 approach that is used for the dino training (two warm-up and three work sets).

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.