bradl’s weight training

Kubik has released more info about the book, including that it is for serious lifters and "This is a book about serious strength training for older lifters — and it’s intended ONLY for those who have been training hard and heavy for pretty much their whole life — and who love training — and who want to keep hitting the iron for as long as they possibly can." and "It’s for deeply committed, deeply serious Iron Warriors".

Later the description says "Gray Hair and Black Iron will teach you … How to build strength and power at any age…"

The first quote tells me I’m not ready for it. The second quote tells me that it could be useful.

The full blurb: http://www.brookskubik.com/dinosaur-store/gray-hair-and-black-iron/

Today was supposed to be a travel and work on remote site day or afternoon anyway. Things were delayed, so we are getting a late start and nothing will get done today. We have to get everything done tomorrow, which means a long day, getting home late, and pushing my workout to the weekend. Oh well.

Brooks Kubik has a new book that’s almost published, "Gray Hair and Black Iron – Secrets of Successful Training for Older Lifters". I don’t like buying books sight unseen without reviews to provide some insight into them, but I’m curious about it. At 45, I’m considered an older lifter. His "Dinosaur Training" was okay. I have a few months to go working on the program(s) before I can evaluate how successful it will be for me. Turn me into a strength dinosaur? Unlikely, but I’ll see how it goes.

I don’t know if I would buy his novel, "Legacy of Iron", if I had learned more about it beforehand. It has a lot of stats from lifting contests that I skipped because I don’t care, so I’m debating buying the sequel.

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.

With the change from daylight savings back to normal time and not sleeping well, I was tired yesterday so didn’t feel like doing legs yesterday, but did it anyway. Under the bar for squats, I tell myself, "this is what I’m here for, do it".

Feel more awake today, even though the kid was up AGAIN a few times last night.

Non-training.
Sun late morning I went out to do some errands. I noticed a broken straw bale at the curb across from the nearby gas station and some straw in the road. It looked me like it fell off a truck and was moved to the side. There are businesses and apartment building in that immediate area, so I concluded there was no one there who would have put it there for gardening needs.

When I returned past there about two hours later, the bale was still there. Hmmm, we could use some of that for our (two) chickens. I went home, ate lunch, and told my wife about the bale. She was ready to go get it and bring it home. After I was done with lunch and brushing teeth, i.e., more time passed, she got out a lawn (big, heavy duty) trash bag and off we went. It felt like stealing, but she convinced me that it was okay, and we tied it up afterward. The broken bale was out there for at least three or four hours and we took about 1/3 of it. Later in the afternoon, while out for a walk that took me there again, the rest of the bale was gone. Don’t know if the owner claimed it or someone else took the rest. The bag of straw we now have will last us maybe two months and saves us from buying small bags at the pet store that last two weeks each.

Happy chickens.

People are getting the idea that I’m a fan of country music. I have a four country CDs (best of Johnny Cash, Tanya Tucker, Steve Holly, best of Patsy Cline), and as I commented on Al’s profile, don’t have any cowboy boots, hats, or belt buckles. It’s just something different when the other radio stations aren’t playing BOSTON … there aren’t any Hawaiian stations here and my wife’s new car has satellite radio but not my ten-year-old one.

I don’t listen to music while I workout (at home), but people who do like upbeat stuff to get moving.

Music that do I like? Wide range of tastes. Classic rock, of course, like hmmm, BOSTON, Fleetwood Mac, Journey, Rush, (older) Tom Petty and the HBs, Elvis. NOT Jimi Hendricks or the Doors. Of course, not rap or hip hop. Some crooners like Sinatra, Dean Martin. "Classical", like Beethoven (symphonies and piano concertos), Rachmaninoff, other piano work, not so much Mozart. Not opera. Other instrumental work like Kitaro. Hawaiian music (Keali’i Reichel, Na Leo Pilimehana, Hapa, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole), including slack key guitar (Sonny Lim, Keola and Kapono Beamer, Gabby Pahinui).

Keali’i: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjW6bk01Bg8
Na Leo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =y8dz8V-e0js

I’ve been quiet this past week because I took the approach of "if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t". I wasn’t very positive last week, so didn’t share that. I wrote some potential posts offline, but didn’t post. I went through the motions of the week, including workouts as usual, but lacked focus.

I’m really ready to finish up this career counseling business. I’ve done all these assessments (tests and homework exercises on interests, skills, values), but we are way behind in discussing the results. I thought the results thus far were not promising. The meeting with the counselor was a trigger a week ago Fri (the date of my last post), but don’t talk with the counselor again until this week Fri.

Yesterday I finished reading a book that Kim (@fitclubmom) suggested, "The Red Book" by Sera Beak. Toward the end she wrote:

_Approach spirituality from a purely analytical standpoint, and I can guarantee that you’ll come away with a massive migraine with a spicy side of existential angst. It’s your choice. Try [to] tackle these classic, metaphysical brain twisters that philosophers and theologians have been struggling with for centuries and spend your whole life tying yourself up in infinite knots, or accept the mystery, the divine paradox, let go of trying to figure it all out, and enjoy the endless crazy ride._

I’m not big on "divine", but have spent my life with the knots and not so much of the enjoyment.

A book I started this week was "Dinosaur Training" by Brooks Kubik. I might as well put a quote from him too:

_…there are no secret systems, no magic answers, and no one way of doing things. Strength training is an art, not a science. We are not dealing with mathematical formulas or chemical equations. We are dealing with human beings, flesh and blood, passion and prejudice, pride and emotion._

For some, that makes it simple. For me, not so much.

Everyone knows I’m not big on patience either, but continue to need more of it.

(I think italics is hard to read, so spared you from big chunks of it.)

Yesterday was leg day. My back was fine. The five squat sets were eight then 4*10. The goal was six reps each, so the weight was too light, but felt heavy and I was nervous about going down, as usual. Once again, didn’t go all the way to parallel on many reps. Annoys me because I don’t get down, but should be using a heavier weight for the depth I’m going. Hmmm, if I didn’t look down to check, I wouldn’t know, so that would mean the reps would then be to the grass

I’ve been cycling the order of the secondary exercises, following a modification of Dr Joe’s scheme. He actually changes the exercises every week, I’ve been moving the first secondary to the end and shifting the others forward each week. My reasoning is that I don’t have to figure out the right weight to use each week. It’s only been a few weeks, but the scheme is different from doing the same order, because the target muscles have a different tiredness than the previous week, so the weight may not be ideal in the current week.

I pushed, but there was no hurling involved Does a burp and some grunting count?

The career counselor sent a bunch of homework that arrived yesterday and that I need to mail today, so I spent the evening and a bit early this morning finishing.

Last Mon’s leg day was when I strained my back warming up for squats. On that workout and each of the ones once then, I didn’t really have any problems with it. I think the strain was due to not focusing on proper breathing during that warmup set and my back was stressed from working too hard on deadlifts recently. By too hard I mean pushing beyond where the correct deadlift form (set of the back) was lost during the rep and I was straining my back to do the lift. The rational approach is one where I stop at failure of form like I used to do. That means a drop in weight until I build up.

Squat weight change? I don’t if I need to adjust that because it was okay last week after the strain. Need to focus on breathing pattern and going low and slow. I only go to parallel, thinking that my knee will not tolerate going "to the grass".

Sat’s workout was shoulders, which included seated overhead BB press. With my set up I can’t to those supported or standing. I felt some back stress, but not overly done. I don’t lift a lot of weight on them. I can do the supported DB seated version, but decided it wasn’t necessary to change.

After that, we three went out to the tide pools along the coast on Sat afternoon. It was cold because it was windy, but we came prepared for that. The traffic on the way there sucked, because of the pumpkin sellers on the side of the road on the way there. The tide pools are next to a small cliff. Our daughter liked exploring in the pools, but also climbing around on the talus piles at the cliff, looking for rocks. The tide pools have one type of small fish. I don’t remember what they are called. There are also hermit crabs, sea anemones, mussels, seaweed, and a few sea stars. The sea stars are brown with white dots, but we have occasionally seen the orange-with-white-dots ones too.