Kulzor’s War Journal

So I tried ShanBL’s (and thus Janthony’s) Hell Week Lunge day today.  Shannon poked at me that I ought to be able to do Hell Week with her with all the push-ups and chin-ups I’ve been doing.  I don’t normally do mass quantities of legwork though, so I viewed Lunge day with some tripidation.

I shouldn’t have.

900 walking lunges later (trying to keep good form, I never do walking lunges, only weighted stationary lunges normally) in about 23 minutes and I was rather shocked that I wasn’t downright dead on my feet.  I actually felt just fine hopping back on the elliptical and jogging.  So I thought, "Hey, might as well do the rest of my leg day."  Yeah … squats were HARD after doing all that lunging.  Even at a reduced weight I almost gave up and just jogged the rest of my workout time (about 126 minutes on a Saturday).  Then I thought of Herm, and forced myself to do sets of squats, deadlifts, and toe-ups.

Not sure what I’ll feel later on, but the legs feel pretty beat down right now.  Of course, after the week of daily push-ups and chin-up work, my chest, back, bi’s and tri’s are all sore and feel wore down as well.  Wait … I think my glutes feel ok for now…

I was SHOCKED at my heart rate doing the walking lunges.  I stayed at 160-162 the entire time.  That’s a darn good combined cardio and strength workout.  It might look humorous, but people ought to be doing this more often.  If ~900 lunges are 1/2 mile for Shannon, I’m pretty sure it’s about 10% further for me.  I’ll bet she’s still better at them than I am, though - she’s a leg powerhouse for her size.

Anyway, it made for a great workout this morning.  Over 1,000 calories burned in 136 minutes today.

Now to get over my trepidation with Hell Week Squat Day……….

P.S.  Thanks Shannon for poking at me to do it with you "soon" (which of course prompted me to try it now), and to Herm for raging against the iron, and sharing it with us on BodySpace.  Sometimes we have to dig deep to push ourselves past our limits, it helps when someone has already dug a hole next to you that you can hop in and dig a little deeper in.  =D

P.P.S.  And thanks to my friends who commented that I *could* do the 8 reps/set on the Chin-Ups yesterday.  Taking the mental stance that I not only could do it, but mentally repeating "I WILL do 8 reps, I WILL do 8 reps" definitely prompted, provoked, pushed and prodded me to complete the 11 sets of them.

I succeeded on moving up to 8 reps per set on the 20 Chin-Ups program.  Either I’m getting beat down by the end of the week, or they are significantly harder than 7 reps/set though, because I could only do 11 full sets before failing on a set.

Then I kicked my backside on bicycle situps, (slight) decline situps, spiderman curls, triceps extensions, shrugs, decline press and lots of cardio.  Total burn for the day comes to about 1150 calories, and I ate very, very well.

Man, I’m feeling the workouts from this week though!

I’m noticing that toward the end of the week this 20 Chin-Ups program really has me feeling beat down.  It’s hard.  HARD.  Actually, I think the push-ups suck more than the chin-ups, but that’s probably because of how many I have to do to hit failure.  That and I *LIKE* the burn in my biceps and back while doing the chin-ups.  I don’t enjoy the tri’s and chest.  Go figure.  I like it when I weight lift on a machine though.  Hmph.  Must be the quantity thing.

Yesterday was a great workout day.  Thursdays are one of my dual-workout, but shorter sessions days of the week.  In the morning I burned perhaps 380 calories doing cardio and push-ups.  The hour in the afternoon burned about 630 calories doing cardio (elliptical) and the chin-ups.  Those are the conservative figures (chest-strap heart rate monitor, and lowering by 15% the calories burned per my watch).

I hit another new record number of chin-ups in an hour.  215.  It was 30 sets of 7, plus the "failed set" of 5.  I couldn’t believe I beat last week’s record.  Most of them were narrow-grip, hands toward me, though I threw in sets here and there of wide grip, hands-away.  The burn on my biceps was awesome.  I wish I could use NO Xplode on Thursday, I’m positive I’d have an awesome pump going.  Heck, I did even without it - but with it they’d be pic-worthy (for me).

I’m very pleased with the chin-ups progress as I hit the end of 3 weeks now.  Tonight (Friday) will be Day 5 of Week 3.  The idea is to repeat the hardest day, though for me I’m deciding to repeat Thursday, except with a twist.  I’m going to up my rep count to 8, which will drop the number of sets.  The key thing I need to prove to myself tonight is that I can do 9 sets of 8.  I know I can do it.  If I can do 30 sets of 7, then darn it, 9 sets of 8 should be no problem.  It’ll be a good battle.

I’ll follow that up with situps, spiderman curls, triceps extensions, shrug, and perhaps a few more sets of other exercises if I’m feeling froggy.

I’m definitely looking forward to two days of no chest or back work over the weekend…

I’m sure most of us have read a few quotes here and there that if you believe you succeed, you’ll find a way to make it so.  If you believe you’ll fail, then you’ll ensure that happens as well.

With that in mind, I’m wondering a bit about my next few weeks in the 20 Chin-Ups program.  I believe rather strongly that I’ll be able to hit 20+ chin-ups by the sixth week.  On the other hand, I’ve gotten to the point of doing 7 reps per set on my many-reps days (Wednesday and Thursday), and with the difficulty the 7 has to it, I’m not 100% sure I’ll be able to progress to 8 per set on Friday.  If I did them all as narrow grip palms toward me chin-ups, then I believe I could.  I’m almost certain of that, in fact.

Doing a mix of wide grip chin-ups makes it a difficult challenge for me though.  And the thought about it makes me wonder if I could accidentally be setting myself up for failure.

On the other hand, I’m seeing changes in my shoulders (above the triceps), and I believe in my latissimus dorsi muscles in my back that I haven’t noticed before.  That makes me think I’m building muscle from this program.  So that lends me to believe I’m gaining muscle, and thus strength I’d think.

It’s just an interesting point I’m pondering.  Only time will tell.

I’ll have to chalk up any doubt to the fat monster, and get into my war mentality as I work out.

First off, thank you brownbikerbabe for reminding me about this.  (Inadvertently, but you did…  ;P  )

Many have said it before, but goals help us focus.  They help us resist the bad things, work harder on what we need to do to achieve them, and give us a reason to cheer when we reach them.  So I’m going to review my own goals here, since they do change somewhat over time.

For example, mine have changed from "lose 50 lbs." back in January, to "get under 200 lbs." (which I didn’t think would be sustainable for me), to "get to 191 lbs." (because it was the point where I’d be down 25% in body weight overall), to "get to 180 lbs." (which is still my current goal - one of them).

So below are my current goals - I’m writing them down to make them a promise to myself, and to my friends who read this.  Nay, they are a vow.  I will succeed, or die trying.

1.  Get down to 180 lbs.  It’s just a number, fat loss is more important to me, so I don’t mind a delay if I’m losing fat or gaining muscle along the way.  This is such a huge thing for me, though.  For a guy who was 255.5 lbs. to get down to such a weight is almost unreal to me.  But it will happen, and I’m very close now.

2.  Be able to do 20 chin-ups in a set.  Just over 2 weeks ago I began a 6-8 week routine sometimes called, get this … "20 Chin-ups."  Clever, huh?  The idea of it is to get anyone from 0 chinups, up to 20 after 6-8 weeks of sticking to it.  Granted, I was at 12 before the program, so I had a head start.  Last night I hit 17.  I’ll probably be at the beginning of week 5 when I hit 20, but will go beyond.  For a former fat guy who couldn’t even do 2 chin-ups in January to get to 20 would be amazing.

3.  Get to a 4-pack of abs.  Yeah, this is a little nebulous.  I don’t want the barest hint of 4 abs to show, though I’m not expecting to hit that pre-show ultra-defined look some people are able to attain.  If I got that far I’m sure I’d be showing 6+ abs.  (Which wouldn’t be a bad thing in my mind either.)  I still don’t know what weight or body fat % I’ll need to hit to reach this goal.  But on top of all the cardio I do (11 sessions a week, total of perhaps 8.5 hours/week of cardio), I’m now doing situps 3x/week in an effort to ensure something will be worth showing when the body fat gets low enough to show them.

4.  Get to size 33 pants.  I’m at size 34 now, which generally is good, but I’ve busted my butt doing squats, lunges, hamstring curls, and I’m hoping I can get down that one last inch.  This is a hopeful goal, not a hard-set one.  My limiter is the actual waistline, and it doesn’t seem like there’s much fat there now.  So I’m not 100% sure it’d be realistic to set it as a hard goal.
There are more goals once the fat loss stage is over, but apart from general thinking, I won’t set them until I’ve hit the above.  For example, I’ll set a size I want my biceps to hit, because I’m like that…  ;P

I will note that goal #2 has actually set back goal #1, but seems to have progressed goal #3 faster.  A lot of measurements dropped last Saturday, barring weight and perhaps 2 others.

These will help add to my bad food resistance, and keep me focused in the gym.  If you haven’t written down your goals, do it today!

The program’s working, Monday is the max-rep test for sets, and I’ve gotten up to 17 reps in my best set now.  I was at 12 three weeks ago before starting the 20 Chin-Ups program.  In Week 2 I hit 15 in a set.  Week 3 (Day 1) I’m now at 17.  That’s awesome progress - I’m stoked about it.

After getting some advice (a great reminder), I changed my situps to do them slowly instead of fast.  I’m really, really hoping to be on the end 2-month stretch of this overly long weight loss year, so I’m trying to build up the abs so I have something to show when the fat finally thins enough to show them.

Overall, a good dual-workout day.  Burned about 1200 calories conservatively between them.  Now to make sure the eating is controlled so all that effort is put to good use.

Interesting, Igor, our creation is turning out to be quite strange indeed!

Just finished my 1.75 hour Saturday morning lifting and cardio combined workout.  Due to the 5-day-in-a-row chest/back work done with the chin-ups program, I shifted my leg workout to Saturdays so it didn’t interfere.  Figured out a way to do leg extensions with a barbell and my bench by putting a 2×4 under the front base of the bench.  Now to figure out the right amount of weight to really use on it.  Also replaced the deadlifts (which are a darn pain with a cable-based machine) with each hand holding a separate handle.  Same amount of weight overall, just no bar getting in the way.  It felt far more natural.

I believe that during my back/situp workout last night I damaged my lower back to some degree.  Enough that when I started doing squats I could tell I’d damage it further if I went with much weight.  So I went lighter, but lower than normal.

So, back to Igor.  Our monstrosity today had measurements done.  I went down on 8 of the 10 body areas I measure.  (All those listed on this site, plus I do extra, like the belt line at the waist.)  Some areas went down that I’d rather not go down, such as the biceps.  However, I didn’t do any bicep work today, so I had no "pump" built up.  On the other hand, the beast gained 1 pound total over the last week, and yet dropped on body fat %.  (I’ll reiterate the shaky nature of the electronic body fat monitors.  They can fluctuate far more than I’d like.)  But, over time and when taken at the same time of day under the same circumstances I think it’s reasonably accurate.  In the last 2 weeks I’ve gone from 18.7% to 17.9% under the same circumstances, yet the weight is the same on both weeks.  So chances are I’m losing a little fat, and building some muscle.  This workout program is certainly kicking my backside far more than anything I’ve done in some time.

Speaking of the backside … I repeated Week 2 Day 4 last night (which was W2D5), except instead of 6 reps/set, I upped it to 7 reps/set.  There’s a distinct difference in difficulty by upping the set count by one on every set.  I focused on form, cheating doesn’t help, and I’m not doing this for a contest, it’s for my own personal body project.  Anyway, I completed 18 sets, plus 3 reps in the 19th set.  Needless to say, I was very, very surprised I hit that number.  Now 7 reps/set is my official rep count for next week.

So overall, I’m very pleased with the progress I’m making on the 20 Chin-ups program.  I’m not happy about the weight gain, but it appears it is muscle gain due to all the reductions in measurements and body fat %.  (I’ll be the first to claim that measurements can easily be off here and there from week to week, but 8 of 10?  I don’t see that happening.)  So I guess I’m still heading toward my final goal of showing a 4-pack of abs, even if it delays my current goal of dropping to 180 lbs.

Making good progress on the 20 Chin-Ups program so far.  My reps/set are set at 6 this week, and the 9 sets (3 wide grip palms-away, 3 close grip palms toward you, 3 away again) on Day 3 (Wednesday) went very well.

Yesterday was Day 4 (of Week 2).  This day you see how many sets you can do of your rep count for the week.  I completed 34 sets, plus 3 reps in the failed set.  That’s 207 Chin-Ups in under 50 minutes.  207.  That’s crazy.  I was actually getting annoyed at having to hop off the elliptical every minute to go do another set.  I’m still in a state of shock about doing that many, it just feels unreal.  Well, barring the soreness in the back muscles, that is.

Today is Day 5, and you’re supposed to repeat the hardest day of the week so far.  I’m tempted to repeat Day 1, where I can see how many reps I can get up to.  But … I believe I’ll repeat day 4 and try 7 reps/set to see if I can pull off 9+ sets.  If I can, then 7 reps/set would become my new rep count for next week Wednesday+.

According to the (rather small) documentation on this 20 Chin-Ups program (http://chin-ups-training.com/), the first two weeks involve some teardown in the muscles.  This fits in with general bodybuilding information, and I definitely feel it from doing the chin-ups and push-ups daily.  However, I expected to see an actual reduction in strength in the second week due to the teardown, and I’ve not seen it.  If they are right about roughly two weeks of teardown, then next week should be great as my body acclimates to this punishment.

I don’t expect to beat that 207 number though, or if I do, not every week.  The reason is that the larger the reps/set get, the fewer sets overall I can do.  I expected to hit that wall this week, but I’m thinking it’ll come, and just want to be mentally prepared for that "failure" to beat my own record.  I’m hoping to beat it a few more times before I’m done though. 

I just don’t get this.  Over the last week, I gained half a pound.  While my eating’s not been perfect, I’ve been at a very solid 1,000 to 1,400 calorie deficit every day.  I eat pretty close to my BMR, NOT taking into account any activity.  So when you figure in activity and all my workouts, I’m easily at 1,000-1,400 a day.  (Note that I’m eating 1,800 - 2,100 calories a day, definitely not at starvation levels.)
So how the heck could I gain half a pound?

Granted, I radically changed my workouts over the last 1.5 weeks.  From working each body area once a week in a lifting session, to this new 20 Chin-Ups program that has me beating myself down with push-ups every morning and chin-ups every day.  I’ve also been doing a lot more situps, about every other day instead of 1-2 times a week, and I switched in much heavier usage of the "bicycle situp" since I’ve read that it’s supposed to be far, far more effective than normal situps.

Could I have lost fat and somehow gained muscle when at such a calorie deficit?  I know it’s possible, but doesn’t make much sense.  I could go with the argument that overloading the muscles on a daily basis might be causing the body to put on muscle.  In fact, that would be very likely in a normal eating scenario.

But … my core focus is on fat loss right now, even though I’ve jumped into this 20 Chin-Ups thing.  I’m wondering if I should try eating another 200 calories a day.  It sounds contradictory, but I’ve heard of it working.  It’s really frustrating hitting a plateau every other week when you are working out twice a day most days a week, and long workouts the other days, plus watching what and how much you eat.

I started out drinking water mixed with about 0.8 scoops of NO Xplode, then warmed up at a faster-than-normal pace on the elliptical (very quickly got the heart rate into the 130’s).

Then I began the Day 1 routine of the 20 Chin-Ups program I’m doing.  I completed 15 chin-ups (close grip) in my first set.  That’s a new record for me.  I’ve been able to do 12 in the past, so I’m stoked that this 20 Chin-ups program might actually be working.  Then I did the other four sets it called for:  12, 8, 8 and 5 reps (those were to max, one of the 8’s and the 5 were wide-grip palms-away).  In between each set I did about 90 seconds of high energy jogging on the elliptical.

After that, I did 3 sets of 45 "bicycle" situps, again with 90 seconds of high energy (as in a bpm of 150-165) jogging, followed that with 3 sets of triceps extensions, and then the same with bench leg-locked decline situps.  Then I finished off about 40 more minutes of high intensity steady state jogging.  As in, my heart rate stayed between 165 and 174, hovering around 170 most of the time.  Note that at age 39 my max heart rate should be about 181, so that’s 91% to 96% of capability steady state.  I just felt the energy pouring through me.

It was AWESOME.  Taking off 15% of what my heart rate monitor on my watch says, I conservatively burned off over 1,000 calories just in this one workout, plus another 380 or so in this morning’s (which was also a great workout, the morning push-ups really help crank up the heart rate on that one as well).

It was like channelling Ull or something.  Man, I wish every workout was like this one.  I’d burn off all my fat in no time for sure, but even moreso, the energy is unreal.

So lots of calories burned, and a new personal chin-up record.  This is a great day.  The battle wasn’t just won, it was a blowout.  The only remaining fat monsters are in retreat.

I hope your workout goes as well.  Be well.