mikschu’s BodyBlog

My goals over the last year have evolved from strict bodybuilding to functional sports training.  The program used to be one body part a day, 167583 sets per body part, maybe 1 or 2 compound movements each day.  How different things are now!  Only compound movements now, 4 different ones, 3 days a week.  I run as hard and fast as I can.  I don’t worry about going to intense on my sprints or taking too long to run in the hills.  I’m not worried about burning off precious muscle (I eat an elephant every day anyway.)  I stopped focusing on what I looked like and instead started thinking about how to push or pull more weight.  I started doing research to find ways to improve my speed, stamina, strength, power, agility, etc.  As a result I’m more athletic than I’ve ever been in my entire life.  My waste is thinning and I’m not losing any strength, in fact I’m gaining.  My strength-mass ratio is increasing and that feels awesome.  I don’t intend to be a mongoloid beast that can’t run, I want to be light, bouncy, athletic, but still very strong.

Anyway for the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing a pyramid-style rep scheme and it proved to be a good change to shock my muslces into new growth.  Not only that but I was so excited to do it that my performance and strength were insane on the very first one and I was deadlifting 285, military pressing 135 (with a little bit of a split jerk but a good negative.)  My reps were 12, 9, 6, 4, 6, 9, 12.  The first couple sets were really like a very thorough warm-up; the 6, 4, 6 sets were the real bulk of the workout, and the last 2 sets were like a nice burn-out.  Doing the pyramid helped me break some mental barriers with heavy weights when I got to the 4 rep part. Now I’m going back to the regular 6 rep scheme for 2 weeks, then 8, then 10.  After I complete 10 reps I’ll probably do another pyramid because it will have been 6 weeks by then.  I may do a something different, like 15, 10, 5, 3, 5, 10, 15.  Who knows what I’ll be feeling like then.

I remember when I first signed up for this thing there was a lot of crap flying around because people were getting upset that this site had become too pornographic.  I didn’t really care then but honestly has it gotten worse?  I mean it’s not a big deal for me, I just don’t like to scroll past all the new pics and top profiles on the main page if people are around me and can see it.  It’s a little embarrassing.  I mean what am I supposed to say?  "Uuuuuh, those are models… men and women…  I’m… This is a spam pop-up!"

The question bodyspace asked me…  It’s been a while since I posted a blog.  Not much is new, my program is as awesome as always and growth is pretty steady these days.  I’m trying a lot of new things and either this coming week or the week after I’m going to switch over to a pyramid style rep scheme for 1 or 2 weeks.  I haven’t done anything like that in about a year, so I think it should work out pretty well.  Something very different will shock the ole muscles into new growth.

calisthenic days are going really well.  I did 3 one-armed pushups on each arm this morning, full ROM.  That felt awesome.  Felt a little laggy on the sprints, but oh well.  Tomorrow I’m going out early in the morning for some long distance hilly trail runs.  That should be relaxing.

I did the one arm dumbbell snatch tonight as my variation of vertical planer press.  That felt awesome!  I was doing the 60’s 6 times so I felt pretty good about that.  I could have done more weight but I didn’t want to push the envelope too much because it was my first time on them, but I’ll do 65s next time.  By the last set of my circuit I felt like puking and doing those did NOT provide any relief from that, but I sure did feel strong doing them.  Anyway good day.  Also deadlifted 265 for 6 reps, so that was great!  I’d done more than that before but my form looked like shit so I had to go way down and force myself to do perfect form.  I’m definitely a lot stronger on those now that I fixed my form.  I moved a lot of weight around tonight; feeling like I’m walking on clouds now.  I can’t wait to do some sprint interval training tomorrow.  I’m going to run into the future!!!

I even got an email because it’s been so long!  Anyway I’m suffering from a little insomnia right now.  Don’t know why but my body just wouldn’t sleep past 4 hours, so I’m not fighting it.  It’s 5 right now but I’ve been up since 3.  Bah.  Anyway no sense in being upset about it, so I’ll just get ready and head to the gym.  I feel awake and energetic so things will be fine.  Besides it’s mental, athletes have been tested after being awake for 24 hours straight and although they were crabby and whiny, their performance didn’t suffer at all.  So I keep that in mind when ever I’m having sleep issues and it helps me get through my workouts with just as much, if not more, intensity.  Food is the most important thing anyway.

Some things I want to change in the next couple of weeks.  I’m going to pay attention to my carb intake and try to curb it after lunch and taper off by evening.  I’m going to run an extra long distance day just for the next 2 weeks to see how the BF% goes down and if it affects my energy with the weights.  I’m trying to burn off some fat as I’m kind of getting disgusted with the little extra I’m still carrying.  It’s not much, and I am by no means fat, but I just feel self conscious about a little love handle action I got going on and not enough ab definition.  It really shouldn’t take long for me to get rid of it if I stay strict in the kitchen, as far as my program goes it’s full of circuits and big multi-joint movements with a different leg workout every day so my metabolism is always through the roof, then I do sprints a couple of times and running once a week (twice for the next couple weeks only.)  I could honestly probably lose like 10 or 15 lbs of fat, the only problem is if I lose 10 or 15 lbs it won’t all be fat!  I will burn off muscle if I aim for something like that. so I can only take off a little bit here and there and then continue to focus on building muscle.  Besides the more muscle mass the easier it will be to chisel the fat off.  Overall muscle mass automatically reduces your BF anyway.

I’m really just rambling now.   It’s weird I feel kind of hyper right now, it defies logic.  Maybe someone slipped some speed into my water?

I finally just pooped!  Sitting down and writing in this thing always helps stimulate a BM.  Now I know if you’ve been reading this you probably either laughed or backed out in disgust.  Whatever I’m human and I’m not afraid to admit that it feels great to just go and take a huge dump, especially right before the gym!

I’m going now…  It’s clobberin time!!!

I did some floor dumbbell presses yesterday, rib-cage style (palms in, close.)  Man did that feel awesome…  I was skeptical about them because of the limited ROM but it turns out they are really great!  You have to stop when your triceps hit the floor (not your elbows,) so you can’t just let your arms come to a rest on the floor, you have to force them to stop.  I could feel a crazy pump in my triceps AND my chest!  I was surprised at how much it hit my chest but it felt great!  I’ll be doing those more often now.  It’s supposed to really help build up the horizontal pushing power so that’s cool.  New things are always very exciting as they illicit a huge initial response.  I really need to start switching a lot of things out for new movements, at least for a couple weeks.  The program setup I have is working great, I think with the same program and just substituted movements I could make some better progress.

This week has been pretty good to me so far.  The other day I did the mile just a tad slower than last time, 6:38 from 6:33.  So only 5 seconds slower.  I was pretty happy with it because I had to slow down towards the end or I would have crapped my pants.  If I don’t have that problem next time I know I’ll do better than 6:33.  I gave myself a 3 month goal of getting from 7:05 to below 6:30.  Looks like I’ll have to reevaluate my goals soon here!  I also said 15 pullups.  Last week I did 11.  I did negatives last Sunday and had an awesome workout, I was very strong in the negative portion, so I know I’ll be stronger and able to do more again today.

Speaking of today, it’s park day!  And I have a few friends going with me so it should be really great!!!  I’m super stoked to have more people with me, it’s always more motivating.  Just having one person makes a huge difference, a little group will make you do things you never thought possible.

Well that’s how I feel…  But somehow I still managed to make some pretty great progress.  I ran a mile in 6:33 yesterday, down from 6:57, so 24 seconds faster than last week.  Clearly I’m growing the mental power to keep my legs moving the entire time.  It’s a very unique energy system to train in order to run a mile very quickly, one I haven’t ever focused on before.  So I know this rapid progress in the beginning is my body adapting to the specific energy demands to in order to go all out for one mile.  But the funny thing is I felt like crap the whole time.  I was surprised when I saw my time but not disappointed at all.  Then today I jogged to the park for my calisthenic day and was able to bust out 11 pullups in the first set, up from 10 last week.  So I’m very excited about that.  They get easier every time I do em.  I know they’ll be putting some good mass on my back and arms as I’m now able to do reps in a solid hypertrophy range.  getting past 6 or 7 reps is all about growing the mental power to control your muscles and get your chin over the bar, and you will develop your muscles during this process, but it’s mostly mental.  After that it’s about developing muscle mass.  I know it will slow down eventually because that’s how all muscle development occurs; you start out with quick gains and then it tapers off because building muscle mass takes longer than building the mental power.  Knowing this is good because we can set realistic goals and thus not be let down if we aim for too much in too short an amount of time.  I think it becomes mental again once I get past 15 reps (I can’t wait till I hit that point.)

Anyway, good week overall…  I missed my sprint interval day, oh well.  And I had to cut out early from the park because I felt like puking.

Today I started my 10 rep cycle.  One word to describe the workout: humbling.  Jumping from 8 to 10 is a huge difference.  This week I’m doing 3 sets of 10.  Next week I’ll do 4 sets.  Then I’ll evaluate my progress in the two weeks and decide whether or not I want to start making my way back to 4 reps or stay at 10 for another week for a total of 3 weeks at 10 reps.  I could put on some good quality mass if I stay at 10 for just  a little while longer, but I don’t want to plateau.  I could counter the plateau by just switching a lot of movements up with dumbbell vs barbell or vice versa.  I may stay for 3 weeks to give myself a chance to get some good negative work in at 10 reps; it could really help build up a lot of strength and mass at the same time.  Anyway other than that it felt great today.  I didn’t even care how much weight I was lifting as long as I was doing it with perfect form.   My deadlifts are evolving towards the SLDL end of the spectrum and I’m still doing a pretty happy weight (for me) at 205.  It feels good to control that for 10 good clean reps.  The weighted pullup negatives were insane, especially on my forarms.  Standing military press felt really awesome today; I can tell my pushing power is getting really strong right now.  That’s a good feeling because I’ve always felt like my ability to push has always lagged behind my pulling ability.  Anyway I gotta go, BE STRONG

Monster.

I did 10 pullups today!  Ok I will admit I had to cheat and do a rest pause for the 10th rep, but even if you only count 9 as one set I still beat my record: 7 reps.  I’ll count 10…  Yeah… I did 3 more pullups than last week!  I’m pretty happy with that jump.  I won’t be disappointed if I plateau at 10 for a couple weeks now.  I made a big jump and raised the bar pretty high, but I do look forward to seeing a big leap like that again after a few weeks.  Next month I expect to be around 13 or 14 in one set.  I know incorporating weighted negatives has helped me make this leap.  I will continue to find ways to shock my muscles with different techniques so I don’t plateau too often.  I’m living it and loving it…  Determination and consistency fuel this engine.

So my recent pics have really done a lot to motivate me in the gym and while running.  They don’t look that great so I’ve been thinking about them while I lift or run, and I’ve been having some intense workouts as a result!  I had to take some for a fitness challenge with some bodyspace friends and now I’m happy I did.  So basically my word to the wise: take progress pics and post them, even if you feel self conscious about them…  Take the most revealing pics you can take and don’t try to hide your trouble areas; take extra pictures of parts you hate!  Posting them and knowing that anyone can look at them will motivate you to take care of it!  I’m on a soap box, I’ve only had like 2 or 3 workouts since I posted them.  But I know the difference has been from those pics.

I’ve recently implemented something new to my program.  Instead of doing as many pullups as i can do and then assisting myself to fill the set of desired reps, I loaded some weight around my waste and just did negatives.  I assisted myself up with my legs on a chair and just lowered myself as slowly as possible for every rep.  It felt amazing!  My lats haven’t been so sore in a long time.  My arms were feeling it too!  It definitely proves that the compound movements are going to increase arm size and definition (they already have) faster than concentration.  I’m going to apply the negative work to more movements in the next couple of months.  I’ll just do one movement in negative every work out or ever other one.  Not too often, but often enough to hit every body part with negative work at least once every 2 weeks.

My friend will be lifting with me more often soon and we decided to switch over to barbell bench and spot eachother to do some heavy negatives.  I’m really looking forward to this because I haven’t hit barbell bench in at least half a year.  I know I will see huge gains in my chest and triceps because it will be so different from dumbbells, plus we’ll be doing negatives so I’ll really be able to load up some heavy weight on that.  I’ll keep that up for a little while and then I think I’ll start alternating between dumbbells / barbell every 2 weeks or so.  I can’t decide if one is better than the other so I’ll just do both (yeah I know what I said a couple of blogs ago, but sh@t happens and people change their minds, ok? OK!)