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!!!