triguyColorado’s Bodyspace Bl

Yesterday morning I was doing weighted chins and finished with 3 sets of (3×140). The 140 is about 6-7 pounds more than I weigh so I figure that is about like 3 one arm pullups which sometimes I can do and sometimes I can’t.

This morning was legs and I finished squats with four sets of (3 x 310). I probably don’t go quite all the way to horizontal with the femurs, but it seemed like I had a lot of energy. I checked the Colorado state record for squats in my weight/age group and it is 390. That’s very close to 3 x body weight. This morning I loaded up my bar to 390 and just lifted it off the rack. Told my wife that this is the goal!

 In the meantime, I am working my way up to 10 sets of 3 by’s.

Perhaps I have just gotten used to the good customer service that I have received from suppliers like Vitamin Shoppe and Life Extension Foundation that makes me more sensitive to poor customer service. I ordered Superpump 250 from Mass Nutrition, Miami, FL, on Monday. On Tuesday I recieved one of the automated UPS tracking emails. Great I thought. Delivery is scheduled for Thursday (two days ago). The Thursday shipment it turns out was a replacement cable for my Computrainer (stationary bike). (Very good service from Computrainer, by the way.) Ok. so where is my Superpump? I called Mass Nut and like a sucker I used option 2 and left a vm inquiring about my ordered since option 1 was for new orders. After not hearing back for most of the day, I called back and used option 1 since I knew someone would answer. They told me the package shipped and would be delivered on Wednesday. (In my vm I said if it had not shipped to cancel the order). This morning I get a UPS tracker and the expected delivery is Friday. Two weeks to get an order. Not good. Honestly, I tried these guys since the total price was $15 less than VS, but I assumed I was going to get the same service. Well shame on me!

Periodization and Progressive Load.

For me I lift in the "off season" in order to get stronger. I typically start in September and lift through about March or April. This year I have been doing four one hour sessions per week. Core, Legs, Chest/Back and Arms/Shoulders. In September I start with higher reps (13-8) and then progressively move to higher weight and lower reps (6-2). I do this to help provide additional stimulus to the muscle to "encourage" it to adapt. During a regular week, I also run two to three hours (in two or three sessions), cycle an hour and swim an hour. It gets me to about 10 hours per week which is about what I maintain all year.

I lift with the idea of getting stronger every workout. Every week I expect to be stronger than the prior week and with rare exceptions that is the case. Two things are important to do this. First is good record keeping. Since I have a gym in my basement, I have a computer that I use to record the workouts as I go. That way I look back at the last several weeks and then determine the minimum weight/reps that I should do for the session at hand. The second important item is that small gains add up big! So, if I am doing a dumbell shoulder press with 40 lbs ea, going up 5 lbs might be too big of a jump. Instead I use 1.24 and 2.5 lb magnets to provide for a more granular increment.

During the triathlon season, I do at least one maintenance work out a week, but I don’t try to gain strenght. Rather I try to slow the loss of it. It is amazing how quickly the absolute strength I build in the weight lifting season is lost, but I see a direct translation to speed, especially swimming. When I lift hard, I don’t swim well at all.

One thing that I am going to do a bit different going into the next six weeks (to prepare for the competition) is to increase the frequency of my four weight lifting routine. Instead of repeating the cycle every seven days, I am going to repeat the cycle every six days. I am already fairly late in my cycle so these sessions will be pretty intense where I will be 2-6 rep range. I have also upped my protein intake from probably around 80 g/day to 120 g/day. The 120 g/day corresponds to 2g/kg of body weight.

That’s all for now.

Hi. My name is Greg and I am a 45 y/o male. I have been competing in triathlons off and on over the last 20 years. A few years ago I learned that I had the beginnings of osteoporosis. It turns out that the best way to build bone mineral density is through weight lifting. So for the last several years I have been lifting, but mainly in the winter. I have been pretty happy with my results. I took some pictures of myself a couple of weeks ago and shared them with a couple fo friends of mine. One of them encouraged me to compete in a body building competition. I thought about it and did some searching. I looked at some pictures of other guys about my weight, well I decided that at least I would not embarrass myself. I found a competition close to my home in Denver on March 15. So now I am pretty motivated to gain some muscle. I only weigh 132 lbs so I am not going to impress anybody with my size, but I would like to see what I can achieve when I focus on this particular goal.In future posts, I will write about my routine and what I am doing differently to prepare for the competition. I would appreciate any pointers on how to get ready for the big day.