Jettisoned Ponderings

It seems this is a commonly unheard of exercise, so I felt the need to make a post about this. Personally, I have a harder time building my hams and inner quads, which really a lot of people do. Power squats tend to really irritate my lower back around the SI joint, so I’ve found that sumo deadlifts work the same muscles, if not more intensely, that I try to hit with the power squats. I also like that I work my arms more to keep a tight grip while doing it. I have a book "Strength Training Anatomy" by Frederick DeLavier that I really love and is very well illustrated to show what parts of what muscles are hit for a number of exercises. An example is the image below for the sumo deads:

After this past weekend I’m really wondering how I ever lived with my body before I really got into lifting. My diet wasn’t that good, I didn’t get my regular workouts in, but still got something at least, and woke up today absolutely miserable. Got home from work and couldn’t find my gym bag, ended up missing today’s workout, but at least got a good healthy meal in (yay sushi!) and spent the evening relaxing more and giving the muscles a break. Pushing water is really helping to flush out a lot of the junk from this weekend. Tomorrow I’m off work and very much looking forward to getting a good hard workout in early and not having to sit in a chair at a desk all day immediately after. It’s one part of my job that I really hate, unfortunately. I do have the option to stand at my desk, but it is just awkward for me and doing that for ten hours just sucks when you’re not actually moving around. I’m hoping something will open up soon in another department and I can try to get involved there and away from the desks/phones all day. I also need to get a bid in and hopefully a better shift to allow for a more appropriate diet. My break and lunch times right now are anything but ideal and also during the hours the cafeteria (typically a source of a good meal) is closed. I dunno… On another note, I’m figuring out that I’m going to have to take a week every month or two to go on a bulk diet. I’m getting really lean, but starting to get a bit too depleted. If I keep this up another month, I’m definitely gonna need to load the carbs back up for a while. I have no problem leaning out, but keeping weight on is a challenge. I’ve already dropped about 7lbs and retained most all strength and lean mass, but I’m also down under 10% bodyfat and still dropping. Gonna really have to watch the numbers these next few weeks and see how I feel.

I’m back in single digits! Bodyfat, that is. I’m down around 9.5% now and feeling really good. I don’t want to go on a bulk anytime soon, so I’m going to work on detail for probably the better part of the rest of this year. I’m really liking the new routine from what I’ve done this week. It’s always interesting to see how much weight I should be doing on each exercise. Today on one of the tricep exercises I was using the entire weight stack, but held out each rep longer and did it slower. I had a really full arm pump going by the end of the workout and have decided for a few areas in my body that I’m not going to work on weight so much, but really emphasize longer control and tension time than I typically do and work more for symmetry. My triceps dominate my biceps, quads dominate my hams, and back dominates chest. I attribute this to mostly growing up and working in a tire shop for so long and using half of my body a lot more than the other. So for a while I’m going to try and work on symmetry a lot more.

This past week some flyers went up for a found cat in my fiance’s complex. We’d seen it running around, but no one ended up claiming it. So we called and said we’d take it if the owner didn’t reply. Today I went over while she was out and picked up the new cat. My guess is this cat’s no more than three years old or so. Extremely friendly, very talkative, and loves attention. Brought her home, and of course the other resident cat did not like the idea at all. I followed them around for a bit and about the time Busa (the resident male who has since learned when he’s in trouble with me) started hissing I went to pull him back and put him in the carrier until the new cat got oriented. Typically he’ll hiss, bat, and run, but today he decided to latch onto my palm and wrist and put about 17 various gashes and fang marks in it before he got away from me. The rest of the story is irrelevant to my reason for posting, which is this: My hand is still throbbing a bit and the next few days are really going to suck trying to lift since I can’t hold a very tight grip for long and certainly won’t be able to hold my typical dumbell weight for very long before it starts to hurt. This friggin sucks. I hate when something like this puts and sort of setback in my workouts and this is something I have to just wait for it to heal. I’ve got some anti-biotic ointment on it so now I’m gonna go do a little hydrotherapy contrast treatments on it to try and shorten the recovery time and get more circulation through it.

Time to change things up again. I’m just now starting to really see some progress with my current program, however I’ve been at it for five weeks now and I know I tend to plateau by the end of 6-7 weeks on any program I do. I did have some good luck though this last time around throwing in a few heavier sets at the end of various exercises. That, and a couple nights when I felt really good I threw on a couple extra plates and shot for new maxes, which oddly enough worked to shock the muscles a bit more than usual. So for the next few months I know I’m going to still be working to lean out and stay lean. I’ve been doing more sets with rest pausing and pushing through for a good hard squeeze more frequently and holding it for a moment before the next rep. I like it… a lot! Not only does it give a good burn, but I can really feel that "tingle" in the muscle that tells me it’s being torn down just enough to grow back bigger. Every routine I like to take what I felt worked best and try to roll it over to the next routine. Even lifting good and consistently for almost a year and a half now I’m still learning things about my body and having to adapt to its changes. So this is my plan for the next few weeks:

-Each exercise will be 4 sets consisting of 1 warmup, two working, and one drop set
-Reps will be 15 for warmup sets, 8-12 for working sets, and for the last set going heavy for 2-4 reps followed by dropping a chunk of weight and holding good hard squeezes each rep to failure.
-Sets 3 and 4 sets should be done with weight that reaches partial failure within the target rep range
-Weights will be progressive and increase every set
-Drop sets should drop only enough weight to be able to squeeze out another 8-12 reps at most, and the muscle should be good and burning by that point. If 12 reps are reached, hold it out isometrically until it starts to become eccentric failure.

I tried this method out a little this last week and really liked how it felt and my body still recovers quickly enough that I could feasibly work each muscle group twice a week, something that I’ve really missed! One day each week will be a dedicated off day. For me personally, this works well. Some people, it might be over-training. Everyone’s different, but I believe this should get me the results that I want assuming I stay consistent with it and keep my diet in check. Tomorrow will be day 1…