Tuesday Feb 6 TRAINING TAK cycle 1 all weights in kilograms
pullups
BWx2-2
db press– wave loading
(2x14) x 6
Wave 1 – 2
(2x16) x 7 – (2x17) x6
(2x18) x 5 – (2x19) x 4
(2x20) x 3 – (2x21) x 3
Didn’t feel much stronger for the 2nd wave.
goblet squat for speed
Dropped it because of hip.
bb front squat
27,5 x 8
25x 8
22,5 x 9
Technique is still a bitch, or actually I can’t make the bb rest on my clavicle, there’s not much space so I just end up holding the weight with my arms, which is tiresome. Got to find back the straps.
EZ-bar skull crusher
20 x 8
17,5 x 10
15 x 12
Still searching for the best way to do extension: to the neck (French press), to the skull (skull crusher or behind the head (lying triceps extension) and I don’t know for sure.
As SS with
standing military press
22,5 x 10
20 x 12
17,5 x 13
Not all that easy. Have to ‘clean’ the weight to get it up properly. Once up it’s not too difficult.
kneeling cable crunch
16,25 x 30 – 35
Still too easy
seated leg curl
40x 15-17
Seated is so much easier than lying leg curl when calves cramp up.
Cardio
None, only a slow & careful walk to/from the gym as it started snowing .. I loathe this kind of weather as far as cycling/walking/driving in it is concerned. The gov’t warned people to not venture outdoors if not necessary. Funny, it’s not even all that much snow but we’re totally unprepared for these conditions.
General: feeling tired. Decided to skip Saturday’s workout if the weather is still atrocious by then and hip still hurts. I’ll just cut down on calories then (it’s my free meal(s) day) .
Training statistics
Rep index: 270 reps/hr (50min)
Volume: 7283kg
Total gym time: 50 mins.
# of sets: 22 - # of reps 225 - avg reps/set : 10,2 - kg/rep 32,4 kg
Not so sure here. It took several years before I could recognize overtraining.
Physiotherapist told me to take it easy. With screaming hips it's not so difficult to make that decision.
Seems the problem really was the overtight hamstrings that made bending over a problem.
Nothing.. it was just a free advice for 10 mins. They aren't very good in giving DIY suggestions . I'll have to wait till early March to get an appointment with the manual therapist.
I should look into foam rolling. Have heard about it so often and still have no clue how it works and how I can make my own.
I also finally made that phone call to the endocrinologist and made an appointment there too.. late March (another 7 weeks!) They all have tremendous waiting lists.
I've got so many things pointing towards an auto-immune disease according to my friends over at Beyond Low Carb that they finally convinced me that I might have a thyroid problem too. The gut problem with all of the allergies, the B12 deficiency, the early greying of hair, excess hair loss, the brittle/soft nails, scaly skin (not anymore, but used to be), tendency to drop body temperature fast when dropping calories, the very low HR (32 is RR). Also the memory problems and the joint pain. Apparently the symptoms for auto-immune disorders are all very similar.
And the final straw that broke the camel's back: the tingling/numb fingers that would appear after low-carb days and disappear after a high carb day and then finally bother me all day long which has now been diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome.
I will have to look into the foam rollers myself. I'm sure you're an expert?
Haha, no. I just roll. We made one, then cappy sent me one, then Jonas bought one from the US and brought it back. The homemade version is just a 6 inch PVC pipe covered with soft bathroom flooring (the non-slip rubbery type thing). It was easy I am sure your man can do it in no time. Then there are many articles (on t-nation by Tony Gentilcore and Mike Robertson especially that show you how to use it + a tennis ball and combination of tennis balls). Since you live in civilized Europe maybe you have them at the store?
I'd put so much effort into planning my new program and then over at another forum they just laughed at my over-complicated design. Just lift big weights!
Point is.. I feel like being in between a rock and a hard place (is that the right word?)
If I do high reps, my joints love me, but I start bingeing because this is where I always overdo it with too much volume.
If I do low reps, my joints hate, me but it's when I can stick to my diet the best of all.
Instead of feeling totally depressed I'd probably do better to change my program
- db shoulder press instead of military press so I won't need to clean the weight
- lat pull down instead of pullups so I can do lighter weights
Not sure what do to with the pull throughs and the RDL-style good mornings re the hip problem.
I'd put so much effort into planning my new program and then over at another forum they just laughed at my over-complicated design. Just lift big weights!
Point is.. I feel like being in between a rock and a hard place (is that the right word?)
If I do high reps, my joints love me, but I start bingeing because this is where I always overdo it with too much volume.
If I do low reps, my joints hate, me but it's when I can stick to my diet the best of all.
That stinks that people on the other forum weren't supportive or helpful .. bah! More reason to hang out here!!
Maybe you would benefit from an undulating periodization program where you are doing low reps/high weights one day and medium/medium the next, and high/low the next. It might help to keep all aspects happy without causing overtraining ...
Maybe you would benefit from an undulating periodization program where you are doing low reps/high weights one day and medium/medium the next, and high/low the next. It might help to keep all aspects happy without causing overtraining ...
It's something which I'd thought to put in this program or rather which was in my last 'anti-KISS' program, but for this one I was stimulated to try for lower reps.
I still think that mixing up all rep ranges in 1 workout and hence be able to emphasize 1 body part more with the lowest reps/highest weight/more sets and then do less weight for the other parts that were trained before was a good idea.
It just looks very complicated. As long as I have my sheets with me, it's not a problem. But apparently I overestimated how much thought other people are willing to put into a program.
In that sense people at JP are more like me. I mean.. that forum was focused on how you look very much, which you can manage with 90% diet and 10% routine and any routine is good
PL-ers work much different but they focus on very low reps.
I'm originally an endurance cyclist and very good at doing very high rep stuff.It doesn't really matter to me whether I get strong in very high rep routines or in very low rep routines, as long as I advance.
I focused on very high reps for too long. Which brought me too much carb cravings, exhaustion and ... no body recomp. From that extreme I went too fast to the other extreme. The high rep workouts are wonderful for blood flow, joint health and burn tons of calories too.
My joints, which are very tiny and fragile, just won't handle all that weight that my muscles CAN and DO handle. This is why I suddenly have that bum hip, shoulder and wrists.. they just aren't strong enough. And never were.
Just in case you were wondering: I thought to rest my joints some more.
And overthink my routine once again.
- will try to avoid hurting my hip & shoulder more than necessary: replace the pullups with lat pulldown and pullover so that leaves only 1 pullup exercise/week!
- will look at diminishing # of sets a tidbit more to around 20 sets
While I rest the joints and fiddle with the routine, I can also watch what happens to my brain when I'm taking a prolonged rest periods with NO cardio !
IT AIN'T PRETTY!
Exercise = endorphins = better adherence to diet!
no exercise = lack of endorphins = self-medication with carbs I don't effing need
I can guarantee you: blood sugar swings have virtually NOTHING to do with the overeating.. it's all dopamine/serotonine related. Duh! It's really bad news that I also am fairly insulin-resistant so most of the excess carbs get stored into the fat cells as well! Though it does seem to not be as bad as it used to be.
So, last night I digged into a full bag of potato crisps. I wasn't feeling like I used to feel when I was eating the crisps. I used to feel totally 100% compelled to finish the bag. Now I just felt listless and could've thrown away the crisps if I'd decided to. But i didn't because I kinda felt 'bored' . Don't know how I can express it any better.
At least, I felt rather relieved that it wasn't like it used to be... I no longer really felt like 'a puppet on a string' that was controlled by mightier forces than myself. I could have regained control if I had wanted to and stopped halfway.
Saturday I'll be lifting again and having leg day.
Exercise = endorphins = better adherence to diet!
no exercise = lack of endorphins = self-medication with carbs I don't effing need.
I find this too ... if I don't get up and exercise right away it is VERY hard for me to stick to my diet ... I need to figure out how to break it on the days I don't exercise ... any suggestions?
As far as exercise is concerned: the best way for me was to exercise every other day. 4x/wk was too much - over training which gives its' own problems.
And then, just keep carbs as low as possible, while still having plenty of choices re food items. Nowadays this is roughly 50-100g of carbs while it used to be 20-50g.
I just got extremely fed up with having to count carbs in veggies and limit fruit intake. Eating 50-100g of carbs on non-training days is low enough to keep me sane = curb appetite and high enough to still sneak in some 'naughty' foods like a couple of dates, or a small piece of chocolate or.. heaven forbid even a small piece of candy.
Also, I no longer try to cram in as much protein as possible. When I had to give up dairy, including dairy-based PP it made eating over 150g of protein too effing hard.
So, it's a carrot-and-stick system:
<100g of carbs vs >100g of carbs
<1500 kcal vs >2000 kcal
- eating only 2g P/kg of LBM (not BW!) vs 3g P/kg LBM
- leave some fun foods in moderation vs less moderation up to: let's have a party!
You can understand why the week between X-mas and Jan 1 freaks me out.. all gyms closed and all the celebratory foods to stuff your face with.
As far as exercise is concerned: the best way for me was to exercise every other day. 4x/wk was too much - over training which gives its' own problems.
And then, just keep carbs as low as possible, while still having plenty of choices re food items. Nowadays this is roughly 50-100g of carbs while it used to be 20-50g.
I just got extremely fed up with having to count carbs in veggies and limit fruit intake. Eating 50-100g of carbs on non-training days is low enough to keep me sane = curb appetite and high enough to still sneak in some 'naughty' foods like a couple of dates, or a small piece of chocolate or.. heaven forbid even a small piece of candy.
Also, I no longer try to cram in as much protein as possible. When I had to give up dairy, including dairy-based PP it made eating over 150g of protein too effing hard.
So, it's a carrot-and-stick system:
<100g of carbs vs >100g of carbs
<1500 kcal vs >2000 kcal
- eating only 2g P/kg of LBM (not BW!) vs 3g P/kg LBM
- leave some fun foods in moderation vs less moderation up to: let's have a party!
You can understand why the week between X-mas and Jan 1 freaks me out.. all gyms closed and all the celebratory foods to stuff your face with.
You've probably addressed this Espi, so forgive me if you have, but what is your body composition doing in response to your diet? Maybe more importantly, is there anything that you want it to be doing that it isn't? I like the IDEA of what you have above, but I find that I am still too neurotic to not be stricter; I do get my every 2 week day of food love at present and am making steady progress. But damn.... I miss fruit and protein waffles, LOL!
I've not seen a whole lot progress in the past years, even when I tried to keep to a stricter diet. Doesn't seem to work well, both physically (body adapts quickly) and mentally (I'm someone who goes for instant gratification and couldn't care less about body recomp when good food is present).
The recent success I've had with losing body fat was entirely due to buckling down on the diet days (rest day) and sticking to just 3 meals/day. The bodybuilding concept, viz. eat 6 meals/day doesn't work for me. Just makes me hungry for food. With 3 meals I eat very much like in a Warrior Diet. Big breakfast around 9am, then a long fast during the day, a small meal at 6pm and a bigger meal at 10pm. Bed time is 11-12pm.
On training days, I add the WO carbs plus another meal around 3-4pm as well as more carbs at night time.
The best results came on eating 1300-1400 kcal on rest days and 2000-2500 kcal on training days as well as leaving some room for cheat days.
There's no way I can stick religiously to a diet, any diet, so this automatically means I've got to dig a deeper calorie hole on the dieting days, to make for a decent deficit. Because once I start eating 'trigger' foods, I won't stop before 3000kcal. If I really couldn't care less I'd stop at 5000 kcal.
Really... there are people who think I'm nuts (on another forum)
I try to make sense for myself and perhaps it makes sense for others. It was all a big learning process. The most recent discovery is tht I don't need to exhaust myself to make progress in the gym. But I do need an interesting program, even when it means that I won't pick a program that's the most 'intelligent'. Girls just want to have FUN!
E.g. I've tried to do something like Max-Stimulation which involves doing kinda 20 singles after another, even if it is with your 10RM. It just wasn't MY type of training. I could see myself do an EDT style of training in the future.
Same for diets.. they need to be complicated to make me stay interested. For most people KISS works better. Not for me.
.. they need to be complicated to make me stay interested. For most people KISS works better. Not for me.
So THAT'S what that means in your siggie ... I was wondering!!!
I think you make a lot of sense ... I need things to be simple for my current lifestyle ... and I don't have the time or patience to analyse everything the way you do, but I have learned tons from reading your log and your thoughts on stuff. So thank you!!
I'm extending the 'being a lazy bum' period to 2 weeks. It will be a real deload and give me an opportunity to get a better estimate of how many calories my body actually needs to maintain on while being minimally active (about 20-30 min of walking/day and easy household chores).
In the 2,5 years that I've been counting calories and tracked weight and volume of workouts, I've only had 3 occasions in which I didn't work out for (almost) 2 weeks on end. None of them were under normal circumstances.
First one I was moving places and extremely active tearing up my new (old!) house and painting everything, so metabolism soared.
Second one I was ill which also raises metabolism.
Third occasion I wasn't counting, taking a break from lifting as well as had a holiday. I literally ballooned but no clue what I was doing that made me balloon so much (well, apart from eating too many carbs).
Since 1 week of data are worthless , I'm waiting for the 2nd week to come around to draw conclusions, but it seems that my non-WO maintenance is around 1800-1900 kcal. More than I had anticipated. But I do see that I need to put a firm lid on the amt of carbs eaten, as carbs really lower maintenance a LOT! Too easy to burn carbs and too difficult to burn fat with all the insulin around in the blood stream.
Also, hopefully the painful hip problem will resolve on its own... am not really counting on it.
Right now it seems that my last routine of which I did only 1 week, also needs a good overhaul
- no pullups because of shoulder and bb rows back into the program
- more front squats because 1-leg presses are way too stressful for the hips
- perhaps... again a 4-way split full body that's frighteningly similar to yet another program I've done before! But this time I'll be stealing some stuff from other programs like King's 4-planes/Built's Baby Got Back.
Sounds smart.
One leg presses are a bad choice, period. When you do back to working out you can try one leg airborn lunges, waayy better or one leg box squats.
Your maintenance is a good number. Hope your pain goes away, stay around and let us know how you feel!
I'd planned to do heavy wave loading with the 1-leg presses. Doing heavy stuff with 2 legs gave knee pain, which is why I abandoned those.
And for heavy squatting there's only a SMith machine. I've worked up to 100kg x1 rep (my PR) but everyone is telling me it's bad for my back/body. Actually I think it's OKish.. (machine is at a slight slant so not too bad).
But the alternatives are all not demanding at all, at least weight wise.
I can't do heavy front squats for lack of technique.
Only thing is, that I've read that it's not a big deal to do high rep sets for legs.
As for the maintenance and the length of the deload. I'm hoping that the length of the deload is not just long enough to let the hip stress disappear, but also make maintenance jump up when I lift again. From then on, I'll try to 'remain a lazy bum' and just do very few sets per workout.. something like 20 sets max. Perhaps when I'm fresh at it again, 20 sets will start feeling like a lot.
I didn't know that you could squat 100kg OK it is in the smith machine and not ass to grass but I think it is still good.In your case,I also think it is OK to do the heavy squatting in the smith machine.In other ways it would not be possible to train heavy when you have balance problems.And you train for balance too with other excercises.Once you have learned to frontsquat properly,I think you will be outsquatting me soon .
Now are you calling this al deload?? I thought a deload was not the same as doing nothing :p.But anyway,lets hope things will go better after this rest periode.
Finally you come out of hiding!
Girls, this is the girl who can front squat TONS of weight and deadlift even more. You'd fit right in with the boys on the deadlift challenge Look it up at : THE DEADLIFT CHART
Quote:
I didn't know that you could squat 100kg OK it is in the smith machine and not ass to grass but I think it is still good.In your case,I also think it is OK to do the heavy squatting in the smith machine.In other ways it would not be possible to train heavy when you have balance problems.And you train for balance too with other excercises.Once you have learned to frontsquat properly,I think you will be outsquatting me soon
Me neither, I just did it once in the Smith and with my heels raised on a disk. Plus, it's very hard to tell whether I'd have gotten the 3 'white' lights. But it really felt good. The best part was that I PRed all of my lifts that day:
DL : 105 kg x1
bb bent over row (Yates style) : 70 kg x 2 (and I've never really pushed on that one)
only bb press sucked: 45 kg x 4 , never got past 52,5kg x 1 there as my triceps weakened substantially over the past few months when I only db pressed.
Seriously my balance sux very much, probably mostly because I'm born with a hearing deficiency, which influences balance. Plus an eyesight problem.
Like you say, I'm trying other exercises too to improve balance, but there's no way I can lift heavy that way. So, just not be too wary of the Smith and keep doing the heavy squats in them..?
And have fun with front squats as a lighter program.. sounds a lot better to me!
Quote:
Now are you calling this al deload?? I thought a deload was not the same as doing nothing
I'm just using a fancy name for being a lazy bum: deload.There's probably a lot of different ways to do it.
In HST you are having 2 weeks off from lifting. 1 week mostly seemed long enough for me and then I'd still do cardio in that week.
I'm still trying to decide what is more important to me
1 look better nekkid = try to be as lazy as possible and lift short & heavy = less appetite problems
2 have fun in the gym AND at home =change routines often and trying out different theories like waveloading and not do the same exercises
3 get as strong as hell = do the same exercises over and over again, so you get freaking good at them
I guess it's mostly 2 then 3 and then 1, but if I want to avoid overtraining and overeating 1 should be kept in sight all the time.
Tons of weight,hahaha.No way.When I had seen this before I don't know if I had posted my DL in the chart.It is not that good.Off course I hope it will be but in the moment it isn't.
You can keep trying to do the 3 things at the same time but I would cut the cutting .I think you will make better progress on training with less injuries.And you can do the things you have fun with and have no need to be lazy.Just try to eat not too much icecream & chocolate,and #1 will also stay in sight.
For the squatting,I think for you indeed it is the best to do the heavy squatting in the shit machine and additional train normal and frontsquatting with lighter weights.And overhead squats,you could also train.Have you ever done those?
By the way,that BB row looks real good but what is meant by "Yates style"?
I did do overhead squats on my 'fun & odd lifts' day : it felt quite interesting!
Hack bb squats are another 'fun' movement I'd say.
Since I was doing DLs and bb rows in every single WO between Aug and Jan , someone told me it was a better idea to do my bb rows more upright if I wanted to decrease the heavy 'spinal loading' and save my lower back.
Yates style bb row is when you're not having your upper body at a 90 degree angle, but only at around 45 degrees. And.. you use underhand gripping. I felt DOMS in my lats immediately when I switched from overhand to underhand gripping on the bb rows.
Yates style rows enable you to row much more heavily than the more horizontal rows. Esp. when you'd put the bb down after every rep, like with Pendlay rows.
Gals & Boys, I'm almost pissed! I'm maintaining on more calories than what I ate back in May when exercising (both lifting & cardio) dutifully!
It's so much more about avoiding allergens than about doing the 'right' exercise!
I'm really surprised that sofar (1 week off) my maintenance hasn't really dropped by much. Though, overindulging in carbs really makes it drop down.
Currently 14d maintenance = 2117 and I ate about 50 kcal more. 30d mtn is still at 2253 kcal and I ate 2292 kcal.
Contrast that to what happened late spring. I was exercising lots and trying to shed a bit of weight: 30d average intake was 1998 kcal and my maintenance was 1987 kcal. My predicted maintenance was supposed to be 2360 kcal.. but wasn't!
Maintenance really follows intake almost like a shadow when I gradually take it higher or lower. It really also explains why I could only lose with more drastic zigzagging of calories.
Definitely had sleep problems when very low carbing. But at the time I wasn't aware of how to solve it. Or rather, heavily influenced by the very dogmatic "thou shalt NOT eat carbs before bedtime".
The worst of the worst sleeping problems I experienced when cycling the 100 mtn pass ride. Averaging 80K/50 mi of extremely hilly/mountainous terrain with a fully loaded touring bike is TOUGH! You just hardly ever get in enough calories, esp. not when you don't cook (I hate schlepping around too much weight and prefer eating cold food over excess equipment & water). So I was unable to sleep more than 3hrs/night for over 3 weeks.
But now I self-medicate with carbs.. or with tryptophan on days I won't allow myself more carbs. When I had the best fat loss in the past months, sleep would zigzag between 7 and 9 hours /night on the low vs high carb days.
OK it is in the smith machine and not ass to grass but I think it is still good.In your case,I also think it is OK to do the heavy squatting in the smith machine.In other ways it would not be possible to train heavy when you have balance problems.And you train for balance too with other excercises.Once you have learned to frontsquat properly,I think you will be outsquatting me soon 
listen to galya the wise woman. 
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