[quote]craze9 wrote:
Fair enough. I suppose I just do cardio then, myself.
I read your post on the value of competing, also. Liked it. It made me think.[/quote]
I’m glad you appreciated it. Definitely one of those things I’ve really learned. I’ve gotten so much stronger during the times I have been competing versus the times I haven’t.
On that topic, Aero, have you done any strongman competitions yet? Might be a good way to get the fire going.
I want to compete, which is why I want to get down to 230 by September, so I can train for a competition from Oct to Jul of 2016. I am heavy for my height even when I was lean. Middleweight class is up to 230lbs for most competitions. right now I am about 260lbs and 5’9" and will get creamed by people who are about 1ft taller than me and much stronger. The absolute leanest I ever achieved was back in 2011 when I was 185lbs and had a 32" - 31" waist. I was pretty weak, granted, but I looked good. I was eating a very strict 2000kcals/day. I lost the weight from 220lbs with no muscle in about a year.
Summer of 2010: 220lbs, way overweight
He got a girlfriend who was pretty attractive “Oh shit I gotta step up my game”, thought Aero, and tracked his calories he did. By purchasing a small pocket notebook, he diligently recorded everything he ate:
Got down to 195 by September of that year.
Reduced further to 185 by Summer of 2011
Girlfriend breaks up, Aero gets angry and vows to get strong to kick her new boyfriends ass.
Lifted on a high volume program, went up to 198lbs again, Squat was 305x5.
Boyfriend was gone, Aero went back in and took his woman back
Cut again and stopped lifting like an asshole, went down to 185.
Left his woman as she was crazy.
The end
[quote]Aero51 wrote:
I want to compete, which is why I want to get down to 230 by September, so I can train for a competition from Oct to Jul of 2016. I am heavy for my height even when I was lean. Middleweight class is up to 230lbs for most competitions. right now I am about 260lbs and 5’9" and will get creamed by people who are about 1ft taller than me and much stronger. The absolute leanest I ever achieved was back in 2011 when I was 185lbs and had a 32" - 31" waist. I was pretty weak, granted, but I looked good.[/quote]
You could always enter novice while you wait. It’s open weight. Some places even have novice heavyweight. Usually a lot of good folks in that division too.
I am really not strong enough - I can barely hit a 385 deadlift. My carries are really good and so are my presses though.
[quote]Aero51 wrote:
I am really not strong enough - I can barely hit a 385 deadlift. My carries are really good and so are my presses though. [/quote]
Maybe not strong enough to win, but definitely strong enough to compete.
I’ve known folks with lower deadlifts that still hit novice. And really, this is one of those things where signing up and putting the pressure on yourself does a pretty good job of motivating you to want to get stronger.
I’ve had a lot of shows I signed up for with weights I couldn’t even hit for a single that I manage to get for reps just due to the pressure of the show.
And I cheer way louder for the guy at a show that is giving everything he can to get one rep versus the guy who shows up to novice and does a million reps when they should really be in the open.
Youre not the first person to tell me “fuck it” and train for competition. What program do you use? I was looking at Kentucky Strong’s articles on strongman with 5/3/1. I still really feel this weight is a serious issue though.
[quote]Aero51 wrote:
Youre not the first person to tell me “fuck it” and train for competition. What program do you use? I was looking at Kentucky Strong’s articles on strongman with 5/3/1. I still really feel this weight is a serious issue though. [/quote]
I do my own programming. The structure is similar to 5/3/1, in that I have an overhead, squat, bench and deadlift day, but for squat and dead I use ROM progression, bench is Matt Kroc’s 16 week bench program, and overhead is just me rotating implements and rep ranges as needed. Assistance work is whatever needs doing that day.
I train implements every training session rather than having an events day. Bench day is the exception, where I use it purely as a bodybuilding style day.
On squat day, I’ll either train an implement clean (keg clean, log clean, axle clean, etc) or car deadlift if I have that coming up in a contest.
Press day, I’ll do carries (either farmer’s or a carry medley with keg/sandbag)
Deadlift day is Yoke.
The Kentucky strong program is a good one from what I’ve seen/heard. Lot of folks like it, and it’s a great starting point. Cube Method for Strongman looked good too, although I couldn’t persuade myself to do all the agility work, haha.
Absolutely keep working toward your weight loss goals, I think that’s a good thing to want. I just remember you mentioning in your post how the drive/desire to self improve was gone. I’ve been there, and honestly competition is what got me out of that funk. I injured my back something fierce back in 2008, and didn’t deadlift for 3 years after that because I had no reason to. When I started powerlifting, I finally had a reason to get stronger, and between that and strongman my deadlift has become my best lift. Strongman has also really improved my bodycomp as well, since I can’t just lay down on a bench like I did in powerlifting, haha.
Yeah, the last few years have been pretty bad. Like I said I had quite a lot going for me by 2012, and in a nutshell a lot of issues I thought were resolved came pouring out at once, really taking my life off track. The way I see it, someone can only take so many hits before it affects the way you think.
I’m fighting between wanting to take a 2 year vacation and get away from everything, and my desire deep down to achieve and be the best. I still want that PhD, I still want to compete in strongman, but emotionally I’m just so tired and really, really want a long break to not think about anything. I grew up around people who basically hated it whenever I did good at anything, and made me feel like shit if I had showed any talent (got called a nerdy faggot by my parents when I was 12 because I wanted to design jets, for example…), but I took that and said “fuck you” to them and my life took off.
I think actually getting into the PhD program was like a “shock”, you know “Holy shit, I really did it”, but that left the question “now what do I do” and that sent me into a deep depression. It was almost like I felt I didn’t deserve the achievement, but acted it out rather than said it.
The point is, I have been noticing lately I’m carrying that behavior again to my lifting and other areas of my life. I’m starting to get strong and I’ve got at least 3-4 people telling me to compete, and oddly it makes me feel bad, like a loser.
One of the older guys came up to me and basically yelled at me that I’d be a 500lb squatter, the other guy recently asked me to come to his gym to do boxing, 2 other guys are telling me to drop the weightloss training and focus on strongman. It is funny though, this encouragement makes me feel bad and depressed. I guess it feels like they are mocking me when I know they aren’t.
And that carrys over into my programming. As soon as I start making real progress it “isn’t good enough” and I jump ship onto another “program” which leads to me going backwards. So im trying to break that.
What heights/weight do you use for the ROM progression btw?
[quote]T3hPwnisher wrote:
If someone’s goal is to lose fat with no performance element, I do not feel that there is anything they could do that would constitute conditioning.
The goal of conditioning is to get better. Getting better is the antithesis of cardio, for the better you get at cardio, the less effective it is.
I do not feel that a state of being is a state of performing, as I see one as passive with the other active. Therefore, I cannot support your conclusion.
[/quote]
To me it seems like having a goal of losing fat means conditioning is anything that burns fat. The body fat amount is the performance number. Performance shouldn’t be limited to only weight lifted and time, it should be something that is measurable for that person’s goal to observe an improvement. The goal of losing strictly body fat doesn’t mean that muscle has to be preserved and measured for performance unless that is also a goal.
I can see the performance aspect of body building being gaining muscle mass in specific areas, although it is not yet possible to measure.
But does not being able to measure something that you truly know can be quantified (but not with current technology) still count as performance? If you are able to lift a bigger rock and don’t know how much it weighs, you still got stronger. Just place the bigger rock on a seesaw with the smaller rock on the other end and observe the bigger rock sink. The exact performance increase is unknown but it is still known to improve. We have weight scales for that now. Maybe we can have an accurate scanner for fat and muscle distribution in the body in the future. It would be easier to state exactly how much fat a person wants to lose or how much muscle that person wants to gain in a specific area if that technology were available now.
[quote]lift206 wrote:
Performance shouldn’t be limited to only weight lifted and time, [/quote]
I feel like this is confusing “results” with “performance”. I am speaking of performance as a verb, as in, TO perform, rather than a noun, as in, THE performance.
I just don’t see the verb that is occurring with fat loss in order to say one is using conditioning to improve their performance at something.
[quote]Aero51 wrote:
What heights/weight do you use for the ROM progression btw?[/quote]
I deadlift off rubber patio tiles that are about 3/4 inch thick. I start with 7 per side under the plates, remove 1 patio tile each week and eventually end up pulling from the floor.
For squats, I suspend chains in my power rack. I start with having 16 links of chain at the end of a 5’ length, and each week remove 1 link until there is only 10 links left at the end, which is right about competition height for me.
Here is a video show casing the starting point for the squat cycle.
[quote]T3hPwnisher wrote:
[quote]lift206 wrote:
Performance shouldn’t be limited to only weight lifted and time, [/quote]
I feel like this is confusing “results” with “performance”. I am speaking of performance as a verb, as in, TO perform, rather than a noun, as in, THE performance.
I just don’t see the verb that is occurring with fat loss in order to say one is using conditioning to improve their performance at something.
[/quote]
I see what you mean. Performance is turning energy into motion - doing work, generating power, anything where mass moves in space. Makes sense now.
[quote]Aero51 wrote:
The way I see it, someone can only take so many hits before it affects the way you think.
I’m fighting between wanting to take a 2 year vacation and get away from everything, and my desire deep down to achieve and be the best.[/quote]
Sounds like you’ve got some work to do on yourself.
As some food for thought, I’d suggest spending some time reading Seneca’s Epistles (or Epictetus’ Discourses, or Cicero’s De Oficiis). No need to adopt any of those ideas, just, another way of looking at things.
I watch that video. Gotta say I know I don’t have the balls to squat like that. I feel like that could end very badly since the back is so rounded. I also hate the safety bar, but that is another issue.
I was thinking of doing ROM progression by starting from a dead stop instead, squatting bottom-up. I think FS form would be ideal, but who knows. I’ve always had problems with my squat once it got above 300lbs.
You’ll have to keep in mind that it’s my upperback that rounds, which is the same style I employ when I deadlift. That said, I agree with you that having the back in a rounded position is a dangerous position, which is why I try to strengthen it IN that position. I find that many people that suffer injuries do so because they train only with perfect form such that, when they exert themselves and put themselves in a position that requires less than perform form, their body is weak in that position.
And as we witness with atlas stone loading, a rounded back is sometimes necessary.
I don’t quite understand your differentiation regarding the dead stop squat, but I wholly advocate squatting from the bottom up. It’s been pretty beneficial to me, and is what I used to break a multiyear plateau. Chains worked a lot better in this regard compared to pins for me, as it allowed me to wiggle/roll into position like you see in the video, whereas with pins you have to do some sort of yoga to get into position, and it can really become painful at some points. I’ve tried with front squats before, but never for a full cycle. It definitely has some potential.
[quote]Aero51 wrote:
I was thinking of doing ROM progression by starting from a dead stop instead, squatting bottom-up. I think FS form would be ideal, but who knows. I’ve always had problems with my squat once it got above 300lbs. [/quote]
I’ve just started a round of dead stop bottoms up squats with ROM progression, I’ll let you know how it goes if you’d like.
260.25 this sunday. I think the sprinting has made a difference. Cutting down to 2200 kcals was too extreme as I ended up bingeing twice this week and going over 3000k. I think 2400kcals might be a good compromise.
Haven’t weighed in yet but I probably wont be happy with the results this week. Been pretty stressed out and oddly way hungrier than usual. My sleep has been messedup too and I had to forgo two workouts simply from being exhausted. Last night I got home from work at 4 and fell as sleep at 5…and woke up at 11:45, then went back to bed at 3 and got up at 7:30 today for work. I think lowering my calories last week really screwed things up as Ive been craving more food than ever in the last few weeks.
Got a complement from the owner of my gym this sunday that my physique is changing for the better. Did not weigh in this week, will have to take care of that today. I have been hitting PRs and I notice too that I am getting stronger and leaner looking. I really think sprinting is having a tremendous effect on my body.