JxG's Progress Log

Training Training Logs
21

[quote]kinein wrote:
JxG wrote:
09.10.08:
Rest day. 6 Minutes Leg stretching.

Newest trick:
Raising the toes while deadlifting. Helps me to drive more from the heels.

Try deadlifting without your shoes on or with flat-soled chucks, or chuck-like shoes. [/quote]

great advice, today doing rack pull wearing x-trainers, bad idea. Even though I have a bunch of air forces and jordans my chucks are my favourite shoe, makes squatting and deadlifting soo much easier.

btw I’ll continue too read your log so make sure you keep updating

22

one more thing to note, if you are barefoot and or using chucks or weightlifting shoes… and you are pulling your toes off ~

Your form is crap ~ fix. Though in my opinion unless your advanced you should always review your training and lifts and occasionally spend 5-10 minutes doing form training ~ getting the motion down.

23

11.10.08:
So-called Rest day. The usual 6 minutes of leg stretching.

Been repairing my wood roller shutter today… that certainly was harder than I thought. Reached total failure on crushing grip and shoulders multiple times. I may take another rest day tomorrow, but i’ve gotta see how I feel. What do you guys do when you did some kind of hard labor the day before?

[quote]jtg987 wrote:
btw I’ll continue too read your log so make sure you keep updating [/quote]
Good to know - I’ll definitely keep updating this log, and it’s nice to know someone will notice if I’ll slack off.

[quote]kinein wrote:
one more thing to note, if you are barefoot and or using chucks or weightlifting shoes… and you are pulling your toes off ~

Your form is crap ~ fix. Though in my opinion unless your advanced you should always review your training and lifts and occasionally spend 5-10 minutes doing form training ~ getting the motion down. [/quote]

First off, thanks for your comment… secondly… crap. I already suspected that. Yup, I lift barefooted and raise my toes.
I alread tried to take a vid of the first and last sets (sideview and frontview each) yesterday, but the cameras battery was dead.
I think it’d be best to make a total of 6 vids:
Front lightweight, Sidview lightweight
Front set #1, Sideview set #2
Front set #7, Sideview set #8

I like the idea of doing form training - I actually planned to make vids of my lifts from time to time to check my technique.

24

12.10.08:
Training day.
Pushups (feet on chair): 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4
Deadlift: 8x4 - 51,5 kg
Bodyweight Rows (feet on chair): 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5

Yupp. Decided to train today. It felt a little bit more straining than usual, but nothing that would be a good reason for another rest day. I expected there to be problems with my grip strenght, but there weren’t any. Seems like hands recover fast.

Couldn’t make the videos, since my mother and sister were away and had the camera with them. Oh well… on tuesday then.

25

13.10.08
Rest day. 6 Minutes of leg stretching.

btw, when I make those lifting vids… i’ll be barefooted, should I use the pulling the toes up trick or not?
I would guess not, so the flaws in my technique are easier to see, right?

26

14.10.08
Training day.
Pushups (feet on chair): 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4
Deadlift: Noone! My technique is fucked up!
Bodyweight Rows (feet on chair): 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5

So. Turns out I even round my lower back with 29 kg (warm-up weight). Gonna post a vid tomorrow.

27

Goddamnit… wrestled with the computer yesterday and the computer won.

15.10.08
Rest day. Didn’t manage any stretching cause the computer keept me occupied all day. Fuck this thing. Were already slaves to the technical system…

On to the vids.
I found out whats the problem. I’ve still been using 10 KG plates. Too long distance = lumbar spine rounding.

Check it out:

With 20 KG plates:

With 20 KG plates + added wooden blocks:

With 10 KG plates:

Technique criticism… welcome.

28

16.10.08:
Training day.
Pushups (feet on chair): 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5
Deadlift: 8x4 - 56,5 Kg
Bodyweight Rows (feet on chair): 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6

Gotta find something to make the Bodyweight rows harder now… and soon I’ll also need to increase the difficulty of the pushups too.

29

17.10.08:
Rest day. 5 Minutes of leg stretching.

30

18.10.08:
Training day.
Pushups (feet on chair): 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 5, 5, 5
Deadlift: 8x4 - 59 Kg
Bodyweight Rows (feet on chair) + 10,5 Kg: 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3

Damn, todays workout was heavy.
I’m using a diving weights belt that I lift over my chest before rowing now to make it harder. Works pretty good. If I’ll hit 8x6 again I’ll just add a secound belt. This should keep me occupied for a while.

Deadlifts: My 6th set was really more like 1/1/2 instead of one set of 4… I think I’m only going to add 1 Kg next workout. Also, especially during the end, I almost always took longer rests than just 40 secounds… ranging from 50 to about 90 secounds.

Nothing special to report about the pushups though. Feelt challenging but not too hard.

31

deadlifts looked good, just make sure your looking up with pulling I noticed in some reps you were kinda looking around, when you start pulling heavier weight looking too the side can really hurt lol.

also get a hair cut, apart from that keep progressing, I take it you work out at home?

32

19.10.08:
Rest day. 6 Minutes of leg stretching.

[quote]jtg987 wrote:
deadlifts looked good, just make sure your looking up with pulling I noticed in some reps you were kinda looking around, when you start pulling heavier weight looking too the side can really hurt lol.[/quote]

Ah, I think I was looking at the plates sometimes. I’ll try to avoid that.

[quote]jtg987 wrote:
also get a hair cut, apart from that keep progressing, I take it you work out at home? [/quote]

lol, no way. Besides… you’re one to talk. :stuck_out_tongue:
And yup, I work out at home. Don’t have the money to join a gym right now… and if I had the money, I’d still rather invest it in protein.

33

20.10.08:
Training day.
Pushups (feet on chair): 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5
Deadlift: 8x4 - 60 Kg
Bodyweight Rows (feet on chair) + 10,5 Kg: 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3

I think one of those days I’m going to have to take 2 rest days in a row or something so I can really recover.

34

[quote]JxG wrote:
I think one of those days I’m going to have to take 2 rest days in a row or something so I can really recover.[/quote]

with the weights your using you shouldn’t really need too take more than a day off at a time, maybe try upping your food intake? I find generally when I’m not recovering properly I’m not eating enough. do you know what the break down of the food you eat in a day is? like how much protein, carbs and fats roughly?

35

21.10.08:
Rest day. 6 Minutes of leg stretching.

[quote]jtg987 wrote:
with the weights your using you shouldn’t really need too take more than a day off at a time, maybe try upping your food intake? I find generally when I’m not recovering properly I’m not eating enough. do you know what the break down of the food you eat in a day is? like how much protein, carbs and fats roughly?[/quote]

Yeah, about that… I happen to live at home, and my mother’s already pretty stressed out about my appetite.

I’m pretty sure I’m not getting enough, but its a problem I’ve got to fix by making my own food to eat in-between the family meals. Not so much of a problem if I - 1) Learn how to cook - 2) Always make meals in advanche for say, a couple of days - 3) Get my own fridge… since the family fridge and freezer are pretty much always full, I’m already having trouble fitting my regular Oatmeal (wich I prepare every evening and eat every morning - otherwise I’d starve away pretty soon) in there.

About the break down… no, unfortunately not. Though I once written down what I’ve been eating for a week. Never analyzed it though. I’ll try to get it done in the next days.

One thing I can say for sure though, I’m hundert percent certain I dont get enough protein. So far, I’ve been taking small steps to increase my protein intake though, such as eating a can of mackerels each evening.

36

do you have any funds for protein powder? I’ve found that when I’m not taking protein powder my recovery begins too suffer, as I also live at home and mum does freak out about how much food i can put down when I’m hungry…We also have arguments about where I keep my supplements lol, tuna, eggs, milk are all inexpensive ways of getting calories and protein in, cheese is another winner.

cooking is easy, its cleaning up thats the bitch.

btw how old are you?

37

22.10.08
Training day.
Pushups (feet on chair): 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 ( more like 4+2), 6, 5 (… 1+4))
Deadlift: 8x4 - 62,5 Kg (set 7 = 2+1+1)
Bodyweight Rows (feet on chair) + 10,5 Kg: 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3

Holey moley… hit failure a couple of times on pushups and deads. Its been a weak day though. I don’t only need to get more protein, I also need to sleep more.

[quote]jtg987 wrote:
do you have any funds for protein powder? I’ve found that when I’m not taking protein powder my recovery begins too suffer, as I also live at home and mum does freak out about how much food i can put down when I’m hungry…We also have arguments about where I keep my supplements lol, tuna, eggs, milk are all inexpensive ways of getting calories and protein in, cheese is another winner.

cooking is easy, its cleaning up thats the bitch.

btw how old are you?[/quote]

Mmmh. Funds… well, assuming I get about 80 grams of protein by regular food, I’d need to get another 80 grams by protein drinks. I’ve been calculating this stuff before, and I can’t afford enough protein to get my 2 grams / kg bodyweight, at least assuming I buy quality protein (Optimum Nutrition in this case - can’t get Biotest’s stuff here in germany).
Though I could at least slightly increase my intake - better to get 80% of what I need than only 50%.

Perhaps I really should set up my own fridge. Cook a shitload of stuff (one of the few things I know is pancake… and I don’t think theres a offical limit for eggs on those.) We still have a small, pretty old one that I could probably use, just gotta free up some space.

38

23.10.08:
Rest day. ~6 Minutes of leg stretching.

Forgot to add this in my last post, im 24.

39

24.10.08 - 29.10.08:

Got the flu on 24.10… so no training during the last few days. I wonder why the hell I’ve got the flu again - last time I had a flu wasn’t even a month ago!

I gotta start supplementing with zinc again, I used to be sick all the time untill my doc put me on a zinc supplement for 90 days, but that was a while ago…

Gonna start training again in a couple of days. Not sure yet how many days it’s going to be though. Probably about 3-5.

40

04.11.08:
Todays training was crap. I’ve become weak. Well… even weaker. Failure here, failure there, failure everywhere. I’ll reduce the workload by about 10% for my next workout.

At least I’ve ordered some protein powder… maybe it’ll help me recover the strenght I’ve lost faster.