In an effort to be a bit more extroverted (New Year’s resolution kind of thing), and to create a platform to (hopefully) get advice from the very knowledgeable people here, I’ve decided to start a training log.
General mission statement- Get stronger.
Specific life-time goals-
Deadlift 3xbw x5
Squat 2xbw x5
Bench 1.5xbw x5
OHP 200lbx5
Run a mile under 6 minutes.
3 miles under 21 minutes.
Barbell goals that I plan on reaching by the end of this year-
Deadlift 405lbx5
Squat 315lbx5
Bench 185lbx5 (Let’s just say my bench really fucking sucks)
OHP 135x5 (Ditto with OHP)
Training History-
Started lifting around Dec(?) of 2011, when my brother convinced me to try going to the gym out. Got hooked. Had fucked around with a bunch of calisthenics and “squatting” with DBs before, but they never amounted to much.
Really enjoyed doing the barbell lifts though, and so I got hooked. Because I was 147ish lb at 5f7 and looked really skinny in the mirror, I tried out Rippetoe’s SS, including the “eat a fuck-ton of food” part. After 3 months, with a week or so of vacation included, I got to 164lb and virtually nothing to show for it. A really shitty 165lb squat, bench stalling at 115lb, and OHP stuck at 70lb. The only thing that went up “well” was the deadlift, which got to 295lb before grip issues crippled me.
Then took roughly a 4 month hiatus as I had to travel for family reasons and moving. Restarted lifting roughly around june of 2012. I more or less decided that 3x a week wasn’t enough, and so I went to lifting 6x a week. Basically followed SS, with some rows and chin-ups included. Diet basically looked like this-
chicken thigh, frozen vegetable medley, protein powder, milk, kimchi, occasional eating out, a weekly carb load with either Vietnamese noodles or a Costco pizza.
Basically very high protein and fat, minimal carb diet.
It worked. By the end of September, my lifting max (which I resetted to bar because the four month hiatus took whatever gains I made away), got to something like- bench-140ish, OHP-105ish, Squat-230ish, Deadlift-340ish (didn’t keep records back then and so spit-balling here). Also went from skinny-fat at 150lb to a lean 162-164. Was starting to stall due to form issues in the squat and deadlift though.
Then I got De Quervain’s tenosynovitis in my left hand, which basically prevented me from doing anything that placed any real stress on my left hand (basically every upper body exercise, and squats/deadlifts when the inflammation flared up). And so I spent the next couple of months (From Oct. to June 2013) just going to the gym and spinning my wheels squatting and deadlifting with no real progress, largely because my heart wasn’t in it. The pain pissed me off and the prospect of requiring surgery to fix the thing bothered me enough to make me take training halfheartedly. Weight went down to 157ish and got pudgier.
Finally got the surgery on June of 2013. Fully recovered by July and went back to training. Decided to do a 3 day split, basically SS again.
Strength came close to what I had a year ago within the span of Aug-Nov. Then I decided to go onto a completely new split in Nov., basically 5/3/1 BBB + conditioning work. Except I chose to bastardize things again. Instead of 5x10, I did 4x10 with a minute rest in between. I also moved the exercises around so that I would have one upper/lower body strength lift, one lower/upper body hypertrophy lift. I am enamored with full body training and wanted to try this out. Also start using chalk and taking creatine for the first time. Creatine really didn’t seem to help all that much though.
By the end of Dec, my max lifts were-
Bench- 150x2. OHP-105lbx5 (This didn’t improve all that well, I think I have serious form issues and a hard time actually bracing my body). Squat-240x3, Deadlift-340x3. BW was somewhere at 170-172lb by this point. A lot of flab because I no longer followed a strict diet. I’ve learned that I do not do well with carbs from a physique standpoint, and I ate a lot of them.
Then I got hit with what felt like the worst flu I’ve ever had. Stayed with me for two weeks. Then I had to move for a new job/school, and that took another two weeks. Roughly a total of a month not training. Only just started this week. Strength went down a bit, but that may be because my body is simply rusty and because all the creatine is gone.
Also became quite a bit pudgier than I was previously. A diet of Mcdonalds and similar fast foods for two weeks while not moving at all doesn’t really help you look good. No idea what my current weight is because I lack a scale, but my guess would be somewhere around 175ish, or 3-5 pounds of fat gained.
My immediate goal right now is to lose the fat, and so I’ve returned to the 6x a week lifting along with a strict diet similar to what I ate in the summer of 2012. As such, I reduced quite a bit of weight from all the barbell lifts to account for both the lack of carbs and the whole 6x a week thing. I hope to stay on this for about a month or two at most (cutting out a lot of carbs seems to be working already) and then return to what I was doing previously to see how well it goes