Saan's Strength Log

Training
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I’ve been lifting a year now! :slight_smile:

I wrote a lovely post about my transformation, the goals I achieved, lessons in determination and hard work and how generally pleased I am with my progress when the rolling brownout I was warned about rolled along. The draft should have been auto-saved but somehow wasn’t, so I wish it well on its merry journey into the ether. In lieu of rewriting what was probably a bit tedious and longwinded anyway I am going to post some transformation photos. I finally went hunting for fat photos of myself and my, did I manage to avoid the camera pretty well for three years.

But first, here is an old photo of the weak Saan; notice my smooth back contrasted with the strong look I’ve got in my avatar now. :slight_smile: This photo is from the end of 2003.

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This is actually the best photo of my plumper self I could find. :stuck_out_tongue: This is from Oktoberfest 2005.

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This is not too long before I got fed up, Nov. 2006.

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Right before I started lifting weights (or possibly a couple of days after)–beginning of April 2007. I had been “dieting” and doing cardio for a month and already lost a little weight.

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It is almost hard to believe but this is just about 4-5 weeks later, the beginning of May 2007. Lifting weights worked really well for me.

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One more from that day in May.

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And finally, yesterday. :slight_smile: I have some better progress photos but unfortunately the ended up more “sexy” than “progress” and I’m not sure they’re appropriate to post to this thread. :stuck_out_tongue:

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You have done such a good job! I am so proud of you :slight_smile:
You should be very happy with your “progress” pic. You do look sexy and that is a great thing. Again, great job!

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Your progress in that short 4-5 weeks was nothing short of amazing.

Your body obviously responds rather well to the training your putting it through. Keep up the good work.

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[quote]rondastarr wrote:
You have done such a good job! I am so proud of you :slight_smile:
You should be very happy with your “progress” pic. You do look sexy and that is a great thing. Again, great job!
[/quote]

Thanks Ronda. I put one of the sexy photos in the T-Vixen Pic Thread (bottom of this page: http://www.T-Nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=2062602&pageNo=8 ) and it felt amazing to have the confidence to post a photo like that! So I am proud of myself too. :slight_smile: It’s actually a pretty nice way to celebrate a year training, putting photos of myself in lingerie up on the internet. :stuck_out_tongue:

I saw you found the grip part of snatch-grip deadlifts challenging and that’s the fun of it. Hopefully you’ll respond like I did and have your grip strength improve quickly.

(And thanks for the encouragement Lillguy).

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11 April

Single-leg squats: 10! 7 6 5

Parallel-grip pullups (throughout workout): 3 2 3 2 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 (=21)

Split squat front foot elevated: 35kg/10 35/10 (killer)

Pull-throughs: 59kg/12 64/10 64/12

Hanging leg raises: 10 10 10

10 single leg squats has been a goal for a long time and I knew I was ready for it today. I got all ten on the right leg without pausing or even touching my left foot to the floor. I had to rebalance and touch the floor twice on the left leg though. For the longest time my left leg was stronger than my right so I’ve been doing right leg first but recently the left leg has been feeling a bit weak–next time I’ll switch to L first. The three other sets weren’t as pretty (resets and some ugly balancing) but at least I did them without cheating. :slight_smile: The squats made my legs feel huge and I was already walking a little funny before the split squats, which deepened the huge feeling and made me walk even sillier.

I was pleased with my pullups too but I ran out of steam at the end of the workout–the leg raises were hard and kind of sucky…I was cheating way more than usual. But it’s been a while since I’ve done them and previously it took a lot of work to get to 4 sets of 10. Either my pre-workout nutrition sucked a bit, the pullups just made the workout too long, or I just didn’t have extended energy today. Whatever. 10 single-leg squats! Yay!

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Impressive you’ve done very well for yourself.

How are you doing in terms of strength goals?

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14 April

Fingertip pushups: 9 10 10 8

Parallel-grip pullups (throughout): 4 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 (=23)

Dips: 6 5 5 6

One-arm military press: 30lbs/7 30/6 30/6 30/7

This hardly even looks like a RE day. :stuck_out_tongue: I left out overhead shrugs and reverse curls to go easy on my wrist one last time but I figure if I could handle 22 bodyweight dips, there should be no trouble adding them back next time. I threw the dips in because it’s been ages since I’ve done them and I was curious how many I could do. I think a set of 10 is quite within my reach now–it wasn’t too tough to get 6 and that was after all the pushups and quite a few pullups. Dips seem to hit my triceps like nothing else so I want to keep them in my program.

Since I’m doing so well with the fingertip pushups I’ve decided once I get to sets of 15-20ish I’ll try 4-fingertip pushups, then 3, 2, even 1? That would be pretty cool. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for asking about strength goals. :slight_smile: I wrote about this in the post that the ether ate but I’ve been meaning to write about it again.

Old goals:
Deadlift 136 kg. (300 lbs.)–I haven’t been working on my deadlift much recently. :frowning: I’ll be ME deadlifting tomorrow or Wednesday for the first time since Jan. I am currently transitioning to giving this goal priority. I’d really really really like to get this by the end of the year but it is going to take a lot of work. Hopefully I will be able to get some feedback and advice on this here. I will see if I can find someone to film my deadlifts next time so I can post them here for form critique.
10 bodyweight pullups or chinups–getting close, I’m hoping I’ll have this within the next few months
10 bodyweight dips–if I keep doing dips, I bet I can get this pretty soon
1 handstand pushup–long way away, and I won’t be practicing handstands for a little while yet

New goals:
Bodyweight overhead press (goes along with the handstand pushup but should be a bit easier)–I’m a long way away from this; about a month ago I was doing 10 reps at 25kg
Squat 1.5x bodyweight (97kg)–I’m at 50kg (3RM) on front squats and 65kg (3RM) on back squats currently. I need lots and lots of practice squatting as I’ve only been going heavy since my gym finally got a squat rack in Jan.
Bench Press 1x bodyweight (65kg)–I’m at 50kg (3RM) now but I seem to add weight so slowly to this lift

Recently achieved goals:
10x single-leg squats and 10x fingertip pushups :slight_smile:

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Those are some great goals. Good luck achieving them! It looks like you are getting close on a lot of them :slight_smile:

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15 April

Sumo deadlifts: 60kg/10 80/5 85/5 90/3 (PR) 95/3 (PR!) 97.5/3 (PR!!) 100/1 (PR!!!) (that’s 220lbs)

BB reverse lunges: 35kg/10 40/10 42.5/10

King deadlift (bent knee to floor): 8 8 8

This was awesome.

As mentioned previously, I haven’t deadlifted heavy since Jan. so I was pretty psyched about today. I didn’t mean to jump from 60 to 80kg in the warmups–my brain temporarily failed at math. So I went from thinking “oh, that’s heavy for 70 :(” to “ah, that’s light for 80!” My previous PR was 90/2 so when I got 90/3 pretty easily I was excited and just kept going. I was tempted to lift the 100kg a second time but my intuition told me I had done enough for the day. I had a little trouble locking the 100 at the top but got it there eventually.

The biggest guy I’ve ever seen at our gym (he looked like one of the heavyweight MMA fighters I’ve seen at Art of War) saw my reverse lunges and gave me a thumbs up after that last excruciating set. :slight_smile: It was cool to see someone else lifting some real weight for once! Also I’m really getting the form for King deadlifts down now and they made a great finisher. I’m still skipping the ab circuit–any suggestions of what to replace it with? This session lasted about an hour but having just three exercises does make it seem a bit brief.

I also wanted to make a note for my own reference regarding my nutrition. I’ve had a big problem with lack of appetite recently (which I blame on spring). Even after training hard I’m not very hungry, which is a new experience to me! The only foods that appeal to me right now are pork, bananas and bell peppers. I’m not kidding. :stuck_out_tongue: I’ve been eating tons of all three (and a little bit of shrimp, steak, beans and tomatoes).

I’ve been drinking too many protein shakes (2 or 3 most days). I end up having shakes because I don’t like forcing myself to eat (I don’t think this would be a good habit to form). I’ve been invited out to a vegetarian restaurant tonight and I was actually thinking about saying no so I could stay home and eat my pork loin and bell peppers. In the past week I’ve lost about 3 kg. :frowning: I guess if it is all fat (and water/normal weight fluctuation) it’s not so bad though. I guess I will try not to worry about it as long as I am not losing strength.

Thanks for the encouraging comment, buckeye. :slight_smile:

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Congrats on the deadlift PRs! Great job.

Eating the protein shakes are better than skipping meals. Do add stuff to your shakes? Flaxseed, peanut butter, fruits? That would help you increase calories.

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[quote]cvb wrote:
Congrats on the deadlift PRs! Great job.[/quote]

Thanks, Claire.

Yeah, that’s why I keep drinking them. Usually I make them with plain whole yogurt–plenty of calories and keeps my digestion happy. I tend to eat a piece of fruit with my shake rather than in it. If only I could find peanut butter without sugar in it in Beijing! I do have a bag of flaxseed languishing in the back of my pantry that I had almost forgotten about; that’s a good suggestion.

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Here’s a food log for yesterday and today. Typing it all out I am of course struck by the monotony. Hopefully this will help encourage me to at get some more diversity into my diet; usually I’m great with eating a variety of fruits and veggies, at least. Just not sure what’s wrong with me recently. :stuck_out_tongue:

15 April

Breakfast: whey protein shake with plain whole yogurt, 1 large banana

Second breakfast: 1/2 roasted pork loin, 1 red bell pepper, a few homemade sweet potato chips (which I really didn’t desire but I knew I needed a little more food in this meal since it was my pre-deadlift meal)

Pre-workout: a small whey protein shake and a small amount of peach juice

Post-workout: more whey and peach juice (usually I have a banana here too but I’d eaten them all!)

Snack: 1 hard-boiled egg, 3 prunes

Dinner: 1/2 pork loin, 1 yellow bell pepper, 1 slice rye/oat/wheat germ toast with butter

Second dinner: whey concentrate shake with plain whole yogurt, fish oil

16 April

Breakfast: whey protein shake with plain whole yogurt

Second breakfast: quesadilla with 2 whole wheat tortillas, beans, several leftover shrimp, slices of pork loin, tomatoes and a little cheese

Lunch: 1/2 pork loin (that’s the end of the red-chile roasted pork loin, finally! I swear I will cook something besides pork loin next), 1 red bell pepper

(Intended potential snack: nuts and a pear or apple)

(Intended dinner: scrambled eggs with broccoli, or bacon and fried eggs and toast, fish oil…I’ll probably eat another bell pepper too–I eat them whole like an apple)

(Intended second dinner: whey concentrate shake with plain whole yogurt, fish oil)

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Congrats on the deadlift.

Can you tell me what a king deadlift is?

O