The big blue experience.

Training Over 35 Lifter
161

[quote]Null wrote:

[quote]big nurse wrote:

[quote]UpScale wrote:
…your still on Holiday? Geeze must be nice.

ouch ![/quote]

Nope—back to grey,cold and wet uk this morning.

Pulled in to the ferry port after a roly-poly channel (english channel !!!) crossing and the first sight of home made me want to chuck myself off the ferry and start swimming back towards france.

Great weather down in the south-west of france and lousy over brittany and uk, and yes it’s typical of a brit to moan about the weather !!.

So, sorting out the camping kit and getting clothes washed etc etc but just been down to the gym, very slow and lethargic --probably due to 2 nights poor sleep.
Nothing great to report except that for some reason i lost count of sets during a lats/push up pair and did about 8 sets each–so around 80 press ups and around 60 lat pullls.

As to the trip–had a bit of a revelatory moment with a (naked) german lesbian !!!..[/quote]

Do tell![/quote]

Well back o the story…

So i was being hugged by a very pleasant naked german …and then by her partner as well, both very good english speaking teachers and a couple.
Being still fairly new to social naturism and by which i mean living on a naturist site for weeks at a time both me and my partner are still getting used to many of the normal ‘conventions’ of social naturism–just doing practically every everyday thing without clothes.

Anyway after said hug we standing around chatting-we were about to dress and leave and or some reason i was standing quite comfortably with my arms crossed over my chest–now in that position i had a hey-ho whats this ? moment in that i seemed to have : 1 obvious biceps and 2 definitely hard pecs. Never expereinced that feeling of actual muscle before.

Sorry …that was my revelatory moment, kind of ‘duh’ so this lifting lark produces muscle as well as stripping fat. not exactly revelatory to anyone on t nation but a nice surprise to someone who has never been muscular to finally find some muscle emerging from under the flab.

162

[quote]big nurse wrote:

[quote]Null wrote:
You may have found the “holy grail” lost fat and gained muscle…

When I started (pre-T-Nation), I both dropped weight and improved body comp, even though I did so many things in correctly.
You’re program is far better then any I have attempted.

I get the best feed back from my partner, especially the non-verbal feedback…[/quote]

Just wondering whether i have in fact done just that because i have just been into town with my partner (ok–coffee and cake treat !) and by chance went to try o get some new work trousers–and easily slipped into a 34" where i was expecting still to be a 36" (i was in a 42" at least this time last year).

Perhaps i am in that stage where outright weight isn’t that helpfull.

Also…next post
[/quote]

HOLY BATCAVE!
That is impressive!
I think you need to get yourself some calipers!

I don’t really care what I weigh (about 270) at this point.
I am working to improve body comp, w/o loosing too much strength. At least that’s what I tell myself. I’m acting more like watching diet but not allowing it to slow lifting progress.

Mirror, clothes, and partner seem to indicate I’m going ok, body comp wise.

I’m very happy with lifting progression, though I’m topped out or nearly so on some of the hammer strength machines for 5x5… So may have to change to higher reps soon.

Sounds like you’ve had a few of those body image, mind altering moments!
Congrats!
You’ve earned it!

I would hazard a bet that you’re also feeling better; fatigue, stress and etc.

163

Null–i do have some calipers and was just about to do some new measurements when i re-read chris shugarts thread about body fat percentage measurements and their non relevance.

Part of my holiday plans was : rest, recovery and reflection time. As it happens i had lots of rest and recovery around the gym time and beach walking but didn’t do much around the reflection issue.

So now at home feeling a bit flat after the journey home and starting to think about where i am going with all of this (training) i know why i started out ie simply not wanting to be an obese diabetic 50 something heading for an early Mi and i have in fact way surpassed my early goals.
I have almost by chance arrived at a point where i have ‘holy crap’ become an ironhead !! and training has become an obsession in its own right…so yes big surprise on ‘what are these muscle thingies doing on my body’ !!.

So…time to sit back a bit and think out where i am going with all this and now that my body seems to want to respond to the stress i give it where to set what goals–goals that i would have said that were impossible last year.

164

Congrats.

In reply to Shugart’s “irrelevance”: I’ll state that relevance depends upon your goals.

So body comp is directly relevant (sadly in my case, far freaking out in yours) to longevity and in particular “obese diabetic 50 something heading for an early Mi” it is according to recent research directly, deterministically related to diabetes. And BMI not withstanding Body comp IS obesity…

According to my doc I have reversed Insulin Resistance. A goal that seemed only academically possible.

I’m still carrying 20-30 lbs of unneeded fat, but I found that lifting (high intensity, especially heavy)makes me a much better person, employee, father and of course partner… It makes me feel alive.

I would love if you related your self discovery, values, and goal setting process. People hear have taught me as much about life and living as about lifting…

165

[quote]big nurse wrote:

Anyway after said hug we standing around chatting-we were about to dress and leave and or some reason i was standing quite comfortably with my arms crossed over my chest–now in that position i had a hey-ho whats this ? moment in that i seemed to have : 1 obvious biceps and 2 definitely hard pecs. Never expereinced that feeling of actual muscle before.

Sorry …that was my revelatory moment, kind of ‘duh’ so this lifting lark produces muscle as well as stripping fat. not exactly revelatory to anyone on t nation but a nice surprise to someone who has never been muscular to finally find some muscle emerging from under the flab.
[/quote]

If you think that’s fun, Nurse, just wait till you wake up after a good night’s sleep and discover your body feels hard as steel.

166

[quote]cavalier wrote:

[quote]big nurse wrote:

Anyway after said hug we standing around chatting-we were about to dress and leave and or some reason i was standing quite comfortably with my arms crossed over my chest–now in that position i had a hey-ho whats this ? moment in that i seemed to have : 1 obvious biceps and 2 definitely hard pecs. Never expereinced that feeling of actual muscle before.

Sorry …that was my revelatory moment, kind of ‘duh’ so this lifting lark produces muscle as well as stripping fat. not exactly revelatory to anyone on t nation but a nice surprise to someone who has never been muscular to finally find some muscle emerging from under the flab.
[/quote]

If you think that’s fun, Nurse, just wait till you wake up after a good night’s sleep and discover your body feels hard as steel.[/quote]

I frequently wake up feeling ‘as hard as steel’ (according to my partner) !!.
She says it wakes her up.

167

Null–i have kind of done that and to some extent written it all down, at least up until the time i started with the weights.

I did have pretensions about actually writing it as a book of self-discovery-a sort of fat to fit journey ,even thought that i had it all worked out 6 months ago entirely based around an outdoors based ,mainly body weight exercise involving a self created fitness circuit out in the woods.

Then i discovered : in rapid order, the gym and a superb trainer, gym jones (although not so sure now !!) and then t nation. I had no intention ever of stepping inside the gym–now it feels like my second home.

I stopped writing at about 35.000 words in simply because i discovered how little i really knew and how long the journey might be.

Anyway…after having been told off by ms upscale it’s back to it tonight.
With limited time before shift i tried an experiment : what can i do with minimal time ?

I thought :why not just concentrate on 1 exercise and make that really count ?.
I had already done an all body weights routine yesterday and my arms/shoulders were if anything a bit sore but lwer back which has been a problem seemed ok so i decided to go for squats . (rear squats paired with goblet squat)
Bare bar warm-up, then :
Rear squat (barbell) 40kg 1x10
Goblet squat (kb) 25kg 1x10
Rear squat 50kg 1x10
Goblet squat 32kg (dumbell) 1x10
Rear squat 55kg 1x10
Goblet squat 36kg 1x10.

Finishing work 5x10 press-ups.

In and out in 30 minutes.

168

Carrying on with the theme of ‘get in, get it done and get out’ this evenings pre work workout plan was for a short upper body session based on lat pulls paired with press-ups.

Tonight the gym was surprisingly quiet for what is usually the busiest zone but looked like a disasater zone with plates laying around everywhere and stations half set-up just as though a whole bunch of guys had literally just left without tidying up !!.

Anyway ,on the case and under the iron.

Lat pulls drop set starting at 82kg (quite a way over my normal working weight–around 65kg) going to failure at each weight and aiming to get up to 10 reps.

Warm up set approx 100lb x10
180 lbs x2 failure on 3rd
173 lbs X3 failure on 4th
169 lbs x4. etc
165 lbs x5.
158 lbs x6
154 lbs x6
150 lbs x7
143 lbs x8
138 lbs x9
134 lbs x10

Rest between each set = 10 x10 press-ups which has been a target for some time.

Main plan complete and a little time to spare so :
Deadlift
Bare bar warm up
132 lb second warm up x 10
Then 198 lbs 5x5.

And out…

169

Sounds like your vacation has done you good.

My wife is a CRNA and finally moved out of the hospital setting. Has had almost a month without 24 hour shifts now and it is starting to have all sorts of positive effects on her, though she now has me training to run a 5k three times a week (thank goodness we are supposed to work up to it, we had been walking a 4 miles track route before that happened).

You’ve really made great progress.

170

Elaikases–yes definitely, came back to planet hospital with a big flat bang !!, but seem to be back on the job today.

Shift pattern is probably the main problem i have to deal with in my training and in fact am sitting here in between calls thinking out how to work around that one. Part of the new post holiday plan is just making the effort to get in the gym on every working day and get some quality work done.

Null… thinking about your question about designing my own training programme, with time i intend to ‘think out loud’ for a while on a post to try and show the mental process (right or wrong) i am applying. At the moment it’s a bit of problem solving as the main issue is my work life that includes long (12 hour) night shifts, sometimes poor sleep and ‘groggy’ workouts.

A lot of this weels thinking is all around how to get in short effective ‘quaility’ workouts that will allow for progress.
Best discovery so far is basically eliminating much of rest time in between exercise by twinnning/pairing exercises eg tonights lat pulls and press-ups ,in a busy gym i can just use 1 station ie the lats machine and go immediately into press ups on the floor.
Basic stuff i know but today that meant my workout included 100 press ups almost as ‘free’ time exercise between the main effort of lat pulls probably doubling the actual time under load.

171

Continuing with the theme.

Thinking at the moment that i would like to try to get in my training sessions before each shift i have been making the effort to get in the gym of an evening and ‘get it done’.
The evening sessions seem to have worked so far although :
1.The gym is at it’s busiest then and it will often be the case that i can’t get on the station that i want eg last night because of a guy doing his db curls in the cage and ‘lads’ swinging on the lats machine and larking around !
2.Because of the timing it can be a bit of a rush to achieve anything.

So i have tried today to flip the coin and try a workout after my shift ie first thing in the morning, gym quiet.

Had a go at a bench session :
Bare bar warm up
30kg second warm up.
50 kg on the bar to see how things feel with a vie to going for a drop set–ok so repeated at 55 kg then thought why not go straight for a new target pb of 60kg.
Well --what happenned : got set up carefully, got under the bar nicely and pushed off the pins, that stage felt ok so committed to the eccentric, made a nicely controlled drop and pushed off my chest thinking ‘this will go’ and then completely stalled at my sticking point,almost panicked but managed to re-rack on the bottom pins . phew !!.

So-immediate failure on a new bench pb !
Carried on :
did then manage 57.5kg x1 which is my previous best.
then 55kg x 2 singles
52.5 1x3
50.0 kg 1x5
47.7 1 x 5
45.0 1x7
42.5 1x8
40.0 1x10.

(all mixed with rack chins between sets)

As an experiment i can’t say that it was a success, it felt like really hard work and later at home i feel that i have only had a poor sleep day as a result.

Some thoughts are :
I might have been just pre-fatigued by the night shift (no proper break)
Might have been just too close to the previous lifting session (lats and press-ups).
Might just be the wrong time to try or heavy sessions.

I would like to continue this idea of getting in sessions before and after work, before work looks like it will go as long as i can make them short and effective but i have to admit that the after work wasn’t a success.

I am going to continue with this experiment of working in different ways over the next few weeks before setting a new training plan.

Any thoughts on training twice a day and before/after work and when fatigued would be a real help.

172

Will you have continual night shifts, or will you be changing between shifts? When I went on a night shift, it took a few days to adjust, but once I stayed on it, did fine.

173

[quote]cavalier wrote:
Will you have continual night shifts, or will you be changing between shifts? When I went on a night shift, it took a few days to adjust, but once I stayed on it, did fine.[/quote]

Cav-- i work nights most of the time. My regular work pattern is 2 work 3 or 4 shifts as a set and the have 3 or 3 days off. Sometimes it works out that i have nearly a whole week off and then end up working 7 or 8 shifts back to back.

The experiment is to try to get a significant amount ofmy training done during my ‘working’ week rather than on days off–mainly because my training was impacting on everything else.

What this means is a bit of organisation on my part to get out of bed a bit earlier, get to the gym on the way to work and get in a shorter but more effective workout.

Main problems are committing to roling out of bed when really tired and then making sense of a busy gym where i amy not be able to do exactly what i want to do o that session.

Thats why i have been expermemnting with the pre-work training and seeing what i can get done within 30-35 minutes which seems to be about tye time slot i will have.
Other things are : experiments with workouts after shifts like today when really fatigued and secondly working out at home --now i have the kbs and thinking about other kit at home to save on gym trips which simply take up too much time , especially if twice day training.

I will still have 1 luxury (time) session per week when i can go at ideal time and spend more time at the gym.

174

Tonights effort pre work.

Conditioning.
3 rounds of :

rower 500m
weighted step-ups (20kg) x20 left and right
kb swing (16kg) x 20
clean and press (vipr 20kg) x 15
kb squat 24kg x12.

Felt like hard going tonight although to be fair i was really trying to work through each round without a break so where i might usually split the clean/press into 3 sets of 5 i just did it as 1 continous blast.
I think it is supposed to be hard–didn’t need the bucket though !!

175

[quote]big nurse wrote:
Continuing with the theme.

…
1.The gym is at it’s busiest then and it will often be the case that i can’t get on the station that i want eg last night because of a guy doing his db curls in the cage and ‘lads’ swinging on the lats machine and larking around !
[/quote]

Uh,
I ask them if I can work in, or how many sets do they have left.

Usually those just putzing around leave quickly.

176

Wow. Lots going on here.

Seems like you’ve had a lot of positive experiences/revelations lately. Sometimes I marvel that repeatedly moving heavy objects has such a big impact on my life. And I sometimes wonder how the pioneers would just stare slack-jawed at all the “work” being done to no fruition. Funny.

What the hell kind of program are you following now?

177

[quote]kpsnap wrote:
Wow. Lots going on here.

Seems like you’ve had a lot of positive experiences/revelations lately. Sometimes I marvel that repeatedly moving heavy objects has such a big impact on my life. And I sometimes wonder how the pioneers would just stare slack-jawed at all the “work” being done to no fruition. Funny.

What the hell kind of program are you following now?[/quote]

Well i have just been writing up the plan for this week , which is experimental.

The ‘rules’ are still :
Keep it simple
Keep it big (compound)
Keep it heavy (relative to ability)

I still want to keep stripping off the body fat while continuing the beginner gains.

However what i was saying earlier is that over the last few months my training hs taken up large parts of the useful parts of my days off–in part due to the problem of not sleeping well at night-getting up late etc. This has badly impacted on everything else that i would normally be doing.

This weeks experiment is simply about time management and also the discipline of training when i am in a fatigued state.
I finish this et of shifts in a few hours time and having trained every day for the last few intend to have a day off.

Then it looks like :
Wednesday will be long training sessions day in which i intend :

  1. Long walk route to gym
    2.All body workout (volume) something like 50 reps per body part exercise.
    3.Workload–probably load carrying–some nice firewood to pick up and split.
    4.Home based conditioning.

On friday i start shifts again but can get a good workout on the way in so that will be a split (probably lower bod).
Sat pre shift will probebly be either the other half split or conditioning and then sunday will the opposite.

The actual programme is still based around the big compound lifts but with an emphasis on volume on the 'long’day and and the emphasis on heavier weight using a 5x5 or similar on the split days.
On the split days what i think i will do is just choose 1 major exercise eg lat pulls and pair that with a body weight exercise eg press-ups, seems to be a good use of available time.
A neat discovery at work is the stairs in our main tower block which is a neat way of getting sneak cardio as well !!

This weeks project work must get going as well which is to continue working on the boat–also want to get a slosh tube made and start building a proper work bench in the garage.

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So : 2 days off and got a load of stuff done.
Cleared the garage out and got 5 bags of rubbish out to the skip.
Took the sails and gear down to the boat.
Picked up 2 new marine batterie and got them to the boat.
Gave the boat a clean,tidy and stow.

Slept down on the boat last night, yesterdays ‘exercise’ turned into a ‘farmers carry’ of the new batteries. (heavy beasts)

Today bit of a late start, had to drive back from the boat and pick up training kit.

Long walk route to gym .

Gym amazingly quiet-hardly anybody on free weights.

So:
Squat sets alternating rear barbell squat with goblet squat and alternating all those on lat pull downs to minimise rest time.
Bare bar warm up 1x10.
Rear squat 45 kg 1x10 (increase in weight by 5 kg for my first set)
Goblet squat
25kg kb 1x10
Rear squat 55kg 1x10 (again 10kg higher than usual)
Goblet squat 32kg db. 1x10
Rear squat 57.5kg 1x10 (but struggling for depth)
Goblet squat 34kg db 1x10.

In between each squat set 1 set on the lats pull down.
Weight set at 68kg
1x8 (+2)
1x8 (+2)
1x8 (+2)
1x8 (+2)
ran into failure at around this point so last 2 sets were around 5-6 reps + a couple each time.

Then bench press paired with seated cable row.
Bare bar warm up 1x10
30 kg warm up 1x10
Then weight set at 45 kg and going to failure each time ,something like :
1x8
1x8
1x7
1x6
1x5
1x5
Alternating with seated cable row 64kg sets of 8-10 (about 6 sets, lost count)

Incline leg press aiming for ‘pyramid’ with intention of going to previous pb and back.
80kg warm up 1x10
100kg 1x10
120kg 1x10
150kg 1x8
170 kg 1x8
190kg 1x5
210kg 1x5
190kg 1x5
170kg 1x8
150kg 1x8
Gave up there.

Just reviewing the work at the end of the week and realised i have pressed a new personal best on the incline leg press, 210 kg or 462 lbs.

Finishing with :
Standing press bare bar barbell 3x10
Farmers walk with 2x20 kg plates 2x twice around gym
Push press 30kg 1x5–failure, no gas in tank.

All in all it felt like an overall increase in work output which is what i am aiming for.

On way home, walk through woods so found a nice piece of oak to have a fight with so added a log carry, guessing about 60-65 lbs and awkward.

179

Very sore and ‘heavy’ today, seem to get a lot more doms with the longer session.

Oh well, conditioning and walk today.

Walk and run to gym.

Then 2 and a bit rounds of :
Rower 500m (around 1.48-1.51 each)
Step ups 20 each l&r + 20kg vipr
Clean and press 15r+ 20kg vipr
Kb swing 20 (16kg)
Kb goblet squat 25 kg x12

Then ;
farmers walk with 2 x 25kg kb 2 circuits of gym.
Nice walk home.

180

[quote]big nurse wrote:
Very sore and ‘heavy’ today, seem to get a lot more doms with the longer session.

Oh well, conditioning and walk today.[/quote]

hmmm, i get more DOMS when i have longer days in between.

:slight_smile: