First post! I’ve been a weak willed little piss ant and I’m changing that now. I began lifting my senior year of highschool and made good progress for a while then after a year of community college I moved away on my own and my training slowly trickled down to a halt after a year or so with a few short-lived attempts at making a comeback. For a while a few intense training sessions and an active life-style kept my physique at an acceptable level, but now I’ve been out of the game for so long that it makes me sick to look at my deflated chest in the morning. My own laziness and lack of focus are the culprit, but I’m tired of that shit. Today I’m stepping my weak ass back inside the gym to train my ass off and never look back.
My goals are simple: I want to look great, feel great, and regain that sense of power I had when I felt strong. I am not interested in bodybuilding as much as I am strength and athleticism, and overall health is of prime importance to me, so eating clean and conditioning will play a huge role in my quest. Initially I don’t plan on following a routine until I get the basics down, meaning I plan on reacquainting myself with and mastering the squat, deadlift, and hopefully a pain-free bench-press (shoulders are somewhat fucked up from ignorant lifting when I was younger, but with some stretching, soft-tissue work, and mobility drills I’ve been doing as of late they are feeling better). Soon after I will start Eric Cressey’s Maximum Strength Program.
Nutrition wise I will be doing a lot more cooking instead of eating out and eventually I plan on purchasing Precision Nutrition. As far as conditioning, I am pretty active already (regular intervals of racquetball, rock climbing, mountain biking and other outdoor fun) but I plan on implementing some basic jogging and work my way up to HIIT and complexes.
In the past I’ve usually had one aspect of training (diet, lifting, or conditioning) where I wanted it to be but never all three at the same time, and I must say I’m pretty damn excited to see what I can accomplish with a solid triad working for me.
I’ll be posting my session later today after I do it, and get some stats, pics, and personal information up soon.
Time to nut up or shut up.
I finally made it into the gym. I just went to the gym my girlfriend goes to, going as her guest. Its so close that we can walk to it from our apartment. They finally added a squat rack so I think I’ll get a membership there since its so damn convenient and my university’s recreation center is always busy. Since starting this log and up until now I’ve been eating extremely clean, played racquetball once and did some pull-ups at my apartment earlier during the week.
Slow start, but today I finally got under the bar and it felt good. I decided I need to begin Eric Cressey’s Maximum Strength Program as soon as possible, because I just felt lost in the gym today. I did dips, cable rows, curls, and a cable machine for chest. The only thing noteworthy that I did (to me) was working up to 2 sets of 5 reps with 225lbs on the back squat. I feel this is a pretty good start.
I’ll be beginning Maximum Strength in just over two weeks; I don’t want to start it now because its a 4 day a week program and I’ll be out of town the next two weekends. In the meantime I’m going to continue eating clean and experimenting in the kitchen (thanks to Shugart for inspiration and ideas) while practicing the big lifts. I’m also going to start recording my lifts between sets in my logbook like I used to do a while back. Despite my late start to get under the bar, my diet this week has been impeccable, in fact I think I’ve eaten healthier this past week than I have for any other straight week in my life.
Hour and a half of racquetball
Lifted after test tonight, almost all of my sets include warm-up sets with increasing weight, but I’ll only post my work sets
Squat 35 215
Cable Row 310 90 (machine on the floor, can do around 120 for reps on on most cable row machines)
Chins in between row sets (only got a few each time)
Incline BB bench 45 135, bar to chest, pretty easy actually, still getting form down and testing shoulder limits
BB curls 212, 16,5,3, both with 50, biceps pretty tired, first two sets hard towards the end and had to rest between some reps on the last set
lateral raises between last two curl sets, 210-12 with 10 lb dbs
When I started my log I was pretty behind in school and didn’t have much time to lift, as of today I am caught up and shouldn’t get as tied down by studying again if I keep up with my work. My diet has been great, trying to incorporate more vegetables into my diet, got about a pound in today, I think between a 1-2 pounds a day will be very manageable.
Since starting this log I’ve lost almost 5 pounds.
Maximum strength was my first real program, and I loved it and thought it was exactly what I needed at the time, a book to tell me exactly everything I need to do in the gym. I made some really good gains on it, mostly because it was my first time actually doing hard work in the gym. Goodluck!
Thanks man! I’m starting on Friday 
I decided to hold off a bit before I start a program, I need to test my shoulder limits some more. I lifted today and also played rball for about an hour and a half.
Deadlifted 245 5*5 with good speed even on the last set, I’m gunna do more weight next time.
Benching didn’t go very well, my shoulders hurt so I stopped. I’m gunna try the hammer strength bench machine or whatever its called, I haven’t done anything but free-weights since I first started lifting, but hopefully it will let me do some chest work pain-free.