Lats Are Like Your Back (P3C4P1)

Posted: July 11th, 2010 | Author: ERIC | Filed under: Body | Tags: bro, curl, deadlift, dumbbell, incline bench, lateral raise, lats, power, pushdown, RDL | No Comments »

Really, all I remember from yesterday that I didn’t note down was the “I’m such an exercise geek” broski next to me when I was working delts.

Bro1: Nah man I don’t do direct ab shit, that’s all about fat loss y’know?
(I’m quiet.)
Bro2: Yeah I guess, but once the fat’s gone there has to be something under it to show off right?
(I nod to myself, I might have smiled but my shoulders were screaming.)
Bro1: I’ve been cuttin’ up for a while. I’mma hit some lats in a minute next to mah man here. My arms’ been leaning up real nice.
(Do what? Whose man? He sits in the lateral raise machine next to me and pounds out a set, lots of reps. I’m moderate reps so, even though he started his set before me, I still finish sooner.)
Bro1: Damn man, you liftin’ pretty light huh?
Me: (I actually didn’t say anything, but I mistakenly managed to acknowledge him.)
Bro1: You trying to build up your lats?
Me: Not at the moment.
Bro1: What are you doing then?
Me: My… shoulders.
Bro1: You should lift more if you wanna build ‘em up.
Me: (I look over at his stack. He really did a lot of reps. I didn’t count him, but he wasn’t lifting anywhere near as much as me. I still ask.) How much do you lift?
Bro1: Every day. (err’day?)
Me: I don’t see you here every day.
Bro1: That’s cuz you ain’t here every day.
Me: …Yet you are?
Bro1: Yeup.
Me: Do you work your lats every day?
Bro1: Sometimes.
(Head explodes.)
Me: You do rows or chins?
Bro1: For my lats or my back?
Me: Silly question, where are your lats?
Bro1: (he taps his shoulder)
Me: Oh.
Bro1: They compound exercises (ezzrsizes?) though. Hits my back and my lats. AND MY ABS. (Bro2 flips him off.)
Me: They… sure do…
Bro1: I’m kinda an exercise geek, you know?
Me: Oh, I know man. I got you. I also got a set, hang on.

Conversation doesn’t resume as I make my way through the drop sets. I fortunately don’t have to explain the concept to him.

Power Workout for July 9, 2010

These are all straight sets. I have tiiiime~

Romanian Deadlift

1. 75lbs x 5 (hook grip)
2. 110 x 3 (hg)

Deadlift

1. 145lbs x 2 (hook grip is slipping now)
2. 185 x 3 (right / left) ~ Increasing.
3. 165 x 2 (left / right) ~ Questioned my form on the top set but the red flag didn’t shoot up until this set. Staying this weight.

I think I might eliminate RDL and do solely DL. I need more practice, and I’ll put more warm-up sets in if I have to in order to get that.

Incline Bench

1. 45lbs x 5
2. 55 x 3
3. 75 x 2
4. 95 x 3 ~ increase
5. 85 x 4 ~ increase
6. 75 x 6 ~ increase
7. 65 x 8 ~ increase

The range for the top set is 3-5, adding one rep to the range each drop set at least. This exercise went surprisingly well.

Lateral Raise

1. 55lbs x 3
2. 75 x 2
3. 95 x 2 ~ stay
4. 85 x 3 ~ stay (I almost forgot that Always was playing during this set. I make a note of it whenever I get HARMONY’d or RickRoll’d….)
5. 75 x 5 ~ increase
6. 65 x 7 ~ increase

I just don’t have it in me to do pulldowns after deadlifts on the same day, I guess. So I skipped working my lats.

Or did I?

Pushdown

1. 32.5lbs x 3
2. 42.5 x 2
3. 52.5 x 2 ~ stay. I’m officially past halfway to pushing the entire stack, haha!
4. 42.5 x 7 ~ stay.

I almost was going to increase the drop set, but then I realized that the range for the triceps-isolation work is 5-7 not 3-5. Which means the top of the drop set is 6-8. One more rep!

I decided on this exercise that if the drop-10% is not exactly 5lbs or less, I won’t round it to 5lbs. I’ll round it to the next highest increment and try to make it to the top of the rep range first.

Dumbbell Curl

1. 5lbs x 5
2. 10 x 5
3. 15 x 5
4. 20 x 1
5. 15 x 5

I wanted to have a fifth movement in for the workout but I didn’t know what to do. I did a 5 rep ceiling and just went along to see where I’d end up. Turns out I have really weak biceps. Who knew? Well, I guess that’s a good sign for my lats, I know my arms aren’t pulling THAT MUCH weight, hahaha…

Oh well.

I just felt really nauseated about the prospect of doing chins (I really pull my abs in hard when I do them) so hopefully on my next carb load I’ll have enough time to digest more of the food before the power workout. It’ll be at least a 24-hour refeed this week.

I don’t really know if I want to do creatine for all my loads now or not. It seemed to have really help me put water in the right places in such a short span. I remember reading that one day of creatine loading is like two days of carb loading, which convinced me to try it given my time limitation. I might try this next refeed without, though, just to see if I have similar results with two-day-carb vs. one-day-carb-with-creatine.

Weight: 169lbs
BF%: 16.6%

I thought it was pretty amusing that the bodyfat % was largely unchanged despite the fact that weight went up so much. Goes to show the accuracy of bio-impedance. I’ll use it as indicative of a successful carb load.

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DOMS Day

Posted: December 27th, 2009 | Author: ERIC | Filed under: Body | Tags: abs, Alec Baldwin, Alton Brown, Artesia, bench, Body, calf raise, carbs, Christmas, crunch, curl, DOMS, dumbbell, fat, fly, Gunnerkrigg Court, horizontal row, lateral raise, Love and Rockets, nauseous, nautilus, partitioning magic, pecs, Pee Wee, puke, pushdown, short shorts, squats, strength, sweaty fucking prick, Ultimatum, vertigo, volume, vomit, weight, Zombies vs. Robots | No Comments »

I had a pretty long workout yesterday. I was tired when I got home, and though I stayed up rather late I wanted to enjoy some non-DOMS time. I knew as soon as I woke up I’d be sore and ache all over. I am.

From a pure-strength perspective, yesterday’s workout was a little… meh. I still had a belly full of Christmas foods, and I think this compromised my benching form. When I activated my pecs I think it interacted unfavorably with this food, and I subconsciously began benching with my arms. It wasn’t until my second set of incline benches (incline bench is always where I really start to feel my chest anyway) that I realized my elbows were tucking in. I dropped the weight and did a third set and deliberately jutted my elbows out. I felt like an idiot for not having caught this sooner.

Wasted session.

After the strength maintenance work I went about the depletion routine. I’ve been eating a lot of carbs in the latter half of the week (though surprisingly few at the beginning of, which nearly balances me calorically.) I either wanted to burn the sugar already saturating my muscles, or I hoped that if I hadn’t fully digested all of that food yet that I could get some tardy partitioning on my side.

Onto the numbers:

Body Weight: 159lbs
Body Fat%: 18.6% (fully loaded; still made me a little grouchy with myself.)

Flat Bench

1. 45lbs. x  5
2. 60lbs. x 4
3. 80lbs. x 2 (machine) ~ end of warm-up
4. 100lbs. x 3 (machine)
5. 95lbs. x 1

I moved to the machine because the first two warm-ups seemed unusually difficult. I attribute this to lack of adequate rest between warm-ups which I ordinarily afford myself. Lack of patience lead to lack of reps, though I did hit my goal of three reps on the top set. My elbows always do what they’re supposed to on the machines but I had two major problems which led me back to the bar for the final set: hand spacing is horrendous/hurts my wrists; nasty sweaty prick stole the machine while I was getting a drink of water.

He was really gross. He didn’t offer to let me work in or anything, and I probably would have barfed on him if he had. Ugh. He came over while I was using it, asked me how long I had on it (“about three more sets, I just got here”) and after one set I put my workout log on the seat and went to the nearest water fountain to sip some water. Come back, he’s dripping all over the seat. Notebook’s on the floor. I grab my book, snicker at his calves, and go back to the floor.

Incline Bench

1. 85lbs. x 4
2. 70lbs. x 5
3. 65lbs. x 5

The top set I arguably shortchanged myself on. I don’t know where the failure was coming from, arms or chest (I didn’t know under stress of the bar, I didn’t think about it on the spot while I was writing in the log, and I can’t remember besides) but I could have probably screamed out a fifth rep on the top set. I had a lot more working out to do, and my goal was 4 reps for today, so I just left it to that.

Second set, as I said, was the “oh shit I’ve been doing it wrong” set, verified by the light final set I used solely to check form. I’m a doofus.

Incline Fly

25lbs. x 4, 4, 2

Nothing changed from last week.

I didn’t have my glasses on, so I got to play “who’s that look like?“:

• Had Alton Brown doing strict curls and rear lateral raises
• Pee-Wee Power Curls (with calf raise)
• My ex standing above my head (if you look at the mirror from the bench I was on) doing whatever she was doing. She had cool yellow short shorts, though, so I knew it wasn’t actually the ex. Still couldn’t look at her directly though. MIRRORS ONLY, COWARD!

Nautilus Abs

3 x 5 @ 60lbs.

I checked the other machine, it’s a “Life Fitness” brand ab worker. I love my gym. It has abs, biceps, and triceps in its own “wing” of the gym, near the pool, squash, and basketball courts. It’s also the closest section of machines (though to be fair it has benches with the vertical handles so you can do reverse crunches, and a mat with medicine balls) to the locker rooms. Presumably so you can pump up your abs/guns and run to the mirrors/pool as quickly as possible.

Speaking of, still playing the celebrity lookalike game: Alec Baldwin was doing some combination of limited ROM shoulder press + tricep extension with a cable machine, further down the line than the Life Fitness ab destructinator.

Oh, and I finally heard that “Poker Face” song while I was working abs. I was not amused. But, abs were the only thing I progressed on for-reals this session. So whatever.

RELATIVELY HIGH VOLUME TIME, GOOO~!

Round One

1. Horizontal Row: 3 x 15 @ 45lbs.
2. Dumbbell Lateral Raise: 13 @ 10lbs; 2 x 15 @ 5lbs.
3. Squats: 3 x 15 @ 45lbs.
4. Standing Calf Raise Machine: 3 x 15 @ 30lbs.
5. Dumbbell Curl: 2 x 15 @ 8lbs. (Pee Wee came by and did his power curls to show me how to lift 65lbs. Thanks bro. This weight was perfect for me, though.)
6. Cable Tricep Pushdowns (w/rope): 2 x 15 @ 30lbs. (Could have done 35, but probably not 40lbs., but the station didn’t have 5lbs. jumps.)

7 minute rest. Each numbered item was done straight through, so all the rows and then all the raises, and then all the squats, etc. 30-60 seconds between sets, no more than 2 minutes between exercises.

Round Two

1. Horizontal Row: 3 x 15 @ 45lbs.
2. Squats: 2 x 15 @ 45lbs.
3. Calf Raise: 3 x 15 @ 30lbs.

My shoulders are fried. I was starting to feel mighty nauseous before my second set of squats this round, and on the ninth rep vertigo hit me. I completed the set but decided not to risk a final one.

Overall, it was a good workout. Took me a total of about three hours to complete. Went to Barnes & Noble afterward and read some comics for a few hours. My arms were all pumped, and it turns out I have traps. I got some interesting looks when I took my coat off. Should have worn a bigger shirt.

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