Lats Are Like Your Back (P3C4P1)

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.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Progress Excites Me (P1C2WA1)

I just realized I started my second workout cycle yesterday. Awwriiight~

It was a highly unexpected result, my measures, as I still feel like I’m vastly overeating. I’m still recording on paper when and how much of whatever I’m eating, but I’m not tracking the calories on The Daily Plate.

I’m not as anal about how much I’m eating as I used to be. Granted, it has to be less than enough, but what I’m doing now can be best-described as eating until I’m full once a day. If I mysteriously put on weight, I can easily backtrack into my records and tabulate the calories. If the numbers make sense, then I know I ate too much and I’ll have to back off. If they don’t quite, or there’s a lot of carbs in there, well! Water weight.

I’m slowly introducing a little more cardio, here-and-there. I don’t really have a set plan with it. I’m tentatively looking at days that I do yohimbine (fasted-cardio style), or post-workout. Something about fat being released into the bloodstream from the Y or the high-intensity activity, that makes me want to include cardio at those times. More on this in another post. I haven’t been as tenacious in my physiological studies as I used to be.

Saturday Cardio

1. 6:45AM: 15mg Yohimbine HCL + 200mg Caffeine (since I haven’t been posting on this as much, in the future this will be referred to as YC much like the ephedrine+caffeine stack is referred to as EC.)
2. 7:23AM: Slow warm-up. Easy-walking for about 12 minutes.
3. 7:35AM: Speed walking. Just walking quickly enough for it to be uncomfortable, for about 40 minutes.
4. 8:15AM: I didn’t plan my route, so when time was up I had to walk back home. Another 12 minutes.

Something I noted was that I had a really high blood sugar. I should have tested much, much earlier (on the order of around midnight, I’d say) but since I had only just realized it a couple of minutes after taking my YC, I just tested right then, at 380mg/dL. Insulin counteracts the effects of yohimbine, so I just went and did my cardio anyway.

A few minutes after I got home (around 8:30AM) I tested again at 292mg/dL. Still really high, but an 88-point drop is pretty significant. I don’t know if that would have worked from 188 to 100 (I don’t know why it wouldn’t but I’m not going to make that claim), but I think doing cardio with an untested threshold made the higher level of sugar a decent “safety net” though I wouldn’t ordinarily like to be anywhere near that high.

Workout for Sunday, June 6, 2010

Before leaving for the gym: EC1 @ 9:45AM

Bench Press

1. 45lbs. x 5
2. 50 x 3
3. 70 x 2
4. 90 x 7 (felt 50/50 on making the 8th rep; I decided not to risk it.)
5. 85 x 9

I’m going to increase this next workout.

Incline Press Machine

1. 45lbs. x 5
2. 75 x 3
3. 90 x 2
4. 120 x 4

Okay. Screw this machine. I can’t find a suitable place to set the lever (it’s either too-high to be useful or too low to not be damaging to my shoulders) so I’ll be moving back to the free-weight version.

Hammer-grip Horizontal Press Machine

1. 55lbs. x 3
2. 70 x 2
3. 90 x 8

Shoulders are bugging me now.

Pushdown

1. 32.5lbs. x 5
2. 37.5 x 2
3. 42.5 x 9

I cheated a tenth rep so I’m not counting it, making this fall below my desired range for increase. Next workout I’m dropping the first warm-up set to 3 reps, but keeping everything else. If I make 10 reps on A2 then I can increase the weight.

Pulldown

1. 45lbs. x 5
2. 70 x 3
3. 90 x 2
4. 115 x 6

I very nearly almost skipped doing these. I was hearing all sorts of excuses in my head during the tricep exercises. I switched on autopilot and let the excuses fly, hammering out possibly the best-form round of pulldowns I’ve ever done in my life. FUCK YEAH. Increasing the weight next workout.

Weighted Crunch Machine

1. 30lbs. x 5
2. 45 x 3
3. 60 x 2
4. 75 x 5

This isn’t, probably, going to be a regular exercise, but I thought in an effort to combat staleness in my routine I’d stick in a ‘reward’ exercise at the end. I chose crunches over calf raises because I’ve got something nasty happening on my left big toe joint and I’d like to establish that it’s not an infection before I harass it much more than I have.

Body Weight: 160.5lbs

Body Fat Percentage: 13.7% ~ I totally didn’t believe a lick of this, though before I saw it I mistook my BMI for my bodyfat percentage and had a mini-heart attack (23.7!?) I redid this reading multiple times and 13.7 was the first one to show up three times so I took it down. It was also the second-highest in the range (13.8 beat it) so it panders to my inner-pessimist.

Condition: B. ~ I very BARELY made it to the gym today. Had to roll off the couch and run down the parking lot in my underwear to make the ride to the gym, but I DID. So, yeah. I’m probably disproportionately proud of myself for having done that. Screw it.

Time in: 10AM
Time out: 12:35PM

I finished the workout at 12:20 but I sat in the locker room debating cardio for 15 minutes before I decided to leave and, if I started to regret it later… just do it later!

So I Regretted It and Came Back and This Is Treadmill

1. 1:42PM: EC2
2. 2:23PM: back in the gym. Warm-Up: 10 minutes at 2 incline/2mph. Heart Rate 102bpm
3. 2:35PM: HIIT: 5.5 minutes. Started and stopped with jog @ 4.5mph for 1.5min; run @ 6mph for 30sec. Incline set to 3 for both. Heart Rate 178bpm
4. 2:41PM: Rest. Talked to DJ in the locker room about cutting. He’s bulking, but cut for beach season.
5. 2:53PM: Steady State: 40 minutes at 3 incline/3mph. Heart Rate 135bpm
6. 3:35PM: Done.

I cut the HIIT short because I just am not fit enough for it. I was sweating and wheezing and my legs felt like they were going to fail out on me at any moment. (I wanted to total 10 minutes.)

So, then, while doing the steady state stuff I kept trying to convince myself to stop. But there weren’t any physical signs of needing to stop early, and any excuse I could come up with was quite easily squashed with “you’re not going to be burning any more fat than you are right now.”

But man, when 40 hit the clock I was off.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Feversore

Believe me, nothing is trivial.

I am sick. First time this year. It’s destroying my diet.

I worked out anyway. Headcold I told myself. Whatever.

Workout for Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Pulldown

1. 45lbs x 5
2. 45 x 6
3. 50 x 5
4. 70 x 3
5. 90 x 2
6. 110 x 3 (form is good, weight stays)
7. 100 x 4 (form is good, weight stays)
8. 90 x 5 (EASY, weight increases)

Incline Press

1. 45lbs x 5
2. 45 x 5
3. 45 x 5
4. 60 x 3
5. 75 x 2
6. 90 x 5 (easy, increase)
7. 75 x 6 (good, increase)

Something I have to note, though, is that the weight jumps on the incline machine only go 15lbs. at a time. I really don’t think I’m going to be able to push 105lbs., but I also think 90lbs is too easy for this rep range, so I’ll just try to get in one or two more reps. I’ll set the ceiling for this lift at 8 reps at the present weight. A 15-pound jump would be an increase of nearly 16%, which would probably knock out like six reps from the previous weight. So I’ll wait until I could crank out at least two reps before I attempt an increase. My math kind of sucks.

Lateral Raises

1. 30lbs x 3
2. 45 x 2
3. 55 x 8 (easy, increase)
4. 50 x 6 (okay; increase)
5. 45 x 6.5 (was getting weak but still more than five reps, increase!)

I abbreviated the warm-up for this exercise because my shoulders are already pretty warm, generally, from the first two exercises. This turned out to be a winning idea.

I was planning on doing twists but these black guys were having a threesome under the pulleys so I decided against that.

Met this cool dude working his anterior delts next to me, name’s BRIAN. He’s like twice my age and his shoulders are the size of my head. I like that guy. He was black too.

Popularity: 4% [?]

You Gotta Jack-in With Your Ponytail

I haven't pooped in like three days :(

I’m going to jump right into the numbers and ramble afterward:

Deadlift

1. 80lbs x 5
2. 80lbs x 5
3. 120lbs x 3
4. 170lbs x 2
5. 205lbs x 3 (left under)
6. 185lbs x 2 (left over)

I “left one in the tank” on both work sets. I’m now recording my warm-ups, so the last two sets are what I would normally be reporting.

The last set felt weird besides, though. Just got a bad feeling about it, and I went with it.

Lat Pulldown

1. 45lbs x 5
2. 45lbs x 5
3. 55lbs x 5
4. 70lbs x 3
5. 85lbs x 2
6. 100lbs x 4 (one less than I would have liked, but it’s progress)
7. 90lbs x 5 (the best set of this session)

On set 6 I attempted a fifth rep but got stuck. I held it and did a slow negative. Again, last two sets are the work sets.

The next two exercises don’t have specific warm-ups.

Horizontal Row
3 x 5 @ 80lbs.

I forgot to stretch my shoulders before the first set, but I cranked out all five reps besides. Then I stretched and did the second set, cranked out another five.

Then I remembered I’m supposed to explode concentrically, and the third set was a breeze. I will probably stay this weight, though. I don’t like how involved my arms got, and I don’t think my lats were truly handling this weight.

Nautilus Abs
3 x 5 @ 65lbs.

I don’t think I’m going to work abs both days anymore. It’s making me lurch forward. Just deadlift days is fine. Nevertheless, this was waaay too easy. The next plate jump puts me at 80lbs, and I did a single rep of that just out of curiosity.

I’ll be doing 80lbs. next week.

I decided to ditch my show prep. I highly doubt they’re going to select me, and it’s not worth having such a thrown diet. It was useful prep for the Christmas events, since I evened out just a touch above maintenance rather than thousands over, for the week.

Physiologically I was primed for this workout, but mentally trashed. Went to see Avatar with some friends, then wound up chatting until six in the morning (NOT about Avatar. That conversation ended ten minutes after it started:

“Would you want to do the Avatar program if you could?”
“No.”
“Seriously? Why not?”
“I already know what it’s like to have proportionally puny lats. I don’t like it.”)

The only miss as far as how my body felt, though, was this ridiculous level of constipation I’ve been dealing with. All this food is pushing my belly out in a rather discouraging way. I tried to pay attention to my shoulders in the gym mirrors, ugh.

And despite the bloaty chunkiness, I’m still 160lbs. So uh. I lost weight. Yeah. I just don’t know how much.

Popularity: 2% [?]