Countdown to 21: First Workout (Part Three)

This part of the workout started at 1:45PM.

During my break between sessions I talked to a fella who I’ve seen every day I’ve spent more than two hours at the gym. Easily the leanest motherfucker there year-round (probably to his detriment given his mass goals,) I finally introduced myself and asked him some questions about his methods. In that order, reversed.

Name’s Ryan, turns out he works in a town neighboring mine. Might try to get a job there myself this Spring.

Cool guy.

Leg Press

1. 70lbs. x 10
2. 70 x 10
3. 70 x 10

Leg Curl

1. 40lbs. x 12

Calf Raise

1. 60lbs. x 12
2. 60 x 12

Flat Bench

1. 55lbs. x 12
2. 55 x 12
3. 55 x 12

Wide-Grip Cable Row

1. 60lbs. x 10
2. 60 x 12
3. 60 x 12

Lateral Raise

1. 65lbs. x 10 (stay)

Pulldown

1. 70lbs. x 12
2. 70 x 12

Of note, I did this in a quasi-circuit fashion. There were long rest periods (but less than five minutes if possible) between sets, but I did all the “1″ sets, then all the “2″ sets (so the “2″ didn’t include leg curls or lateral raises, etc.)

BREAK TIME: 3:41PM

Still have a lot of time to kill. I take a twenty-minute break before deciding to work my chest and back with light weights to failure instead of doing cardio. Lol. Again, I’m cycling through the movments, with maybe 2 or 3 minutes of rest between sets. Somewhere in there I had to stop for 8 for a phone call that reminds me that one should never answer one’s phone at the gym under any circumstances.

Bench Press

1. 45lbs. x 20
2. 55 x 20 (slowing down already)
3. 45 x 10
4. 45 x 11
5. 45 x 10

Narrow-Grip Cable Row

1. 10 or 15lbs. x 20 (the lightest isn’t labeled.)
2. 30 x 20
3. 30 x 20
4. 45 x 20
5. 45 x 20

Pulldown

1. 25lbs. x 20 (started with 10 and it was so comically light I’m not going to count it)
2. 40 x 20
3. 55 x 20 (getting tough)
4. 55 x 15
5. 40 x 20
6. 40 x 14
7. 25 x 20
8. 25 x 20
9. 25 x 20
10. 25 x 50

FINISHED: 5:41PM

And that was that.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Depletion Bump

This workout made me consider the wisdom of increasing the weight on my volume workout.

Even more so now, two days later, with raped hamstrings.

Workout for Thursday, December 2, 2010

Body Weight: 169lbs.
Body Fat Percentage: 16.7%

NOTE: Constipated…

START: 10:08AM
STOP: 1:19PM

Pre-Workout: EC1 (50/200mg) @ 8:15AM

3 x 15, no weight changes between sets but I’ll note what the increase was from previous workouts, as well as changes in rest periods throughout the workout.

• Leg Press (55lbs.; +5) ~ 1 minute rest
• Leg Curl (35lbs.; +5)
• Calf Raise (45lbs.; +15) ~ 1.5 min rest
• Leg Press
• Leg Curl
• Calf Raise ~ 2 min rest
• Leg Press
• Leg Curl
• Leg Press
• Leg Curl
• Calf Raise ~ 2.5 min rest

10 minute break.

• Bench Press (50lbs.; +5) ~ 2 min rest
• Cable Row (45lbs.; +0)
• Bench Press
• Cable Row

EC2 (25/200mg) @ 12:15PM

• DB Incline Press (30lbs.; +0) ~ 2 min rest
• Pulldown (35lbs.; +5)
• Machine Lateral Raise (20lbs.; +0)
• DB Incline Press
• Pulldown
• Machine Lateral Raise

I finish up here. I had to cut things short (heh) because I’d gotten a call from my dad, who wanted to take me out to lunch. Not about to refuse a free ride home,  y’know?

So I just decided to not sweat skipping the arms/abs/cardio on this day.

I did take some time to think about how to increase the poundages for this workout, however.

What I decided on was this:

1. Determine the tonnage for the bottom of the rep range at the new weight. (For example: Cable Rows can only be increased in jumps of 15lbs. The next jump up for me would be 60lbs. 60 x 12 = 720lbs.)
2. Divide the determined tonnage by the present weight. (720lbs./45lbs.)
3. The result is the top of the rep range to work towards (16)

HOWEVER.

The only time I will increase the weight on depletion exercises when I am returning from a diet break. If I hit the ceiling on all my lifts here and I still have three cycles (meaning three more depletion workouts) to go: DEAL WITH IT.

The weight stays the same and I won’t likely go for more reps unless it’s really, mind-numbingly easy to perform them.

I may progress slower even still, such as if I hit the ceiling on ONLY the workout before the break, I may retry at this same weight when I come back from the break. My reasoning is that this was the first break I’ve “come back” from, and there’s a remarkable regression of recoverability. A final-cycle depletion performance bump might just be indicative of a good day or excitement or what-have-you.

This is all conjecture for the moment, but I wasn’t happy with the thought of just leaving one of my workouts exactly the same intensity until MARCH.

Popularity: 1% [?]

10-20 Depletion

Stats
Weight: 164lbs.
Body Fat Percentage: 15.6%

This was a rather simple workout. High volume, high reps, lots of misery, low weights. Everything listed is machines, except for bicep curls. Those are dumbbells.

Mostly to shuffle out a lot of water weight. I took some pictures of myself at “full-bloat” post-birthday gorging. Later this week I’ll upload those in comparison to ones of full depletion.

The major thing about this workout was discovering the weight to use for each life. Once upon a time, I used whacks of calculators and attempts to extrapolate isolation lift estimations from muscular contribution in compound exercises. Fuck that, I just tried shit.

Workout for Monday, February 1, 2010

Popularity: 2% [?]