Posted: March 9th, 2010 | Author: ERIC | Filed under: Body | Tags: 5RM, body fat, condition, ditched, fat, forgot, incline press, lateral raise, nautilus, protein, pulldown, Star Trac, weight | No Comments »
I woke up on my own in time to check my email and get my stuff for the gym ready. I went out, made my protein shake, and as I was drinking it noticed that my mom (ride to the gym) had left without me.
Mother…
So I called my dad and we ran a side errand and he dropped me off at the gym.
I get into the locker room, open my bag: didn’t put my notebook (workout log) in the bag.
…Fucker.
I decided to strike a balance between volume and intensity by testing my 5RM. I figured that today I’m ‘primed,’ carb-loaded but not weighed down, not tired, and only a little stressed/pissed off… which may have actually helped my cause anyway. I beat the shit out of myself in lieu of being capable of kicking anyone else’s ass.
I basically did straight sets until I couldn’t perform five reps. Then de-loaded for the following two sets as though I was reverse pyramiding as usual.
The top set weight is what I’ll be striving to MAINTAIN as I go further into my diet.
Workout for Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Pulldown
- Sets of 5: 45, 55, 70, 85, 100lbs.
- Set of 3: 115lbs. (form not so good, but adequate, I got it below my chin without curling it)
- Set of 5: 105lbs.
- Set of 7.5: 95lbs. (5-second hold on the half-rep)
Incline Press (Nautilus)
- Sets of 5: 20, 25, 30, 35, 45lbs.
- 1 rep: 60lbs.
- Set of 3: 50lbs.
I didn’t like the way my shoulders were feeling on this machine. It felt like I was activating too much of my lateral delts and not my pecs. I switched over to the machine next to it, which looked more like a wide-grip incline press setup. The weights weren’t as minutely customizable (no 5 or 10-pound jumps) but, form is key! The whole reason I’m switching over to machines is so that I can let form concerns be less on my ass than they otherwise would be.
Incline Press (Star Trac)
- 8 reps: 45lbs.
- Sets of 5: 60, 75lbs.
- 3 reps: 90lbs.
- 7 reps: 75lbs.
- 12 reps: 60lbs.
And so you see, only my top set can stay where it is. However, being that the jumps are only in 15-lb increments, the two deload sets have nowhere to go. I guess I’ll just rep it out like a madman, hah.
I decided to do some crunch machine to give my shoulders a bit a break. I don’t think that I’ll be doing abs on a regular basis, or, if I do, I want to see if I can find that ‘twist’ machine so I don’t just work this part of my core, and so that I don’t totally rape my shoulders trying to do them with cables.
Nautilus Crunch
- Sets of 5: 20, 35, 50, 65, 80, 95lbs. (the last set I noticed that the handgrips were too high and caused too much of my arms assist in the pull, so I raised the seat)
- Not even a rep: 100lbs.
- 5 reps: 95lbs.
- 6 reps: 90lbs.
- 11 reps: 85lbs. (WHEW!)
Lateral Raise
- Sets of 5: 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70
- 1.5 reps: 75lbs.
- 3 reps: 70lbs.
- 4.5 reps: 65lbs. (held at halfway for a bit, didn’t count the length of the hold)
I skipped cardio for today. I was pretty beat and the workout already took about two hours. I don’t think I want to spend longer than two hours at a time in the gym if I don’t REALLY have to.
Weight: 164lbs.
Body Fat: 17.6% (I’m starting to get irritated by trying to get my hydration levels right!)
Condition: PRIMED! (new factor I’m recording, I don’t think I could have felt more ‘ready’ to work out than I did this morning.)
Popularity: 1% [?]
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
- 45lbs. x 5
- 60lbs. x 4
- 80lbs. x 2 (machine) ~ end of warm-up
- 100lbs. x 3 (machine)
- 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
- 85lbs. x 4
- 70lbs. x 5
- 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
- Horizontal Row: 3 x 15 @ 45lbs.
- Dumbbell Lateral Raise: 13 @ 10lbs; 2 x 15 @ 5lbs.
- Squats: 3 x 15 @ 45lbs.
- Standing Calf Raise Machine: 3 x 15 @ 30lbs.
- 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.)
- 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
- Horizontal Row: 3 x 15 @ 45lbs.
- Squats: 2 x 15 @ 45lbs.
- 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.
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Popularity: 1% [?]