I'm going to start adding "Boring" to the tittles of my work-out logs, so anyone who happens to be reading this (which is probably no-one) will know to skip over these posts because they are pretty much going to bore you to death.... Lifting, dieting, HST, blah, blah, blah.... :P
My second HST lifting day went off pretty smooth. I think I've divided my exercises up just about right, including splitting Squat days and Lunge days up, because this morning I was all gung-ho to do both on the same day (even though the plan I put together said otherwise), but when I actually finished my lunges, I remembered why it was wise best not to combine them... my legs were shaking and I still had Dead-lifts to do (which use a lot of the same muscles as squats). Yeah, I'd have to say that Lunges were by far the most challenging of the exercises today, but I'm guessing that will change as the weights on all the others go up. Perhaps next time around I need to adjust the percentages on the lunge exercises, because if they are this hard to do 15 on the second day, I have no idea how I'm going to get through the last day of 15's on my sixth day!
In previous HST plans I had a hard time with assisted Pull-ups where my max weight at 5 reps did not correspond with my max weight at 15 reps. Basically, the formula I use where I find my max 5 rep rate and then drop 5% per workout down literally to the first day of 15 reps didn't work because I simply couldn't do 15 assisted pull-ups at the weights I came up (well, maybe for the first few 15 rep workouts, but not for the last half). But I made an adjustment this time around that seems to have done the trick. I've dropped 6% per work out from the max rather that 5%. I'm finding that while I can already feel the Pull-ups (so they are not too easy), I also feel like I can keep adding on weight for awhile and still do 15, which is how I feel with pretty much all the other exercises I'm doing, except maybe lunges. We'll see how lunges go and if I have the same problem, I'll adjust them down 6% next time around too.
Oh, I kicked off today's workout with 5 minutes on the elliptical at level 16. Not sure why level 16 feels a ton harder than level 15 (15 doesn't feel that different than 14, or even 13), but it is. So of course, that's my new challenge; to get comfortable with level 16 and have that be my normal workout level.
I forgot to weigh myself again this morning. I know I'm around 138 or so, but I need to measure this on more than one day to get an average, especially given the variance in water weight I suspect I have (or had?). I'm going to get my work-out plan out right now and write a reminder at the bottom to jump on the scale at the end.
Still in ketosis. Need to buy some more ketone sticks. It's funny, I did low-carb for a year or more before I discovered ketone sticks, and I did just fine, so I know I really don't need them, but good lord they are fun to check on a regular basis. They're sort of like Daily Affirmations, which I'd post a link to on Youtube, but I can't find the Stewart Smalley ones (stupid copywrite!).
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
First Day of HST
Yesterday I did my first day of HST lifting, which means I was doing pretty light weights for 15 reps per exercise, and not surprisingly it was really easy, as well as a bit embarrassing. See the way HST works is that instead of doing the traditional 3 or so sets of each exercise on a given day, then doing that again around 4 or 5 days later (which is about how long you really should wait if you want to make gains in your lifting), you do one set per day, every other day, three times per week (you give yourself a workout weekend every week), adding about 5% more weight to the exercise with each workout. The idea is that you are doing roughly the same number of sets over time (three per week), but you are always increasing the load you are lifting, and this progressive load stimulates your muscle growth more efficiently.
Anyway, so you start with two weeks of progressive loading doing 15 reps per exercise, then drop to 10 reps for two weeks and finally finish off the program with two weeks of 5 reps per exercise. But remember that each day you go up in weight by about 5%, so by the end of the program, on the very last day, you are lifting the maximum amount of weight that you are able to for five reps.
So HST starts off deceptively easy, with the first day feeling very light, and as I already mentioned, you feeling a bit embarrassed. I mean, here you have been lifting for awhile, built up to heavier and heavier weights, until you are no longer the newbie lifter in the gym, then suddenly you drop to a weight below even where you started! For instance, my max squatfor 5 reps is currently is 205 lbs (actually, it's more than that, but while I'm doing low carb I'm weaker, so I figured I give myself a realistic goal), but yesterday I was doing only 85 lbs. for my first day of HST while a girl next to me was doing about 30 lbs. more than that. WEAK!
Anyway, but the nice thing about doing HST is that I enjoy full body workouts, and that's what I'm able to do in under an hour on this program. I get into the gym, do everything quickly, hit every muscle group and then I'm done. It's also great (did I say this same stuff in my previous post?) because while I'm on low carb, my body can't do more than about an hour anyway, much less find the energy to push each muscle group to lift near max more than one set. So it works out well.
Speaking of low carb, I pulled out the sticks Wednesday night and I was already in Ketosis, which was still true for the first HST workout yesterday (and my cardio work-out today). I was able to get into Ketosis so quickly because I did cardio (10 minutes) , sprints (15 minutes) and a jumping-jack/jump-rope combo (3 minutes) in the gym on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I must of burned up all my glucose stores. So, it's all gravy (or actually fat) from now on.
Yeah, this was a boring post... perhaps I'll have more energy for more creative writing later, but right now my blood sugar levels are just too low :P
Anyway, so you start with two weeks of progressive loading doing 15 reps per exercise, then drop to 10 reps for two weeks and finally finish off the program with two weeks of 5 reps per exercise. But remember that each day you go up in weight by about 5%, so by the end of the program, on the very last day, you are lifting the maximum amount of weight that you are able to for five reps.
So HST starts off deceptively easy, with the first day feeling very light, and as I already mentioned, you feeling a bit embarrassed. I mean, here you have been lifting for awhile, built up to heavier and heavier weights, until you are no longer the newbie lifter in the gym, then suddenly you drop to a weight below even where you started! For instance, my max squatfor 5 reps is currently is 205 lbs (actually, it's more than that, but while I'm doing low carb I'm weaker, so I figured I give myself a realistic goal), but yesterday I was doing only 85 lbs. for my first day of HST while a girl next to me was doing about 30 lbs. more than that. WEAK!
Anyway, but the nice thing about doing HST is that I enjoy full body workouts, and that's what I'm able to do in under an hour on this program. I get into the gym, do everything quickly, hit every muscle group and then I'm done. It's also great (did I say this same stuff in my previous post?) because while I'm on low carb, my body can't do more than about an hour anyway, much less find the energy to push each muscle group to lift near max more than one set. So it works out well.
Speaking of low carb, I pulled out the sticks Wednesday night and I was already in Ketosis, which was still true for the first HST workout yesterday (and my cardio work-out today). I was able to get into Ketosis so quickly because I did cardio (10 minutes) , sprints (15 minutes) and a jumping-jack/jump-rope combo (3 minutes) in the gym on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I must of burned up all my glucose stores. So, it's all gravy (or actually fat) from now on.
Yeah, this was a boring post... perhaps I'll have more energy for more creative writing later, but right now my blood sugar levels are just too low :P
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Today at the Gym
Today at the gym I started with 10 minutes at level 15 at full ramp height (20) on the elliptical machine. I was listening to the Above and Beyond Trance Around the World podcast, and it was an especially good week. Well, maybe not as good as the weeks they spent in Singapore (or am I confusing Singapore with Thailand? It may have been Thailand) which had lots of great female vocals mixed it, but the energy in this particular week's episode, which was based on sets done in Eastern Europe (Poland?) was really high. I wonder if that's that pattern, Eastern Europe = high energy, deep base mostly non-vocal tracks, which Asia = female vocals and a more trippy trance-like sound.
Anyway, after I finished forward and and reverse patterns on the machine, I switched over to the treadmill for 15 minutes of walking and sprinting. I had the incline set to around 11 (not sure if this corresponds to degrees or percentage) and the walking speed at 3.4 mph, and for the three 15 second sprints I upped the speed to 8.5 to 9 mph. It probably takes between 10 and 15 seconds to get from 3.4 to 8.5, not just because the belt has to speed up, but because you can't just push the increase speed button and have it go up to 8.5. One press and hold of the button will cause the speed to only increase by a maximum of 1.5 mph or so, probably as a safety mechanism, but this is really annoying when you are trying to push the button until it finally gets up to a challenging sprint level AND run at the same time!
Anyway, this is pretty much the most boring post EVER! How can I spice this up a bit? If I mentioned that after my run I did a couple minutes of jump roping, would that save it? No, probably not...
Fuck it, it's too late and this is my blog after all, so I'm just going to keep going.
When I got in the elevator up to the apartment, an attractive girl got on at the same time with her dog, which she directed to "please sit", and because my father recently got a new dog that we've been working on giving positive training feedback to, I immediately responded "good dog!" when it followed her directions. I think she took this as some sort of flirtation because she started telling me how beautiful of a day outside it was... and in my post-sprinting/jump-roping state all I could muster in response was "Is that right?". Then we enjoyed several long seconds of silence punctuated only by my continued heavy breathing. She quickly got off on the floor beneath mine, probably thankful that I didn't follow her off...
So the awesome part about doing sprints is they stimulate your metabolism (something to do with mimicking flight-or-fight modes) so that your heart rate stays up long after you finish your workout, you continue to burn fat and they supposedly stimulate more muscle growth. The not-so-awesome part is that you run hot for long after too, which means, at least for me, you sweat, which sucks if you have to get ready for work right away. So to minimize the chance of showing up for work in wet clothes, I literally take cold showers to cool down. It's either that, or I have to sit around cooling off for about an hour before I get dressed, which I simply don't have time for most days. So, it's cold showers in the morning for me, which I'm guessing that everyone will agree just sucks, the cold part that is, not the showers. And the worst part is that even though I take a cold shower, about five minutes after I get out, I still tend to start running hot again, and that was true this morning.
So I got on the bus still sweating and plopped down to listen to the latest podcast of This American Life, a radio show on NPR that is generally pretty funny (I like it enough that I sent them money). But the last two episodes or so have been kinda depressing. The end of last week's was a story about a man falling in love and how it ended, and the first part of this week's was about a man in Afghanistan who fell in love with a woman that he couldn't afford to marry, who then got money from some Western Aid workers, but it turned out the families dissaproved so he ended up using the money for an arranged marriage. WTF? I wanted to hear funny or at the very least thoughtful stories, not ones that would have me arriving at work bummed out! On the other hand, the people on the bus proably prefer the later, as that means they don't have to wonder if the big sweaty red haired guy laughing in the seat next to them is going to do something... well, odd I suppose.
Anyway, after I finished forward and and reverse patterns on the machine, I switched over to the treadmill for 15 minutes of walking and sprinting. I had the incline set to around 11 (not sure if this corresponds to degrees or percentage) and the walking speed at 3.4 mph, and for the three 15 second sprints I upped the speed to 8.5 to 9 mph. It probably takes between 10 and 15 seconds to get from 3.4 to 8.5, not just because the belt has to speed up, but because you can't just push the increase speed button and have it go up to 8.5. One press and hold of the button will cause the speed to only increase by a maximum of 1.5 mph or so, probably as a safety mechanism, but this is really annoying when you are trying to push the button until it finally gets up to a challenging sprint level AND run at the same time!
Anyway, this is pretty much the most boring post EVER! How can I spice this up a bit? If I mentioned that after my run I did a couple minutes of jump roping, would that save it? No, probably not...
Fuck it, it's too late and this is my blog after all, so I'm just going to keep going.
When I got in the elevator up to the apartment, an attractive girl got on at the same time with her dog, which she directed to "please sit", and because my father recently got a new dog that we've been working on giving positive training feedback to, I immediately responded "good dog!" when it followed her directions. I think she took this as some sort of flirtation because she started telling me how beautiful of a day outside it was... and in my post-sprinting/jump-roping state all I could muster in response was "Is that right?". Then we enjoyed several long seconds of silence punctuated only by my continued heavy breathing. She quickly got off on the floor beneath mine, probably thankful that I didn't follow her off...
So the awesome part about doing sprints is they stimulate your metabolism (something to do with mimicking flight-or-fight modes) so that your heart rate stays up long after you finish your workout, you continue to burn fat and they supposedly stimulate more muscle growth. The not-so-awesome part is that you run hot for long after too, which means, at least for me, you sweat, which sucks if you have to get ready for work right away. So to minimize the chance of showing up for work in wet clothes, I literally take cold showers to cool down. It's either that, or I have to sit around cooling off for about an hour before I get dressed, which I simply don't have time for most days. So, it's cold showers in the morning for me, which I'm guessing that everyone will agree just sucks, the cold part that is, not the showers. And the worst part is that even though I take a cold shower, about five minutes after I get out, I still tend to start running hot again, and that was true this morning.
So I got on the bus still sweating and plopped down to listen to the latest podcast of This American Life, a radio show on NPR that is generally pretty funny (I like it enough that I sent them money). But the last two episodes or so have been kinda depressing. The end of last week's was a story about a man falling in love and how it ended, and the first part of this week's was about a man in Afghanistan who fell in love with a woman that he couldn't afford to marry, who then got money from some Western Aid workers, but it turned out the families dissaproved so he ended up using the money for an arranged marriage. WTF? I wanted to hear funny or at the very least thoughtful stories, not ones that would have me arriving at work bummed out! On the other hand, the people on the bus proably prefer the later, as that means they don't have to wonder if the big sweaty red haired guy laughing in the seat next to them is going to do something... well, odd I suppose.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Low Carb and HST
I've managed to put on a fair amount of muscle and up my max weight in all my exercises this past six weeks or so in the new gym here in my new home town, but I've also put on some fat, my work-outs are taking a little too much time for my schedule, and from experience I know that when you reach your max, you're likely to plateau there for awhile unless you mix it up. So, it's time for a change. Today I started in on a low carb diet and am switching over HST work outs for the next six weeks or seven weeks.
I say low carb, because I still plan to still eat some carbs in the form of fruits (mostly bananas and blue berries) and vegetables, and some of my supplements contain enough carbs to technically violate the induction phase rules for Atkins. But I found last time I did this that I still managed to go into and stay in ketosis, probably because my work-outs were intense enough to burn off any glucose I was accumulating, which was nice because you simply feel better (and I'm guessing it's just plain healthier) when you eat fresh fruits and vegetables on a regular basis.
I haven't started my HST workouts yet, as I still have a couple of more days of strategic deconditioning before I start lifting again. I'm guessing that I'll either be in ketosis by then, or I'll be just on the edge and the lifting will put me over. But since I'm still doing fairly intense cardio at the gym, it won't surprise me if I get into ketosis sooner. We'll just have to see.
I'm really hoping that combining HST and low carb, along with keeping my work-outs very intense, will be the magic bullet in terms of fat loss and no muscle loss. Perhaps it will be extra extra magic and I'll even gain some muscle too (conventional wisdom is that you can't "cut" and gain muscle or strength at the same time)! Yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that last one, but it would be nice and I have heard more than once that high intensity work-outs stimulate the body in ways that allow for muscle growth even when dieting.
It really is time to loose some fat though, both because I want to look better, but also because I've apparently started snoring. The snoring could very well be the result of something else, but I'm guessing that if I loose 15 to 20 pounds that I'll stop. That said, I'll be very happy if I loose 10 pounds in the next six weeks, so if I'm going to hit my goals, I'll have to keep on going past my current plans. But I've found that for me (and in game development) six week goals work well; six weeks is short enough that you can visualize and feel the finish line, but are long enough that you can still set significant milestones to aim for. I'll set a new six week goal once I finish this one.
I say low carb, because I still plan to still eat some carbs in the form of fruits (mostly bananas and blue berries) and vegetables, and some of my supplements contain enough carbs to technically violate the induction phase rules for Atkins. But I found last time I did this that I still managed to go into and stay in ketosis, probably because my work-outs were intense enough to burn off any glucose I was accumulating, which was nice because you simply feel better (and I'm guessing it's just plain healthier) when you eat fresh fruits and vegetables on a regular basis.
I haven't started my HST workouts yet, as I still have a couple of more days of strategic deconditioning before I start lifting again. I'm guessing that I'll either be in ketosis by then, or I'll be just on the edge and the lifting will put me over. But since I'm still doing fairly intense cardio at the gym, it won't surprise me if I get into ketosis sooner. We'll just have to see.
I'm really hoping that combining HST and low carb, along with keeping my work-outs very intense, will be the magic bullet in terms of fat loss and no muscle loss. Perhaps it will be extra extra magic and I'll even gain some muscle too (conventional wisdom is that you can't "cut" and gain muscle or strength at the same time)! Yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that last one, but it would be nice and I have heard more than once that high intensity work-outs stimulate the body in ways that allow for muscle growth even when dieting.
It really is time to loose some fat though, both because I want to look better, but also because I've apparently started snoring. The snoring could very well be the result of something else, but I'm guessing that if I loose 15 to 20 pounds that I'll stop. That said, I'll be very happy if I loose 10 pounds in the next six weeks, so if I'm going to hit my goals, I'll have to keep on going past my current plans. But I've found that for me (and in game development) six week goals work well; six weeks is short enough that you can visualize and feel the finish line, but are long enough that you can still set significant milestones to aim for. I'll set a new six week goal once I finish this one.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Jacuzzi Bioshock
We finally finished playing Bioshock this past weekend. We actually started it about nine months ago, but then we moved, and moved again, then moved yet again, and it's only now that we are settled in SF that we decided to get back into it. I say "we" not because I like to refer to myself in the plural, but actually as in my girl and I, as we have been playing together. Yeah, I know there is no co-op in Bioshock, but it's an adventure game that can be entertaining for even those not playing, and these next-to-you-on-the-couch-drivers can actually help sometimes, especially if they want to throw out ideas of what to do next ("try shooting an electric bolt at that broken door panel"), or point out to the person playing stuff they may have missed ("there's money on the floor right there"), or just help when you're trying to hack stuff ("the bendy piece you need is right there! ").
We actually had a lot of fun playing through the game together, and I credit her being there for getting as many achievements as we did (46 out of 51, or 840 points out of a possible 1100 - not bad for one playthrough). Now the challenge is going to be finding another game she can enjoy watching me play and participate at that level in getting through... I've tried Fallout 3, Left for Dead, Dead Space and Rock Band 2, but none of them have captured her imagination like Bioshock did. They just don't have the same pacing, compelling presentation and/or feeling of a backstory. I'm going to try the New Prince of Persia next to see if she digs that, but I'm thinking I may wait a few days or a week before I try, as I think her love of the Bioshock look and feel may need to fade a bit before she is ready to commit to a new game world.
I have to say that I'm kind of enjoying Fallout 3 so far. I don't easily get into RPG's anymore because I often can't help but see through the game and characters to the database driving its system, but the post nuclear war scenario is interesting enough to keep me curious, I like the fact that there is an alignment system that affects the way the game rolls out (at least it feels like it does, which is good enough) and so far I haven't grown tired with the exploration aspect of the game (probably in large part because you can jump to places you've visited before rather than having to walk or run there again across the hugeness of the world).
Deadspace is a nice adventure game so far, but I've only just started it, so we'll see how it turns out. My first impression is that it pretty cliche, but well done enough to keep playing.
Left 4 Dead I'm also just starting, but my first impression honestly was, well two impression actually - 1. Crap, this game really wants me to play co-op, and 2. These zombies offend me with their running! Don't get me wrong, co-op and multiplayer games rock, but for whatever reason my initial reaction to them is often like first getting into a pool; jumping in is hard, but once I'm in, I know I'll get used to the water and totally enjoy myself. I just need to have a few hours to devote to it and then I can take the plunge. On the running zombies, I just wasn't expecting them... I loved the fast zombies in 28 Days Later , because they were different, but when I sat down to play Left 4 Dead I was expecting the slow moving kind that I would require me to stay calm and think tactically about how to defeat or get around. The running kind combined with pistols with infinite ammo immediately forced me to be more twitchy about my game play style. It doesn't help that I just finished reading "Day by Day Armageddon", another slow moving zombie novel.
Rock Band 2... well, I'm not convinced I can't get her hooked yet. I just need her to find a song she likes that she can do well on. But I may just be doomed as she is more of a dancer than a musician. Even on New Years, when I brought Rock Band 2 up to my sister's friend's cabin and everyone (pretty much all non-gamers) played it for like six hours, she just didn't get into it, so it may be a hopeless cause. I think I'm going to give it one more shot and ask her to play a bit on her own, so she can practice without anyone watching or comparing her abilities to theirs. Maybe I'll spin it as a game where she could conceivably become better at it than me since our experience playing these kinds of games is virtually the same. Yeah, that might be the ticket.
Speaking of New Years, my sister called on Monday to inform me that her friend had caught some sort of skin infection from the Jacuzzi we all hung out drinking in that night. Folic-cue-lite-ous (no idea how it's spelled) was what it is called, and the symptoms are red spots all over your body. A skin infection? Fabulous! That's exactly what I need! But it turns out I didn't have it. In fact, it's apparently one of those things that everyone pretty much has, the bugs that cause it I mean, like staff infections, but sometimes people's immune systems can't handle it, or they get a strain they've never encountered, or whatever... I was just happy to not have red spots all over my body and to not have to find a doctor here yet. I mean seriously, if you are going to get a disease that you need to see a doctor for from being a jacuzzi, then you want something more interesting than that right?!? Well, er, on second thought, perhaps not if your sister was one of the people in the jacuzzi with you.
We actually had a lot of fun playing through the game together, and I credit her being there for getting as many achievements as we did (46 out of 51, or 840 points out of a possible 1100 - not bad for one playthrough). Now the challenge is going to be finding another game she can enjoy watching me play and participate at that level in getting through... I've tried Fallout 3, Left for Dead, Dead Space and Rock Band 2, but none of them have captured her imagination like Bioshock did. They just don't have the same pacing, compelling presentation and/or feeling of a backstory. I'm going to try the New Prince of Persia next to see if she digs that, but I'm thinking I may wait a few days or a week before I try, as I think her love of the Bioshock look and feel may need to fade a bit before she is ready to commit to a new game world.
I have to say that I'm kind of enjoying Fallout 3 so far. I don't easily get into RPG's anymore because I often can't help but see through the game and characters to the database driving its system, but the post nuclear war scenario is interesting enough to keep me curious, I like the fact that there is an alignment system that affects the way the game rolls out (at least it feels like it does, which is good enough) and so far I haven't grown tired with the exploration aspect of the game (probably in large part because you can jump to places you've visited before rather than having to walk or run there again across the hugeness of the world).
Deadspace is a nice adventure game so far, but I've only just started it, so we'll see how it turns out. My first impression is that it pretty cliche, but well done enough to keep playing.
Left 4 Dead I'm also just starting, but my first impression honestly was, well two impression actually - 1. Crap, this game really wants me to play co-op, and 2. These zombies offend me with their running! Don't get me wrong, co-op and multiplayer games rock, but for whatever reason my initial reaction to them is often like first getting into a pool; jumping in is hard, but once I'm in, I know I'll get used to the water and totally enjoy myself. I just need to have a few hours to devote to it and then I can take the plunge. On the running zombies, I just wasn't expecting them... I loved the fast zombies in 28 Days Later , because they were different, but when I sat down to play Left 4 Dead I was expecting the slow moving kind that I would require me to stay calm and think tactically about how to defeat or get around. The running kind combined with pistols with infinite ammo immediately forced me to be more twitchy about my game play style. It doesn't help that I just finished reading "Day by Day Armageddon", another slow moving zombie novel.
Rock Band 2... well, I'm not convinced I can't get her hooked yet. I just need her to find a song she likes that she can do well on. But I may just be doomed as she is more of a dancer than a musician. Even on New Years, when I brought Rock Band 2 up to my sister's friend's cabin and everyone (pretty much all non-gamers) played it for like six hours, she just didn't get into it, so it may be a hopeless cause. I think I'm going to give it one more shot and ask her to play a bit on her own, so she can practice without anyone watching or comparing her abilities to theirs. Maybe I'll spin it as a game where she could conceivably become better at it than me since our experience playing these kinds of games is virtually the same. Yeah, that might be the ticket.
Speaking of New Years, my sister called on Monday to inform me that her friend had caught some sort of skin infection from the Jacuzzi we all hung out drinking in that night. Folic-cue-lite-ous (no idea how it's spelled) was what it is called, and the symptoms are red spots all over your body. A skin infection? Fabulous! That's exactly what I need! But it turns out I didn't have it. In fact, it's apparently one of those things that everyone pretty much has, the bugs that cause it I mean, like staff infections, but sometimes people's immune systems can't handle it, or they get a strain they've never encountered, or whatever... I was just happy to not have red spots all over my body and to not have to find a doctor here yet. I mean seriously, if you are going to get a disease that you need to see a doctor for from being a jacuzzi, then you want something more interesting than that right?!? Well, er, on second thought, perhaps not if your sister was one of the people in the jacuzzi with you.
Personal Best
Today I achieved a personal best doing squats. 205 lbs for two sets of six reps (my first set was a warm-up at only 135 lbs.). That's up from my 195 lb work-out last week on New Years Eve, which was a TERRIBLE idea because apparently lifting at your max on the same day as consuming large amounts of alcohol, sitting in a hot jacuzzi for an hour and playing Rock Band 2 until the wee hours of the morning do NOT mix well... I could barely walk for two days.
I followed up the squats with 80 lb walking lunges (basically, you lunge forward holding a 40 lb dumbbell in each hand, a bit like doing the Monty Python Silly Walk around the gym) for two sets of 16 reps, three sets of seated machine calf raises at 135 lbs, and three sets on the leg abductor machines at 180 lbs for inner and 150 lbs for outer. Then I did two sets of back extensions holding a 25 lb plate, because I realized I'd missed that one on my last back day. Actually I haven't been doing back extensions lately, so I'm still going light on the weight (can't be too careful). Before we left Madison, I was regularly doing them with a 45 lb weight, but while you can hobble around with destroyed legs, or have laughter turn into tears when you've blown your abs, I've found that doing the same to your lower back muscles by pushing them too hard is just not a good idea, so I went easy.
Anyway, it was a great workout, and even at my new max squat, my legs felt totally strong, like I could do more weight with no problem, so I'm probably going to do one more leg workout on Sunday and see if I can do 215 lbs before I get back on a low carb diet to "cut". I say before because the minute I go low carb, I've found my max workout weights drop significantly, around 20%. As my body adjusts, they slowly go back up, but never to where they are when I'm eating yummy carbs and sugars.
After my workout, I seriously thought about creating a fantasy blog called something along the lines of "You're a Fat-Assed Pussy!". It would be written from the perspective of a hard-core gym-rat/personal trainer named Hugh G., and contain actual useful information mixed in with extensive "motivational" verbal abuse. We'll see if I actually get to it or not :P
I followed up the squats with 80 lb walking lunges (basically, you lunge forward holding a 40 lb dumbbell in each hand, a bit like doing the Monty Python Silly Walk around the gym) for two sets of 16 reps, three sets of seated machine calf raises at 135 lbs, and three sets on the leg abductor machines at 180 lbs for inner and 150 lbs for outer. Then I did two sets of back extensions holding a 25 lb plate, because I realized I'd missed that one on my last back day. Actually I haven't been doing back extensions lately, so I'm still going light on the weight (can't be too careful). Before we left Madison, I was regularly doing them with a 45 lb weight, but while you can hobble around with destroyed legs, or have laughter turn into tears when you've blown your abs, I've found that doing the same to your lower back muscles by pushing them too hard is just not a good idea, so I went easy.
Anyway, it was a great workout, and even at my new max squat, my legs felt totally strong, like I could do more weight with no problem, so I'm probably going to do one more leg workout on Sunday and see if I can do 215 lbs before I get back on a low carb diet to "cut". I say before because the minute I go low carb, I've found my max workout weights drop significantly, around 20%. As my body adjusts, they slowly go back up, but never to where they are when I'm eating yummy carbs and sugars.
After my workout, I seriously thought about creating a fantasy blog called something along the lines of "You're a Fat-Assed Pussy!". It would be written from the perspective of a hard-core gym-rat/personal trainer named Hugh G., and contain actual useful information mixed in with extensive "motivational" verbal abuse. We'll see if I actually get to it or not :P
Friday, January 2, 2009
It's not cold here
San Francisco is not cold, in fact, it is never really cold. Yes, you do often have to put on a jacket here, and it should have windbreaker characteristics, but I'm pretty sure I'll never, ever, ever need my 15 pound arctic expedition inspired North Face jacket that now lives in a plastic container under our bed.
So whenever my woman complains about the cold here in our new home town, I remind her of the time it was -14 degrees Fahrenheit and she thought we were going to die from exposure during our three block walk/suitcase-snow-ice-drag from our place in Chicago to the Blue Line train station.
I realized something that day about her: if it is chilly out, she will definitely whine about it (she likes the attention), but if it's actually cold, as in Midwest cold, she gets very, very quiet...
So whenever my woman complains about the cold here in our new home town, I remind her of the time it was -14 degrees Fahrenheit and she thought we were going to die from exposure during our three block walk/suitcase-snow-ice-drag from our place in Chicago to the Blue Line train station.
I realized something that day about her: if it is chilly out, she will definitely whine about it (she likes the attention), but if it's actually cold, as in Midwest cold, she gets very, very quiet...
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