Training -- 30/12/2013

Paused Front Squats

10xBW
10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
3x3x72.5kg

High Bar Back Squats

3x8x97.5kg -- First set was pretty shaky, which I think is due to the pause on the front squats. Second set was best, third set wasn't far behind. On both front and back squats, I really felt it in my hip flexors at the start of the concentric. Not something that makes much anatomical sense, but the body does as the body does.

Goodmorning/Calf Raise

3x8x35kg/10x340lb

Glute Bridge/Calf Raise

3x10x30kg/10x340lb

Training -- Tue 24/12/2013

Rotator Cuff/Band Pull Apart

2x15xOrange/15xOrange

Bench Press/L-Pull Up

10x20kg
5x40kg
14x60kg/6xBW
11x60kg/6xBW
10x60kg/4+2xBW

OHP/Fat Gripz Row

10x20kg/15x52.5kg
5x30kg/15x52.5kg
3x35kg/15x52.5kg
4x41kg/15x52.5kg
5x35kg/15x52.5kg
5x35kg

This is probably my second-last training session for the year.

Training -- Sat 21/12/2013 and Mon 23/21/2013

Saturday

Rotator Cuff/Band Pull Apart

2x12xOrange/12xOrange

Bench Press/Pull Ups

10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
1x80kg
1x90kg/10xBW -- Attempted a 2nd rep and got stuck.
4x80kg/10xBW
11x60kg/7+2+1xBW

1-Arm OHP/Fat Gripz Row

3x10x10kg/15x50kg
--/12x50kg w/ grips + 3x50kg w/o gripz



Monday

Front Squats

10xBW
10x20kg
5x40kg
5x60kg
3x5x72.5kg

Back Squats

3x10x92.5kg

SLDL/Calf Raise

3x6x92.5kg/10x340lb

GHR

3x3xBW

Training -- Thur 19/12/2013 and Fri 20/12/2013

Thursday

Rotator Cuff/Band Pull Apart

2x12xOrange/12xOrange

Bench Press

10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
3x70kg
5x80kg

CGBP/Pull Ups

--/6x10kg
3x6x60kg/6x10kg

Incline DBBP/Barbell Row

10x20kg/3x60kg + 5x40kg -- Attempted 60kg and the weight was definitely too heavy for me to do anything useful with it. Sure, I could get the bar from the floor to my torso, but don't let that fool you into thinking my reps at that weight added any value to my training.
2x10x20kg/10x40kg

Friday

Long day. From about 10am-4pm I was out getting in touch with nature or something. After NTE the other week, a few of us got together for what was specifically termed the "post NTE thing." This involved cooking over a wood-fire (putting my totally legit Masters in Barbecuology to good use), lengthy, in-depth theological discussions, and about 2hr45min of bush walking/mountain climbing, occasionally broken up to look at Aboriginal paintings and stone surfaces or kill cain toads. At about 5pm, I finally made it to the gym, where it was so hot that I think I was suffering mild heat exhaustion right up until the sun went down.

Front Squats

10xBW
10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
3x70kg
3x3x80kg

Back Squats

3x6x100kg -- What I believe was heat exhaustion meant that every time I walked up to the bar to start a set, I felt no more ready for it than I had felt at the moment of re-racking the previous set.

Deadlift

10x60kg
5x100kg
2x140kg
1x160kg
1x170kg -- And then, after this set, the sun made its may over the horizon. Suddenly, in time for my next set, I was alive-awake-alert-enthusiastic, instead of the zombie I had been for the previous 90min.
5x150kg
4+1x150kg -- I did my first 4 reps, and then my chalk failed due to too much sweat, and the bar was like: "lol no, I don't do this whole breaking off the floor thing." So I rechalked and then got right back into it for the last rep.

Training -- Wed 18/12/2013

Paused Front Squats

10xBW
10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
2x3x70kg -- Between sets, a guy was telling me all about his "scientific" program. He's preparing for a bodybuilding show in a few months, and boasted that he can lift more than bodybuilders who are much bigger than him, which I think was supposed to be proof that his program's working. For him. A guy who'll be competing. In bodybuilding. I dropped him a hint about goal specificity and individuality, then went back and did my last set.

Squat

3x8x95kg

Goodmorning

3x8x30kg -- I should film these for a form check, because they felt awkward as anything.

Glute Bridge/Calf Raise

10x25kg/10x340lb -- People looked at me funny and asked questions. I explained that I'm training to be a porn star.
3x10x40kg/10x340lb

Training -- Tue 17/12/2013

Rotator Cuff/Band Pull Apart

2x10/10

Bench Press/L-Pull Up

10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
3x6x70kg/6xBW

OHP/DB Row

5x30kg/10x15kg
3x35kg/10x15kg
3x5x40kg/10x15kg

Training -- Mon 16/12/2013

Front Squats

10xBW
10x20kg
5x40kg
5x60kg
3x5x70kg -- 2nd set was technically 4+1, as I reracked the bar due to all my fingers slipping out.

High Bar Squats

3x10x90kg

SLDL/Calf Raise

6x90kg
6x90kg/8x340lb
6x90kg/10x300lb

GHR/Calf Raise

3x2xBW/10x300lb -- I'm surprised by my lingering GHR strength. I was expecting this to have taken a clear step backwards after everything surrounding the powerlifting comp and NTE.

Training -- Sat 14/12/2013

Rotator Cuff/Band Pull Apart

2x10/10

Bench Press

10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
2x70kg
2x80kg
2x85kg
1x90kg
4x80kg
12x60kg

L-Pull Up

3x6xBW

Incline DBBP/Pull Ups

2x8x20kg/5x10kg
--/5x10kg

OHP/Cable Row

10x20kg/10x5kg
10x25kg/10x50kg
8x25kg/10x50kg
--/10x50kg

An Introduction to Working Out: Part 5 -- Selecting Starting Exercises

Having been running this blog for a year, I'm going to go right back to basics. This is going to be a brief series on general principles and methods of exercising, and as new year resolutions are right around the corner, this should be a helpful go-to guide. In it I'll cover:

Part 1 -- Goal Setting
Part 2 -- Resistance Training Focus
Part 3 -- Cardiovascular Training Focus
Part 4 -- Selecting Starting Loads
Part 5 -- Selecting Starting Exercises
Part 6 -- Warming Up
Part 7 -- Stretching

Selecting Starting Exercises

If you've been reading my blog for long enough, then you know there are a few central compound exercises that I prefer for people to have in their programs: squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press, pull ups and rows. Does that mean I think everyone should start with those exact exercises? No.

The exercises you start with will be determined by a few factors:

Available Resources What equipment do you have access to? Do you have a commercial gym with all its machines at your finger tips? Do you just have a power rack and barbell set? Do you have odd equipment, such as fat bars, logs, kettlebells etc? Do you not have any equipment at all? These things matter, for what should be self-explanatory reasons: You can't do something unless you have the resources for it; you might be able to do something if you do have the resources for it.

Skill/Proficiency How good is your body awareness? Do you have a history of sports, physical labour or other physical hobbies? Do you have a trainer available (plug plug plug) to coach you through the exercises you'll be doing, or are you working everything out on your own? These things make a difference. Someone who has a history of dancing is going to have good body awareness. Someone who does hard physical labour is going to have a certain work capacity, and will hopefully have learned how to do some loaded movements safely (if not, I expect you're living with a lot more pain than you'd like). Someone who doesn't have any physical hobbies, history of sports or a physical job probably has low body awareness. The lower your body awareness, the simpler the exercises you start with need to be. The greater your body awareness, the more complex the exercises you start with can be.

Physical Ability A certain amount of flexibility/ROM and strength is needed for various exercises. The squat is a great example: you need the hip and ankle ROM to be able to get into position at the bottom, and you need the strength to stand back up from that position. If you lack the physical ability to do an exercise (but are able to gain that ability -- if you have no arms, then obviously you're not going to gain the ability to bench press no matter how strong or flexible you are), then it's generally going to be wise to go to a less demanding exercise and build up your abilities with that exercise. If you aren't strong enough or flexible enough to squat, then leg presses and stretches that address your flexibility issues are a good starting point.

So, what should your starting exercises be? The ones you can do. Your immediate goals are to increase your abilities and proficiency within the context of what's available. If you've read any of my technique articles (I haven't posted many of them here, but I did give what was honestly a brief rundown of the squat and deadlift earlier this year, and even that took three articles), you'll know that there's a lot to think about when learning even the exercises that I treat as staples. There are much more complicated exercises than the six compounds I opened with, too. So maybe the ideal is to squat and deadlift, but the reality is to do leg presses and hyperextensions. Maybe the ideal is to do bench and overhead press with free weights, but the reality is a chest and shoulder press machine. Maybe the ideal is pull ups and barbell rows (actually, I don't think barbell rows are all that ideal, but they are more complicated), but the reality is lat pull downs and seated rows.

Training -- Fri 13/12/2013

Hey, it's that day in which black cats let Freddy Kruegar in. Yay.

Paused Front Squat

10xBW
10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
3x2x80kg

High Bar Squat

3x5x100kg

Deadlift

10x60kg
5x100kg
2x140kg
2x160kg
1x170kg
8x120kg

Feeling lazy 100% of the time.

An Introduction to Working Out: Part 4 -- Selecting Starting Loads

Having been running this blog for a year, I'm going to go right back to basics. This is going to be a brief series on general principles and methods of exercising, and as new year resolutions are right around the corner, this should be a helpful go-to guide. In it I'll cover:

Part 1 -- Goal Setting
Part 2 -- Resistance Training Focus
Part 3 -- Cardiovascular Training Focus
Part 4 -- Selecting Starting Loads
Part 5 -- Selecting Starting Exercises
Part 6 -- Warming Up
Part 7 -- Stretching

Selecting Starting Loads

For the most part, this will apply to resistance training, although the same principles (without the numbers) can be used for cardio. This is a fairly reliable method for setting up your initial working weights. Continuing in the vein of Part 2 of this series, I'll use 12-15 as the target rep range, but note that this same method can be used for anything between about 5 and 15 reps, and the same principles can be used outside of that range, although some modifications may be necessary.

When selecting your starting weight for any given exercise, always err on the side of caution. If you're hyper-conservative and pick a weight that's way too light, you can always add more weight afterwards. If you go the other way, you can cause all sorts of trouble for yourself. If you have a trainer guiding you through this (ahem, plug), they should be able to make some reasonable guestimates about what will be appropriate loads for you to use, but they should still be testing your strength, body awareness and response to cuing, as I'm about to describe, so a good trainer will still generally get you started with weights that are too light, and then work their way up.

After doing a general warm up, you're going to take the lightest load you can practically use for your given exercise. Depending on the exercise, that might be an empty barbell or little 1kg dumbbells, or it might be your body weight, or it might be the lightest plate in a pin-loaded machine, or it might even be some form of assistance.

Having received basic instruction on the exercise, and being aware of your main cues, take that light load and perform a set, focusing on your cues. This set will generally end in one of 4 ways:

1) Despite making a conscious effort to adhere to technique, you find yourself struggling to do so, and your form degrades before you reach 12 reps. This is technical failure, which is distinct from muscular failure, in that you have the strength to continue moving the weight, but can no longer move it well.

2) You successfully adhere to technique, but the load is more than you're ready for, and you reach muscular failure before 12 reps (this is much rarer than option 1 when starting out, although that will also depend on the exercise in question).

3) You complete 12 reps while adhering to your cues, but are not sure that you could do much more.

4) You complete 12 reps while adhering to your cues, and are confident you could do at least 2 more reps.

If 1) or 2) happens, complete the rep you're on if it's safe to do so (if you have a trainer helping you, they can give a more reliable call on this than you probably can yourself; likewise they can probably identify when you're not adhering to your cues more reliably than you can), and then finish the set immediately. Take note of which rep you failed on, and then subtract that number by 2, and that'll be your starting number of reps. So, if you failed on rep 10, start out doing sets of 8 with your starting weight. Progress 1 rep/set at a time until you work your way up to sets of 15 (always putting technique ahead of sets and reps, since the goal of the 12-15 rep range at this stage is to get a lot of technical practice -- reps in which you don't deliberately practice good technique at this stage are teaching you to use bad habits, instead). In this example, you should be using the same weight for at least 9 workouts: workout 1 = test starting weight; wo2 = sets of 8; wo3 = sets of 9; ....wo9 = sets of 15. That's assuming you don't have to delay progressing your reps in order to keep technique in order.

If 3) happens, you've found your starting weight. Again, progress by adding 1 rep/set at a time, provided you get all your reps with passable technique.

If 4) happens, then increase the weight slightly, rest, and then repeat the test with the new weight. Keep adding weight until 3) happens. If you go too far and 1) or 2) happens, take a step back and set your last successful weight as your working weight.

Training -- Thur 05/12/2013

Front Squats

10xBW
10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
1x70kg
1x80kg
1x85kg
1x90kg -- This was beltless. I know that I've done something like 2-3x90kg with a belt before, but I'm not sure if I've done that beltless before. Felt like I could have gone a little heavier, too, although being the first week after comp, I'm not exactly testing maxes right now (even though today and yesterday I have been coming close to my 1RM).

High Bar Squats

5x100kg
2x3x110kg

Deadlift

10x70kg
5x100kg
2x120kg
2x140kg
1x150kg
1x160kg
1x170kg
1x180kg

Hyperextension

10xBW
2xBW -- This just felt off, so I decided to do some GHR's instead.

GHR

2x1xBW

Hanging Leg Raise

2x10xBW

An Introduction to Working Out: Part 3 -- Cardiovascular Training Focus

Having been running this blog for a year, I'm going to go right back to basics. This is going to be a brief series on general principles and methods of exercising, and as new year resolutions are right around the corner, this should be a helpful go-to guide. In it I'll cover:

Part 1 -- Goal Setting
Part 2 -- Resistance Training Focus
Part 3 -- Cardiovascular Training Focus
Part 4 -- Selecting Starting Loads
Part 5 -- Selecting Starting Exercises
Part 6 -- Warming Up
Part 7 -- Stretching

Cardiovascular Training Focus

If you're like most people, cardio will fit into your goals somehow. Marketing aside, there is a reason why the average gym has a dozen of each cardio machine, whereas having that many of each item of strength equipment would seem ludicrous. In order to be all-round fit, you're going to have to do some form of cardio (in saying that, you don't necessarily need to be all-round fit, although for most of us the benefits are worth it). Like resistance training, cardio can be broken down into a couple different generic areas:

Aerobic The most common type of cardio performed. Stereotypically, this is a go-to for many and poison to everyone else. If you can do it for more than 5min consecutively, it's probably aerobic.

Anaerobic This denotes high intensity cardio. If you can't keep it up for 5min, it's probably anaerobic. Anaerobic fitness can be further broken down into energy systems that last for minutes down to energy systems that are depleted within seconds.

One key thing I'll point out right now is that cardio is not necessary for fat loss. Ultimately, that comes down to calories in vs calories out, and (to a lesser extent) the maintenance of fat-free mass. Cardio is useful for getting rid of calories, so it contributes to the calories out part of the equation, but so does resistance training, and so does incidental activity. Cardio's a weight loss tool, not a weight loss rule.

As a general prescription, I would recommend that complete beginners focus on aerobic fitness unless they need to improve anaerobic fitness urgently. Much like resistance training, this largely comes down to matters of technique, safety, practice and thinking. It also comes down to the general issue that you need to be able to walk before you can run, and you need to be able to run before you can sprint (there are many other exercises you can do for cardio, but you get the point). Besides that, if you're doing resistance training in accordance with the previous section's recommendations, then you'll be doing frequent bouts of about 1min loaded exercise at a time with your resistance training, which will be developing your anaerobic systems anyway.

You'll notice I mentioned technique in there. In general, people are more or less willing to accept that they need help learning how to lift weights safely, but aren't so easily convinced when you tell them they don't know how to walk 10 feet. Technique does still need to be learned with the movements you'll be performing for cardio. Considering you'll be doing thousands of repetitions of those movements, and 1 bad rep is far less harmful than 1,000 bad reps, I hope you'll see the benefits of learning to move decently up front.

A few general methods of cardio are as follows:

Steady State Also known as LISS or MISS (Low/Medium Intensity Steady State), LSD (Long Slow Distance), or getting off your arse and going for a run. Basically, you'll be doing one activity, and you'll be more or less maintaining the same intensity as you go.

Circuit Training This is a decent way to combine aerobic with anaerobic training. Normally I program circuits with resistance training exercises, but you could program them with more conventional cardio exercises. Basically, you'll be taking a group of exercises, and performing them for a short duration each, but back-to-back with minimal (preferably no) rest between exercises. This more or less causes anaerobic conditioning at a local level (in whichever muscles are being used for a specific exercise) and aerobic conditioning systemically, as your heart rate and breathing will be continuously elevated as you work through each exercise.

Interval Training This is where you'll be intentionally varying the intensity throughout the workout. Most interval approaches that I've looked at or used have intervals lasting for as little as a few seconds through to a couple minutes. As a beginner, the preferred intervals will be at medium and low intensities, so it might look like 1min of jogging alternating with 1min of walking. This style is often used with a progression on the duration of the medium intensity intervals, to help you build up to MISS. As you get more advanced and are ready for it (in terms of cardiovascular function, proficiency of movement, having a good approach to pre/post-workout nutrition, having good joint health, etc), you might move up to HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), which will typically mean alternating between intervals at a high intensity and at a low intensity. If regular intervals can be broadly categorised as jog/walk intensities, HIIT falls more into the realms of sprint/walk intensities. HIIT is very anaerobic.

An Introduction to Working Out: Part 2 -- Resistance Training Focus

Having been running this blog for a year, I'm going to go right back to basics. This is going to be a brief series on general principles and methods of exercising, and as new year resolutions are right around the corner, this should be a helpful go-to guide. In it I'll cover:

Part 1 -- Goal Setting
Part 2 -- Resistance Training Focus
Part 3 -- Cardiovascular Training Focus
Part 4 -- Selecting Starting Loads
Part 5 -- Selecting Starting Exercises
Part 6 -- Warming Up
Part 7 -- Stretching

Resistance Training Focus

So, you've established your goals and figured out you're going to have to move some sort of heavy object/s to achieve them. Excellent.

You won't have to search very far to find information resembling the following as a guide for how to handle your resistance training based on your goal:

Endurance 15+ reps

Hypertrophy 6-15 reps

Strength 1-5 reps

Power 1-5 reps

As someone who's new to training, the above guide doesn't really matter a whole lot. Yep, I just said that. Right now, you could do 50-rep sets of an exercise, and you would get hypertrophy, strength and power out of it. Likewise, you could practice your 1RM (which I don't advise without strict supervision and strict definitions of what counts as a successful lift, basically determining technique degradation as failure) and get more power, muscle and endurance out of it. Heck, you could probably look at a barbell, imagine lifting it 3 days a week, and that would be enough to build more muscle mass.

Instead, the following is what you actually need to worry about:

- TECHNIQUE: This is going to come before everything else right now.

- SAFETY: This comes with both practicing good (or at least sensible) technique and using sensible workloads.

- PRACTICE: It's said that it takes about 300-500 repetitions with deliberate good technique in order to learn a movement pattern. Whether or not that's accurate, the main point is that you want to practice your movements a lot. A LOT.

- THINKING: Or lack thereof. As a beginner, you generally don't know how to move your body very well, which means that to make the above 3 things happen consistently, you're going to need to think a lot about your key cues for the exercises you're doing. You're primary goal is going to be to get to the point where you don't have to think as much about each exercise, to the point that you only need to focus on one cue and everything else just falls into place. Starting out you'll be thinking a lot; you want to get to the point where you're not thinking much at all.

Once you reach the point at which you don't have to think much about each exercise, you've reached the first level of mastery. Now it's time to start thinking about training specifically for endurance, hypertrophy, strength or power; or to advance to a more complicated exercise which builds on the skills you've just mastered.

Referring back to technique, safety, practice and thinking, a good starting point is often the upper end of the stated hypertrophy range, with beginner programs often advising sets of 12-15. If you're doing sets in that rep range, then the weight is going to be relatively light (compared to, say, 1-5 reps), which is relatively safe. The caveat to that is that you want to be practicing good technique and thinking through your cues on every rep. Your mental focus, and your control over both your prime movements and your supporting muscles throughout the range of motion of an exercise, will limit how many reps you can realistically perform. If you can perform 12-15 reps per set with consistent adherence to your main cues, I'd recommend it. If not, don't. Your ability to maintain technique will be the limit of how many reps you do, and of how much weight you use. So you might only be doing 5 reps of an exercise starting out, not because it's heavy, but because your technique degrades beyond that point. Practice those 5 reps, and then progress onto 6 reps, then 7, etc. Keep building up the reps, and building up your discipline with each rep. Now, looking at the estimation on how long it supposedly takes to learn a movement, once you get up to a consistent 12-15 reps per set, doing 2-3 sets you're looking at up to about 20 workouts before you're likely to have reached that first level of mastery. If you're doing a full-body program and you're doing the same exercises each time, 3 days a week, that's about 7 weeks before it might be time to start worrying specifically about strength, hypertrophy, power or endurance. Of course, it could take more or less time than this.

Point is, your primary goal right now is simply to learn movements -- increased strength, endurance, power and hypertrophy will flow naturally from this, simply because you're learning to do more than you could before and exert yourself in ways you're not used to.

An Introduction to Working Out: Part 1 -- Goal Setting

Having been running this blog for a year, I'm going to go right back to basics. This is going to be a brief series on general principles and methods of exercising, and as new year resolutions are right around the corner, this should be a helpful go-to guide. In it I'll cover:

Part 1 -- Goal Setting
Part 2 -- Resistance Training Focus
Part 3 -- Cardiovascular Training Focus
Part 4 -- Selecting Starting Loads
Part 5 -- Selecting Starting Exercises
Part 6 -- Warming Up
Part 7 -- Stretching

Goal Setting

"Yay, it's the 2nd of January, my hangover's over, and I'm going to get fit!"

Excellent, and what does that mean?

"What?"

What does it mean to get fit?

"You know, fit! I'm gonna get fit! You know?"

Okay, and what will be different once you are fit? How is this going to change you?

"Oh, I'm going to be 10kg lighter and I'm going to be able to run 10km and I'm going to be able to bench press 100kg."

Excellent. You've just set your first fitness goals. The first one is body composition, the other two are performance. The two performance goals are going to help with the body composition goal (although ultimately, it's going to take more than just improved performance to get there). These three goals you've just set are Specific and Measurable. This is very good, because we want to set SMART goals.

"Oh yeah, I love being smart. It's my third-favourite passtime."

Very good. Now, when we talk about SMART goals, we're actually talking about goals that have 5 elements to them:

Specific "I want to improve my bench press" is specific; "I want to get fitter" is not.

Measurable A good fitness goal is usually one in which you can observe the results in some objective way. Granted, that's not always the case ("I used to be unable to bend over without pain but now I can" doesn't really have a number to it, but is still a very worthy pursuit), but for the most part, numbers are good.

Action-Oriented The goal can't just be an end result, you actually need to do something to make that goal happen. This is where scheduling and logging workouts, modifying and logging diet, and getting a proper program put together implementing these pieces of the puzzle (there's a plug for my services in there somewhere) comes into play.

Realistic There's not much point in setting a goal that's unachievable. My recommendation is generally to set a goal that's within reach, but is actually going to demand that you reach for it. Something close enough that you can reasonably foresee it being done, but far enough away that you'll have to put in some effort to get there.

Time-Constrained There are short-term, mid-term and long-term goals. Whether your goal is for this week (short-term), this season (mid-term), or this year (long-term), most goals that fit into the rest of the SMART formula work best with a time element involved. This needs to be consistent with the other elements, of course: if you take a realistic mid-term goal and set it as a short-term goal, it's no longer realistic; if you take the same goal and set it as a long-term goal, you've just removed the urgency to take action.

"*nod nod* I see (tell me that once a week for the next 12 weeks and I think I might get it)."

Ironically, your inner monologue has just shown something close to a SMART goal: Specifically, you'll get it; the measurable factor is whether or not you get it; action involves me preaching to you once a week (between the lines, it also involves you listening once a week); it's realistic that through repetition you'll learn and understand the issue; and it's time-constrained on a short- and mid-term basis (weekly and seasonal).

Now, let's translate your fitness goals into SMART goals.

Instead of "I'm going to be 10kg lighter," it's now: "I'm going lose 10kg over the next 6 months. I'm going to do this by modifying my diet, logging my diet to make sure that I'm staying within the parameters of my diet, exercising at least 3 days a week, and targeting 0.5kg of weight loss each week."

Instead of "I'm going to be able to run 10km," it's now: "I'm going to be able to run 10km in 6 months time. I'm going to achieve this with the Couch to 5k program, followed up with weekly progressive overload to get from 5k to 10k."

And instead of "I'm going to be able to bench press 100kg," it's now: "I'm going to bench press 100kg in the next 12 months. I'm going to begin with learning technique on the empty bar (20kg) and practicing weekly progressive overload on a program designed by my trainer (yeah guys, I'm really subtle with this whole plugging myself thing), peaking 3-4 times throughout the year, and setting specific bench press goals for each season."

Training -- Wed 04/12/2013

Bench Press

10x20kg
5x40kg
3x60kg
1x70kg
1x80kg
1x85kg
1x90kg
2x10x60kg

Pull Ups

3x10xBW

Sprints

Several x a distance

In other news, I'll be roughly 1,500km away come the weekend, and then I won't be back until the following Thursday.

Competition: UQ Challenge 1 Dec 2013

Unlike the Iron Fest Open back in April, I didn't try water-cutting this time. If I were a couple kilos lighter already, I might have, but as I'd been sitting around the middle of my weight class, I saw no good reason for it. I weighed in at 70kg, on the dot, but not before some worries.

Weigh-in started at 8am; I arrived at about 8:45. I was immediately told that I'd been called up, and the word "piss" found its way into that memo. I can't remember what was said, so maybe they just meant that I should pee now and get any excess water out of my system before urinating, but as Powerlifting Australia is drug-tested, I put my name and piss together, and assumed some old people wanted to stare at me as I filled up a cup for them. Turns out this wasn't the case, and I was getting worried for nothing. For the record, I'm not worried about failing a drug test -- I'm clean, and if I were using steroids (which I must stress that I'm not), I think we can safely say they're not working, given how unremarkable my progress is. What does worry me about drug testing is the simple fact of having people watching me pee. I'd rather they take my saliva or blood or any other easily accessible bodily fluid. Heck, I think I'm more comfortable with the prospect of having someone checking out my prostate than I am with having to pee in front of someone.

Anyway, I didn't have to do a drug test this morning, or at any other time during the day. I enjoyed catching up with the other guys in my weight class, and meeting for the first time a lifter who I've been in contact with over youtube throughout the year.

And onto my lifts:

Squat

First Attempt: 140kg R

Second Attempt: 150kg R

Third Attempt: 155kg T

First attempt felt about the same as my squats the previous Monday, so not too flash. Second attempt was a major grinder, and I won't know until I see the footage (I assume there is footage), but it felt like I was twisting on the way up. I was surprised to get 3 white lights for it. Third attempt was a real wrestle, but alas an unsuccessful one. Just didn't have the strength in me that I had two weeks ago. So much for peaking :S

Bench Press

First Attempt: 85kg R

Second Attempt: 92.5kg R

Third Attempt: 97.5kg T

Ended up doing the exact same attempts I made last comp. 85kg felt great, and this time I remembered to wait for my calls. 92.5kg felt decent. 97.5kg turned out to be me biting off more than I could chew. If there's anything I can say as far as progress goes here, it's that the pause on the bench didn't feel as long drawn out as last comp (either meaning I'm getting better at stabilising the bar, or the judges were just more lenient), and I felt like I failed more elegantly on the last attempt -- no butt off the bench; just couldn't get it today.

Deadlift

First Attempt: 170kg R

Second Attempt: 185kg T

Third Attempt: 190kg R

First attempt felt better than my heavy deadlifts last Monday, and that was good for confidence.

Second attempt was funny. I thought that there was another lifter between me and the guy before me, so when I realised I was up (probably 30sec after they initially called out that the bar was loaded), I wasn't mentally ready. I rushed out onto the platform, forgetting to add chalk to my hands, and did the lift. The lift itself was great -- despite only residual chalk on my hands and being far from psyched up, the bar came up and it looked (from what I hear) about the same as 170kg. All great, right? Well, not according to the judges. See, my interpretation of the rules about lowering the bar is that if the bar's still in your hands when it hits the ground, it's all good. Now, I don't recall letting go of the bar prematurely, which suggests that the judges unanimously have a different interpretation of the rules.

Third attempt, like last comp, could have been heavier, from what I could tell. I actually suspected that I could go heavier before doing it, but that suspicion didn't arise until after the blood had returned to my head post-second-attempt, which did not happen until after I'd submitted my request to do 190kg.

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Compared to last comp, my total's up 20kg (+7.5kg on squat, +0kg on bench press, and +12.5kg on deadlift). Last comp I got a gold medal. Did my increased strength lead to more gold today? Not even once. I went in knowing that unless something went wrong, I wasn't going to get a gold medal today, because of a certain weightlifter in my class who was going to be opening with more than my best. Knowing that I wasn't going to win actually took some pressure off, and consequently I enjoyed this meet a lot more than the last one. I did still take home a piece of metal, though, this time winning bronze in the 74kg weight class. That's two meets and two lumps of metal under my belt.