Chasing 300/405/500 - A skinny labcoat's journey away from 90's Small™

[blowdpanis]

Matt (PMDL) and I both decided to make logs here, as we both feel this site has the potential to grow into a rather promising community. I like the convergence of forces here - the 70's Big™ mentality, old school Bill Starr, and new school Rippetoe and his tried and true yet labcoat'd analysis of lifting mechanics. Things that actually work combined with labcoating about why - this is a cause I can get behind.

Stuff About Me

I'm 30 years old and currently enrolled in a Doctor of Physical Therapy program of which I am not wildly enthused. I have competition aspirations in terms of achieving the 300/405/500 in that context, but no definitive plans at the moment for my next meet.

My story is actually similar to Gary's, to some degree. I started off as a fully grown adult weighing in the low 130's with extremely small bone structure. I started "lifting" at the tail end of my senior year of high school, but it took me many years to arrive into some form of sensible training.

I am presently almost 40 lbs heavier than what I started while still having reasonably low bodyfat (maybe 12-13%), but experiments to date with getting heavier have not gone awesome. I.e. I've seemed to gain disproportionate amounts of fat relative to muscle when overfeeding past my current weight (~170 lbs). Perhaps you guys can convince me to become an adult male.

Establishing E-Cred

To date, I have only competed once, raw, in April of 2006, and put up a ~341 squat, ~275 bench, and ~452 deadlift. I peaked out heavier than I've ever been at the time by embracing absolute garbage food, but wasn't a fan of either the gut I gained or the lipid panel that came back afterwards, so I've somewhat restrained myself from the 70's Big™ philosophy the past few years.

As opposed to posting old vids of my meet, I'll post more recent stuff in terms of what I've been up to the past several months of training:

315 Pause Squat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEZE2o1neY0&fmt=18

335 Momentary Pause Squat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwYT3ZMswjU&fmt=18

280 Bench:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHcFj3Gydu0&fmt=18

405 Hook Grip Pull

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c3lF6wGd-w&fmt=18

160 lb Strict Chin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZY7rEf_4nc&fmt=18

170 lb Paused Dip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU5bK-aL6lU&fmt=18

165 lb Press:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWrqfmB7Cco&fmt=18

I've also dieted down to pretty god damn low bodyfat levels, just to see what I'd look like:

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/5...cn0148bhf6.jpg

This back in the summer of '08. Don't ask me what my weight was. Okay, the low 150's. I can already foresee the "EAT A CHEESEBURGER, LABCOAT!" comments forthcoming.

My Goals:

Hitting those ~300/405/500 marks are primary amongst my goals, but to get stronger in general is my primary training goal. Gay or not, my health is extremely important to me, and I will admit that aesthetics play a role in my decision making.

My Current Routine:

The past few weeks have been a mess, but I've been experimenting a lot with frequent, submaximal, volume-varied routines. Basically my own ideas on what makes the Russki routines work, based on dual factor thinking, and incorporating Tescherer's RPE ideas.

RPE = a scale of effort from 1-10, basically, with a scale that goes like this

7 = speed weight, lots of reps left over
8 = ~a couple or few reps left in the tank
9 = probably another good rep if you really pushed it
10 = the limit of your ability

I try to keep most of my training in that 8-9 range, and it's been working quite well.

[blowdpanis]

An example of my training from yesterday (Friday), went like this...

Pause Squats

Bar x warmup
135 x warmup (band around the knees - helps me to remember shove them out)
185 x warmup (band)
205 x warmup (no band)
225 x 5
225 x 5

Chins

Me x 5
Me + 75 x 5
Me + 75 x 5

Rehab Press

Due to a nagging right shoulder injury, I've been using the overhead press as my primary upper body push exercise. Without getting overly optimistic, it seems to be working, as a good deal of my shoulder pain is already gone after a week of doing these daily. I am really, really concentrating on good form/shrugging the shoulders at the top, and theoretically this isn't anywhere near the limit of my ability.

Bar x get the shoulders warm
105 x 5
105 x 5

Hook Grip Semi-Sumo Deadlifts

As the first kind of interesting thing here, I've been fooling a little with an alternate style of pull that some people who have a difficult time setting up in a tight, conventional stance might like...

345 x 5:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Jh9hYGidA&fmt=18

As per the description in the video:

This is a form of deadlift I've been playing with. In a sense, the mechanics are fundamentally the same as Rippetoe's prescribed conventional form, but with the arms outside of the legs.

The setup:

* Position the bar approximately over midfoot.
* Take your grip, such that your arms are more or less perpendicular to the ground.
* Take your stance RIGHT outside of this grip. This will be narrower than a standard sumo deadlift.
* Otherwise, same as Rippetoe's setup - big breath, squeeze the chest up, take the slack out of the bar, THEN pull.
* Use the lats to keep the bar "towards" yourself on the way up and down.

Between switching to a hook grip full time and really emphasizing good deadlift mechanics, my pulls took a nosedive for a bit, but are starting to recover in terms of getting back to my prior levels of strength. As evidenced by the 405 vid above, I should be capable of a good bit more, but I am in no rush, trying to keep things pretty on the way up.

[misspelledgeoff]

Christ you are a strong fucker! Especially for a skinny, ripped guy.

Glad you started a log and look forward to following it.

[blowdpanis]

Thank you, geoff. I figure my lifts at my bodyweight imply that I certainly do my job on the training end of things. It might be fairly argued that my bodyweight itself implies that I haven't properly done my job in the kitchen, though.

I ordered a pair of those new .5" heel Rip weightlifting shoes, so when I get them hopefully sometime later this week, I'll post my review. I've been lifting in Vibram's as of late for funsies, and actually really like them, but will ultimately side with the shoes that give me the biggest squat.

[K.Diesel]

Christ you are a strong fucker! Especially for a skinny, ripped guy.

Glad you started a log and look forward to following it.

No joke, man! How much do you weigh?

[blowdpanis]

No joke, man! How much do you weigh?

Maybe ~170 on a good day. As low as ~165 depending on my calorie intake/water weight.

[blowdpanis]

My back is tighter than it should be. Could it have something to do with pause squatting 5 days per week? LOL COULD BE. So I'm moving this to a poor man's Pavel routine. Wasdatmean? 3 sets of 5 done thrice weekly, with RPE's kept in the 8-9 range (preferrably more towards the former). This suits my purposes for now (right shoulder irritated, school starting up again etc).

Pause Squats

Principle thing I've worked on here lately is getting better depth and pauses. I think I've arguably done both more consistently.

Bar x warmup
135 x warmup (band)
185 x warmup (band)
205 x warmup
225 x 5,5,5

Video of the 2nd and 3rd sets hither:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtTUslmhGVk&fmt=18

Looks mostly pretty good, by my eye. 4th rep on the 2nd set is a little more segmented than I'd prefer, but these things happen.

Chins

Me x warmup
Me + 75 x 5,5,5

Rehab Press

Bar x warmup
105 x 5,5,5

Legs to Bar

Like knees to elbows, but harder/cooler looking.

Me x 6,10

I actually take a wide grip on these to reduce the help of the lats in rotating me up towards the bar. Quite a burn in the abs.

[blowdpanis]

Video log of today's workout:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaTBn_a4T-A&fmt=18

Rocking out the oly shoes with a musical soundtrack!

Exercises shown...

Pause Squats - 225 x 5, 3rd of 3 sets. Pauses here are a little borderline, and the last rep is a little more segmented than I like. Principle difference in my paused squats now is that I am consistently BELOW parallel, instead of just above.

Pause Bench - 215 x 5, 2nd of 2 sets. A little wobbly, as per usual. Eccentrics a little over-slow, but the weight felt light.

Chins - me + 75 x 5, 3rd of 3 sets. Pretty speedy.

Rehab Press - 105 x 5, 3rd of 3 sets. It's possible I'm being wildly overcautious here, but I'm trying to really, consciously shrug the bar at the top, which seems to be doing good things for my right shoulder.

[blowdpanis]

Just got my pair of 9 Rip's. These feel amazing, can't wait to give them a proper run-through tomorrow.

[blowdpanis]

So, some first impressions of the shoes...

They feel tremendously stable, which is awesome. However, there seems to be a difference in heel height between my left and right shoe...





If I were a normal leg length'd person, I'd probably send these back as I consider a margin of error of ~20% on the heel height to be unacceptable. However, this provides me a sort of weird opportunity to try something I've wanted to do for a while, which is get the soles shimmed in my right shoe such that my left shoe has a higher heel, since my retroverted hip makes my right leg sort of permanently, functionally longer at a given foot angle. I had actually experimented squatting on additional material on the left side, and this seemed somewhat promising, but I ended up ditching it since A) the surface could move, which creates instability and B) it was too much of a pain in the ass.

As such, I'm thinking about keeping the shoes, even if there is a defect in heel height. That said, I'll see what Bill from Rogue says when he sees these pictures.