Stuffed Superdud: Bumpy road to respectable lifting

[stuffedsuperdud]

8/31/2014
I had an awkward encounter while ordering a sandwich. I was wearing these ridiculous compression pants, and was still rocking a sick pump, brah, after pressing, when I went to order a sandwich.

Obese emo guy behind the counter:"Whoa, man! Those pants make your legs look really small! What's it called? Chicken legs?"
Me: "Uh.....yea it's called chickenlegs. But I do squat-"
Guy: "Yea yea, chickenlegs. I mean, your upper body is MASSIVE [edit: it's not] but your legs look really small."
Me: "Ugh...yea I guess they could use more work...."
Guy: "Nah! I can tell you're not a chickenlegs guy. I mean, judging from your waistline and all."
Me: [to myself] Uh...is he calling me fat?!"
Guy: "I guess it's your pants. They're compression, right? Man, but you got some big calves though."
Me: "Yea can't complain.....(where's my sandwich?) I guess they were my consolation prize at the genetic lottery, huh."
Guy: "Nah. Big calves suck. Look at the NBA. Small, high calves, big verticals. Big low calves do nothing."
Me: "Yep."

Push
Press:
162.5x5x5 Volume PR
I pushed a thing! And it was surprisingly easy. Can't complain.

Squat

Sn/CJ
Snatch:
40kgx3x2
50x3x2
60x3
70x3
75x1
80x0,1,1
85x0

Ehhhhhh The "wall" of fail where consistency falls apart has definitely gone up from 70 to 80, which is good, but 80 is still not 180, which is bad. This isn't a strength issue, as the barbell feels very light all the way. I just am not catching it in the correct position as the weight goes up, and also intimidated by the barbell and hesitating just a tick to get under, and in snatching, hesitation is the end of the lift, so sorry, better luck next time. I am afraid the most likely solution is more snatches.

Pulls

[idlehands]

Waiting for 410 squat sir. Represent.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Sorry sir. My work schedule went crazy last week (20+ hour days) and took a shit on my training. Everything came to a head today though, so maybe it'll be better from here on out. I'll find out tomorrow where I am at. Hint: I don't think I've supercompensated my way to that 200kg squat during this mess.

[Oldman]

Sorry sir. My work schedule went crazy last week (20+ hour days) and took a shit on my training. Everything came to a head today though, so maybe it'll be better from here on out. I'll find out tomorrow where I am at. Hint: I don't think I've supercompensated my way to that 200kg squat during this mess.

It sucks that work is shitting on your training, but I think you're still coming out ahead: I'm with JC that your strength in the lab incident prevented the fall from being a total FUBAR, and it is a bonus point that your intern stayed on task with his mono-focus. Plus a volume press PR. Definitely a glass half full (or more).

Now emo sandwich boy...that relationship needs to be developed over time and nutured...

[Bryan Dobson]

The entire commentary on your body from a food preparer is just weird.

[stuffedsuperdud]

9/4/2014
So training has been wildly inconsistent this week due to work. While we're at it, diet has been in the shitter too, as we've just been chowing down whatever we can get our hands on at random night hours, which means a lot of Jack in the Box and Taco Bell. It's like being back in college! Cancergirl wanted to train at 6AM though, so....

Push
Press intensity
175x5 5RM PR, I think I've been stalled at 175 for intensity day for what felt like years, so I'm glad this finally happened. Actually, the last time I tested my 1RM (late 2012), I got exactly this, 175, so it feels pretty good to finally get past it. Looking forward to 180 next week.

Squat

Sn/CJ

Pulls

Cancergirl
This was the real show of the day. She hadn't trained in about two weeks due to her work schedule and various family activities. I thought about backing her off a bit, but her #s are still low and she's not going to be able to train again till Monday, probably, so I figured, even if she overtrained a little, she has three days to recover.

Squat:
65lbx5x2
70lbx5 PR
The 70 was really easy and just for kicks she paused the last rep.

Deadlift:
105lbx5 5RM PR
After Rep 3 she asked if she could stop, but I figured, hey you're already 60% of the way there, might as well get paid, right? So she ground out the last two reps. Knees caved a bit, but nothing terrible.

Storiezzz
I've complained about this sort of things before, but here comes another round.

Story #1: Some creeper over the weekend that she had rejected years ago reappeared from the gutter; she felt bad and invited him to get beers with me and some others. He was awful depressing company and as the night dragged on, he made some icky comment about how he's been hittin' the gym hard, and invited her to go with him.

She goes, "Oh yea, I already go. I lift with this guy [points to me]."

He gives me a dirty look: "Oh him? What's he having you do?" A smug grin. And now we're at DEFCON 2, apparently.

"Just squats and deadlifts, mostly. Sometimes bench and press." This took some of the wind out of his sails. Guess he was all set on telling her how stupid I was for using machines?

"Oh. I certainly hope he has you going to parallel. Because you know, it doesn't count otherwise. Lots of guys stay above parallel for ego. Not me though."

She just gave him a stare, and I made the mistake here of interrupting with, "Don't worry. We go below parallel." Ugh shouldn't have gotten my hands dirty!!!

"Well, that's wrong. That's bad for your knees."

Here I compound my mistake by trying to explain in painful detail why she's fine. Not because I wanted to trounce him, exactly. I just like to talk training and would have done it to anyone. Reeeaaallly should have realized he was interested in pussy and not training though. Damn my autism.

So he starts getting mad, when fortunately Cancergirl says to this guy, "It's fine. He knows what he's doing. He competes....! Very occasionally."

This shut him up. Miffed, he pouts, "Well, I certainly hope you're using free weights, at least." (LOLOL been a while since I've heard "free weights." I thought they were just called weights, period. Hanging out with lifters in our little corner of the gym has spoiled me, I guess.)

When we left for the night, she mentioned, "He's better than he used to be. This guy cried outside my parents' house for a week after I rejected him." Wut.

Story #2: Cancergirl mentioned to her co-worker that she started lifting this summer, and he immediately goes into White Knight mode and starts offering advice along the lines of, "Oh yea, there's no need to get bigger than a 1x BW deadlift" and "Don't squat. It's bad for your knees and you'll get too big." I guess this is marginally better than the other guy, but now I have a horny no-squat mofo with what I guess is, according to his logic, a 185lb deadlift filling her head with garbage.

.....and I had to waste about 30 minutes last night and this morning debunking these ideas he put in her head. Hopefully after this morning's session they're no longer bouncing around her mind.

I don't get it. For anything else in life, if you don't know what you're doing, you shut up in accordance with Abe Lincoln's advice. Hell, even if you do know what you're doing, you keep quiet unless asked, right? You never hear an IT guy go, "Hey babe, you should really switch from Norton to Kasperrsky. Much better security. So, wanna bang?"

But combine women with iron and suddenly every penis in the room is a patronizing cocksmock. It's just lifting weights, everyone. Holy crap.

[Oldman]

SSD

Congratulations on the great 5RM press, dude! That's awesome...I'm 100 lbs behind, but if my shoulder rehab continues to work, I'll get there in 20-30 weeks. If you hear footsteps behind you, it's a fat, bald man, trying to press 175x5.

Cancergirl

Two big PRs! Very nice! Tell her she's bringing game.

Storiezzz

Creepy pouterboy: "free weights"....lulz. I like that "he's better than he used to be." I remember guys like this from college.

White Knight 185 Deadlift Guy: Over time, after she's heard 1000 guys tell her she'll get too big (for what? for whom? for them?), she'll understand that these are guys who want to keep her down.

I'm loving the mini-plays: you're like the Tom Stoppard of Iron.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Thanks Ed! Hey, the way I figure, between the cancer and the surgery, your press is massive. Hell, you're probably literally the world's strongest cancer survivor, and you're definitely stronger than I was the first day I pressed (I did 65lbs, or 1/3 bodyweight, for 3 ugly wobbly sets of 5.....ugh don't remind me of those dark days)

Glad you're enjoying the stories; some good might as well come out of these situations, I guess. Truth really is stranger (and more annoying) than fiction sometimes. These past few months have really been an eye-opening experience on the body image crap women go through. I used to just think, "Meh whatever, women can just turn off the TV and go lift and be awesome," but now I am downright embarrassed by how oblivious I was to just how many times a woman is told, directly or otherwise, to look a certain way every single day. I guess establishing any standard for how someone "should" look is obnoxious, hence my disdain for the whole "Strong is the New Skinny" schtick, but it seems especially unfortunate that of all looks and body types, we've settled on the weak and malnourished flavor. That goes double, no, triple, here in LA, hope to Earth's most vapid humans. Ugh, and where I do I start with the cornucopia of bad science to go with it. It's almost every time we go to the gym that Cancergirl asks something that starts with, "So my cousin told me to eat no more than 800 calories a day" or "My friend said that too much protein causes kidney poisoning" or "Should I go on a cleanse for one month? My aunt is doing it and says she feels much better." She's not stupid; on the contrary, she's a great engineer and one of the smartest people I know, and gets it every time I explain scientifically why these are bad ideas. It's just that the bullshit is so thick, and always presented with such confidence, that it is very difficult for anyone other than nerds like us to sort out the good from the bad, and I'm sure any of us would have trouble when the shit appeals to our insecurities, e.g. the "You going to get too big!" people. Every day's a new battle, it seems, between me (I have science on my side!....no seriously, aside from the training books, this finally motivated me to re-learn all the biochemistry and cell biology stuff that I skated through during the BS and MS years.....heh) and all the voices screaming nonsense into her ears, and cleaning up after them is getting frustrating and old. You'd think it'd be obvious that it's fun and healthy to be big and strong, and miserable to be deliberately malnourished and weak, but that message seems to have been thoroughly buried under the trash.

9/5/2014
Got a quick session in right before going to work. Pretty rushed due to this week's craziness, so twas a squat and go affair.

Push

Squat
Didn't want to push it too hard with an impromptu session, so I did.....front squats!! Haven't done these since I tweaked a wrist two months ago, so ramped up conservatively....at first.

Front squat:
45lbx10
135x5
225x5
275x3
285x3
295x3 Accidental 3-rep PR I thought I had done this before, but it turns out I had left off at 290.

Was going to stop here, but that felt easy enough so:
305x2 300lb club?!
315x1 3-plate club!
I took the 315 for a second rep but was slow coming out of the hole and had to dump it. The legs probably could have ground it out but I was afraid of any excessive forward lean stressing the wrist so I figured, might as well stop while I'm way ahead. Not bad for a "I'll just go mess around a bit" day, I guess.

Sn/CJ

Pulls

[stuffedsuperdud]

9/6/2014
You guys ready for this hot mess? Starr and Broz agree that front squats are more upper body than anything else, I believe. Well, today, my legs feel okay, but my traps, upper back, and abs are absolutely roasted to the point where I can't even shrug my arms without epic DOMS flaring. And God help me if I sneeze. Might have been a mistake to lift 25lbs more than I had ever lifted after 2 months off. :P

So today I tried to take it "easy" and just snatch, which failed comically. I worked my way from 40kg to 80kg, and missed tons of lifts backwards. The bar absolutely would not stay stable overhead. On the plus side the strength is clearly there, as it felt very easy whipping the thing up.........and over my head. Blah.

A dude on the platform next to me was Sheiko-ing his DL up to 300kgx2x6 or something ridiculous like that and was visibly upset with me when I missed 80kg for the 8th time. Sorry, big guy!

[Oldman]

Holy shit, dude! Awesome PRs! I think after I crap out on the paused squats, I'll alternate with the front squats.