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Thread: Stuffed Superdud: Bumpy road to respectable lifting

  1. #131
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    • starting strength seminar april 2024
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    I just started adding in Prowler work, once per week, for 6 sprints lasting 20-30 seconds with a 1:30 or so of rest in between. What else are Steel and Tracy putting together for you?

    BTW, I read your question to Andy Baker about your friend getting back to working out after having gone through chemo. Sorry to hear about her difficulties, but I wanted to say that it's great that you are helping her. It is tough to get someone to shift from running to lifting: I used to run (marathons and ultras, back of the pack) and it took my health situation to move me toward lifting. Perhaps you could encourage her to start running short distances 4x/week and then get her to a gym 2x/week "to strengthen her for the running." She might learn to squat and deadlift and power clean, as a way "to strengthen her core," which would strengthen her running. Maybe the consistent progress on a slow LP, SS-style, would get her excited about lifting, and then you could add the upper body stuff. Just a thought.

  2. #132
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    Steel has posted some really cool "Train like an Athlete" type programs over the years that they use at UPenn and suggested that I could combine those templates with some of Tracy's programming ideas, which I hadn't know about before. (I always figured she was just his freaky strong assistant.) I ended up putting together a 3-days-a-week interval program. The first day is sprints across a variety of distances (10yds, 25, 50, etc), starting with 5 reps at each length and building up to 10. The second day is the more traditional interval day where I can either do 100m sprints or 40yd hills or Prowler runs), again adding reps every week, and the third day is the "fun" day where I should just get outside and run a mile or two, changing speeds or running styles (adding skips, hops, backpedals, etc.) every 100 steps or so. It's pretty straightforward, but definitely looks like a miserable 9 weeks. Guess I'll get super sexified at the end. Well either that or super dead. We'll see.

    Thanks for your concern, btw. I'll let her know that somewhere in North Carolina, that big teddy bear with the beard and black baseball cap just PR'ed his 2RM squat and that barbells helped get him back on his feet after his own chemo. Physically she's durable but she has days where she's too upset about this happening to her to get anything done, so I figured I'd run into fewer emotional speedbumps/landmines if we just did stuff she had done before and progressed slowly from there. Thanks for the tips; you'll be the first to know if I get her under a bar.

  3. #133
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    5/23/2014
    I am traveling for the holiday weekend (business, not pleasure, I am afraid) and didn't expect to train, but when I saw that the nearby globogym had a squat rack, I figured I'd add some light work; couldn't go too heavy anyway since I didn't have my shoes and wrist wraps and didn't want to risk an ego injury. Did this in a casual shirt, street shoes and boxer briefs (because all I had were jeans and slacks).

    Press: 145x5x3
    Squat: 315x5x3
    Face smash*: 50lbx1

    I looked pretty bad the way I was dressed, I admit, and some douchebag college kids actually laughed when I walked into the room. But then I squatted up to three easy wheels when they crapped out at 185, and they stopped. I'm usually not one to get into a pissing contest over #s, since the more I lift the more I realize how much I have to go before I can even be in the same building as a real lifter like Klokov, but not gonna lie, in this case it felt pretty good to outlift them by a fat margin.

    *Thought I'd do a bit of conditioning with dumbbells while waiting for everyone else to finish their treadmill rides so I recalled I used to enjoy doing high rep DB clean and presses. Welp, reached for the 50's not realizing how light they were, yanked, and clanked myself right in the face. Very sexy. Put the DBs back and called it a day.

  4. #134
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    Quote Originally Posted by stuffedsuperdud View Post
    5/23/2014
    I looked pretty bad the way I was dressed, I admit, and some douchebag college kids actually laughed when I walked into the room. But then I squatted up to three easy wheels when they crapped out at 185, and they stopped. I'm usually not one to get into a pissing contest over #s, since the more I lift the more I realize how much I have to go before I can even be in the same building as a real lifter like Klokov, but not gonna lie, in this case it felt pretty good to outlift them by a fat margin.
    It has to feel good. My wife and I have had similar experiences at these places, while on vacation. I like watching while she out squats or out pulls the bros.

  5. #135
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    Oh, I forgot:
    Lifetime learning PR: Practical Programming had been sitting in my Kindle account for the last month collecting electronic dust, so I read it from cover to cover on the plane. WOW. I actually got off the plane feeling a billion times smarter. Definitely a must-read for anyone coaching anyone else in, well, any sport, really. That goes double for strength/power sports. Big props to Andy and Rip and Friends for putting all this together.

  6. #136
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    Still out of town. I went back to the gym and basically repeated the session from previously, only a bit heavier.

    Press: 145x5x5
    Squat: 315x5, 325x5, 335x5 in my crappy street shoes it's fine.

    I had forgotten how wonderful globogyms can be in some areas. Sure, there's only one squat rack and no platform or bumpers, but hey, it's very clean, and, more crucially, today the place was full of MILFs and girls from the college next door; I was basically drowning in Spandex leggings, shortshorts, sideboobs, and blatant deliberate cameltoes. Yahtzee.

    ............but since I am an awkward nerd / sucky person, I avoided eye contact with all of them and spent most of the time in the one rack lifting and making friends with two guys who had questions about squats. It got a bit rambly when I recommended that one guy who just wanted to get stronger that he squat low-bar, when he clearly saw me squatting high-bar (because I'm an asshole and know that it irritates some of this forum's zealots). I went into a breathless ramble about the merits of each, and then somehow the discussion turned to the use of weightlifting shoes, an issue made confusing by the fact that i wasn't wearing mine. Basically, it was a giant hot mess + they kept on talking to me right when I was re-racking a weight and was dizzy and tired.

    By golly I need to really get better at breaking down the things I know about barbell training into bite sized pieces for laypeople. I have some teaching experience from grad school, but it's definitely easier to teach a topic to a group of people who know nothing and who are trapped in the room with me for an hour than it is to try and casually talk about such a big topic to someone who might know bits and pieces of it but not other bits and pieces, and who might lose interest at any moment and go back to half-squats and dumbbbell flies.

    I did manage to say the words Mark Rippetoe and Starting Strength somewhere in there though so hopefully they'll sort everything out on their own...

  7. #137
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    I am back. Didn't realize how exhausting the flight / the day's adventures were until after I got back to my apartment, unloaded my stuff and passed out, so no lifting. I was hoping to do some intervals today but my conditioning buddy (see: Thread of Suck and Andy's forum) was also away for the holiday and didn't get back till the dark of night. Ended up doing a 3 mile powerwalk with her while she filled me in on her weekend adventure. Ate several cookies she baked while walking, effectively negating any calories burned, so I am telling myself my knees and hips and VO2_max are at least marginally improved....but they're probably not. This is why I'm fat.

    Also, from here on out I'll be a bit more diligent about noting the diet and bodyweight. My sister took a candid photo of me the other day and boy I've slacked a bit since my knee injury. Definite a "Am I that fat?" moment. Better fix it. Bodyweight was 104kg/228lbs today. See you guys at 94kg/207lbs. Because let's be realistic: with my crappy #'s there's no reason to weigh more than 56kg anyway.

  8. #138
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    It doesn't sound like the trip totally FUBAR'd you. You'll be back and feeling on track in short order. I look forward to following your nutrition progress, too. I'm trying my best to get that together, as well.

  9. #139
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    Quote Originally Posted by Oldman View Post
    It doesn't sound like the trip totally FUBAR'd you. You'll be back and feeling on track in short order. I look forward to following your nutrition progress, too. I'm trying my best to get that together, as well.
    Yea I'm fine, sir. I just like to complain a lot. The good thing about food is I naturally prefer the clean stuff anyway (I descend from a bunch of farmers and we were eating paleo before yuppies made it cool..guess we're hipsters). The bad news is, for me the hard part is simply a matter of reducing quantities: I love to eat and I'm a pretty good cook to boot, a dangerous combination, so my macro ratios might be okay but the caloric load no. I had good results with cyclic keto in 2012-2013 and walked around at about 210lbs, but it got too socially awkward when eating out, and it was always a tossup between either ruining my diet and adding several days before the next carb day, or ruining a first date, which tend to be uncomfortable enough as it is. I ended up dropping the diet. This time I'll be following Jordan's guidelines, which seems to work for him, anyway. We'll see how it goes.

    I don't envy you though. If I lived in NC, I would probably weigh around 300lbs. Every time I've been in the area for work, I've missed significant portions of the conference because every day I was there, I would take extended lunch breaks and then leave early so that there would be enough time to eat dinner twice. Everything in your neck of the woods is delicious. Good luck!

  10. #140
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    starting strength coach development program
    5/27/2014
    Wheee running.
    Push

    Squat

    Sn/CJ

    Pulls

    Conditioning
    Steel 1-1: (30-40-30)x10
    Each rep = 65% sprint from the goal line to the 30, 100% sprint to the other 30, 65% spring to the opposite goal, walk back.
    My first time sprinting in a long time and I was horrified to discover how slow I've become, despite the fact that I've only gotten faster in sn/cj. Hopefully the speed returns as the body leans out.

    My conditioning partner (see Andy's forum) was wildly atrophied after six months of cancer treatment but insisted that she do all ten reps. I had her jog the 30's and not do a dead sprint for the 40's, and take extra long rests, and even then she didn't have any gas left to sprint the last two reps at all, but she got all the volume in and was extremely thrilled with herself at the end. I couldn't be prouder either: I was there the day she was diagnosed and she really hung tough through the gauntlet of treatment. She still has a long road ahead to get her strength and conditioning back, but today's work sort of marked her return to normalcy. Whoo!

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