David's journey from puney to powerful

[DCon]

I started starting strength a week ago and thought I'd keep a log to track my progress and to get feedback from other forum users to aid my development.

I am a 24 year old male 6ft 2 and 12.5 stone

My goal is to get to 13.5 as soon as possible. I play 7 a side football monday, 5aside on thursdays, and rugby on saturdays. I will be following the routine on tuesdays, fridays, and sundays mostly, but will obviously have to accomodate if my situation changes.

I will be trying to follow the GOMAD diet, but i reckon half is probably the most realistic option aswell as eating 6 meals a day, and consuming maxmuscle cyclone after my workouts and after training.

I started out as low as possible and all my weights are in kilos without the bar, they seem extremely small at the moment, but im making progression and everyone has to start somewhere. I am also apparently a massive weakling, which I feel is a good reason to be following the programme. I will only be putting up the weight by 2.5 kilos each workout for each exercise, or 1.25 kilos each side of the bar.

My first weeks log is as follows:

Tues:
Squats: 3x5x20
Bench: 3x5x10
Deadlift: 3x5x40

Fri:
Squats: 3x5x22.5
Press:3x5x2.5
cleans: just the bar, finding it hard to get the catching position, will keep practicing and read up more on the power clean

Sun: 3x5x25
Bench: 3x5x12.5
Deadlift: 3x5x42.5

[DCon]

Tues:

Squats: 3x5x27.5 easy today, really tried to focus on hip drive and the hamstring stretch
Press: 3x5x5 felt quite heavy, lame! Unbelievable how weak my shoulders are
Cleans: practiced the jump and shrug but cant get the hook. Went home and re-read the chapter, will focus on working from the top down next time.
Rows: 3x5x5 easing myself in

Mainly focussing on keeping good form and eating tonnes at the minute, the gains will come!

[Sami]

You are going to have some pretty serious recovery issues ahead. You'll end up having to choose one over the other since neither will be very productive.

Also, include the weight of the bar. Nobody writes like that. If it's a 7ft Olympic bar, it weighs 20 kg.

Good luck with progress though.

[DCon]

do you mean choose between football and rugby? or between starting strength and those sports? I'l be sure to add the 20kgs next time

Thanks for the support

[DCon]

Game got cancelled today so I hit the gym instead. Here are the results (including bar weight ):

squats: 3x5x50 nice and deep, felt good today
bench: 3x5x35
deadlift: 8x65 felt really easy today, which actually made me worried for some reason as last week they were quite tough.

Had to do my bench first as there were 5 dudes cycling 5 sets of 10 each on the squats, unbelieveable! Took an age! All doing quarter squats badly too!

[DCon]

Squats: 3x5x52.5
Press: 3x5x27.5
Cleans: 4x7x20

I kept the weight low on the cleans and used what i guess must be a 5ft bar just to try and get some good technique, some of my cleans werent great but some were really good and it feels amazing to nail one properly with perfect timing. I think this is going to become my favourite exercise!

Motivation is high, I ate a shit load today aswell!

[DCon]

squats: 3x5x55
bench: 3x5x37.5
deadlift: 5 x 67.5

[DCon]

Had the day off today so thought I'd hit the gym before football tonight.

Todays workout:

Squats: 3x5x57.5
Press: 3x5x30
Hang Cleans: 3x5x30

I've got to focus on not bending my arms when cleaning, I'll be doing hang cleans until I can do 20kg a side as we dont have any bumper plates or anything like that in my gym.

Overall im happy with my progress, need to drink a shit load more milk though!!

[DCon]

Today something occured which I had only read about in starting strength folklore. As i walked through the gym to the back room where the squat rack is kept i took a glance to see if it was free and to my delight, a solitary drongo was there bicep curling using the olympic bar and standing in the squat rack. A huge smile came to my face as i was obvioulsy witnessing something special. Stupidness of this claibur is a rare sight.

So once he'd finished I started my workout, which went as follows:

Squats: 3x5x60 woohoo finally hit 2 plates, i actually deloaded my warmup weights just so i could put the 20's on there, how sad am I! Felt good though, nice depth and power in the drive up. Only struggled slightly on the last reps of the last sets.
Bench: 3x5x40 I have the chest and arms of a small girl
Deadlift: 5 x 70 felt good, really trying to focus on good back position and making sure my starting position is correct.

[DCon]

Todays workout:

Squats: 3x5x62.5 squats felt quite heavy today, hoping eating more will help with this and it doesnt mean that im going to stall soon.
Press: 4x32.5, 3x32.5, 5x32.5 these felt so heavy but managed to push 5 out on the last set so hoping its in my mind
Hang Cleans: 3x5x32.5, keep practicing!