A Track Junkie Hits the Gym

[TrackJunkie]

There are two things I love in sports; lifting heavy things and moving fast. It's this strange combination that leads me to powerlifting and track cycling.
Inspired by Rippetoe's recent post on the novice effect, and the knowledge that track season is just 20 weeks away, I've decided to take another shot at starting strength and this time, I'm keeping a training log AND an eating log online.

I made a half-assed attempt at following the program last fall, and saw reasonable gains on it despite not eating enough and not lifting hard enough. It's amazing how that works for novices.
My lifts were going up, but a month in, I weighed myself again and found I'd lost nearly 10 lbs. Determined to reverse the trend, I gained that weight back over the next couple months until my squat got up to about 225.
That's when I fizzled out. I kept going to the gym, but the squats were "too hard" and I "couldn't" keep my legs in position while setting up for the deadlift, so instead I played around on machines, thinking it would all get better.
Of course it didn't, and now I've lost a fair amount of progress after about a month long layoff, and so begins my second attempt.

I had my first day back in the gym yesterday. I took a 5 minute warmup on a stationary bike and then went to the real work.

Body weight - 182lbs
Squats - 3x5@165lbs
Bench - 3x5@115lbs
Power Cleans- 5x3@95lbs

Food: I drank my gallon of milk, at some oats with yogurt, and put down half of a delicious homemade pepperoni and sausage pizza. It was truly a thing of beauty. We're talking about a pan full of dough, topped with sauce, a pound and a half of cheese, 8 ounces of pepperoni and maybe 16 ounces of sausage? Not really sure. I probably ate some other things too. The food part of my log will only get better, since I only decided to take the food log part of this seriously today.



My plan for weekly programming is similar, at least at first glance, to the practical programming novice program. The difference is that I added power cleans on Monday, since power is important to lifting but especially important to track cycling. Since I added power cleans on Monday, I moved the deadlifts to Friday, which I intend to hit even harder now, since I'll have the whole weekend to recover from them. I added pistol squats to wednesday because I enjoy doing them, and Wednesday was looking awfully lonely without a double helping of leg work.

Monday-
General warmup on a stationary bike at 120 rpm for 5 minutes
Squats 3x5
Press/bench 3x5
Power Cleans 3x5
Chins to failure (which for now means negative chins, since I can't do any yet)

Wednesday-
General warmup on a stationary bike at 120 rpm for 5 minutes
Squats 3x5
Press/bench 3x5
Chins to failure
Pistol squats

Friday-
General warmup on a stationary bike at 120 rpm for 5 minutes
Squats 3x5
Press/bench 3x5
Deadlifts 1x5
Chins to failure

[TartanEagle]

I just started using Fitday to track my eating. Its pretty simple to use and it lets me know I am getting enough protein and calories. Good luck.

[TrackJunkie]

I hit the gym this afternoon, finished my warmup on the bike at 120 rpm and moved on to the first open squat rack I saw. I made it through my warmup sets, and then 2 reps into my first squat set I heard a great noise. It sounded like... ripping fabric?
I stood up quick, probably with terrible form, and racked the weight. I felt around to see if my pants had ripped, and thankfully they hadn't. I'm sure it looked strange though, for a lifter to finish 2 reps of a lift and start grabbing his ass.
I finished the workout though, and made my PRs for the day.
I tried five reps of the overhead press at 80 lbs, but I cheated in a MAJOR way to get them up. We're talking huge layback, ratcheting the weight up with calf raises, everything I could think of to finish the set, but I was GOING to finish it, and I "did" it.
Chins to failure was a bit embarrassing. I got a rep and a half each time. I'm thinking I should either switch to negatives, or try a grease the groove sort of thing, but I'm not sure how that would impact recovery. It can't be too hard to recover from though, since I'm a novice.
Squats 3x5@175lbs
OHP 3x5@75lbs
Chinups 3 sets to failure

[Mr.City]

Does your gym have resistance bands to assist your chins?

[TrackJunkie]

Does your gym have resistance bands to assist your chins?

Maybe. I'm not sure. I'll check the next time I go in. I'll be spending the next few days in a different city though, so I'll have two gyms to look for resistance bands in.

I was about to ask if the resistance bands would really help, since they would have relaxed by the time I hit the part of the movement I get stuck on, but
I suppose that's just about perfect since I'll still get all the training stimulus from that sticking point. I can't seem to rise above a 90 degree elbow angle.

[TrackJunkie]

Hit the gym early today. LOTS of yawning, but lots of lifting too. I played around with a different grip today for the bench and deadlift, which a quick google search has showed is the hook grip, but with just the index and middle fingers over the thumb. After I finished my deadlifts, I stuck around and just did a single chin followed by a negative every minute or so for a few minutes.
The 10 lb jump in the squats went pretty well. I think I have an unacceptable level of lateral movement in my squats, linked with a tendency to let the left side of my body rise before the right, which lets it get away without doing its share of the work. This will be my major form goal I think, fixing this problem. After that, I'll try to find a camera and see how things look.
I made a 10 lb jump in the bench compared to monday, which I'm not sure was the right thing to do, but I finished it. I plan on making 5 lb jumps from now on.
The deadlifts went alright for my first day back to deadlifting since the layoff, I guess. I need to focus on squeezing the hell out of the bar, since I'm sure that my legs can move the weight, but I do this stupid thing where I let go of the bar at the bottom of every rep, so maybe I should say I'm doing 5x1 deadlifts... Anyway, this is my major form goal on the deadlift until I find a camera to use.
Squat 3x5@185
Bench 3x5@125
Deadlift 1x5@195
Random singleton chins with negatives, since I couldn't think of a good, safe way to use assistance bands on the fly.

On the food side of things, I've probably only been putting down 3-4k Calories per day, instead of the 4-5, and preferably nearly 6k Calories per day. I think I'm still managing to gain some weight though. I don't entirely trust the scale I used today, since it said I was 190 lbs, and I only weight about 182 on Monday. Maybe that's from combined weight gain and water weight fluctuations.

[TrackJunkie]

Hit my workout today. Weighed in at 192 lbs. Everything felt good. My squats are getting heavier, the presses felt heavy but I made my increase, and the power cleans were performed with some messy form, but I got them all up to my shoulders.

1 week in:
Body weight - 192lbs
Squats - 3x5@195lbs
Press - 3x5@80lbs
Power Cleans- 5x3@115lbs

[TrackJunkie]

I need to eat more. I haven't weighed myself on the same scale I started with for a while, but I'm not convinced that I've gained appreciable weight.
Squats felt good and heavy today, and I think I definitely felt some hip drive. I didn't quite rest long enough between my last two sets though, because I failed the first rep somehow. Then, I took another break, got under the weight again, and heard my underwear rip on the first rep, but I finished it out anyway.
Bench press went well, not much to say. My pecs, triceps and shoulders all feel pretty good.
I've decided to remove chinups from my gym workout and start doing them at home instead. I'll probably try some sort of grease the groove method.

Bodyweight- 188 lbs
Squats- 3x5 @ 215 lbs
Bench- 3x5 @ 130 lbs

[TrackJunkie]

I missed two gym days, and then follow it up with this bullshit. Today's workout is hardly worth commenting on, I felt great in my warmups, and then my boxers tore during a workset, which left me a bit shocked. Between the shock and the weight, I pretty much just dropped the weight. Oops. Better luck on Friday.

[TrackJunkie]

Another bad day, possibly because I need chalk? My grip strength is lagging behind, my back strength seems to be lagging, I think my form might be horrendous because I don't have a camera to check or a reliable coach... This is where I might need to attempt to train in a gym partner I think.