Pat's Training Log

[acelticmonk]

Hey everybody, I'm happy to have found this place and it's a good time to start a training log.

I'm Pat. 46, M. 6', starting at 204 and around 17% BF. Married and 2 kids(13yo daughter, 9yo son). By day I work in IT for a large coffee company in Seattle, and I also teach graduate courses in Christian spirituality at a few local universities. Life is full.

I started StrongLifts a few months ago and followed the program pretty strictly until early/mid-December, when I tweaked my lower back doing squats, then a shoulder doing handstand training after yoga on an off day. I posted some form check videos to a Reddit site for SL and got decent feedback but it's hard to learn the lifts from reading and watching videos. Especially for those of us of a certain age who get out of sorts a bit and recover more slowly than you youngsters.

As I was looking around the Internet for more form help, I discovered Starting Strength through some of Rip's videos (not sure what was first; maybe the Art of Manliness ones). I ordered the book, loved it so much I gave it away to my brother the athletic trainer, and ordered myself another copy.

Last weekend I scheduled a training session with an SS coach near me, to form check all the lifts, learn the Power Clean, and really make the transition from StrongLifts to Starting Strength. SL was helpful to me, but the SS book and the different attitude convinced me to move this direction.

So I'll start this training log here, as a transition to Starting Strength and a hello to this forum.

I should also mention that in starting StrongLifts, I also started a keto diet. I get chronic daily migraine, and an unintended side effect of Keto was that my migraines were nearly completely relieved. Three years of migraine every day, down to one or two in a few months. So I'll be exploring diet around Keto also; like: Can I be low-carb but not fully Keto, should I be eating Paleo, etc. Keto is hard to maintain for me, but the whole migraine thing makes me motivated to explore this heavily.

[acelticmonk]

So, a quick entry for last week's coaching and kickoff to Starting Strength. I met with Carla Smith, a coach out of Duvall, WA. She coaches at Big Rock Crossfit. I scheduled and hour with her, and it was super helpful.

She had me start with warmup on the rowing machine, then do some unweighted squats, some arm passthroughs using a wooden bar (and here we talked about my first injury; I separated my left shoulder many years ago in a motorcycle accident and it's permanently not-quit-in-socket. No pain, but some motion restriction). Then some lunges.

I then did squats, warming up and then to my current working weight (150). For reference, bodyweight is 204. We worked on breath (I usually apparently 'sip' my breath, but when I took big full open mouth in breaths, I could stabilize my core better). And at the bottom of my squat, my left knee comes in, so we worked on cues of pushing both knees out at the bottom before the drive up. That in turn stabilized my lower back, so that tweak I ran into in December, which I think came from anunstable core and some wiggling at the bottom, has a fix.

We did Press next, warming up to my current working weight of 95. My hip movement in Press was a bit of a disaster - I had misinterpreted what I saw in Rip's video on the Art of Manliness for the press, and was backwards. It took some extra time with the empty bar to get my hip movement right, and also to lock my elbows above my head, not a few inches forward. And also, I had been breathing at the bottom of the press, not at the top. We reset all those, and my final set at 95 was way more comfortable than any set I've done before.

Deadlift was next, working weight of 215. Two things we tweaked here: One, my shins had been pretty much vertical, so we move them out to meet my elbows. A minor change. And more importantly, I had been unintentionally exhaling when on the way down, not waiting until the bar was on the ground. That destabilized my core on the drop, and gave me some low back risk also. Other than this though, deadlift was pretty OK. After fixing these both, deadlift was pretty comfy, though it's a challenging weight for me.

Finally, Carla asked if I wanted to learn the Power Clean. StrongLifts uses Rows instead (I was at 125 before shifting over), and I'd only read about the clean so far but hadn't started to practice it. She built up the movement starting from the hang, really focusing on how the jump would work for me, taking plenty of time. We ended with sets at 95 lbs. I have a lot of work to do on this one, but it's a fun addition to my routine.

So at the end of the day, some very helpful coaching, a revamp to my Press, and a new start with the Power Clean. I'll go visit Carla again for more coaching in a month or two when I need a refresher or when I need the next stage of form checks. It's really nice to have somebody I can TRUST to give me input, rather than some random gym dude, or a random person on Reddit who may or may not know what they're talking about.

[acelticmonk]

And the first of the "regular" entries.

Squat: 160lb 3x5. Difficult enough to turn my face reddish in the last set, but kept my form cues and was stable.

Bench: 150lb 3x5. I didn't get bench coaching on Sat, but practiced the same breathing I did for squat: Big inhale, hold hard. Stabilize the core. 150 was WAY easier than last bench last week. Easily the biggest improvement in the feel of my lifts came on the bench, which just got better by applying what I was actually coached to improve in the other lifts. Ha.

Power Clean: 95lb 5x3. Here things got interesting. Warmup was fine. First two sets of three were good, though I felt them working hard. By set three, I was running low on time so I cut short the recovery time from 3 min to about 90 sec. In rep 2, as I was going up I kinda blacked out. The world went dark and dizzy; I released the bar to the floor and stabilized myself. Didn't fall down, but breathed a while and decided my set was done, and I didn't do the last two sets. Not so much scary as a bit trippy and quite funny. I'll take my full rest time next time through. Lesson learned.

Sleep: OK. Diet: OK. Both can use improvement but weren't terrible.

[acelticmonk]

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1451951605.583620.jpg

Here's a quick view of my Stronglifts timeline.

(Edit: Well poop, that's not helpful. And I can't delete the post. Well, it'll have to do.)

[iSquat]

Welcome to the site. Looking forward to watching your progress.

[acelticmonk]

Thanks, iSquat.

Today's a SS off day. We have a gym in the building in which I work - no barbells (Smith machine only), so I don't use it to lift. But they have yoga classes and some other stuff.

Yoga today (Forrest Yoga). Pretty low key. Both glutes were very tight, and right hip flexor was too. Moving a bit and getting those stretched out helps.

[acelticmonk]

Rowing machine: 5 min
Squat: Was supposed to be at 170x3x5. First set at work weight, I got really dizzy again. Heavy strain, red face. So I rested, breathed, deloaded to 160, did last four sets there.
Press: 95
Dead: 225

I need to figure out this dizziness thing though. Am currently watching the new video of Starting Strength to see what I can learn.

There also seem to be A LOT of sets of warmup in the iPhone app for the three exercises. 5 sets of warmups - takes a lot of time. I remember that the coach last weekend said there's been some discussion about the warmup progression in the app. I need to figure out what warmup sets are necessary.

[anniemichael]

Welcome from a fellow Washingtonian!

I wonder if the dizziness is related to your Keto diet? I know that I can sometimes black out or get tunnel vision if I haven't had carbs prior to lifting.

Also -- are you Valsalva-ing correctly? I ask because you do yoga, and yoga breathing is basically exactly the opposite of Valsalva. A buddy I lifted with last year had a really hard time holding his breath in a correct Valsalva because he was so used to breathing steadily through movements, as in yoga.

That's pretty fascinating about the migraines, though -- good for you. I'm a migraineur also, though not nearly daily. I can't imagine what that must have been like.

[acelticmonk]

Hi anniemichael,

Thanks for the response.

I'm thinking that it's more likely that I'm not valsalva-ing correctly, since I've not had the dizziness thing for the past few months, only after this weekend's coaching which emphasized it. I've been Keto (ish) that whole time.

You're right, Valsalva is opposite of breathing in yoga, where you don't hold at all, but long slow steady breaths. And the form I usually practice, Ashtanga, times each of the poses to your breath length. Hold this pose for 5 breaths, transition to the next pose on the long exhale, etc.

Reading more in these forms about dizziness, I'm gonna try an 80% inbreath and hold, and also hold with mouth open so I'm not adding pressure in my head/neck, which should ensure that I'm doing it right. It's quite possible that increasing head pressure is a big part of the issue for me, as I remember seeing my face really red in that first squat set

[anniemichael]

Yeah -- I recall that seeing the veins pop out of my neck and forehead for the first time was nervewracking, to say the least. But now I've gotten used to it. But it's totally benign, and maybe even a sign you're pushing yourself correctly.