Babu's log

[Babu]

Hey all, thought I'd start my log after much advising/pestering from forum member Sami to do so.

I'm Hari, I'm 18 and I'm a med student living in South London. I'm 5' 10 and weigh 67.5 kg/149 lb right now, although I constantly weighed in at around 61 - 63 before so I'm a pretty skinny little runt. I heard about SS from Sami a while back, maybe around March or so. At the time, I wasn't interesting in getting stronger; a friend and I were planning on a little mountain trek next year and it meant a lot of endurance training but for various reasons it got called off so I thought I may as well give SS a shot. I started it properly about 3 weeks ago. I had started a few weeks prior to that but I was fucking around a little, and then I left halls so I couldn't use my university gym and had to look for one at home, so resumed it about 2 weeks later with a bit of deloading and I've just been going from there. Can't really remember what I started at but here's where I'm at as of Friday:

Squat: 82.5 kg 3 x 5 (fairly difficult)
Bench: 55 kg 3 x 5 (not too hard)
Deadlift: 80 kg 1 x 5 (I was supposed to do 95 kg on Friday, but I did one rep and my back started hurting loads so gave myself a bit of time and went down to 80kg; back was hurting afterwards but it's fine now; not really sure what happened, possibly bad form; when I did 90 the time before, it wasn't too hard)
Press: 40 kg 5 x 3 (pretty hard)
Power Clean: 47.5 3 x 5 (also pretty hard)

In terms of eating, I don't really keep a tab on calories but I think I eat about 6000 on days I work out and perhaps 4 - 5k otherwise? I'm not quite doing GOMAD but I drink between 4 - 6 pints of whole milk every day (6.7 pints in a US gallon so not too bad surely?).

I'll have to take a break soon though; I have retakes coming up soon and then I'm off to India straight after for almost 2 weeks. I won't have anything available to me so while I'm out there, so I'll just have to make do with press-ups, one-legged squats and whatever else I can think of, and I'll drop the weights down a little and start again.

I'll add to this as I go along. Thanks for reading. Any advice and comments would be greatly appreciated!

[Sami]

I think once the deadlift starts going up (and believe me, it will go up fast), your squat will go up to.

Did you sort out a belt yet? What about chalk?


EDIT: Oh, and I think power cleans are supposed to be 5 sets of 3.

[Babu]

Haven't ordered chalk yet, really need to get on that. As for a belt, I haven't seen the guy in the gym who sells them for a while. Hopefully I will soon but haven't been looking into belts too much. Looks like I might need to start doing so. As you know, not too much time for much of anything right now...stupid retakes.

Crap, yeah I do 5 sets of 3, I got things a little mixed up there, thanks for pointing that out.

[Sami]

I wouldn't worry too much about a belt right now. Get your form solid first and get everything up a little more. I probably don't need a belt either, but my past injury still worries me.

[Babu]

Today...

Squat: 85.0 kg
Press: 42.5 kg
Clean: 50.0 kg

Everything felt hard and heavy. Not sure if I was getting the depth I needed with the squat. I'll look over SS, but I'll probably stay on the same weight and try and video myself (if my phone camera decides to work) to see if I'm getting the depth. If I'm not...then not too sure what to do. Deload I guess?

[Babu]

Bad day.

Squat: 85.0 kg
Bench: 57.5 kg
Deadlift: 90.0 kg

Bench is still feeling about the same as before. It's heavy but it's not really difficult yet. I was worried about the deadlift this time but it went fine and my back didn't feel bad either. I was really conscious the whole way through about maintaining the shape of my back, I might have arched it a bit before but I'm not really sure. As for the squat...fucking camera wasn't working! Instead I asked somebody for a form check. This is difficult, because most of the guys I see in the free weights area of my gym (I go to a bog-standard Fitness First) generally do bicep curls. lateral raises or whatever, and probably don't know what a squat is. I usually go in the late morning and there are a few old people there who are ridiculously strong for their age, but nobody really squats; the few that I have seen squat use the fucking Smith machine. I asked a personal trainer milling round if he could check my depth for me, so only got his word to go by. He said the second and third sets weren't to parallel. Looks like I'll have to drop the weights a little, just not sure how much by. I think this happened because I started jumping by 2.5 kg (as opposed to jumping by 5 kg) too late; had I stopped my 5 kg jumps earlier, I probably wouldn't be in a position where I'd be compromising form so much right now. But I guess I can learn from this for when I can't maintain 2.5 kg increases anymore and have to go down to 1.25 kg.

[Sami]

Have you got plates smaller than 1.25kg? If you do, steal some from that place.

Don't drop the weight yet. Rip usually recommends to repeat at least 2-3 times at a given weight. Could've been an off day. And you're probably still learning the technique.

[Babu]

There are none smaller unfortunately. While I've been there this summer, one of the four 1.25 plates they had have gone missing... it'll require improvisation for when it comes to it I think, because like you, I haven't seen anything smaller online or anywhere that'll go onto a 20 kg barbell; chains or something perhaps?

I'll give SS another read then and give it one more shot. Hopefully I can sort out the camera to see for myself. If it doesn't go up on Friday, I'll drop it 10 kg or so.

[banthafodder]

There are none smaller unfortunately. While I've been there this summer, one of the four 1.25 plates they had have gone missing... it'll require improvisation for when it comes to it I think, because like you, I haven't seen anything smaller online or anywhere that'll go onto a 20 kg barbell; chains or something perhaps?

I built some micro-weights out of some chain from the local hardware store ("#10 decorator's chain", IIRC--stuff to hang planters with). I have a small food scale I could use to measure things, and it turned out that 11 links of the chain weighed exactly 0.25 lbs, so I built a bunch of loops (8 x 0.25 lbs, 2 x 0.5 lbs, 2 x 1lb), and now I can load any weight I want, to a granularity of 0.5 lbs. It's been a giant help with the pressing movements.

[Babu]

So, not been to the gym in a while. Had to revise for fucking resits, then go off abroad to attend loads of bloody weddings. Passed resits, found a house to rent and I've been fixing that up. It's nowhere near done but I decided that I could make time for the gym. I thought it'd be interesting to see how much my lifts would drop by. It's been a little strange...everything 3 x 5 as standard:

Squat: 60.0 kg (I tried 70 kg but it was too heavy wtf! I was having problems with form before though, I guess I have an opportunity to rectify that now. Bit pissed off but that's what you get for not doing any fucking exercise for a long time)
Bench: 50.0 kg (could probably have done more I think, but I thought it best to play safe and go down a bit)
Deadlift: 90.0 kg (this was an accident; I meant to put 70 on and clearly I messed up my maths quite substantially. It was alright though so I reckon I'll go from here)

Can't wait to see how fucked up my press and cleans are! Don't know how long I'll be continuing SS either, found some big mountains that I wouldn't mind climbing over the summer and if I go for that, I'm sure there's better ways to prepare for that than by doing Starting Strength. And banthafodder, thanks for that, it'll probably come in handy soon with the press I think.