Avatara's training log

[Avatara]

Hello all! I am new to Starting Strength, in fact today was my second workout. I am 29, female, 5'7", 174lbs, and 34% body fat. I also just gave birth and am a month postpartum.

I dabbled in linear programming about six years ago using StrongLifts 5x5. It is basically a ripoff of SS (although I didn't know that at the time), except with five sets instead of three and no power cleans. I stayed with it for about three months, getting up to about a 170lb squat, 220lb deadlift, 65lb overhead press, and 150lb bench press. I ultimately quit for several reasons, namely that my squat form had been flawed from the get-go and I was getting to a weight (approaching body weight) where it could no longer be ignored. In retrospect I believe my main problem was that my knees were caving in and my stance was probably too narrow, but instead of doing a drastic deload to rebuild my form from the ground up I got discouraged and stopped the program. Secondly, I was doing GOMAD throughout the program (it made a lot more sense when I was 23!), and although I did gain a substantial amount of muscle, I also gained an equally substantial amount of fat. As the workouts and the milk went on, I kept getting fatter and fatter, and my self-consciousness about it sealed the deal on me quitting once the squats started to crumble.

Anyway, I am going to try Starting Strength and see how it goes. My goal is to adhere to the program as closely as possible, and to do the program for at least 12 weeks. Ultimately I would like to lose body fat (34% is quite high, even for a female), but I'm not going to worry about that just yet - probably not till 4 or 5 months down the road, if I stay on the program for that long. I'm definitely not going to do GOMAD. However, getting enough calories is probably going to be my biggest difficulty (I've been averaging around 2800 a day for the past few days that I've been tracking it), so I may up my milk intake just to get calories, although not to GOMAD levels. As far as sleep, I have a newborn, so there's really nothing I can do about that.

1st Workout 11 July:
Squat 3x5 45lb
Press 3x5 25lb
Deadlift 1x5 60lb

2nd Workout 13 July:
Squat 3x5 50lb
Bench press 3x5 45lb
Deadlift 1x5 70lb

[YoungOpa]

The eyes of Texas are upon you now... no pressure, just a solid support group.
Welcome to the forum.

[Mr. Bingley]

welcome, congrats on the newborn! slow and steady, you've got the right attitude and it will be fine

[Bacon]

Ditto on the congrats for your new baby. Wishing you as much sleep as possible and good lifting!

[Avatara]

Thanks for the support guys!

Yesterday's workout:

Squat 3x5 55lbs
Press 3x5 30lbs
Deadlift 1x5 80lbs

The low bar position on the squat is hard. My shoulders are not very flexible and it's somewhat painful and awkward. According to the book, the bar is supposed to rest on the muscle belly of the rear delt, unfortunately in my case I have practically no rear delts so the weight is just resting on the bone. It also felt like the bar was trying to slide down my back. On the third set I figured out that if I started out in a high bar position (with the bar still on the rack of course) and then kind of slid into low bar position, it worked a little better. The weight feels noticeably heavier when in a low bar position versus a high bar one. High bar is much easier. Tl;dr, low bar is going to take a lot of work.

I noticed some pain on the outside of my left knee during squats, and am not sure what was causing it. I want to be very focused on squat form given my trouble in that area previously. I think possibly my feet were turned out too much; when I brought them in a little it seemed to feel better anyway. I did several sets of air squats in between sets to try and troubleshoot. When I reminded myself to keep the glutes activated that seemed to help as well. I guess my next step will be to post a form video.

I need to continue to work on nutrition. It's been hit or miss; one day I'll get 4000 calories, but then the next day get only 2900. The upside is that my protein intake has at least been consistently high.

[Avatara]

Squat 3x5 60lb
Bench press 3x5 50lb
Deadlift 1x5 85lb

Left knee didn't hurt anymore. Low bar continues to be a work in progress.

[Avatara]

Squat 3x5 65 lb
Press 3x5 35 lb
Deadlift 1x5 90 lb

I might have to start micro-loading on the press soon.

[chromoly]

Welcome, I'll be following along!

[Avatara]

Squat 3x5 55lb
Bench press 3x5 35lb
Deadlift 1x5 80lb

I missed three workouts for being out of town. In retrospect I should have found a gym and gotten a day pass, but the idea never actually occurred to me until after I was back home. I feel a little sheepish for not thinking of it.

Anyway, I reduced the weight a little to compensate, and I'll just restart my 12-week clock.

[Avatara]

29 July
Squat 3x5 60 lbs
Press 3x5 30 lbs
DL 1x5 85 lbs

1August
Squat 3x5 65 lbs
Bench 3x5 45 lbs
DL 1x5 90 lbs