Reply With Quote8/5/10
front squat - 170 x 5,5,5
press - 180 x 10 singles
powerclean - 210 x 10 singles
Press and powerclean singles were done at one minute intervals.
Member
8/3/10
front squat - 165 x 5,5,5
press - 175 x 3,3,3,2,3
powerclean - 205 x 3,3,3,3,3
Front squats are feeling great. Concentrating on keeping the form just right and making the movement as explosive as possible. It is a major exercise in patience right now to stick with 5lb increases, but it will get heavy soon enough and overriding shitty form habits is more important to me right now. Worked on a few high-bar back squats with the fs, press, and powerclean weights while they were on the rack; feels like it will be a pretty easy transition from front squat when I begin to stall on those.
Press seems to be just about stalled; I'll try working with singles for a while and increase the weight 5lb every other workout.
A little time off from lifting did me some good. The little nagging aches that had built up seem to have disappeared. The backpacking trip was a little more strenuous than I had planned on, but that just resulted in a little bit of a drained feeling; feeling great otherwise and expecting to bounce back quickly.
Last edited by NKT; 08-03-2010 at 10:04 PM.
Member
8/5/10
front squat - 170 x 5,5,5
press - 180 x 10 singles
powerclean - 210 x 10 singles
Press and powerclean singles were done at one minute intervals.
Member
8/7/10
front squat - 180 x 5,5,5
press - 180 x 10 singles
powerclean - stopped at 185. Don't have the power today...
Everything felt heavy today. Too heavy. Walking felt heavy.
I'm pretty much stalled on the press at 180lb, after stalling at 180 about two months ago. Similar with the pulls.
Member
I'm going to wrap up this log now, because my workouts are now rapidly moving away from the "Starting Strength" program. So, here's a summary of my starting strength experience:
Squats
Started at 135lb work sets and experienced unbelievable muscle soreness. Plowed through that and rapidly worked my way up to 275lb work sets in about five weeks. That was too aggressive, and I ended up with some tendon inflammation problems and poor form habits as a result. I had to drop the squats for a while as a result and am still not fully recovered from that bit of over-reaching. Lesson here: err on the side of too slow rather than too fast when on a linear progression program.
Press
Started at 100lb work sets and worked up to 175lb work sets in about four months. I am thrilled with the results here. I started with a lot of problems with shoulder looseness and instability; I frequently dislocated my shoulders during daily activity and in my sleep, and had a lot of recurring upper back injuries similar to whiplash. The SS program with bench omitted has been nothing short of miraculous here; I feel like I have a brand-new set of shoulders. No pain, no dislocations, no upper back problems.
Deadlift
Started at 210lb and worked up to 390lb work sets. These are feeling good; I feel like the deadlift is a really good fit for my body proportions as a general-purpose strength-building exercise.
Powerclean
Another example of over-reaching here. I worked up to 200lb much too quickly and my form fell apart. Did a huge reset and worked back up slowly and it went great. Ended up at 225lb worksets before starting to stall again.
Physical changes
Bodyweight went from 212lb to 245lb in about five months, with most of that 33lb gain happening during the first month. I was seriously gaining just about 1lb per day for the first month, and not much of it was fat. The novice-effect can be truly shocking when "the program" is done right. Actually, I guess it wasn't done exactly right because of the previously-mentioned over-reaching. But... here's what happened to some of my measurements during that first month of too-aggressive progression, GOMAD, and big eating:
calf: +1"
thigh: +4"
ass: +2.25"
waist: +0.5"
chest: +3.625"
bicep: +1"
neck: +1.25"
Needless to say, that kind of rapid change was fucking bizarre. My pants didn't fit me any more, and all of my shirts suddenly seemed really short.
In summary: I would strongly recommend the SS program to any skinny novice who wants to get big and strong in a hurry. Just don't be in too much of a hurry.
Last edited by NKT; 08-14-2010 at 01:22 AM.
Member
Your progress is makes me feel pretty depressed. My waist is continuously increasing whereas I am struggling to increase lifts. I don't know what to do!
Member
I found that during the first 3-4 weeks of GOMAD and big eating, I put on muscle really fast, but after that I started putting on fat faster than I was comfortable with. It seems like caloric surplus needs to be cycled to keep its strongly-anabolic effects. There is a 1" gain and loss in waist size that doesn't show up in the before-and-after numbers I posted. My (formerly) baggy-fit carpenter jeans were pretty tight for a while.Originally Posted by ivankannan
(Edit: I looked back at my training journal, and I really did only gain .5" on my waist in the first month; between then and now I gained and lost 1" on my waist measurement. That's when I figured out that I have to cycle the big eating to keep getting the anabolic effects without too much fat gain.)
Sounds like a small reset in working weights combined with a mild caloric deficit might do you some good for a few weeks. Sort of "reset" the effects of the big eating and trim a little fat at the same time. I'm still very much a noob at this, so take this advice for whatever it may be worth (quite possibly zero!).
Last edited by NKT; 08-16-2010 at 10:05 AM.
Member
Yeah right, I have also experienced this. I just wanted to get to 160lbs before trying out a small caloric deficit, but since I will be travelling next week, its guaranteed that I will lose weight and strength
I want to try ZigZag diet or there was this another diet where you eat in surplus for 14 days and then in deficit for 14 days etc. At the end of deficit, hormone levels drop and then in surplus they increase but saturate at the end of 14 days and so on.
Posting Permissions
