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Thread: The Norse God of Butter

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2020
    Posts
    25

    Default The Norse God of Butter

    • starting strength seminar april 2024
    • starting strength seminar jume 2024
    • starting strength seminar august 2024
    Age 43
    Male
    Weight 345
    Height 6'1"

    My 5 year old son asked me "Daddy, who's the strongest man in the world?" This, I knew, was a job for the internet and a few minutes later my kids were watching Episode 1 of "The Strongest Man in History." One of the participants weighed 342 and my 7 year old daughter excitedly yelled, "that's what you weigh!" 10 minutes later, she asked me why, if I was the same size as these guys, I wasn't strong. I did not have an adequate answer.

    So here I am, a month later with a rack in my garage, a barbell, 370 pounds of plates (half of that is 10# plates because that's all I could find) and a copy of "Starting Strength."

    Starting lifts:
    Squat: 145
    Bench: 150
    Press: 105
    DL: 155

    I just finished session #3:

    Squats: 165x5x3
    Bench: 155x5x3
    DL: 175x5x3

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    Walled Lake, Michigan
    Posts
    6,681

    Default

    Good start. I suggest that you strictly follow the Starting Strength book so that you continue to gain and avoid as much injury as possible. Also, contact a Starting Strength Coach either directly or online.

    Keep it up.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    1,226

    Default

    Welcome and congrats on your first few workouts.

    Make sure you really push that deadlift. After the first 2-3 weeks it should be about 100 lbs more than your squat. Deadlifts drive a lot of the general strength gains early on so you want them strong fast.

    Good luck with your training.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2018
    Posts
    442

    Default

    I love it. Awesome reason to get started!!

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2018
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    248

    Default

    Great story mate! Welcome. I look forward to hearing more tales from your journey.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2020
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    25

    Default

    Starting Strength for the Obese Trainee says "Increasing the weight on the deadlift should initially take priority over achieving a full range of motion. Since it is such an effective strength builder, the trainee should be encouraged to add weight to this partial pulling exercise." So I'd like to thank Eric Schexnayder for helping with the encouragement part.

    From the same article: "The bent-over starting position could make the trainee uncomfortably short of breath, due to impingement between the thighs and the belly and compression of the chest cavity. Should this occur, a full reset between reps should alleviate the discomfort." This was totally happening, I couldn't breathe during deadlifts and yes, stated remedy worked. I also made sure to take adequate time between sets for a change.

    Squat: 175x5x3 (as planned)
    Press: 135x5, 135x4, 135x3 (because I actually rested between sets, my planned 110 felt like a warmup, so I decided to add too much weight and failed a couple of reps. Next time I press, I'm planning to try 130 and progress from there)
    Deadlift: 225x5 (it's a lot easier when you're not trying to hold your breath through 5 reps because you can't breathe at the bottom)

    Anyway, I tried big jumps today, they more or less worked, but I don't feel like I can do it again (except in Bench press where I also probably started at too low of a weight and didn't notice because I wasn't resting between sets). I'm going to go back to 10/5 lb jumps going forward, but it felt really good to work closer to the limit of what I can actually lift. I mean afterward it felt good, at the time it was pretty horrible.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Sep 2020
    Posts
    25

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    My name is Lardo McFatterson, I am deeply stupid and I can't perform a full squat. But I didn't know this until I had the wife come out and film my squats. I didn't do a single squat to depth and as the load increased, the worse it got. I was only half-squatting my highest warm-up. So I took all the weight off the bar and tried again. Still couldn't get low enough. So I decided to use a box squat as suggested in "Starting Strength for the Obese Trainee." I set up a 14" box.

    And this is where the deeply stupid part comes in. Instead of starting with an empty bar and working up, I decided to put my planned weight the bar. And there I was, suddenly sitting on a box with 185 lbs on my back and no way to get back up, really wishing that I'd set the safety rails a couple of inches higher. Dumping the weight from a seated position was accomplished, but not with much in the way of dignity on my part. Fortunately my wife was laughing too hard to film it, so there's no evidence.

    Oh well, nothing to do but press forward, doing incrementally lower box squats until I can perform the full range of motion properly and finding a local coach, because I had no idea how bad my squat form really was.

    Box squat (16") 135x5x3 (goal is to drop these by 1" increments while keeping weight steady until I'm able to get below parallel)
    Bench press 175x5x3 (as planned)
    Deadlift 245x5 (as planned, but I don't think I have another 20# jump in me, almost failed locking out the last rep)

    Curiously, despite the chest compression issue I mentioned previously, my deadlift form wasn't completely terrible. Bar path was more or less vertical, back didn't seem rounded, etc... I still can't breathe while getting set and have to take 4-5 breaths before each rep, but I thought it would be a lot worse on video.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    Walled Lake, Michigan
    Posts
    6,681

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    Don't beat yourself up. Go see a Starting Strength coach.

    One question: What are you going to do about plates when you hit 370 and are ready to go heavier?
    Last edited by carson; 09-14-2020 at 12:17 PM.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Apr 2016
    Location
    Chicago Burbs, IL
    Posts
    1,524

    Default

    Very good advice above. Be sure you get a lot of good protein.
    A lot of us saw the deadlift drive progress, especially initially.
    Video yourself, especially on the squat and dead. Coaching and seminars are great.
    Watch and rewatch Rip's videos on the Squat and Deadlift.
    Work toward perfect form, but don't beat yourself up over current limitations, just keep working.
    Welcome.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Sep 2020
    Posts
    25

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    starting strength coach development program
    Quote Originally Posted by carson View Post
    Go see a Starting Strength coach.
    Carson, you've told me this twice now, and I solemnly promise to go see a Starting Strength coach in person as soon as I can. This will probably be in early October due to various scheduling difficulties.

    In the meantime, I FINALLY MANAGED TO SQUAT TO DEPTH. I'm training on Tues/Thurs/Sat, so I had 2 days to brood on my failure. I went back to the squatting chapter of the blue book, read a bunch of forum threads, watched too many videos started making a plan. I made a list of all my mobility problems that were messing with my ability to squat:
    1. 23 years ago I had a Type-II shoulder separation on my right side. Left side mobility is OK, but it's really bad on the other side and it made it hard to get the bar into correct position.
    2. My hip mobility is awful, in the way that's typical for a spherical keyboard jockey.
    3. I have really terrible edema in my lower legs and feet. By the end of the day, my ankles are so swollen it's hard to bend them.

    For #1 I decided to assume that I don't have osteoarthritis and that I can stretch my way out of this and see what happens. I've been doing the Low Bar Position Stretch from this thread every day for the past 3 days and keeping a broom handle next to my desk so I can do shoulder separations whenever I need a break. I've been able to move my right arm a couple of inches closer and I'm no longer rolling the bar up my neck as I go down. Hopefully it'll continue to improve over the next month because my grip is still way too wide.

    For #2 I found a length of old pipe on my property about 7 feet long and the same diameter as the barbell. Every morning I've been putting it on my back, slowly squatting down onto an overturned milk crate and then practicing keeping my back straight and knees apart while slowly rocking back and forth. I really felt it in my hips and it seems to have helped.

    For #3 there's not much I can do as long as I keep training at night when the swelling is the worst. The doctor told me "It's because you're fat and it's not going to stop until you stop being fat or you develop type II diabetes and gracelessly expire. In the meantime, don't cut back on coffee unless you want it to get worse." (paraphrasing slightly)

    I also used hose clamps to hang weights from the pipe (which weighs ~5lbs) so I could incrementally load. Anyway, it worked. I had the wife watch some videos to get an idea of proper depth and then tell me when I'd hit it. This resulted in paused squats because I kept having to pull myself down to get to depth, but...

    Squats (for the first time):
    5x5
    25x5
    45x5x3

    By the time I'd finished 3 sets of an empty bar, my hips were done. The hardest thing I did tonight was actually picking up a 5lb plate off the ground immediately afterward. But I can squat the bar, which means I can load the bar, which means I can DTFP.

    Press:
    45x5
    85x5
    115x5
    135x5x3

    I had only planned to do 130 but I was so happy about having squatted I could have jumped for joy if I'd been capable of jumping at the time. So I went for 135 and nearly missed the last rep of the last set, but I got it locked out eventually.

    Deadlift:
    135x5
    175x5
    215x5
    255x5

    Deadlifts are getting harder, but there's some good news. After 2 weeks on the program (minus proper squats) I've dropped 2.5 inches of belly fat and I can actually breathe at the bottom of my deadlifts, just not very well. I still have to pause and take 4-5 breaths during the last warmup and the work set, but it's definitely helping.

    I also used my 2 day break to start paying a little attention to nutrition. I'm trying to hit 3200-3300 calories a day with about 40% of that as protein (so ~326 g). I've only been tracking for 3 days, and it's hard to hit the target. Like most blubbery great whale beasts, I'm a sugar and starch junkie, so eating lean protein just makes me feel not hungry and I've been having to make myself eat some meat and cheese to avoid running a huge deficit until I go on a junk food binge and stay weak and fat.

    I've also been trying to do HIIT for 16 minutes a day with a 5 minute warmup and 10 minute cool down. Actually, I started trying this a month ago, but it's taken me a long time to work up to actually doing intervals because I couldn't even do 30 minutes of slow pedaling at the start.

    As for weight loss, well I don't actually know. The 345 I listed earlier was a guess because my home scale only goes up to 340 and I haven't had an accurate read in months. It's still reporting "OL" which I believe stands for "Ouch, Lardo." But I believe I have to be losing: 2.5 inches of belly fat is ~7 lbs according to the navy formula and I doubt I've gained 7 lbs of lean mass in 2 weeks to compensate.

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