27 November 2021
Age - 45
Height - 5'9", 29" inseam (torso boy, short limbs)
Weight - 214
Bench - 190x3, 195x3, 197.5x3x3|5
Chin - BWx9,8,7
Elliptical - 20 min @ 120-130 BPM
Starting to ramp the worksets in the bench. Eventually it'll be something like 190, 195, 200, 202.5, 195, all sets of three, where the 202.5 would be the mark. But I'm going to keep the intensity as high as is workable between that and the straight sets across.
Chins are stagnant, but that's somewhat okay. I'm going to reorder a few things and I think I'll be able to address the chins better. I'm going to focus more on adding weight and 5-7 rep range work.
Elliptical for healing, as always. Joints are feeling better today, which may be due to not deadlifting and relieving a bit of the weekly stress.
This is the end of this log. My actual NLP ended a bit ago, but it felt convenient to get a full year out of it for comparison. So here we go.
Lift Start Approx. End of NLP One Year Comment Squat 105 365 405 Went to weekly progress at around 365. Easily my best lift. Press 45 135 142.5 Progress on 5x3 ended around 115. Running out singles ended around 135. Bench 75 185 197.5 Stalled twice. Like the press, I should have gone intermediate much sooner. Deadlift 155 385 415 Went to weekly deads at 385. Went to 5 lb jumps at 405. Several setbacks during the year. Power Clean 65 - 137.5 Setbacks with form issues and no good coaching in the area. Currently my best form, though. Snatch 85 - 97.5 I've been very conservative on these since learning. I don't want to repeat the clean mistakes. Chin 2,1 - 9,8,7 Wasn't always consistent with these.
I added additional details in the header this time (age, dimensions, etc.) for perspective. I'm best at squats partly because of anthropometry. I'm worst at presses because I lived a life of weakling desk work and remained skinny (typically about 155 lb). I'm not explosive, so the fast lifts will lag. Regardless, all the slow lifts have improved in the 2-3x starting weight range in the course of a year. All from reading two very well-written books and simply doing what they said.
Other notes:
- I had several setbacks. A broken rib on deadlifts, a herniated disc (on deadlifts too), a strained hamstring (yep, deadlifts), squatter's elbow, a three-week vacation, and occasional days where training wasn't available. All of the injuries except the strained hammy could have been avoided with a coach to tell me I was doing something wrong.
- A completely new wardrobe. I need relaxed fit jeans just to get my thighs in them. (What in the world do elite lifters wear?). I've gone from Medium to XL in everything. 2 1/2" on my neck. I'm fatter than before, but not egregiously so. I look much better and I haven't even tried for aesthetics.
- I've had some of the strong guys (and they're actually strong) show interest in how I got here. It's still disorienting to be viewed as strong. It all happened so fast.
- I love food. :-D
...I think that's it. Thanks, everybody, for the support. I'll get a new log in the intermediate section once I start there (and post in a link here when I do). It'll probably be updated weekly rather than daily since all of my programming is organized as such, and I'll probably be more high-level with my comments. December will be a mess, but I think I'll be able to get a clean start in January with a program somewhat derived from Texas Method, but more amenable to my schedule and life.