Author: hsoi

Leaning out

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

You cannot serve two masters.

If you exercise, you can’t try to gain muscle mass, gain strength, and lose fat all at the same time. You can’t serve all of those masters. Pick one.

However, I do think while you serve one master you can at least acknowledge the others. For instance, if you are focused on building muscle mass, that’s generally going to work against fat loss. To gain muscle mass at any sort of decent rate, you’re going to have to eat more and that will mean some of your weight gain will be fat gain; however, you can be smart about it and not gain weight like a blob. So, serve a master but give a nod to the others.

My focus right now is building strength, with mass being secondary, and fat loss bringing up the rear. I want to get strong(er) and focus primarily on that goal. But, in doing so building muscle mass comes with it: muscles will get larger as they get stronger, tho not as much as a pure mass-building program. Plus, my flavor of the Wender 5/3/1 cycle is “boring but big”, directing my assistance work specifically towards mass building because to lift big you do need to be big.

But the big thing I struggle with is the fat situation.

I don’t want to become a fat slob. In fact, I’d love to shed the muffin around my middle. But it won’t necessarily happen with the path I’m on, and I’m OK with that situation. I have had some thoughts that in 2012 I may take a couple of months break from Wender 5/3/1 and focus on the fat loss goal, or perhaps stay with Wender 5/3/1 as a general template but modify the particular program. We’ll see.

The one thing that I am attempting to do tho in giving a nod to fat “maintenance” is my food intake. Of course, I must have a lot of protein in a day and strive to eat 30-50g about 6x a day (exactly how much depends on what I’m eating and when, but the goal is at least 200g a day). I don’t mind the fat that much other than ensuring I’m getting some but not overdoing it (e.g. eat 6 hard boiled eggs but give 1-2 yolks to the dog). Carbs tho are another matter… and have generally been my problem spot.

One thing that I’ve been toying with, tho have yet to fully master, is WHEN I have my carbs, in addition to what my carb sources are. I will say, getting our veggies from Johnson’s Backyard Garden Organic Farm is a boon because so much of it is green leafies and other “good stuff” that I don’t have much problem just shoveling it down and not worrying much about caloric impact. But still, I need some sources of carbs that have caloric value to help with glycogen stores so…. what and how to deal with this?

I read something that started me down a slightly different path. See, I was trying to avoid carbs as much as possible (quasi-atkins) but my body balked at that, and understandably so. So I needed to find what and how and when to take them in so they were beneficial but not harmful to my goals. What came up was consuming my carbs around my workout. Carb up beforehand to have energy for the workout, then carb up afterwards to replenish and the body should take them up well. But otherwise, don’t take in much for carbs throughout the rest of the day.

I saw a tweet last night from Dave Tate that sums it up well:

What has always worked best for me (getting lean) is 6-7 meals per day with 70% of the carbs before and right after training. #eliteftschat

– Dave Tate via Twitter

And that’s about the size of it. If you know who Dave is and the transformation he went through, there’s something to what he’s saying.

I’ve been trying that, tho haven’t mastered it yet (slave to old habits, working to change them), and so far I seem to be working well with it. I can see in the mirror that muscles are getting larger, and I do think fat may be going away because I swear I might be seeing my abs a little better and it doesn’t feel like there’s as much muffin over my belt. But my bodyweight remains the same, around 235-240 (fluxes depending on the time of day or what day it is, and I’m 6’3″ tall) and has remained pretty steady there since I got off the PPNP program. Strength continues to go up, mass seems to be going up (tho perhaps not as fast as if I was shoveling food), and fat seems like it might be dropping off… slowly, but that’s ok.

I am not trying to serve all 3 masters, strength is still the prime goal. But if I can keep a nod to the others in the mix and still make overall progress? Great. We’ll see where this leads me.

Don’t call yourself a programmer

/ hsoi

Cleaning out a bunch of things I’ve wanted to link to.

A great article, “Don’t Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice“. It’s long. I’ve only been able to skim it. But it’s chock full of goodness.

Another local

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

He linked to me, I’ll link back: A Rock In A Sea of Chaos.

A gun guy and blogger right here in Austin.

Some time ago, TXGunGeek and I tossed around the idea of having a Texas blogger gathering/shoot. It never came to pass since we’re both way too busy. But geez there are a lot of such types, so it would be cool to have such a thing one of these days.

2011-11-07 workout

/ hsoi

At best, I’d give today a C+. A PR, but still a C+.

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Bench Press (working max: 205#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x85
    • 1x5x105
    • 1x3x125
    • 1x5x155 (work)
    • 1x3x175
    • 1x5x195 (PR)
  • Asst. #1 – Bench Press
    • 5 x 10 x 115
  • Asst. #2 – 1 arm dumbbell rows
    • 5 x 10 x 45
  • Metcon – jump rope
    • 1 Tabata set – all single hop

Today… well, sure I set a PR on bench press, but I hated how it went down.

As soon as I pulled the bar out of the rack, I started shaking. I expect maybe a little shaking because it is a new and heavy weight, but this was ridiculous. In fact, my knees started to shake like I was trying to work a bellows between my knees! WTF? I got to rep 5 and knew this wasn’t going to continue without something going horribly wrong, so I just racked it. Yeah, 5 reps @ 195 is still respectable and still a PR for me, but what the hell went wrong with my body?

So during assistance benching I worked to plant the hell out of my legs. My legs were pushing pushing pushing… so much that after each set my legs felt worked! They had a burn, and by the end of the 5th set my legs actually felt like they had a good isometric workout. But while I pushed, my body didn’t feel coordinated as a whole. My cue has been “tight” but it’s just not all there.

And that’s really what’s going on… it’s more of my mental game failing. I just wasn’t there.

Furthermore, I’m thinking too much. I’m putting too much thought into everything. I picked up a copy of “Powerlifting – Year 1” and had a bunch of “bench tips” on the brain… that is wrong. I’m going into my heaviest week, this is NOT the time to be futzing with form. Stick with what I have, for better or for worse, don’t be fucking around with things. I can futz during deload week, week 1, maybe week 2… but on week 3 I need to just focus on moving the damn weight and setting an awesome PR. I had too much going on in my head.

There’s just too much going on in my head, period… be it lifting form, doubt, day job, night job, my other jobs, life, family, whatever…. too many things. It’s not an excuse, it’s reality. And I need to fix it. But I guess I have to admit I’m not sure how. Or at least, I’m not sure yet about how to immediately turn it on and off on demand, so when I have to get under the bar, it’s immediately as it should be.

Anyways… chalk today up and move on.

On rows, speaking of the powerlifting eBook, I changed it slightly. Instead of rowing with elbows in, upper arm running essentially parallel to torso and weight pulled to stomach, I put the elbows out at about a 45º angle and pulling the weight to my lower chest — about the same angle and location as the bar is at the bottom of the bench press. This is a better angle of attack for my needs, but it worked me a bit more — posterior deltoid peeded out sooner. Good thing.

And jump rope? Geez… I think I was just so bummed that again, I wasn’t mentally there and couldn’t jump worth a damn. Did my best, and that was that.

Gotta get over it all. Wednesday is another day.

One longer-term thing? I had been tinkering with what I’ll do next cycle, in terms of jumps and so on. I’m going to perhaps go rather conservative… maybe even less of a jump than normal? Make sure I’m solid. That’s more important than trying to hit ego-satisfying numbers. Putting up a solid performance is a lot more ego-satisfying.

Our modern world

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Need to shop for clothing. Mall has the stores, so off we go.

Enter on first floor. Need to go to second. There’s the up escalator. It’s not running.

In front of us a lady says to her child, “oh we can go up; it’s broken.”

Uh… no it’s not. They’re called “stairs”.

*sigh*

Daylight Saving Time – other things to do

/ hsoi

It’s become a mantra that every time we switch our clocks for Daylight Saving Time, we should do some other things.

The one you most often hear is to change the batteries on the smoke detectors in your home. A good thing for sure. And if you don’t have smoke detectors, get some.

What are some other useful things to do on a semi-annual basis?

  • If you have a home alarm system, test it. IMHO better to do this monthly, but semi-annual is a good start.
  • Change batteries in other things. For instance, if you have flashlights for emergency use in your car or home, change those batteries. Use batteries as a backup for a safe? Change them. Use batteries in a scope? change them.
  • How about your carry ammo? There’s much debate over how often to rotate your carry ammo, but an oft-mentioned guideline is every 6 months.
    • While you’re at it, how are your magazines and their springs?
  • Sharpen knives. These could be your every day carry knives, or even the knives you use in the kitchen. This may be something to do more often than semi-annually, but some people rarely sharpen knives so….
  • Check the air in your car tires. Weather’s changing (getting colder).
  • When was the last time you changed the air filters in your house? I have to change mine monthly due to children with allergy issues… not to mention a big fuzzy dog shedding clogs things up much faster. But again, I know some people rarely do this so….

I will agree that many of these things are something you should do more often, or could stretch out and do perhaps once a year. The main point is to be aware of the need to do them and find a schedule on which to perform them. One nice thing is so many of us now have electronic gizmos like iPhone’s with calendaring systems. Set yourself a reminder — a repeating reminder — to perform these tasks on a regular basis.

Stronger people shoot better

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.
– Mark Rippetoe

A difficult premise to argue against. The stronger I get, the more I appreciate the usefulness of it.

So if being stronger can help me shoot better, well I’m all for that. I was reading articles on Charles Poliquin’s website, and one in particular caught my eye: “Tips To Increase Firearm Shooting Accuracy“.

I’m…. not sure what to make of the article.

I’m not questioning Poliquin’s knowledge as a strength coach (his résumé). But I don’t know what he knows about shooting. Perhaps someone can enlighten me about a few things I saw in the article.

First, the article starts with this statement:

Did you know that your rotator cuff strength is a reflection of the amount of weight you can lift in the barbell bench press?

Then later in the article when suggesting exercises, 3 isolation exercises are given — with no mention of bench press. Well, if rotator cuff strength and bench press are so related, why shouldn’t people just bench press to improve their rotator cuff strength? Granted, some people may have injuries or other limiting factors, but in general it’s agreed that compound exercises, like the bench press, are overall superior for developing strength and a healthy body. Perhaps the article suggests 3 isolation exercises merely to say “here’s 3 exercises that specifically target the rotator cuff”. Still, why no mention of bench pressing as an avenue was odd.

Second, Poliquin states:

The larger the caliber of the handgun, the more the rotator cuff helps shooting accuracy. As more law enforcement agencies are switching from the 9 mm to the 0.40 and the 0.45, it’s even more important to have a strong and healthy rotator cuff. One of the reasons agencies are using larger calibers is today’s obesity epidemic. If this unhealthy trend worsens, cops will need ammo strong enough to bring down rhinos and elephants.

Um….

He’s saying that the reason LEO’s are adopting the fo-tay is because of fat people.

And if people keep getting fatter, we’re going to need to arm our LEO’s with .500 Nitro Express.

I am not sure how well he understands ballistics and the development of cartridges. And I’d LOVE to know where he got his information that the Glock 22 came about because of Grimace. 😉

So… I asked.

Hi John,
Thank you for your email and for your interest in the free articles provided at charlespoliquin.com! The articles have a list of references at the bottom, so you can refer to those. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide specific references for bits of information provided within the article.
Kind Regards,
Stephanie
Poliquin Strength Institute

I’d rather they made the effort to find out, because the claims are… questionable, in my mind. I have asked for more information, we’ll see how it goes. Frankly I’m most curious as to where the “fo-tay fo fatties” tidbit comes from. That’s a new one to me.

The article doesn’t come across as the most well-written. Nevertheless, I’ll agree with the general premise that having a strong, stable base does improve your ability to shoot. A strong grip, as influenced by forearm muscles or, as the article states, rotator cuff health, certainly plays into one’s ability to manage recoil and thus shoot better. And when it comes to shooting, especially long guns (i.e. shouldered guns), a healthy shoulder will help you manage things.

What are you waiting for? Hit the weights!

2011-11-04 workout

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Didn’t do jack, other than set a great PR.

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Deadlift (working max: 285#)
    • 1x5x115
    • 1x5x145
    • 1x3x175
    • 1x5x215 (work)
    • 1x3x245
    • 1x8x275 (PR)

Due to time constraints, I pulled an “ain’t doing jack shit” variant today. I also figure that’s better for me because I haven’t slept well the past couple nights and need the recovery. Glad the weekend is ahead.

The deadlift set just felt awesome. My head wasn’t cluttered with anything… nothing positive, nothing negative, and wasn’t really even thinking about the lift. Last night I started to think about it but just put it out of my head because it will be whatever it will be. Today, it just “was” and I set one heck of a PR with it.

I attribute the 8 reps in part to the mixed grip on the last set. That helps a lot. I actually felt like I could have done 9 or 10, but just stopped for whatever reason. Err on conservative I guess, since I need the recovery.

Come. Set PR. Leave. Felt good.