Every so often it’s good to review what you (think you) know to ensure you really know it.
Over the weekend I reread the Base Building manual to see if there were any little things I missed regarding the protocol. I did. That every so often one should work up to their EDM to see how things are going.
So today I worked up to my working (everyday) max that I’m using to calculate all my numbers, and it felt good and as it should be. One where you can do it crisp, but you have to take it seriously. Certainly I felt like I could have moved more, but that wasn’t the point. It felt good to work up to it, went well, and then back to work. Even in the work I did well. OK, so incline dropped off a bit, but all things considered it was good and quality. Overall I can see I’m progressing and getting stronger, which is the whole point.
The Polquin Flies (calling them that to best reference the technique used) remain interesting to me. It puts you in a very mechancially poor position, but it really does stretch and isolate the pecs amazingly well. Still, my right shoulder isn’t the happiest with them, but I’m playing with some variables that seem to help. So, I’ll keep at them for a bit to see what comes of it.
This means I can eat candy all night tonight, right? Cheat meal? right? Naaah. 🙂
I wasn’t totally into things today… not sure why. It wasn’t a bad session, just lacking a little motivation.
For sure, 5 sets is working better for me. I do wonder if I need a little more back work… like maybe after the heavy BB rows doing like 3 sets of higher rep cable rows. Dunno. We’ll see.
Yeah, a little more volume seems to be happy for me.
When I do 4 sets of something heavy-ish, it just hasn’t felt like enough — that I’m just warmed up and one more set would be beneficial. Been feeling this for a while with rows, and now the same with pressing. Today tho on a whim instead of doing a 5th set I did it rest-pause, but conceptually it’s the same.
So I’m going to keep going with this 5 sets thing because it does seem I’m getting more out of it. But it may not strictly be a number of sets thing, but how the sets and reps add up, e.g. at least 40-50 total reps. But given the rep ranges I generally work in, it comes down to “moar sets”.
After last week’s set/rep snafu on press, I was sure to follow things today. 🙂 I upped the weight by 5 lbs, and upped the set by a final rest-pause; probably won’t do that every time, just a straight 5th set normally. But today that’s just how I did things.
That said, things are feeling good. I actually am feeling a bit better going 4x week, eating a little more carbs, and staying a little more sane. I am in “maintenance mode” on the diet/fat-loss approach, but I still feel good, weights are still going up, and despite being maintenance I seem to have lost a little bit with this morning’s weigh-in. It may be a fluke, so I want to see how Sunday goes. But all in all, so far so good.
Increased 10 lbs per Wendler-spec, recalculated and off I went. Squats felt good as a result — felt worked, felt challenged.
I need to work on keeping my torso tight. I’m doing all of this without a belt (can’t remember the last time I put a belt on), and the belt just gives me so much rigidity. When I got into the hole with the 265 I fell forward. I’m not sure if I just blew technique or if it was a lack of torso tightness. I try, but I think I’m trying too much technique of pushing my stomach out — but there’s nothing to push into (belt). So, I need to rethink this.
Sumos continue to progress nicely. I feel more comfortable with the techinque after the 4 or so weeks I’ve been trying out sumo, and given last week I did 315 pretty easily I thought why not try working up a bit to see what I could do. I got to 355 and figured that was a good stopping point. It wasn’t near a max, but it was challenging. Plus, I only rest about 1 minute between each set here, so all things considered: full squat session, minimal rest, new technique (sumo)… hey, this ain’t too bad given my conventional best is 445 lbs from just a couple months ago. I think at this point I’m going to try shifting to actually work sumo now in a Base Building model 1 style. Small/light workup, then 5×3 at maybe 315 to start and see how that goes.
First, in the gym. Upped the weight. Model 2 seems to be working better for me than Model 1. I don’t recall Carter giving any guidelines about how much to up things, so I took a cue from Wendler and just went up 5 lbs. Overall felt good, and actually felt more like it’s where I should be, which tells me it was time to go up. Paul actually says on those +10% days that you can work up to your EDM if you feel like it, and I actually felt like it today but opted against it since I had enough changes for one day. Still, I have to remember to throw that in now and again when I’m feeling up for it.
I also changed how I did flies. I saw this video from Charles Polquin on “the right way to do flies”. Given he’s forgotten more than most people know, I figure there’s something to what he says. 🙂 So I gave them a try. He says to use 10% of what you can bench, so I went with what I thought was lower. While I could move that weight, my right shoulder didn’t like moving that weight through that particular plane of motion. So I dropped down the weight more to see if it was the weight or the movement. It’s the weight. I kept at it tho because while it wasn’t the happiest thing for my shoulder, it actually got better as I went along. There’s a particular way my mobility has been hindered in my shoulder, and this actually seems like it’s hitting the right stretch, the right place. I actually felt a lot better after doing it! So, I’m going to stick with the very light weight and slowly work my way up as my shoulder will let me, e.g. stick with the light weight, work up to 20 reps before upping the weight, etc.. We’ll see how it goes, but if it winds up bringing shoulder improvements, then awesome.
Second, my fat-loss has stagnated. This is to be expected. Instead of trying to make further adjustments, we’re going to take a break for a month and maintain. I got the new diet plan last night, and while I haven’t examined it in detail yet it seems to be pretty much the same plan just 1. upping the fat intake slightly, 2. dropping cardio (from 1 hour on my off days to 30 minutes). I have some questions for Nick, but the general plan is to maintain my weight (perhaps a very slight gain) for the next month and come December start on the downward trend again.
It’s a long road, but I can see the results… the end of the road is still far off in the distance, but I can see it and it looks pretty sweet. 🙂
So much crap in my head and life… and somehow that motivated me to put in ear buds, crank the music, and lift hard and aggressive.
It was good. 🙂
I modified a bit, adding a 5th set of rows, which I think makes a good difference.
On the shrugs, I realized I went too heavy then backed off. I need to get the shrugs in better form. I know, shrugs right? But it’s about watching my body “droop” instead of keeping excellent posture the whole time. I might even drop the weight down even more next week to ensure posture stays solid all the way through — I think side effects like on posture, on grip, etc. are good side-effects of this method of shrugs. So, gotta focus on that.
I hate to admit it, but I’ve held myself back a lot in life. And now, a lot of life has passed me by, but at least I’ve gotten over holding myself back. But perhaps I wouldn’t be so driven now if I hadn’t held myself back before, having the anger and regret of what I missed to motivate me to not make that same mistake again.
While Paul Carter writes about “The things that are going to hold you back in training” from an exercise/powerlifting/weightlifting/gym perspective, the issues here really apply to anything life. Even if you don’t lift (bro), you should still give the article a read because:
Information overload
Conflicting goals
Inability to embrace discomfort
Success
Confidence
Inconsistency
Listening to the wrong people
Life
… hopefully you can see those eight things apply universally as things that can and do hold people — probably yourself — back.
The one that speaks most to me these days is “inability to embrace discomfort”.
I had to embrace something I wasn’t really comfortable doing in order to get to where I needed to be.
And THAT is what lifting and life is going to be about sometimes. I could machine gun off a million cliche’s about that right now but I will spare you. The point is, nothing that is worth attaining will come easy. If it does, good for you. However 99.99% of the time getting to a place you desire to be will mean spending a lot of time embracing discomfort.
[…]
Great things generally just don’t fall on our doorstep via UPS. If you want to find your own personal greatness, then get comfortable with being uncomfortable. The amount of discomfort you are willing to submit yourself to is generally in parallel with the amount of greatness you’re trying to attain.
Lifting weights has taught me much in life. While I’ve lifted on and off since I was a teenager, never has it been as profound in my life as the past 3.5 years. If I wanted to get stronger, I had to embrace the discomfort of heavy weights on my back, the fear of getting pinned or injury. Or just the simple hard work that has to come, because getting stronger isn’t easy. But I’ve learned to embrace it, and I’m getting stronger as a result.
Or more immediate is my fat-loss effort. I’m down 20 lbs. in just under 3 months. It’s not been easy, and just about every day contains some level of discomfort. Lord it’d be so much easier right now to eat a tub of ice cream, but that ice cream is what created my tub. I have to go through this discomfort. I know there are many more months ahead of this discomfort (probably at least 6 more), but I will never achieve my goals if I don’t go through this discomfort. And yes, what makes it easier to manage is to embrace it instead of fighting it. No it doesn’t make it any more enjoyable, but when you know the pain will bring your greatness, the pain is easier to bear.
I think about my recent career change to having my own business, basically going indie/freelancer making my own products and taking on contract work. I put it off for too many years because I didn’t want the discomfort for myself or my family. But the discomfort of not doing it became greater, and so here I am. And yes, the startup of it all has been quite a struggle, filled with daily discomfort that I never imagined. But that’s what keeps it exciting, and that’s what causes me to learn and grow. It’s like the scene in the movie Parenthood when Steve Martin’s character finally learns to embrace the rollercoaster.
That’s not the ending scene, but it’s the seed for the allusion. And grandma’s right:
You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.
Pretty evident I was distracted today. I’m pressing and it felt really light, really good… then I realized I had been only doing 5 reps instead of 8. sigh So I just cranked out a few more sets of 8. groan
Just got a lot on my mind from work and life and whatever. So today was just in there, do the work, and go. But I am liking getting back to some direct shoulder work, and it does feel good to press again. I keep wondering if I should go back to 5/3/1, but I honestly think I get about the same results from Base Building and Strong-15, but I don’t feel as beat-up. So same results and less downside? Yeah, I’m just going to keep on with Paul’s programming until I truly see reason to stop.
In other news, my fat loss seems to have stagnated, so after 20 lbs and 3 months I’m guessing Nick’s going to want to put me on maintenance for a month. We’ll see how that phase goes because diet will still be programmed; I’m curious to see how it will be.
Squats feel strong. I will bump up the weight next session.
Sumo’s feel better each week. For sure, I’m better built for conventional, but this continues to be an interesting experiment. I do think sumos may play well as an assistance exercise for me, but needs more time to know. Today tho I opted to work up a little further, and the 315 went up very easy. Next week I think I’ll try to do a further workup until I miss to see really where a good working weight is for me, then do a more formal programming around that.
