Me

2012-01-27 workout – didn’t

/ hsoi

Today would have been the last day of cycle 5 (squat, week 4, deload). However I didn’t make it into the gym.

I’ve been sleeping horribly lately, getting maybe 4 hours of sleep a night. I think last night my body finally chose to do something about it. I sat on the couch and promptly fell asleep. Wife roused me after a few hours to move me into the bedroom where I zonked right back out. Wife tells me I got almost 10 hours of sleep last night. I do feel better this morning.

Upon waking, I got deeply into a programming problem on a new project for my company and didn’t realize what time it was. Before I knew it, time to go to the gym had passed and time to start the day job workday had to start.

So, no squats for me today. 😦  Won’t be able to make it up. Will just deal with it and start cycle 6 on Monday.

More grease

/ hsoi

Fortunately today was a slow day at work, so I put the time to good use and did a little more work on the truck.

Today was gear lubes. Changing the front differential gear oil, the rear differential gear oil, and the transfer case. I’ve never changed these things in my life. Well, on my motorcycle I sorta did — the V*Star 1100′ is a shaft-drive, so I did change the gear oil on the final drive there. And essentially these were no different, other than being a lot harder to get to. 😉

The rear diff was difficult just because it was cramped and difficult to get my arms in the right places. The oil stunk pretty bad too. I’m not sure it was ever changed because the magnet had a huge cake of shavings on it. This was time consuming as well because of the need to scrape off the old gasket. Wasn’t hard, just time consuming. I’m thankful tho I still had some gasket sealant left over from the motorcycle days; came in handy for putting on the new gasket. Put almost 3 quarts of Mobil 1 75W-90 in it.

The front diff was pretty easy, since it was just removing the skid plate, then simply removing the fill bolt and drain bolt. Use about 2 quarts of Valvoline DuraBlend 80w-90 here.

The transfer case was a bit of a pain, but only because AutoZone had only one pump, made for gallon jugs. So Daughter and I had to do some jury rigging to get the pump working right. We did like that the GM AutoTrak II fluid is Smurf-blue. 🙂

Ran her through all the gears and all the drives. Went around the neighborhood. All seemed OK. I’m a little nervous that I did everything right, that I got the proper amounts of fluid in everything. I think that’s just because it’s a first time doing it and you always get a little nervous about your first time performance. 😉  We’ll see if there are any puddles under the truck in the morning and how things hold up in the days to come.

I am going to let someone else change the transmission fluid and filter, and the coolant. It’s a matter of 1. the hassle, 2. the amount of liquid and being able to properly handle and dispose of it. Maybe I can do that next week. There’s only a few things left to do, and who knows… if the shop will do them for a reasonable price I may just have them do it and be done with it. I don’t mind doing it all myself, but it’s coming down to a time/hassle factor.

2012-01-25 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 5, Bench 4

/ hsoi

Deload week. Nothing to write home about.

“Week 4”

  • Deload – Bench Press (working max: 215#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x85
    • 1x5x110
    • 1x5x130
  • Asst. #1 – Bench Press
    • 5 x 10 x 125
  • Asst. #2 – 1-Arm Dumbbell Rows
    • 5 x 10 x 55
  • GPP – Elliptical
    • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
    • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
    • 1 Tabata set
    • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
  • DeFranco Agile 8 – just foam rolling

It’s deload week. Nothing exciting to say. Go in, lift, leave.

I think I’ve officially dropped doing Agile 8, but I sure love foam rolling. Makes a difference, especially on my back.

Only other thing I can think to mention is my body is adapting to the GPP work, which is good. I’m not sure I need to adjust the settings on the machine… maybe a slight up in resistence. But I do think the main thing I need at this point is MORE work. So instead of 8 reps, let’s bump it to 9, then 10, and so on. I’ll probably go 9 or 10 next cycle and see how things fare.

A little grease under the fingernails

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’ve had the new (to me) truck a week and a half now, and the maintenance work has already begun.

The goal? To replace everything that I can replace. Fix all that I can fix. Update all I can update. Within reason.

It’s a used vehicle. I don’t know how well it was maintained, the condition of the fluids, and so on. I can tell some, but not all. I want to put as much as I can into a known good state. Besides, with 95K miles already on it, if these things haven’t been done they sure need to be done if I want to keep this truck going for another 100-200K miles.

Now first, I must give some credit where it’s due. I owe much to foo.c for getting me going. I didn’t grow up under the hood of a car. Sure, since I turned 16 and got my drivers license I tinkered on what little non-intimidating things I could, and I paid attention to regular maintenance, but I paid someone else to do the work. Anything that required working on the engine I did not do, save replacing an alternator on an old minivan many years ago. Then some many years ago, foo.c showed me how to change my own oil. My reaction — “that’s it?”  I was surprised at how easy it was, and a little ashamed I hadn’t tried it sooner. Since then I’ve only paid for an oil change once, because that one time I didn’t have the time, wasn’t going to have the time, and the change was overdue.

Then I got my motorcycle some years ago, and tinkered heavily on that doing all the regular maintenance plus various modifications including exhaust, intake/carb mods, and even changing the cams. I was well over being afraid or intimidated of such things; in fact, I really liked it.

I’ve done my best to tackle jobs on the family cars, but I just can’t do it all. On the minivan, there’s not much I can do due to how they designed and assembled everything. Something that should be simple, like changing the alternator, is nothing I can tackle on my own due to the horrible location of the thing and the level of pain and tools/equipment involved to get to it. *sigh*  But I’ll do what I can.

Then I got the truck. I admit tho that the notion of maintaining the truck did intimidate me a bit, and once again foo.c helped me get a handle on things. I realize tho that it’s like most source of intimidation, it came from being unaware and ignorant of what’s involved — I just didn’t have any info to go on, what’s involved, how to do the work, etc.. After reviewing things he told me, the Chilton manual, and YouTube videos (gee but the Internet is great), most everything seems like a piece of cake. I’m just going to slowly whittle away at the to-do list trying to tackle one job per day/weekend (whenever I have time).

So far:

  • new wiper blades
  • new battery – existing battery was failing load test during the pre-purchase inspection, so this was bought shortly after I pulled off the dealer’s lot.
  • oil change – used Valvoline DuraBlend, and a Mobil 1 M-206 filter (foo.c tipped me off that while the M-107 is the proper filter, the M-206 fits and is just slightly longer to give more filter media).
  • new air filter — paper, I’ll change it every year.
  • new belts (serpentine and a/c)

From what I can tell so far, I do think the truck was maintained by the prior owners. One funny example? When I took off the front skid plate to replace the a/c belt, there was a crumpled up piece of paper in there. It was a receipt from an oil change at a shop. Not sure how it got there, but there it was… a little bit of confirmed history for the truck. 🙂

That said, it was interesting the serpentine belt looked fairly new, but the a/c belt was old and cracked. I’m not sure why they replaced the one belt and not the other since you have to remove the serpentine to get to the a/c belt anyways. The serpentine didn’t really need changing, but I figured there was no harm in changing it while I was at it.

Next up is stuff like changing the front and rear differential oil and the transfer case oil. Doesn’t look hard, just a matter of doing the work. I’ll be most curious to see the condition of those oils, to see if they were ever changed. Spark plugs will be done, but looking at the engine and placement of the plugs I don’t wanna… tho foo.c tells me only a couple are a bitch to deal with. I’ll probably get foo.c to help me with the brakes… they don’t need it, but I figure why not, replace that fluid and put new pads on everything.

I do think I will pay someone for a couple of things. Transmission fluid and filter I may get someone else to do, or foo.c to help me. I’ll also probably have the coolant drain/flush done by someone else because I just don’t have the ability to safely handle that much fluid.

The best part? Daughter is helping me with everything. For whatever reason she’s taken an interest in learning about it all, how everything works, how to do all of this work. Certainly some things I have to do because she’s just not strong enough, but I’m letting her do all that she can and teaching her what I can. We’re learning together on this and having a lot of fun. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’ll take what I can. 🙂

 

2012-01-22 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 5, Press 4 Deadlift 4

/ hsoi

Time to deload.

“Week 4”

  • Deload – Deadlift (working max: 305#)
    • 2x5x125
    • 2x5x155
    • 2x5x185
  • Deload – Press (working max: 145#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x60
    • 1x5x75
    • 1x5x90
  • Asst. #1 – Press
    • 5 x 10 x 70
  • Asst. #2 – Supinated Close-grip Pulldowns
    • 5 x 10 x 130
  • GPP – Elliptical
    • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
    • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
    • 1 Tabata set
    • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
  • Grip
    • 3x10xT, 2 sec. hold between reps
    • 3x3x1, 2 sec. hold between reps, 10 sec. hold on the last rep

In previous cycles, I handled deload along the normal schedule. After I got the 2nd edition of Wendler’s 5/3/1 book, that made me take another look at scheduling the “3 days per week” cycle. Yes, it was not a typo, you are supposed to double-up on the deload week to make it last just a week, not a week and a half. So press and deadlift end up getting merged onto the same day during deload week. But I figured as well, that would make quite a long workout with all the assistance work for both days, so I opted to modify and do what assistance I thought mattered most. In this case, I kept in the assistance pressing and the lat pulldowns. I don’t NEED the Good Morning work as much as I need the press work, and the pulldowns let me control impact to my shoulder better than the hanging leg-hip raises. So there we go.

Nothing really to write home about. It’s deload week. Take it easy. I did my work. I did not rest-pause things (again, deload). I did spend a little more time on the elliptical… probably had 4 minutes of cooldown instead. Had earbuds in listening to music and “I like this song, want to hear it to the end, just keep going”. 🙂

2012-01-20 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 5, Squat 3

/ hsoi

I believe I’ve broken through my barrier.

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Squat (working max: 250#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x100
    • 1x5x125
    • 1x3x150
    • 1x5x190 (work)
    • 1x3x215
    • 1x5x240 (PR)
  • Asst. #1 – Leg Press
    • 5 x 10 x 275
  • Asst. #2 – Leg Curls
    • 5 x 10 x 80
  • GPP – Elliptical
    • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
    • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
    • 1 Tabata set
    • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
  • DeFranco Agile 8

Setting a squat PR today of 1x5x240 may not seem like a huge PR, but it is. For far too long I’ve been hovering with this 230# issue. Worked up to it doing the SS/PPNP program but form was horrible so I reset. Shortly after resetting I switched to the Wendler 5/3/1 program, which is much slower progress. Then during this I opted to hang around that level for a while while I changed around my GPP. But finally, everything is coming together and I’ve officially blown through that 230 barrier and setbacks and did 240 today. Felt pretty good too! Onwards.

On leg presses, I did some reading up on the range of motion one should use. There doesn’t seem to be any hard limits here, but the big point stressed is to keep your (lower) back in contact with the backrest. So today I played around with backrest settings to find what worked best for me (all the way down, lowest setting). Repositioned my feet slightly to be closer to my squat stance, and then the range of motion isn’t all the way touching the bottom stops/guards, but almost. It’s more that I’m getting my legs and thighs into the same position as the bottom of the squat, then pressing out explosively, again working to replicate my squat. The whole time, keeping focus on my lower back to ensure nothing curls up. If I’m not careful, in the lower position I can get a curl, but it’s slight. So I just have to keep things focused to keep the arch in my back. Good things. I reckon next cycle I’ll go to 315 and that’ll probably hold me for a little while.

On leg curls, today I just opted to up the weight 5# to 80 because of the lack of additional stress from switching to leg press. That worked. I’ll stick with this during next week’s deload and then go to 85 the week after.

I’ve been thinking about the elliptical stuff. I think the incline setting of “10” is good. I might up the resistance level just slightly to more closely replicate the real life resistance I’d feel running up a hill. “12” is a close setting but not quite. Maybe 14. But once I find myself in the right groove, I decided the way to increase the work is to just increase the workload. Instead of doing 8 “reps”, I’ll work my way up to say 15. I think that may do more for me than just making the resistance higher.

All in all, feeling good. Looking forward to next week’s deload.

2012-01-18 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 5, Bench Press 3

/ hsoi

Today was weird, but good.

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Bench Press (working max: 215#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x85
    • 1x5x110
    • 1x3x130
    • 1x5x165 (work)
    • 1x3x185
    • 1x6x205 (PR)
  • Asst. #1 – Bench Press
    • 5 x 10 x 125
  • Asst. #2 – 1-Arm Dumbbell Rows
    • 5 x 10 x 55
  • GPP – Elliptical
    • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
    • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
    • 1 Tabata set
    • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
  • DeFranco Agile 8 – just foam rolling

Today was weird.

My lower back is rather sore from deadlifting 2 days ago. You know how it goes… day after you’re sore, 2 days later you’re REALLY sore. Then last night before bed I couldn’t pop something in my lumbar region and that just made it worse. Finally got it to adjust this morning, but it still hurt. Then while doing my PR set on bench press, I was really tightening up. I’ve been working on putting my whole body into the bench press, keeping my feet really planted, pushing through my heels, whole body tight, whole body pushing, but keep the butt on the bench, keep an arch, etc.. And while I still have a LONG way to go on getting the technique, I did make progress because boy I had an arch today — almost too much arch. My lower back was screaming at me. I only cranked out 6 reps because my back was screaming, it surprised me and threw off my focus, and that was that. Between sets for the rest of the workout I kept doing lower back stretching exercises.

But I don’t feel bad about it. While it hurt, it showed that to some degree there was improvement in my technique. Whereas before things were collapsing down there, today they weren’t, which was awesome. Again, lots of work still to improve, but a step forward is a step forward. And as for 6 reps with 205? Well, last cycle I did 6 with 200. So no regression, I’ve gotten stronger. I can’t be unhappy about the progress.

Everything else just jammed along. I had to use another elliptical machine today and the resistance didn’t feel the same. It should be, in theory, but didn’t feel it. So I bumped it to “13”, and I’ll stick with that number on the machine I regularly use and see how it goes. I don’t really want to up this too much too fast.

A pretty decent day, I must say.

Either I’m a dork…

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

…or it’s just the frosting side of me talking.

I just want to go drive somewhere. It doesn’t matter. I just want to drive.

It’s like a kid a Christmas. You get new toys, you want to play with them. 🙂

2012-01-16 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 5, Deadlift 3

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Set a personal record, and looking forward to the next 2 cycles as I’ll get to break nice milestones!

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Deadlift (working max: 305#)
    • 1x5x125 (warmup)
    • 1x5x155
    • 1x3x185
    • 1x5x230 (work)
    • 1x3x265
    • 1x8x295 (PR)
  • Asst. #1 – Good Mornings
    • 5 x 10 x 70
  • Asst. #2 – Hanging LegHip Raise
    • 5 x 5 x WT
  • GPP – Elliptical
    • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
    • 2 min slow (warmup)
    • 1 Tabata set
    • 2 min slow (cooldown)
  • DeFranco Agile 8 – foam rolled
  • Grip
    • 3x10xT, 2 sec. hold between reps
    • 3x3x1, 2 sec. hold between reps, 10 second hold on the last rep

1x8x295 is a nice personal record. What I really like about it tho is how I’m set up for the next 2 cycles, not just for the PR’s but how they are some cool milestones. Next cycle I’ll do 305, which breaks the 300# barrier, and the cycle after I’ll do 315, which will be 3 45# plates per side, another cool milestone. And then it’s on to 325, and so on.

I wasn’t sure how to assess today’s PR, but I realized that last cycle I did 1x8x285, so, same reps, more weight, that’s an acceptable improvement. I’m stoked.

On good mornings, I want to focus more on moving like a hinge, and keeping a belly full of air as I move — Valsalva. I don’t get as much a range of motion, but everything works better.

On the leg raises, due to my continuing weird shoulder issues I told myself I’d rather get 5×5 awesome reps than 5×7 or 8 reps where I am exhausted, pushing myself too hard, lose tension in my shoulder area, and make things worse. And so, I did that. The right shoulder still got that odd twinge. It’s not a bone thing, it’s like this odd ache in the medial deltoid muscle. I’d have a doctor look at it, but I don’t know what to tell them….

Gripper work is progressing nicely too. I didn’t need much help on the left hand save for the last rep of the last set so I could do the 10 second hold with a fully-closed gripper. This is all good progress. I’ll probably bump to 3×4 or 3×5 next cycle.

All in all, a great way to start off the week.