Today didn’t feel like much progress, but I just have to remember that progress in the gym isn’t as priority as progress on the scales, which it is: 237 lb. this morning.
Still, making small tweaks to improve on how I do things. Better form, better focus on the muscle (not the movement). It is what it is.
So I’m changing it up for a couple reasons: 1. trying to up the “work” done (more sets, more reps, etc.) to help burn more calories, 2. trying to see if I can be nicer to my knees.
I didn’t wear the knee sleeves to see how things went. I also wound up moving rather slowly. I want to be more controlled on the descent in case the rebound is hurting my knees, and since the sleeves add a little bulk behind the knee joint to see if well… this helps in any way.
I think I moved a little too slow, but I was trying to really pay attention to things. I think it wound up being ok because boy, form was pretty strict. I think I need that, so I keep my torso tighter, more upright, and thus yes it puts more work into my quads. All squat sets were slow, but by choice and I sure felt a lot more worked afterwards. We’ll see where this goes.
Stiff-Legs I kept light so I could get the movement down. I’m very used to straight-legs, but I don’t want to do that. This is stiff-legs, where there can be some bend in the knees but not in the lower back; initiate from the top, push the hips back, etc.. So I wanted to keep it light today just so I could get myself into the movement and find that right groove. I’ll slowly increase the weight as I get into the groove — the hardest part being minding my (lack of) flexibility….
Same with leg press… it’s not out to press a ton, just to be better about things. Like to really push my knees out on the descent, work to get a good pump, etc.. So again, starting really light here. Be kind to the knees.
I think one thing not helping is again, the diet. I woke up this morning to 236 lb — dropped pound since yesterday. Hrm. Is this tissue? Because geez, what’s left in me of water or glycogen at this point? I’m pretty tapped out. Even after being able to have carbs yesterday, by evening I was having some serious hunger pangs and cravings, which is unusual for such a day. So… it is what it is, and I’ll just keep going because even if this is all legit fat-issue loss, it’s a rate that won’t last long. Just ride along while I can, and keep in mind that no matter how shitty things are in the gym, so long as it continues to work towards my primary goal of “defatting” then it’s all good.
239 yesterday, and 237 this morning. It’s a long carb-less and low-calorie weekend, so I’m not surprised I dropped 2 lb. in 24 hours… it’s not all tissue, it’s simple depletion. I was craving HARD yesterday… but you just suck it up and go about your business. I expect by next Sunday’s weigh-in I’ll be 237, maybe 236. Whatever the number, so long as it’s a downward trend. 🙂
Otherwise, today was what it was. It’s tough coming in so depleted — just no nothing. Still, the AMRAP set went up, a few more dips. All in all, it felt good. Again, I don’t really expect much progress on this front, as this front is geared towards supporting the fat-loss efforts, which seem to be trending properly. So, all in all, cannot complain.
Yesterday I went deer hunting with Youngest. He got to learn why it’s “hunting” not “bagging” because we came home with nothing.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. We came home with a bunch of great experiences and memories.
It wasn’t until maybe a year ago that Youngest expressed any interest in hunting. But since he did, I’ve been trying to make it happen. Finally, thanks to the generosity of a friend, I had an opportunity to take him out. Now, I’m doing the actual hunting and work here as Youngest doesn’t feel ready to do anything other than observe. But he wants to see what it’s all about.
We set off at an early hour. I swear I’ve never seen this kid so happy to wake up, not to mention wake up at 3:30 am! Obviously excited, and we set off. Over the hour drive there was much talking, asking and answering of questions, and getting ready for things. We get there, we set up the blind, and then we sit and wait.
I made it clear that there are no guarantees. That we could sit and wait and be bored out of our skulls, and have nothing to bring home. So he was prepared for that. Still, I really wanted to be able to bag a doe, as it was his first time out; it’d just help him see a lot of it all.
Alas, we saw almost nothing. We saw 3 does when we parked the truck, and we saw a very immature buck. That’s all we saw in our hours sitting out there. We even got tired of sitting and went on a stalk hunt for a while. Alas, nothing. It was very quiet.
But in that is where we were able to experience some neat things.
I told him that it is a little boring, but that’s ok. Take in what’s around you. There will be sounds, there will be things to see. Watching the sun come up itself is really cool. You never know what you might experience.
We saw movement behind some trees and thought “maybe a deer?” No… it wound up being a feral (house)cat. It was rather cute, and actually spotted us and stalked us for a while. 🙂
We got to see a hawk. Numerous other birds. This one squirrel had no idea about us and was hopping straight at us — that was mighty cute.
But the coolest thing?
We heard a woodpecker. We found him atop a telephone/power pole that was maybe 50-60 yards from us. We thought he was rather large, but didn’t think much of it. We watch him for a long time.
Then he took flight.
GEEZ! He was huge! I mean, for a woodpecker. Imagine a really large crow. He was a big dude! We kept watching him when he landed on another tree, then eventually lost track of him. But it was quite cool. We didn’t realize how cool until we got home.
Here’s a video of one, which is a pretty good shot of what they look AND sound like:
What made this extraordinary is they are an East Texas bird. To find them where we were is a rare occurrence!
Frankly, that made our day! 🙂 We’ve spent more time talking and learning about the woodpecker than anything else.
And you see, that’s really what it was all about.
It’s about having time together, building memories, and doing fun things. Heck, the fact we didn’t take a deer? Just means we have to go out again — gee, darn the luck! Which means another opportunity have time together, build more memories, and do more fun things.
So you see, we could focus on what we don’t have – a deer in the freezer. But life is so much better because we focus on what we do have. 🙂
Carbs are wonderful things — if you can eat them. 😉
Yesterday was a no-carb day, and with the recent revision to the diet plan the carbs were reduced again. I think I started the day with a pretty empty tank, because the Pressing was a struggle. Oye. But all good, as it does appear the weight is going down again (240 this morning).
As stated before, I’m adding more volume and work to my gym sessions: a little more exercises, a little more sets, a little more reps, a little less rest time (trying to hold stricter to 60 seconds between things). All in an effort to stimulate muscle growth (may not happen, but best thing towards ensuring I don’t lose muscle mass while on the cut), and to try to burn more and keep the fat loss going.
One thing is adding in side lateral raises, but doing it in a way demonstrated by Charles Polquin. I will say that just skipping bringing the db’s in front of the body and thus keeping more upright and a straight back was helpful. It does feel like more isolation on the medial deltoid, and obviously this approach puts more emphasis on the negative. We’ll see how it goes long-term.
I also dumped rear lat raises because I hate ’em…. face pulls instead, for a change-up. I opted to do them on a different weight stack, which has a different pulley system and thus affects the “work” done relative to the weight lifted. Still have to find the right groove here, but using this stack is better because I can position the cable in front of my face and get a more proper angle, instead of a “lat pull” station and having a downward pull.
Then, more tricep work. Close-grips are a good thing. I think the 350-method is appropriate here. Again, need to find my weight, but it’s close.
So, things started off kinda crappy but rolled ok towards the end. Hopefully this increase in workload will pay off on the fat loss.
475 lb deadlift — Close, but not going to count it as a PR.
I’ve decided to stop deadlifting for a little while. Not a happy decision because I really like deadlifting, but my knee isn’t happy in a couple ways now, so I want to see if laying off the (heavy) deadlifting will help. Before I stop tho, I wanted to see if the sumos perhaps helped my conventional at all. So, today I decided to work up and see what I could do.
My best ever is 455, set back in August before I started down the defatting path. I figured if I could hit that today I’d be happy — if anything, on a cut, I would expect to lose something, but the work of the past some months seems to point to maintaining and perhaps a hair bit of forward progression. So, the plan was to just see what I could do.
I put on a belt at 315, and things were going quite nicely. 405 went well. 455 did alright too; worked for it, but solid. In fact, because I haven’t had a belt on in a while coupled with less girth around my middle well… the belt doesn’t fit the same of course, I don’t like a mega-tight belt when deadlifting (can’t get into position if it’s too tight), but on the 455 I had it one notch looser than it should have been so when it went up and my torso got really tight, the belt actually felt totally loose — the 455 felt like I did it beltless. It was certainly nearing my end tho, so I figured just go 475 and see.
I got the 475 up — for sure it was tough. But I’m not going to count it. It felt like I got 98% of the way there, but just didn’t lock it out. Could I have done it? I think so, if I had my shit together. I recall being up there and just having a “just keep pulling!” mindset, but at that point it wasn’t pulling, but rather I needed to squeeze my glutes and thrust my hips forward. I didn’t remember that cue until afterwards. I think if I had all my cues in the right place I would have gotten it. But that’s OK that I didn’t. I think I learned more from the failure than the success.
Regardless, that I was able to do that tells me my strength in fact is going up despite the cut. Of course it’s WAY slower than a proper strength cycle would be (what? only 20 lb in 4 months), but the simple fact I’m losing fat and NOT losing strength is awesome. Really, I’m happy with how things went, all things considered.
Then I squatted my normal routine. A little tougher since I did it coming off the deadlifts, but fine.
Then here’s where things change up a bit. I did some empty-sled less presses, just to get some reps and volume and blood flowing. Then some calf raises. This is in part how squat day will change for me, both to try to be a little less heavy stress, and a little more volume towards the fat-loss. I don’t expect these to be a lot of weight, just lots of reps.
The other change will be stiff-legged deadlifts instead of conventional/sumo, for higher reps.
Had some talks with Nick & Renaissance Periodization over the weekend. More diet adjustments, and I’m trying to find out what else I can do to keep the losing train rolling. One certain thing is increasing my gym time – moar lifting! Like 5 or 6 days a week. I’m not sure how sustainable that will be for me. I’m old, I’m on a rather restrictive diet, no PEDs, and I have scheduling issues. So for now I’ve decided to stick with my same basic plan, just add in a little more work on each day.
The other thing is a change in deadlifting, but I’ll talk about that tomorrow.
So the changes started today, taking the dips as far as I could. Instead of artificially limiting it, just go until the lock-out gets difficult then stop. I also added Polquin Flies back in. So again, not a huge change in things, but trying to get a little more volume, a little more work, which should translate over into more calories burned. 🙂
All in all, things felt good. Certainly felt better than last week. I know the strength loss of last week was just a minor setback due to the diet kicking back in. One-step back, many steps forward. No worries.
The trend of “weaker” continues. Just couldn’t hit things like I did last week. But that’s to be expected. I think this week I’ve pretty much depleted any reserves I had of glycogen, water, other bloat, etc.. I’ve watched my weight every day (instead of the usual 2-times-per-week) and the loss trend is tapering, so the “easy weight” is gone and it should be “all tissue” from here out. I expect to be 240 on Sunday’s weigh-in.
Otherwise, things were generally fine. Sure I couldn’t hit the reps, but that’s ok. I don’t intend on modifying things much at this point… just go back in next week and see how things go.
It’s no secret that if you go on a “loss” diet, that strength is going to decline. Sure enough, it seems to be happening. From the slower bench/squat/deadlift sessions, to today where I just couldn’t hit the reps. Worked as hard as I could, but it’s just not there.
Probably a combination of the restricted diet and the cessation of creatine supplementation.
But it’s all good. It’s just how it goes. Fat loss is the primary consideration.
That said, I did make some other changes. The big one? Reduction of reps along with increase in weight. Why? Simple… I hate ultra-high-rep work. 🙂 Plus, I don’t think I get as much out of it. Yes, it does really flush the area with blood, but that’s not always what I want. So, making some adjustments and we’ll see how it goes.
Stuff From Hsoi 