Staving off the decline, part deux

[JimRiley]

All done with school stuff and looking forward to the winter solstice. It's nice to be down to just one daily calendar entry.*

Just mucking about:

TNG bench: 45x7,8,8; 65x8x2; 85x8; 95x8; 105x5; 115x5; 120x3; 125x3, 130x3; 135x1; 130x3; 125x3; 120x3; 115x7; 105x7; 95(close grip)x7,8,7

LBBS: 45x8x3; 65x8; 85x8; 105x6; 125x6; 145x6; 165x6x3

In other news, 2000 views! I'm feeling very humble right now.

*4:30: stare into the abyss

[JimRiley]

Cycled on the trainer for 41 minutes. Did nine 15-20 second efforts, starting every two minutes, in 50x17,18,18,16,17,16,15,15,13, or something like that. Did 30 crank revolutions on each one; they took about 16 seconds on the average. Even though I haven't been doing much cardio (or anything else), it seemed like a fairly easy session - maybe @6.

[JimRiley]

Woke up, fell out of bed, and did:
OHP: 15(!)x10; 25x8; 35x8; 45x8; 55x8; 65x8; 70x8; 62.5x8; 55x8 (yes, pounds)

I hardly ever lift in the morning if I can help it, but pressing first thing (before breakfast, even) was a bit of solstice madness brought on by a just-before-waking dream sequence in which Rippetoe drew a cartoon for me linking trigonometry and baseball. Unfortunately I've forgotten the cartoon, except that it was satirical and involved cross product, but whatever it said I woke up yearning to apply force against external resistance.

Later on:
Deadlift: 135x5,6; 155x6; 175x6; 195x6; 215x6; 235x6; 245x5

Meh. Time for another nap.

[Wilhelm]

Heh. Kind of how i live my life.
Except i more recline than actually nap.

Small bursts of activity, and a great deal of "recovery"

And then there is snow removal.

[JimRiley]

Yeah, @Wilhelm, I hear you about reclining without sleeping. I used to hardly ever do that, because I'd fall asleep right away, but not any more. Speaking of snow, you have a whole lot of it right now, don't you? At least clearing it must be good conditioning work.

This afternoon I cycled - outdoors for once! - for ~47 minutes at a medium pace. Pretty comfy considering how little I've been on the bike: almost felt motorized. Had a little back soreness, maybe from yesterday's deadlifts, but no biggie.

[Wilhelm]

Yeah, @ Wilhelm, I hear you about reclining without sleeping. I used to hardly ever do that, because I'd fall asleep right away, but not any more. Speaking of snow, you have a whole lot of it right now, don't you? At least clearing it must be good conditioning work.

This afternoon I cycled - outdoors for once! - for ~47 minutes at a medium pace. Pretty comfy considering how little I've been on the bike: almost felt motorized. Had a little back soreness, maybe from yesterday's deadlifts, but no biggie.

I was pleased for the extra snow work when i was done with the meet, and cutting pretty hard.
Now i just hope for storms to line up well with my training.

Odd warm spell just blew through.
50f for a day and a half, overnight as well.
Stopped raining before the refreeze too, so it was a nice thing.
The drive is mostly clear and dry now, and i sanded up top where a good bit of ice remained.
Most often melts and refreezes are the worst, demanding action to avoid having a skating rink develop.

When it stays cold, i have more flexibility.

[JimRiley]

Warmed up on the bench with 45/65/85/105 doing a combination of TNG, 1-count pause, and 3-3-0 tempo, the latter because I’ve had a lot of trouble with tennis elbow the last few days. (Lately it's usual for one or the other, or both, of my elbows to complain about being flexed against resistance, even though that's, like, pretty much central to an elbow's mission. WTF, elbows?)

For working sets, I did 1-count: 115x6@8, 110x6x3@7.

For a little more elbow rehab, I also did a set of 3-3-0: 95x4@7. The elbows felt somewhat better afterwards.

e1RM for the sets above was about 145, compared to low 170s not so long ago, so after five weeks of not really training I'm waaaay below the poverty line. 'Bout time to get serious again!

[JimRiley]

LBBS, just a few: 45x8x3, 65x8, 85x8, 105x6, 125x5, 145x4, 165x3, 185x2

[JimRiley]

Forty minutes of outdoor cruising on la machine. Did six 30-revolution sprints starting at two-minute intervals (EOMOM?).

There was a headwind, which had me longing for my well-oiled leadout train. ("Hey Riley, you planning on an actual sprint today?" "Sure, if you sods think you can form a line this time!") After half a dozen I had that @9 feeling and called it a day. Nothing to crow about, but on the other hand I didn't see any other old farts out there hammering away!

[JimRiley]

Happy new year! Hopefully it'll be a happy, healthy, successful one for everyone here.

I'm about to embark on something a bit different. A few weeks ago I had a really helpful Skype consultation with @Austin to get some input on overall fitness strategy, seeing as I'm not getting any younger despite best efforts, and also have some health issues to keep at bay. One thing stood out for me as an immediate action item: add some more muscle mass for a better buffer against frailty in the event of a prolonged illness. That's not a pleasant thing to think about, but I'm all about being prepared for eventualities - hence the title of this log, and the fact that I'm training in the first place - so I've decided to make it my goal in the next few months to add 10 pounds of muscle mass without adding fat.

My coach @KoolaidMannn suggested using the Renaissance Programming model, which uses alternating short periods of bulking and cutting, in about a 2-to-1 ratio, along with a high-carb-low-fat (and of course high protein!) diet. It sounded pretty reasonable to me, and I tend to eat a lot of carbs and not much fat anyway, so that's how we're going to proceed. Colin (not doxxing) was kind enough to lay out the first week of training for me, despite his being on a well-earned vacation, and I did Day 1 yesterday. I won't reproduce it here, but it involves doing sets with a prescribed RPE and an open-ended rep count, as well as some exercises I'd never done before, like banded pushdowns and barbell shrugs. (I got to know my bar better than ever before while doing the shrugs, at least until I adopted a wider grip.)

I'll be using my impedance scale to track my body weight, muscle, and fat. I realize that isn't necessarily accurate, but it seems to be real repeatable, and it gave plausible body fat numbers while I was cutting a few months ago. so I'm pretty comfortable with it. Today the scale said I weighed 173.9 with 17.0% fat and 32.7% muscle, which would be roughly 30 pounds of fat and 57 pounds of muscle, so I'd consider 30 pounds of fat with 67 pounds of muscle a win. And hopefully after that I'll be in a better position to realize some more strength gains.

So I'll be probably be working on that through the winter and spring, along with teaching linear algebra and a combined precalc and trig course. Linear is my fave, so it should be a fun time!

[Wilhelm]

This sounds great, @JimRiley

Here's to all the new recruits in your mitochondria army.

[JimRiley]

Thanks, @Wilhelm! It was quite a surprise to see my log on page 1! Not many new recruits in evidence yet, but Colin said it typically six to eight weeks to see results. Looks like you're going to town as always!

[Wilhelm]

Thanks, @ Wilhelm! It was quite a surprise to see my log on page 1! Not many new recruits in evidence yet, but Colin said it typically six to eight weeks to see results. Looks like you're going to town as always!

Enjoy the gains.

I really should do that at some point, but so far i've always had a meet scheduled, and haven't been able to cut far enough for an extended bulk.
I'm always about 5lbs under my weight class. I've really been pretty steady for a couple of years it seems. I think i've been recomping as i go.
I also seem to have an aversion to new exercises.
All comp, all the time. lol

I've been walking tha calorie tightrope since my fast and dirty cut in December.
Between 3000 and close to 3,400 ( some days).
Everytime i think i'm getting fat, i wake up under 195.
I guess i'm finding maintenance fairly accurately week by week.
I don't want to lose the extra belt hole i gained, but i don't want to shortchange myself on surplus either.
I can def see the difference in my waist in my squat videos.

I'm going high cal today. 3 1/2 hours of snow work yesterday burned a good few.

[JimRiley]

I haven't posted in a while, but I'm just wrapping up the first mesocycle of the RP-based programming @KoolaidMannn is doing for me. No earth-shattering gains yet, but I'm still in the first six weeks so that's to be expected. (I have to remember while in public not to keep grabbing my shoulders to see if they feel like pumpkins yet.) It's been fun branching out from doing the same four lifts all the time.

I found out in the early '90s that I had low bone density. Taking bisphosphonates for a good many years brought about only a slight improvement, but the lifting I've done for the past three and half years - while no longer taking any bone density drugs - has made a much bigger difference. On my latest DEXA scan, all my T-scores were positive for the first time ever, meaning higher bone density in each area scanned than in the average 25-year-old. My endocrinologist said I'd made the biggest improvement he'd ever seen in someone who wasn't taking medication, and added that he'd like to publish a paper about my case. So it's nice to find out lifting has made me a little bit of a medical miracle, even though I'm strictly mediocre at it!

Hopefully this means I'm harder to kill too. Is there a scan for that? #voluntaryhardship

[mgil]

@JimRiley, hearing that news about your bone density is awesome! This is fantastic news. Keep it up!

[JimRiley]

Thanks, @mgil. I certainly will continue with this stuff!

[JimRiley]

My training has been really spotty since my last log entry, owing to a headache that lasted 12 days straight (wtf?), two colds, and the worst cough I've ever had. I worked out the first week of March, the first three weeks of April, and nothing but a few chinups since then until the last couple days. Finally I stopped coughing like the cowboys in the old "Cigarettes: They're Killers" PSA, so yesterday I went for a little bike ride and this evening did a few pulls: 135x6, 155x6, 175x5, 195x5, 215x3, 235x3, 255x3. That felt good in a way, but definitely harder than normal.

I think for a little while I'll just kind of rotate through the main lifts plus chinups and maybe some dumbbell stuff, along with a few bike rides, to get used to actually doing something for a change. My overall goal for the year of adding muscle mass is totally off the rails at the moment, but I'll get back to it once I regain a little work capacity.

Oh, and I turn 65 next week, so I must savor these last precious days of youth.

[JimRiley]

Yesterday: 41 minutes on the bike, outdoors. Medium pace, felt OK.

Today: LBBS 145x6x4@6, BP 95x6x4@6, DL 185x6x4@6. Just trying to get back in the habit and regain a little work capacity. The weights I chose are 60% of my alltime 1RMs - so probably at least 70% of my current 1RMs - rounded up to multiples of 5. I may do some chinups and curls later on if time allows.

The front of my right shoulder is hurting, so I might have to massage (even though that's useless) some Biofreeze (even though that's useless too) into the knots (even though those don't exist). Let's just say they're regions of alternative pliability.

[JimRiley]

Sort of a potpourri workout this evening, interleaved with grading linear algebra finals. I was pretty sore today from two days ago, so I mostly chose from the orthogonal complement of what I did that day.
Press: 60x6x4@<6 (continuing the 60% of 1RM thing)
Rows: 75x6x5@<6
Band tricep pushdowns: 4 sets of 10 with the thickest bands I have
DB curls: 4 sets of 12 with 14s

[JimRiley]

Yesterday: 35 minutes on the bike, in a hurry because it was a few hours from my grading deadline and I still had quite a bit to do. (Ultimately I finished entering grades with about 10 minutes to spare, as is my custom.)

Felt unaccountably good on the bike. There's one split that I usually time, just to track my fitness, and I did it in 15:30, compared with 17:45 and 17:15 on my previous two rides since I started training again. When I can ride like that it usually means I'm about to come down with a cold, but so far I haven't, knock on wood.

Today: LBBS 145x6x4@6, OHP 60x6x4@6-7 (the third set was randomly hard), DL 215x3@6, 185x6x4@<6. I warmed up to bench, but my right shoulder wasn't having it; tried different grip widths and even pressing from the pins for less ROM, but to no avail. So I did OHP instead and that felt pretty much OK.

Did everything unbelted. Used straps on the last couple of deadlift sets because I was getting a blister. I might look into getting some thin gloves for deadlifting, if I can find some that match my purse.