kwesadilo

Week 4 update Lifting: Last week, I did not follow my regularly scheduled workout program, because I had previously scheduled to receive some coaching this weekend, and I didn't want to interfere with that. Although it wasn't part of Texas Method, I consider the coaching and thus the light week beforehand to have been planned. I'll say I completed this. No serious derailments happened. (That will come next week, after I get back from a trip, when I attempt to implement the coaching advice I received.) Move chores: I finished changing my address. However, I did not establish a local bank account and close my old one, so this goal is incomplete. Finances: No movement this week. I didn't complete any of the checklist items I referred to previously, and I'm not really much closer to having a financial plan that I feel good about. Minimal points. Vacuum: Done.

I got the Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352, because The Wirecutter recommended it, and I didn't see any derogatory reviews that were sufficiently credible to hold up my purchase. There is a highly ranked negative Amazon review, but the author seems like the kind of person who likes writing bad reviews. I'm not expecting this thing to be perfect. I haven't really used the vacuum yet. We'll see how things go.

Week 3 update Lifting: On Friday, I switched to 2 sets of 3 and continued to increase the weight for squat and bench. I might have been able to go another week with sets of 5 for bench. For deadlift, I did a 10% reset, because that's what Practical Programming said to do. Move chores: I changed my address with all but two entities, which I will have to call on the phone. Finances: I sent in the form I referred to last time. Otherwise, nothing here. Vacuum: I started shopping online, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Posting from my phone this week, because I finished at the gym 30 minutes ago, and they are still cleaning the locker room. Week 2 update Lifting: Still going strong. I think I'm going to transition intensity from sets of 5 to sets of 3 this week. Move chores: I had to get on the phone, but I managed to change my address with my credit card, which will now allow me to change it with various merchants. Finances: Not much movement. I downloaded the form to finish my backdoor Roth IRA contribution. Vacuum: No progress.

Week 1 update Lifting: Last week was pretty solid. On Friday, I benched 210x5, which is a new PR, which hasn't happened in quite some time in general. I also deadlifted 345x5 for the first time in awhile. My back was bothering me a little bit towards the beginning of the week, so I went a bit light on squats and didn't try to increase the weight on Friday. It's felt OK today. Hopefully, it's fixed. Move chores: I started changing my address with the organizations on the list I had made previously. The first one on the list was AAA, and I can't log into their website for some reason, so it was an inauspicious start. Finances: I took the quiz, which only took like 15 minutes. To my horror, it resulted in a lengthy checklist of things I'm supposed to read or do to improve my financial planning. I haven't figured out which of them pertain to this goal yet. Vacuum: No progress. As a bonus not-living-like-a-bum task, I scheduled a doctor's appointment for today, which has been on my to-do list for weeks, with the result that I now have a primary care physician for the first time in my adult life.

Since I moved, I've been getting things done when I really needed to, but most of the time, I've been doing things at the last minute, and things with no deadline have gotten the short shrift. The vast majority of my free time (at least, outside the gym) consists of activities that won't improve my life in any meaningful way. I'd like to get on more of an upward trajectory, and that means attending to some things that I've allowed to languish for awhile. Goals Keep going on Texas Method. Lifting isn't going anywhere. Things have gone smoothly so far, and I'd like to keep it that way. Finish my move chores! My mail forwarding runs out soon, so I actually need to update my address with my correspondents, like, now. I'll count this goal as complete if I can close the browser tab that has the list of things I needed to do when I moved. Make a plan for my finances. This sounds like a tall order for 4 weeks, but I actually signed up for a service related to this months ago and have been snoozing the email reminding me to fill out their intro questionnaire every few days since then. It's pretty pathetic. I don't need to have every little thing hammered out by the end of the challenge, but I'd like to have at least a general idea of what I should be doing and how it relates to what I'm currently doing. Buy a vacuum cleaner. My old apartment didn't have carpet, and my new one does. I need to clean it at least occasionally.

Week 4 update Lifting: Generally, things seem to be gong OK. I've mostly done a good job of avoiding blowing out my grip before heavy pulling workouts. My bench is 2.5 lbs away from my all-time 5RM. Most lifts are progressing smoothly. I did repeat my squat weight from last intensity day this week, because I thought my form was slipping a little bit last week. Last night, for volume day, I did 6 sets of overhead press instead of the usual 5. Hopefully that will be sufficient to unstick intensity day overhead presses. I think this has gone about as well as could be expected. Sleep: In bed on time Monday through Friday. 100% complete. Move chores: Still did nothing. A whopping 0% complete. Taxes: Filed. I think this took like 10 hours overall. 100% complete, although there remain a few small things to make next year easier that I should do now, while I'm thinking about it. Although finishing my taxes felt like a gargantuan effort, I didn't really chug through as much paperwork as I had intended during this challenge, and, sure enough, more to-dos have piled up during the past 4 weeks. My desk is a little cleaner than when I started, but not by much.

Texas Method is kind of a program template that is organized into 3 training days per week with weekly progression. Monday (for example) is volume day, where you accumulate the volume that will drive the gains for that week. Wednesday is light day, where you recover from the past week's workouts. Friday is intensity day, where you set new PRs. Right now, my programming looks approximately like this: Monday: Squat 5x5x90% of Friday's weight, bench press 5x5x90% of Friday's weight, RDL 3x8x~70% of Friday's deadlift weight Wednesday: Squat 3x5x90% of Monday's weight, overhead press 3x5x90% of Monday's weight, power clean 3x3x hopefully more than I did last week Friday: Squat 5x5lbs more than I did last Friday, bench press 5x5lbs more than I did last Friday, deadlift 5x5lbs more than I did last Friday Every other week, I swap pressing movements so that overhead press is the heavy lift, and bench is the recovery lift, so the pressing movements only really go up every 2 weeks. I am still messing with the exact formulation. Texas Method is more of an idea than a spreadsheet. It's not radically different than the heavy-light-medium programming that I was doing before, but to my mind, it has two advantages that I hope will play out: Because most of the volume comes in a different workout than the one where the most weight is handled, I can adjust volume and intensity somewhat independently. Because I'm only doing 1 set on intensity day, I can work closer to my true 5RM and also not feel quite as wiped out by the end of my workouts. Alternating bench and overhead press as the heavy lift for the week is also new for me, but there's no reason that I couldn't have done that with HLM. I just didn't think of it.

Week 3 update Lifting: Things are mostly going according to plan, but I missed an overhead press rep on intensity day. Given the state of my other lifts and the relationship of my current intensity weight (118 lbs.) to what I've done historically, it seems hard to believe that I've already gotten to the point where I need to transition from 1 set of 5 to 2 sets of 3. I might need to increase pressing volume. My deadlift on Friday was affected by climbing earlier in the day but not to the extent that I missed my programmed reps, and my RDLs tonight were fine. Sleep: Got to bed on time every day but Sunday. Move chores: Still did nothing. Taxes: I am ready to file my federal and state taxes, but I still need to do my local taxes. I think I'm about 6 hours in at this point.

Week 2 update Lifting: I've continued to make progress and basically stay on schedule. I did 2 fewer RDL reps tonight than I had planned, but I think the most likely culprit was grip training on Sunday, which, in retrospect, was ill advised. Sleep: Got to bed on time Monday through Thursday and Sunday, although there were some close calls. Move chores: Still did nothing. Taxes: I think I finished my federal taxes, after staying up very late on Saturday. That's pretty lame, but there was surprisingly little weeping.

It's been gone for about a year now, but since then, I've been working my squat back up very slowly, trying to make sure that my form doesn't deviate in the way that caused the original injury.

Week 1 update Lifting: On Saturday, I strained my right trap during my heavy set of overhead presses, which I nevertheless made. It was pretty stiff on Sunday, and I was afraid that I might have to skip today's workout, but none of my lifts hurt it, and volume day was pretty easy, all things considered. It feels better now than when I woke up. Lifting FTW! In other news, I squatted 300x5 (really 300 x anything) for the first time since hurting my back in late 2017, and I deadlifted 320x5 for the first time since before I moved. Sleep: Got to bed on time Monday through Thursday and Saturday. Move chores: Did nothing. Taxes: Spent about an hour on this over the course of two days, much later in the day than I had intended. I didn't accomplish very much, but I did discover that some income that I thought I would have to hunt down weird forms for was already included in my W-2 and withheld appropriately, so this whole process might be simpler than I had imagined.

I'm doing it myself. I paid someone to do it last year, which I viewed as money well spent, but I moved, and by the time I started thinking about taxes, it seemed like it would be too late to perform the research necessary to find a tax preparer I felt good about, at least at the pace that I would have been likely to complete that task. I've stopped assigning stat awards to my goals, if that's what you're referring to. I might splurge on something if I finish early, now that you mention it.

I moved several months ago, and I have completed most of the urgent chores involved in that project, but a few linger. Lately, Uncle Sam has added another urgent chore to that list. I really hate doing paperwork, shopping, and making phone calls, and that has led to a lot of procrastination on my part but I just want to be done with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5QIUYg5M6w Goals Keep Texas Method going. This is my second week doing it, and nothing terrible has happened so far. I don't think I've been doing it for long enough to know whether it's going to work well, but I intend to at least give it a fair shake. Get to bed on time 5 days each week. I've been doing a decent job of this, but I'd like to get to the point where getting enough sleep feels automatic. Finish my move chores. At this point, that entails opening a local bank account and changing my address with my correspondents. Surely, surely, I can finish perhaps 4 hours of work in 4 weeks, right? File my taxes on time. Although this should also only take a few hours, it is perhaps my least favorite activity in the whole world, and it will be accompanied by weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Week 4 update Last week seemed like pretty much the end of my LP. Tonight, I started Texas Method, which I've never done before. I guess I'll find out how it's going to be on Friday. Conditioning: I pushed the cart twice last week. I worked up to 9 sprints. I would say that I'm still mostly recovered after 30 seconds of rest. I turned the timer down to 25 seconds, because it takes me a bit to enter my previous set and walk over to where I left the cart. Done. Mobility: Did this every day but one. I can't remember which day it was right now. I think maybe Tuesday. 27/28 days. I've gotten to the point where I very rarely have to remind myself to do this. Sleep: Got to bed on time every day but Sunday. 19/20 days. I've been pretty good about this lately, but it's not at all automatic for me. Move chores: I sold my superfluous furniture this week. I made a list of businesses to change my address with but did not actually do that. I did about half of the things that I still needed to do at the beginning of this challenge. I'll give this 50%. Additionally, I cleared away all of the paperwork that had piled up during the move process, so that's something. Just in time for me to do my taxes.