Waldo's Bigger and Better Challenge

[Waldo]

I think that I'm to defect from the Scouts to the Assassins for this challenge. Nothing against the Scouts, but running is not going to be a focus of mine for the time being. And TBH the only reason I didn't pick the Assassins to begin with was the presence of the P word in the guild description.

Starting Attributes:

Race:...............................Correllian

Level:...............................2

Strength (STR):.................6

Dexterity/Speed (DEX):.....6

Stamina (STA):..................8

Constitution (CON):...........3.25

Wisdom (WIS):..................7.5

Charisma (CHA):...............4

Current Status:

Tomorrow I will bump my calories to 3300 net/day and be officially bulking. I've been holding maintenence and near maintenence now for a couple weeks. My plan is to do a relatively short bulk cycle, then follow it with a cut to a lower BF% than I am now. I have a couple reasons for this; I want to let my body/skin catch up a bit to the weight loss, a diet break was needed anyway, I haven't taken a real break since Christmas, and that one was short, I need moar muscle, and its good for the mental health.

I put together a rather complex workout plan for the upcoming challenge/bulk cycle. But I think the complexity is a little superficial; the focus is much smaller than it seems.

Just a couple points about my workout plan:

1) I've found that it would be hard to sprint 2x per week. Hill sprints the way I do it, basically a peak power exercise, are rough on the legs, a significant amount of DOMS is expected, and it lasts a bit longer than usual.

2) I'm going to begin using steady state training cycles for my levers. The straight arm forces involved are increasing to the point where it is much better to be safe than sorry, steady state training is done to protect joints since muscle growth is much faster than connective tissue growth. But I've been taking it easy at the point I'm at now for 2 weeks, so I'm going to reevaluate progress and adjust my holds at the 4 week point.

3) I'm still working on the plan for warmup, prehab, and skills, before the meat of the strength training.

Goals:

My overall goals for this challenge will center around getting bigger and stronger.

1) Meet all the prerequisites for planche work.

To prove that I'm ready for the planche progression, I need to complete the following:

Floor L-sit - Hold 30 sec x 3

Planche Lean - Hold 30 sec x 3

Frog Stand - Hold 60 sec

- I've been working the various parts for a long time and am nearing the point where I can put it all together into a tuck planche. I cannot currently do any of these, but I'm pretty close. I can hold floor L-sits a maximum of 20 sec, and can easily hold PB or hanging L-sits 20 sec x 3 (I never go to failure on them). The floor is a little more challenging. The planche lean is an exercise that I have not done for very long so my progress has been very rapid. I can currently hold it 15 sec with my feet at shoulder height. Frog stands are an exercise that I've worked on for a long time. I haven't focused on the basic frog stand at all recently so have only minimally worked it. My maximum hold times are in the 45-50 sec area. I'm actually taking a step back with the planches; I plowed ahead a little early from frog stands to advanced frog stands and came to a grinding halt with virtually no progress. I've been diversifying my approach to the planche to surpass this development plateau. My eventual short term goal is to hold a 5 second tuck planche; that is where you begin training to do planches by doing planches, prior to that point it has to be cut up into little pieces.

Points Awarded for Successful Completion: STR +1, DEX +2, STA +1, CON +1

2) Press from a headstand to a handstand.

- Another item I've been working on for a long, long time, and am nearing the major milestone point. A few months ago I worked up to headstand pushups, and could do a few, before putting that work on hiatus. Some of you may be thinking, LOLWUT, you can already do them, but I cannot. Starting from a handstand, going to the ground and pushing back up is a good bit easier than stating on the ground without the assistance of elastic energy. This will give me a chance to improve my form with them as well, bring my hands and elbows in.

Points Awarded for Successful Completion: STR +3, DEX +1

3) Gain weight averaging between 0.5 and 1.0 lb/wk throughout the challenge.

- My starting calorie target will be 3300 net/day. This will be reevaluated and adjusted weekly as necessary. I appear to be in the midst of a little weight spike right now, but I believe that I weigh about 190-191 right now. Within a few days the moving average for today will settle down and I'll know my starting weight. *Edit* - My moving average has settled down, my official starting weight for the beginning of the challenge is 190.6 lbs.

Points Awarded for Successful Completion: CHA+3

And a life goal:

4) No surfing the net during the first hour of every workday.

- I waste way too much time on the internet at work when I should be working. I have a tendency to start days off on the wrong foot by starting my day surfing the net. This tends to be the most productive time for me at work, and working hard first thing tends to transfer to the rest of the day.

Points Awarded for Successful Completion: WIS +3

I take progress photos every other week. I took one at the end of the last challenge, that will be my starting photo for this challenge. As the challenge progresses I'l put together a collage for this challenge only. This collage is from about when I joined NF to now:

[drsloomis]

Awesome workout schedule...particularly glad to see I'm not the only person who actually likes P90X Yoga!

[Waldo]

Awesome workout schedule...particularly glad to see I'm not the only person who actually likes P90X Yoga!

The only reason to not like it is because it is too hard. That is a weak attitude to have.

[azsf]

nice goals mate, gonna have shoulders of steel! good luck!

and what's up with the photo?

[Waldo]

nice goals mate, gonna have shoulders of steel! good luck!

and what's up with the photo?

Picture of a construction site. I was still working on the challenge write up.

I'm hoping so on the shoulders.

There are 3 fundamental motions I cannot do in my shoulders moving my bodyweight that I'm hoping to change:

1) I cannot rotate from vertical to horizontal, pressing, even in a tucked position. Granted this is not easy, and I don't expect to be even to do it initially after being able to do a tuck planche, but it is possible to do this movement. I consider this movement critical to being able to perform tuck planche dips (whatever the real name is, I'm not quite sure), what I consider to be one of the truly premiere chest exercises.

2) I cannot press to handstand. A lot of the multiplane pressing variants require this one critical piece, and if they don't, it sure helps so you don't have to waste an inordinate amount of time learning skills where having plain old brute strength will greatly speed things along. First getting headstand pushups is so anticlimatic; without the ability to press to the handstand it is largely a useless ability. I also think that it will make freestanding handstand training so much easier; kicking up into a handstand is about the most difficult way to control things at first; you are in much more control when you press into a handstand.

3) I cannot rotate my body forward of my hands in a floor sitting variation. The same thing as item 1 but pulling instead of pressing. This specifically refers to doing a Manna or at least training for it from the middle split hold onward. This is an angle of shoulder rotation people are typically very weak in. It also shows up at the top of pullups. I'm a ways from addressing this weakness of the shoulders.

[morethanjustamom]

Can't wait to see what awesomeness you attain during this challenge!

[TeaKwonDo]

You're one of my favorite people to thread-stalk, and you hand out solid advice on the other forums. Best of luck!

[LessJos]

Yay, Waldo is an Assassin! You are my hero and I will definitely follow this one. That reminds me I need to get my thread together uhoh

[Waldo]

A couple things I didn't write down anywhere:

- I build myself a set of parallettes last week. I can't do a whole lot with them yet, but I do plan on doing most of my planche training on them instead of the floor.

- Two things I'm adding to the prehab/skill portion of my upper body days are middle split hold practice (Manna progression, I can hold it 5 seconds) and holding a german hang for 30 sec. I might work some straddle L practice in too.

- I'm fairly flexible for a mid 30's dude, however my flexibility in the plane of the legs forward/back splits is downright laughable. I'm focusing a lot more on this, my lack of flexibility there does impact a number of things. A little odd because my flexibility in your basic touch your toes stretch is very good, I can almost put my palms flat on the ground.

- I'm still focused on doing levers, however I need to work a little smarter on them. Going too fast on them is a recipe for injury.

- I don't have a specific plan to address it, but I plan on practicing muscle ups when I have the opportunity. Most of it will be on sprinting days, but I might be around pullup bars or rings with head room at other times. I worked on it a bit last night. This will all be GTG style far from failure work. I can do muscle ups, but my form is still really bad and I'm weak in the transition.

- I'm going to work freestanding handstands as I get the chance. Mostly in the afternoons on the weekends out in the yard. But I might start to do a couple freestanding reps as skill work on upper body days, using the wall as a spotter.

- I plan on doing some movements GTG style throughout the day during the challenge. Right now I'm working flat palm floor L-sits that way, using 10 second hold times.

[Waldo]

Workout Log - 6/18

Outdoor leg day

Dynamic Warmup

BW Pistols - 5L, 5R x3

125M Hill Sprints x4 *new PR on run #2, 17.09 sec*

Jogged 0.64 miles each way to and from hill

Stopped at playground for muscle up practice, successful on 2 of 4 attempts

- My left knee, the one that I've had a long term tendonitis battle in, has been acting up recently after feeling 95% for a while. Since Friday I've heard a squishy sound in it when doing squatting type motions (with a little soreness), which has me more afraid than anything else. Just the nature of tendonitis, my guess is that the high number of BW squat/lunge reps throughout the last challenge (>400/wk), caused a little irritation/inflammation over time which has caused the soreness and the sound. I'm going to take it easy and try to minimize squat reps for the time being, sticking primarily to heavy work to maximize the value of each rep. I skipped the lunges and BW squats today because of it.

- Muscle up practice hurts. At least on a bar. Maybe not if you are little, but @ 190+ lbs, the bar ain't so comfy. I gave myself a nice bar burn on my triceps and bruised my pecs. Bruised them last time I practiced too. Small price to pay I guess. I missed the first two reps, nailed the last two. Still doing one elbow at a time. Though I practice 2 elbows on the low bars (with my feet touching), just one of those things that is hard to put into action when doing it on the high bar. A bar muscle up is a complex maneuver.

- I both love and hate sprinting. I really enjoy doing it, but at the same time there is always a little dread, max effort hill sprints really kick your hind end, especially when you have them timed like I do to fully exhaust your CP system. For some reason I tend to visualize Star Wars when running; nearing the end of a treadmill run I've got Lukes targeting computer up, when sprinting Han pulls back the levers and the stars turn to lines when I take off on the start of a sprint, or Han @ co take off from the Hoth base when I take off.

- For the seemingly small amount of work I did, good grief am I ever beat.

Edit - Forgot to mention, I did 4x 10 sec flat palm floor L-sits throughout the day.

[Elastigirl]

Squishy sounds in knee=not good. But very impressive numbers on the last challenge over, over 400 a week, sounds like your knees earned a break. I need to do some pull ups or something next time I walk by our park.

[azsf]

awesome progress photos mate! keep training hard and the shoulder/back/core strength for a lot of those advanced moves will come. i'm working on similar techniques myself, and a lot of the estimated timelines for developing them are around 3-6months.

as for the forward/backward (vertical?) splits, that's usually a groin and hip flexibility issue, as opposed to hamstring/lower back flexbility for the forward fold. what do you find this lack of flexibility impacts on in your training? sprints and pistols come to mind, but you don't seem to be having issues with those.

[Waldo]

awesome progress photos mate! keep training hard and the shoulder/back/core strength for a lot of those advanced moves will come. i'm working on similar techniques myself, and a lot of the estimated timelines for developing them are around 3-6months.

as for the forward/backward (vertical?) splits, that's usually a groin and hip flexibility issue, as opposed to hamstring/lower back flexbility for the forward fold. what do you find this lack of flexibility impacts on in your training? sprints and pistols come to mind, but you don't seem to be having issues with those.

The main place it shows up is when doing yoga; I'm simply horrible at warrior 3, half moon and similar poses. But it also shows up when doing 1 leg bridges.

[TeaKwonDo]

The main place it shows up is when doing yoga; I'm simply horrible at warrior 3, half moon and similar poses. But it also shows up when doing 1 leg bridges.

For you it might be a double-edged sword, though. Puts some stress on the knee yet opens up your hips like nothing else.

[Waldo]

For you it might be a double-edged sword, though. Puts some stress on the knee yet opens up your hips like nothing else.

Wow, that's awesome, I have to give that a try.

Knee stress is fine, I'm long since past babying my gimpy knee. It really is nearly fully healed, the current soreness is more from overuse than anything else I think. Stressing it is actually good for it, it strengthens connective tissue same as muscle is strengthened by being stressed. The tendonitis I had/have was severe enough that minor consistent reinjury was the only way to get it to heal (read squatting through fairly severe pain), rest did abolutely nothing for it.

[Waldo]

Workout Log - 6/19

Today is an upper body dynamic strength day for me.

Warmup:

L-sit Chinups - 5 reps x 2

Pushups - 10 reps x 2

Hollow Hold - 45 sec

Reverse Plank - 45 sec

Front Plank Lean - 45 sec

Wall Handstand - 45 sec

Arch Hold - 45 sec

Knee Raise Support Hold - 45 sec

German Hang - 30 sec

10 minutes shoulder mobility work w/band

Skill Work:

Freestanding Handstand w/ Wall Assist - 4 attempts, 5 sec max freestanding

Bent Knee Middle Split Hold - 5 sec x 3

Bent Knee Straddle L - 10 sec x 3

Strength Work:

One Arm Pushup - (3L, 3R) x 2, (4L, 4R)

Uneven Chin-Up - (3L, 3R) x 3

Dragon Flag - 5 reps x 3

Wall Headstand Pushup - 3.5 reps, 4 reps, 3 reps

Neutral Grip Tuck Front Lever Rows - 4 reps, 6 reps, 6 reps

Assistance Work/Burnout:

DB Fly (35 lb x 2) - 8 reps, 10 reps

DB Curl (35 lb x 2) - 6 reps, 3 reps

Chin-ups - 8 reps

Pushups - 20 reps

Began and ended the day with a 1/4 mile barefoot jog @ 6 mph

- My upper body is kaput after that workout.

- I'm hoping to see a ton of progress across the board during this challenge. I'm now eating to support rapid strength gains.

- I've gone backwards on the uneven chins since I last did them. By the time I got to the DB work my muscles were shot.

- I did the headstand pushups a little further from the wall, I narrowed my hand placement and kept my elbows in, cleaning up my form a great deal. I'm surprised at the number of reps I could do.

[161803398874989]

What's wrong with the word 'playground'?

You sound like someone with tight hip flexors and adductors and flexible back. So maybe try standing pike with your back in neutral to assess hamstring flexibility.

[Waldo]

What's wrong with the word 'playground'?

You sound like someone with tight hip flexors and adductors and flexible back. So maybe try standing pike with your back in neutral to assess hamstring flexibility.

The orgininal description had the word "Paleo". (at least I'm pretty sure it did, but can find no evidence of this).

Is that similar to a 1 leg romanian deadlift? I can flat palm the ground on those. The 2 leg flat back forward bend stretch (basically a 2 leg romanian deadlift) I can get my fingers flat on the ground, but not my palm. I can actually get ultra deep on a runners stretch too. With one of my knees bent 90 degrees I can practically widen to a full front splits. Straighten the bent knee and I can't even get them 90 degrees apart.

[161803398874989]

Yep, like an RDL or good-morning. But you definitely have tight flexors. Work them!

[msuroo]

You're one of my favorite people to thread-stalk, and you hand out solid advice on the other forums. Best of luck!

^ this. Which is funny, because half the time I don't even know what you are talking about (I need a bodyweight glossary or something). All the same, I always love the level of detail.

4) No surfing the net during the first hour of every workday.

- I waste way too much time on the internet at work when I should be working. I have a tendency to start days off on the wrong foot by starting my day surfing the net. This tends to be the most productive time for me at work, and working hard first thing tends to transfer to the rest of the day.

Points Awarded for Successful Completion: WIS +3

This is an awesome goal. I may steal this in the future.

[Waldo]

^ this. Which is funny, because half the time I don't even know what you are talking about (I need a bodyweight glossary or something). All the same, I always love the level of detail.

If you ever want to know an exercise I'm doing, I'll explain any you don't know. Nothing I do is really complex.

........................................................

Workout Log - 6/20

Run 5.0 miles in 53:32 (5.6 mph avg)

- Long recovery run done at low intensity. Still, with the increased calories and intensity in the strength training, my running is slowing a little bit. This was a subpar showing even for a low intensity run. But the whole point is to get the blood flowing and enjoy myself, hopefully clear out some of the muscle soreness from strength training.

[Waldo]

Workout Log - 6/21

Run 1/4 mile @ 6.0 mph

10 minutes dynamic stretching

5 prisoner squats

BW pistol squats - 3L, 3R

Weighted Pistol Squats (15lb x 2) - (4L, 4R), (5L, 5R), (5L, 5R), (6L, 6R)

Hand Assist Glute-Ham Raises - 5, 5, 5, 5

Falling Tower w/5 sec pause - 5, 5, 5, 1 (+20 sec hold)

Weighted Leg Curl-Hold - (15 lb) - 20 sec, (35 lb) - 20 sec, 20 sec

Horse Stance Hold - 30 sec, 30 sec, 35 sec

Run 1/4 mile @ 6.0 mph

10 minutes static stretching

- Legs be jello after that.

- Figured out a new exercise I can do for the quads, pick up a DB with my feet and hold it straight out. Burn baby burn.

- I didn't have a fast run in me afterwards.

- It is going to be hard to quantify GHR progress until I can do them without assistance. My arms provide help at the bottom.

- I might bump the weight on the weighted pistols next week; I can pretty much do as many with 15 lb DBs in my hands as I can do with BW.

[Damy]

Man, that's quite a journey you have made, your progress photos are very inspiring. You are a guy who is going the whole nine yards, these pictures are proof enough for that. And your goals are just excellent! Can't wait to see your further progresss. Good luck!

[theanne]

Holy crap! I just checked out your progress photos. You are seriously an inspiration.

[Waldo]

Man, that's quite a journey you have made, your progress photos are very inspiring. You are a guy who is going the whole nine yards, these pictures are proof enough for that. And your goals are just excellent! Can't wait to see your further progresss. Good luck!

Holy crap! I just checked out your progress photos. You are seriously an inspiration.

Thanks.

I wish I had progress photos going all the way back to when I started. By the time I took the first progress photo I had already lost >40 lbs. I started at 262 lbs last Sept.