Disil's Log

[EmbracingChaos]

... hurting everywhere and being in an overall shitty mood resulted in devouring a huge ass tuna salad and a full bag of chips. At least I ate some greens and protein instead of just gorging on candy. That's about as good as it was going to get today.

 

 

I completely understand.  Isn't it crazy how just feeling like crap can make you want to throw everything out the window?  At least that's how it is for me.  It's the whole hierarchy of needs deal, if I'm starting to feel injured or depressed it all spirals out of control.  Keep your head up and try to "tread water" until things improve.  I hope you feel better.

[Disil]

Another rest day. Scheduled long beforehand, today I went to an Italian place with my Mom. I had a lot of olive bread and a gigantic bowl of pasta, but since I had a small breakfast and only an apple for lunch, things should be okay. I only had a beer and a little treat in the evening to cap off the day.

I slept over 10 hours after going to bed at 7.40 pm, but barely feel any better. Tomorrow will mark 4 days since my last workout and my last day of work until I get a week of vacation (during which I will have to study tons and tons of stuff) and I can' really look forward to it. I just want things to improve.

 

Weight: 135.4lbs

Calories: ~?

Estimated Surplus ~?

[Disil]

Today was the first day that things felt a little better, but still far from okay. I certainly didn't expect to work out even though I wanted to. Once I finished a ridiculously stressful day at work I decided to take a nap and depending on how I felt after, I would go to the gym and do a light workout or not. I woke up feeling pretty much the same, but the thought of working out made me want to go so badly that I just did. I'm not even surprised that the pain in my elbow was basically gone once I was warmed up and my knee only hurt a bit here and there..it's funny how the body works. Unfortunately this also made it so that I didn't do a light workout, cutting a set each, but instead went with my first real, by the numbers workout, albeit with about the same weights as last time and that was a wise decision.

 

HeSPUs: 4, 4, 4 (these were shit, likely due to me being very full and pretty tired)

Squats (50Kg/110lbs): 3x6 (these felt very heavy, but I managed, can't increase weight)

Romanian Deadlifts (45Kg/99lbs): 2x6 (for whatever reason I didn't feel my hamstrings at all this time which spells bad form. no increase in weight next time) 

Bench-Press (30Kg/66lbs): 3x6 (this was decent, but my form needs a ton of improvement, as does my hip flexibility because I almost cramp every time I set up my legs)

Pull-Ups: 1x10, 7, 4 (see HeSPUs)

Face-Pulls (3.25Kg/:7.15lbs): 2x20, 1x18 (I knew I should've taken a break from these until my elbow is fine again, but I really wanted to find a way to do them without hurting it and I did. Turns out I previously did them in a way where my forearm and my upper arm were way too narrow/close to eachother which caused the injury. The 58 reps here I did without any pain just by adjusting the angle a fair amount. In case you're curious, the video below is an awesome guide and I wish I would've paid more attention to it the first time I watched it)

 

Triceps-Extensions (Rope, both arms) (12.5Kg/27.5lbs): 1x11, 9 (I really like these. just need to make sure I don't assist with my lats when I get to the later reps)

Dumbbell-Curls (10Kg/22lbs): 1x12, 10 (couldn't find the 9Kg ones so I used these, felt heavy, duh)

 

Given all that's been going on I'm very happy with this workout, despite not seeing much actual progress.

 

Weight: 137.6lbs

Calories: ~?

Estimated Surplus ~?

 

Lost track of calories midway through the day. I didn't eat any junk food aside from a load of cereal post workout, just ate a lot in general. Oh well.

[Disil]

Sorta shitty (rest) day. I'm pretty sore, but overall my elbow and knee feel a tad better. I didn't sleep well after going to bed way too late and spent most of the day wishing that I could train. I did some mobility work late, mostly targeting ankle and hamstrings. I also ordered what will be my parents' individual birthday/christmas presents for me (instead of them just giving me money, I buy some nice stuff I wouldn't otherwise and they pay for it).

 

The first is a new matress which is way overdue after sleeping on a garbage ikea couch for far too long and then on a barely better futon where springs are poking me every way I lie on it.

 

The second, well, you could say that I'm taking this lifting business seriously:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Do-Win-weight-lifting-shoes-Power/dp/B009M26MWM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1445725001&sr=8-2&keywords=gong+lu

 

Weight: 135.4lbs

Calories: ~?

Estimated Surplus ~?

 

Bad day food wise. No reason other than me being too lazy to count and using it as an excuse to just eat whatever. Shit happens.

[EmbracingChaos]

I've never even bought any weight-lifting shoes and I've been lifting regularly off and on for about 13 years.  Way to go!  I've heard they make a ton of difference.  I'll have to invest in some myself one of these days but first I need a new barbell as mine has become a bit unshapely as the weight increased.  I'm not sure how much it's rated at (it was a cheap one) but I know that my 315 lb. deadlifts have made it a bit gnarled.

[Disil]

I wasn't really intending to buy them, but my ankle flexibility is absolutely horrific which is also one of the reasons struggled so much with pistol squats. I can't even do a deep bodyweight squat without my arms reaching forward or I will tilt back and fall on my ass. Then I read about how much these kind of shoes would help with that, not replacing flexibility per se, but helping you achieve good form until you've improved flexibility at which point they'll simply allow you to squat even deeper with better form. I still wasn't convinced, but then I tried what Alan recommends in the video below and put plates under my heels. The difference is absolutely ridiculous and I was able to get below parallel easily and with minimal buttwink. Additionally, I need shoes for the gym anyway as I'm right now using some old sneakers with a flat sole that I cleaned up and I could probably use the added stability when benching with my short legs, so the decision was made.

 

 

 

Today is another rest day. Pecs, delts and hamstrings are very sore, but just that, nothing injury-related. Elbow feels a bit better, knee not so much.

 

Weight: 135.6

Calories: ?

Estimated Surplus: ~?

 

Lunch was very difficult to count, but overall I did well and should end up somewhere between maintenance or slightly above - certainly not too much over or under.

 

Edit: I improvised a DDP Yoga routine to work up a quick sweat in 20 minutes. This felt great, especially since I immediately got back some of my old hamstring flexibility. I really need to make this a priority next to my strength training.

[Disil]

Workout for today

 

HeSPUs: / (with my left lateral delt still quite sore, I just didn't need to screw up my entire workout beforehand, so I skipped these)

Pull-Ups: 10, 7, 6 (given all the food I had, this was more than I expected, but it's still pretty bad)

Squats (50Kg/110lbs): 3x6 (with plates under my heels and much improved form thanks to some great tutorials, these went well and I will go up to 52.5Kg next workout)

Deadlifts (60Kg/132lbs): 2x6 (+ some extra) - (I was such a dummy. Those plates I used as platforms for deadlifts the first time I worked out there are sorta bumper plates I can use to deadlift with - see pic below - so that I don't even need a platform to counteract the small regular plates. This means I can do actual deadlifts without any downside, wooo! The starting weight of 60Kg sure felt heavy, but not unmanageable.

Bench-Press (30Kg/66lbs): 3x6 (another point where working on my technique, especially retracting my shoulderblades, arching my back, using leg drive properly and having a better grip, improved this lift by leaps and bounds. These felt easy. I had to stop myself from putting more weight on the bar immediately. Slow and steady. Next workout it'll be 32.5Kg and that's okay.)

Face-Pulls (5Kg/:11lbs): 1x17, 1x15, 1x12 (now that I do them with good form they just rock!)

Triceps-Extensions (Rope, both arms) (12.5Kg/27.5lbs): 1x15, 1x12 (these felt good, going up to 15Kg next time)

Dumbbell-Curls (10Kg/22lbs): 1x15, 1x11 (these also felt good. 11Kg incoming.)

 

What a rollercoaster of a day. Busy in the start, then I overate on a ridiculous amount of junk food (Hell in a Cell + Walking Dead), then I slept for 3 hours, woke back up at 9:30 pm, arrived at the gym at midnight and returned at 3:30 am after jogging home due to zero public transport during that time. I'm one weird mofo, but I'm hella proud I made this day my own.

 

Weight: 136.2lbs

Calories: ~?

Estimated Surplus ~?

 

Sucks, but at least I ran a ton and trained my ass off. I do belive that a brief ~1-week cut might be in order soon. I really should take advantage of the fact that I'm still getting all these adaptions and stronger just by virtue of having just started. Permabulking for 6 months until I've exhausted most noob gains doesn't seem wise, so let's just see when I can fit in a mini-cut sometime in November.

[Disil]

The last two days were rest days. I spent one drinking and the other hungover, one overeating and the other undereating ...overeating some more, but counted calories during neither, so kind of a wash really yeah..not good. This is 7 days in a row without counting, this has to change.

 

My lower back, abs, triceps and biceps are all very sore which is new, but not unwelcome. With deadlifts a staple now, I should finally be through with new stimuli creating this ugly, longlasting doms and thus should be able to go over to a 3 workout/week schedule rather soon. I'm hoping that I'll be able to work out tomorrow since I can then break in 3 new toys at once: My lifting shoes (I got a different pair after all, more on that anoher day), the liquid chalk I ordered to help with pull-up and deadlift grip as well as the blackroll that should help me with my warming up and mobility drills.

 

Weight: 138.7lbs

Calories: ~?

Estimated Surplus ~?

[Disil]

Workout for today

 

HeSPUs: 4, 4, 4 (given my weight, this was more than I expected, but it's still pretty bad)

Pull-Ups: 8, 7, 6 (see above)

Squats (52.5Kg/115.5lbs): 3x6 (getting used to the lifting shoes made for some awkward moments, but overall they improve my form greatly, even though I still have a lot to figure out here. Gonna stay at this weight for now)

Deadlifts (60Kg/132lbs): 2x6 (deadlifting in the new shoes was stupid as the elevated heels made a difficult lift even more difficult, essentially making it a deficit deadlift. I'm certainly gonna deadlift in socks from now on)

Bench-Press (32.5Kg/71.5lbs): 3x6 (for various reasons I was distracted here which lead to subpar form despite the weight feeling light. Staying at this weight won't help form, practice and focus will, so I'm going to go up to 35Kg here)

Face-Pulls (5Kg/:11lbs): 1x20, 1x12, 1x14 (a little rough towards the end, but good enough to increase once more. I love these)

Triceps-Extensions (Rope, both arms) (15Kg/33lbs): 1x14, 1x12 (I lifted too much with my back/lats for some of these)

Dumbbell-Curls (12Kg/26.4lbs): 1x11, 1x9 (Dumbbells here only go in 2Kg increments so I had to jump from 10 to 12. I was surprised to do this well, but I'll take it)

 

The most important things right now are frequency and consistency. I just need to lift more often to drill technique and familiarize myself more/better with everything, figure stuff out and progress accordingly. Hopefully I can train again on Saturday.

 

Weight: 140.7lbs

Calories: ~3288

Estimated Surplus ~400

 

Ouch. I managed to count today, but I really need a reset. I'm likely gonna have my mini-cut, maybe as soon as tomorrow.

[Disil]

This mental slump I'm in right now doesn't make things any easier. I'll spare you all the whining and nonsense and just note that today sucked, but at least I kept on counting and didn't eat extreme amounts.

 

Weight: 138.9lbs

Calories: ~2940

Estimated Surplus ~800

[Disil]

Another rest day. My entire back is ridiculously sore and working out like this is impossible. My new mattress is absolutely great and I slept 22 hours during the last two nights because of it. I did half an hour of mobility work that was quite painful, but foamrolling my back with the new blackroll actually helped.

 

Weight: 140.7lbs

Calories: ~2540

Estimated Surplus ~450

[Disil]

Workout for today

 

HeSPUs: / (I'll probably only alternate these given how sore they leave my shoulders)

Pull-Ups: 10, 8, 6 (better. liquid chalk helps a lot, so does not eating fucktons of food beforehand)

Squats (52.5Kg/115.5lbs): 3x6 (form was very shaky and I'm not sure why. It's mostly my hips buckling to one side or the other. I'll go back down to 50Kg for now. Technique needs to be better.)

Deadlifts (60Kg/132lbs): 2x6 (these felt pretty ugly, then I remembered that my back likely was still weakened given the soreness, so I wont be too hard on myself. Also no lifting shoes certainly helped)

Bench-Press (35Kg/77lbs): 3x6 (I'm improving noticeably here. I still have some shaky moments where one arm clearly moves more weight than the other, but overall, my form looks a lot better and the weight still feels very manageable so let's see what 37.5Kg looks like.)

Face-Pulls (6.5Kg/:14.3lbs): 1x15, 13, 10 (I need to be careful with my back taking over in certain spots and slow the movement down, just like with the triceps-extensions)

Triceps-Extensions (Rope, both arms) (15Kg/33lbs): 1x12, 1x9 (I focussed much more on actually using my triceps instead of my back or lats. quality over quantity)

Hammer-Curls (10Kg/22lbs): 1x12, 1x10 (I switched to hammer-curls, since they're easier on my wrists, target the outer bicep more and also use the forearms more, I think)

 

Given my level of soreness this was pretty decent. Let's hope I finally get used to it.

 

Weight: 138.5lbs

Calories: ~3275

Estimated Surplus ~600

[Disil]

Rest day. I had a normal breakfast, skipped lunch and had a huge dinner at a colleague's place where he made some pickled mackerel and other stuff. I'm probably a bit over where I should be for the day, but it's impossible to say. What is certain is that my weight will spike like crazy tomorrow. I can't stop drinking from all the salt and the bread as a side didn't really help here.

 

Weight: 138.2lbs

Calories: ~?

Estimated Surplus ~?

[Disil]

Rest day. A good day for once. I'm meeting a friend on Thursday and we'll have dinner at the Mongolian grill where there'll be a huge buffet waiting, so with that in mind, I'll have a very conservative breakfast/lunch that day. Also, I've decided to start my mini-cut afterwards, on Friday. Over the past six weeks I've had a very rough surplus of 27k calories. If 60%+ of that went towards fat gain (which seems very likely), I'm looking at having added roundabout 5lbs of fat. A mere 7 days of cutting at a 1250cal deficit would already have me shed half of that, but let's take things slowly and see how I feel during and after that week. I don't intend to make this anything other than a mini-cut though, that's for sure.

 

Weight: 140lbs

Calories: ~2514

Estimated Surplus ~300

[Disil]

Workout for yesterday

 

Squats (50Kg/110lbs): 3x6 (Well, at least I now know why my knees sometimes hurt from squatting. I seriously need to stop braking the descent with my knees and start relying on the stretch reflex of my hamstrings. Other than that these felt ok, but not good enough to go up in weight.)

Deadlifts (60Kg/132lbs): 2x6 (The best improvement to my form was simply to get rid of my phone and earbuds+cable, all of which were in the way for most reps and distracted the shit out of me. I did the rest of the workout without and maybe I will stick to this to improve focus - at least until I get my hands on a good set of bluetooth earbuds.)

Video of me deadlifting other people's warm-up weight: https://vid.me/UnxL

Bench-Press (37.5Kg/82.5lbs): 3x6 (these felt good. gonna increase to 40Kg next time.)

Face-Pulls (6.25Kg/:13.75lbs): 1x17, 14, 14 (slow and steady)

Triceps-Extensions (Rope, both arms) (15Kg/33lbs): 1x14, 1x10 (triceps were tired from benching)

Hammer-Curls (10Kg/22lbs): 1x15, 1x9 (gonna go up to 12 again)

HeSPUs: 5, 2 (doing these at the very end sucked big time, especially after having done bench and triceps before)

Pull-Ups: 8, 6, 5 (see above, especially after having done deadlifts/curls before)

 

Digging it.

 

Weight: 138lbs

Calories: ~3811

Estimated Surplus ~850

 

Feasted post workout. Shit happens.

 

---

 

 

Today is a rest day. As mentioned, no idea about food due to the buffet, but trying to keep it somewhat acceptable.

 

Weight: 140.4lbs

Calories: ~?

Estimated Surplus ~?

[EmbracingChaos]

FYI, I watched your Deadlift video.  Your form looks good to me, but I've always done and been told that you should lift it slow and put it down fast (the opposite of other lifts).  The main reason is that the greatest potential for injury is while putting the weight back down and the second most common injury is tearing a bicep while lifting it up fast.  Looking good though!

[matty_mcfly]

FYI, I watched your Deadlift video. Your form looks good to me, but I've always done and been told that you should lift it slow and put it down fast (the opposite of other lifts). The main reason is that the greatest potential for injury is while putting the weight back down and the second most common injury is tearing a bicep while lifting it up fast. Looking good though!

I've never heard of this. Usually with deadlifts you want to rip it off the floor as explosively as you can. Putting it back down is dependent on the lifter. On some reps I will lower the weight slowly (while staying tight) as they are tremendous benefits to have a slow negative and other times (usually the last rep of a high volume set) I'll just release the weight at the top.

I would see more issue with possible injury dropping the weight fast as you may lose tightness.

And usually bicep tears happen while doing mixed grip and trying to jerk the weight up or starting to curl the weight.

Sorry for the slightly incoherent ramble. Please tell me if I didn't make sense and I'll rephrase like a literate person lol

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[EmbracingChaos]

After googling, here's two places that advocate lowering quickly (didn't learn it here though, and I admit I only browsed both of them):

https://m.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/3lfnox/cant_hold_up_form_when_putting_the_bar_down_while/

http://jasonferruggia.com/drop-the-deadlift/

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[matty_mcfly]

Maybe I'm picturing something different. I'm picturing losing all tightness and letting the bar pull you down in a jerky manner

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[EmbracingChaos]

Yea I'm just saying fast, still with tightness and strict form. I just don't "hold back" the bar if that makes sense. I don't drop it, nor loosen up, just kind of let the bar fall while keeping control. There does seem to be a lot of people who put it down slow too, so maybe that's more common than I thought. Personally any lower back pain I used to have from heavy deadlifts went away when I stopped putting the bar down slowly.

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[matty_mcfly]

Yeah you can see here that I lower the bar in a controlled fashion then drop is a few inches from the ground

http://youtu.be/6xgh11NACXc

I think it's all personal preference. I've seen several people not lower the weight at all on the last rep and just release it after lockout

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[Disil]

Actually that's what I'm trying to do - go up explosively and then on the way down, basically perform a Romanian Deadlift until the point where I'd usually pull back up, i. E. the point just before my back starts to round because I'm at the end of my hamstring flexibility, which typically is just below the knee. At this point I drop the weight in a controlled fashion, as I did in the video.

 

My idea was that when doing it this way, I can get the benefits of the negative that you mentioned, while also not being the annoying dude that constantly drops his bar from the hips.

[Disil]

Workout for today
 

After only 1 day of rest, semi-hungover, with sore biceps and pecs and a jacked up right knee, I was quite pleased with the result.

 

Squats (50Kg/110lbs): 3x6 (this felt good aside from the fact that my right knee hurt like hell. I can't in good conscience go up in weight until this is fixed, as pathetic as it may be)
Deadlifts (60Kg/132lbs): 2x6 (trying to improve my form actually made it worse somehow. I eventually figured out two good cues to look for next time which hopefully should make this better and enable me to go up in weight soon)

Pull-Ups: 10, 7, 7 (given my weight, the sore biceps and everything, this was better than anticipated)

Face-Pulls (6.25Kg/:13.75lbs): 1x18, 14, 14 (slow and steady)
Bench-Press (40Kg/88lbs): 3x6 (my biggest issue is to keep my shoulders properly retracted for the entire set. I'm not sure what I can do to help with this other than keeping on trying. The weight felt very doable, so I'll increase once more)
Triceps-Extensions (Rope, both arms) (15Kg/33lbs): 1x14, 1x12 (these are still rough and form consistently breaks down. For next time I'll go down in weight to nail them with proper form again.)
Hammer-Curls (10Kg/22lbs): 1x15, 1x13 (I was planning on going up for these, but with my biceps as sore as they were and having done pull-ups beforehand, I didn't want to overdo it and stuck with 10Kg)
HeSPUs: 5, 3 (I don't know about these. Doing them before the workout has me afraid that I'll jack up my shoulders and ruin everything following, but doing them after I'm just too spent to do them reasonably well. Maybe the mini-cut and thus less weight will help here)
 

I did the entire workout without headphones and I'm torn. For DLs and Bench it certainly helped to not have the distraction, but during pull-ups for example I feel that the lack of my awesome playlist hurt a bit, but good bluetooth headsets aren't cheap and most suck anyway, as the 25€ one I tried and returned showed.
 
Weight: 140.7lbs
Calories: ~713
Estimated Deficit ~2150

 

Today is day 1 of my mini-cut and after eating and drinking way too much yesterday, fasting for ~24 hours was incredibly easy, making for a nice deficit to boot.

[Disil]

Today is a rest day. I wanted to aid recovery and up my deficit a bit by going for a walk, but had to stop 20 minutes in because my left hip and knee started badly hurting for no apparent reason while my right knee has been pretty much fine all day. I might skip squats next workout to give my lower body a bit more recovery time, especially when it's running on less fuel than usual.

 

Weight: 136.5lbs

Calories: ~1346

Estimated Deficit ~900

Mini-Cut Deficit Total: ~3050

[Disil]

Another rest day. I was itching to go to the gym, but I'm just too beat up. Disposing my old mattress was quite the hassle and ever since doing so, my entire left side is hurting, from the wrist and shoulder to the hip, quad, knee and calf. In spite of that, I fortunately I was able to go for a proper walk today on this unusually gorgeous November day (65 °F, sunny). It was only a little over 5 miles, but I felt a lot better after and upped my deficit in the process.

 

Weight: 136.0lbs

Calories: ~1173

Estimated Deficit ~1200

Mini-Cut Deficit Total: ~4250

 

Easy.