Staving off the decline, part deux

[Wilhelm]

Every bit of that is so cool.

Great work, @JimRiley

[BenM]

Awesome. Squat compliments from the bearded monster himself.

[JimRiley]

Thanks, @Wilhelm and @BenM. As always, I appreciate the thoughts and need the traffic.

By the way, in gushing (mostly, but not entirely, facetiously) over two kind words from Alan Thrall, I didn't mean to shortchange @KoolaidMannn's assessment and advice, which were far more important to my progress!

[KoolaidMannn]

Haha I don’t think you shortchanged me at all. It’s always nice when someone who isn’t your coach compliments your lift, especially one that you’ve been working really hard on and when it is someone like Alan Thrall! Good shit Jim!

[JimRiley]

I just have to tell the world that my wife broke 100 pounds on the deadlift yesterday! 105, specifically - two 45-pound bumper plates plus the 15-pound bar she's been using. She'd been wanting for some time to roll out the big bumpers and use them on a pull, and of course I'd been wanting to see her do that too, so we were both jazzed.

The amazing part for me was that after getting stuck a few inches off the floor on her first attempt at 105, she set it down for about 30 seconds and then pulled it again successfully. No way is that in my playbook!

Since this is supposedly my training log: I've been doing a slow cut, while doing hypertrophy programming courtesy of @KoolaidMannn, and my weight has dropped from 183.8 on August 5 to 175.8 today. The goal is 170 with risible abs.

I'm also in the process of switching from low-bar to high-bar because my shoulders were bugging me. Sounded easy, but as always it's hard to break established habits. (<drawl>"The problem most people have with the squaaat is they have a mental image of somebody with a horizontal back angle."</drawl>) But it's all coming along.

[Wilhelm]

Congratulations to Mrs. Riley! That is awesome.

Good work on the cut as well, Jim. Hope high bar treats you well. : )

[KoolaidMannn]

Wait I thought the goal was to step on stage at 2% body fat?

Shitposting aside, congrats to Mrs. Riley that’s so awesome!!!

[JimRiley]

@KoolaidMannn, I swear I just saw your post above for the first time! You were right, of course, about the goal, but the Tan 'n Go kept coming out all streaky so I bailed on the competition. Also I was invisible from the side at 2%, making it dangerous to go out.

So... I'm taking the next few weeks off from structured training. I'll have a lot of work to do in connection with teaching (math) until about Dec. 18, and then there's Christmas, so it seems like a good time to shift focus for a spell. Also, after doing a cut plus hypertrophy programming for about three months, the Well of Mental Discipline was getting pretty low, and I was starting to do flaky stuff like getting halfway through a workout and then saying screw this. So yeah, definitely time for a break. I'll still be exercising, but just doing whatever I feel like - and have time for - day by day rather than any sort of structured programming.

By the way, the cut was pretty successful, though of course my BF didn't really get down to 2%; more like 16-20%. I took off 14 pounds in just under three months, and according to my inductance scale dropped just about that same amount of body fat, so hopefully there was little if any muscle loss. I had a deadlift 1PR and some miscellaneous volume PRs along the way, including right at the end, so I think I pretty much preserved my strength, such as it is. (And now I've gone and thrown it all away. Mama, ooh-oo-oo-ooh...)

Just for fun, while in this mode I'll log whatever I'm doing in here. Maybe that'll even motivate me to not totally goof off!

Ongoing: I'm doing 5 or so chinups every day in ones and twos. I can do as many as four at a time (ring out, wild bells), but am keeping it low-key. Also I do a slow negative once in a while because it seems to help my tennis elbow.

Tuesday, 11/20/18: Did a trail run with some fun ups and downs in 43:25. Fastest time for that run this year, but that's saying very little. Lately I've resumed doing some running after about a six-year hiatus, and wow, it's been humbling.

[JimRiley]

Continuing in the spirit of broing around and not training, I decided to see how much I could bench.

My 1PR for TNG is 155#, so I warmed up with numbers ending in 7 with the hope of hitting 157. I did, but it was a pretty crappy rep so I don't consider it as a PR. After that I tried 165 a couple times, but it was going nowhere. That's fine.

[JimRiley]

Last night (Fri., 11/23), I did some overhead presses. They felt hard from 55 pounds on; maybe I was tireder than I thought from a combination of eating and driving a lot. I eventually missed a rep at 95 and called it a night.

Tonight, I did some intervals on my stationary trainer. After about 20 minutes of totally taking it easy focusing on souplesse and cadence, I did six 20-second efforts with 100-second rests. Gearing was 50x17,16,15,15,15,14. I hadn't done intervals in several months, but they didn't feel very hard until the last one, which was purposely pretty close to maximal because I didn't plan to do any more.

[JimRiley]

Did some deadlifts. Had this silly idea of going for a nice round number like 300 pounds, but it wasn't happening.

[JimRiley]

Wow, busy week. It's the second to last week of instruction at the community college where I teach, so the push is on to get through the rest of the material, review for finals, keep everybody calmed down, etc.

This evening I made time to do squats for an hour - but because I'm in goofing-off mode, I did nothing but warmup sets. My work sets have tended to be about an inch above parallel lately, so I decided to focus on going deep enough on every rep. That went well until I got to 175, where suddenly every rep was high, even though they didn't feel that way. (As if they ever do.) So I worked on depth at 175 until I got it dialed in, and then I stopped.

[JimRiley]

Friday, 11/30: Rode my bike on the indoor trainer for about 20 minutes. My left knee was hurting on the medial side of the kneecap. That sort of thing usually clears up after a few minutes, but this was getting worse, so I stopped. Grumble grumble.

Sunday, 12/2: After a weekend of meaning to do some lifting and not getting around to it, I finally had a few minutes Sunday night and decided to see how some deadlifts felt. They felt pretty good, and I ended up doing 300 for a 1PR. Also my Chargers (to whom I lay claim only they're winning) beat the Steelers, so it's been a pleasant evening.

My wife cheering me on is the best part of the video:


Yeah, I used straps and my form sucked, but I PULLED 300 POUNDS!

[KoolaidMannn]

Fuck yeah Jim!!!! Congratulations

[JimRiley]

Did light squats for a while: 45x8x2, 65x8, 85x6, 105x5x2, 125x5, 135x5, 145x5, 155x5x3

Those fives were just like comfort food. My left knee was hurting again though, in the same way that got me to cut my bike time short last Friday. This time I kept going and it eventually felt better, but just the same I decided not to push my luck and go heavier.

[JimRiley]

TNG bench: 45x8x2, 65x8x2, 85x8, 105x8, 125x5, 135x3, 140x1, 115x8, 110x8, 105x6, 100x6

I hadn't benched in a couple weeks and had definitely lost something. I was taking less rest than usual, in keeping with my current devil-may-care attitude, and even though I was using a fairly wide grip my triceps were toast by the last few sets. Didn't even get a wicked pump out of it, but whatevs.

[JimRiley]

Squat: 45x6, 45x8, 65x8, 85x6, 105x5, 125x5, 145x5, 165x3, 185x2, 205x1, 135x8, 145x6, 165x5, or something like that. Wore lifting shoes instead of my usual Chuck Taylors because of a sore foot, and it actually felt really good squatting in heels. (Next week, Louboutins.)

I'm about to dive into grading finals, and will surface in a few days when I'm done. At some point in the meanwhile I'm sure to say to myself "that's it, I can't stand this any more, I'm retiring", but so far that feeling has always passed.

[JimRiley]

Had a few minutes before dressing for a neighbor's Christmas party and snagged the opportunity to do a few deadlifts, plucking some low-hanging fruit in the process:
135x5,6,8; 155x5; 175x5; 195x5; 215x5; 235x5; 257x6 (volume PR, replacing 255x5); 215x10. I'd never done a set of 10 pulls before - that's two weeks worth of work!

Just one final still to grade. It'll take a long time, because it's one of those tests where almost everybody probably made a mistake somewhere on almost every problem. 'Tis the season for giving, though, so they'll get lots of partial credit.

[JimRiley]

OHP: 35x8,10; 45x8ishx3; 55x8; 62.5x8; 70x6; 62.5x7; 55x8; 0x2@8

I'm so freaking weak on these. Afterwards it was pretty hard just to raise my arms overhead a couple times, hence that last set listed above.

After Christmas I'll quit messing around and start actual training again.

Medium-term goal: half of @KoolaidMannn's total from today. That would be 1480/2 or 740, compared with 695 currently.

Longer term goal: squat 1.5xBW, deadlift 2xBW, bench 1xBW. That would be a 765 total if I stay at 170. However, I hope to add some more muscle mass for a better buffer against the ravages of old age, and also to look like Dr. Life (jk), so in chasing this one I may end up like Achilles in Zeno's paradox.

[JimRiley]

Cycled on the trainer for 33 minutes. Mostly just wanted to make sure my left knee is OK, since it's bugged me intermittently over the last week or so.

Before starting I rubbed some green liniment of unknown provenance on my knee (my wife and I got it from a relative), and it didn't hurt a bit while I was cycling. Obviously cause and effect! I could sure go for a bag of chips though.