renpwn, it's ridiculously tough to constantly be fighting the cutting/bulking battle, I've been trying for the last 3 years and finally gave up and have been bulking this year, sacrificing this year to be "fat" but finally getting strong and putting much needed muscle on my body. I think even though my waist line has expanded I do look better with my shirt on than I used too when I had skinny arms, no chest/back. Ofc w/o a shirt I'm looking a little pudgy but w/e, I figure cutting will be that much easier once I've put on 10-15lbs of lbm this year (probably low end for a n00b like you or me).

My point is you need to assess your long term goals and work from there, working out and dieting isn't some instant gratification, it's going to take a while. The sooner you get in that mindset the better, so work for the future, sets some aggressive goals, and go after them.

also...

ldo

Do SS and get to the point where you aren't making linear progress on your lifts, and then think about where you want to go from there.

The point is that right now you need to get a lot stronger before you worry about that physique contest you have coming up.

I forgot to add, in regards to legs taking a beating, I don't go m/w/f SS I do Lyle's mon/wed/fri/sat program which is lower/upper/lower/upper, because my legs compared to my upper body suck at recovering and I just didn't feel fulfilled being in the gym only 3 times a week.

so the consensus is that i should eat a good bit and try to get strong then

well no matter what if you ever want to look good (shirtless I'm assuming) you're going to need a helluva lot more muscle than you have now, so either way you're going to have to bulk. If you feel more confident bulking after cutting some unwanted poundage then I don't see too much wrong with that, but eventually you're going to have to gain weight.

If you're comfortable with doing that now go ahead and bulk, get stronger, put on some mass, then cut.

OK today I officially started.

Warmed up with 5 minutes on treadmill walking 4mph.

Squat:

Lots of air squats and a couple of sets of 5 with the bar as I revisited the SS video.

Re: form, I seem to have trouble with how far my knees stick out over my toes. It seems noticeably farther than most that I see, although a lot of the fatter people in the SS vid stick out that far and Rippetoe doesn't say anything to them about it. I assume its an issue with flexibility. Other than that, I feel like my form is good. That said, I felt pretty good about my form up till now, and then that strain happened, which TBK said was a form issue, so who knows.

Anyways then I ramped up to 75# and did 3 sets of that. I started where I was "slow" as advised, but beginning with late in the second set these were pretty tough for me.

Bench Press:

2x5 45, 1x3 55, 1x1 65, worksets 3x5 75#

These went smoothly, and cool thing is that I was able to do the same amount as my last workset before I quit for the past couple weeks (unlike ******* fckface squats).

Deadlift:

1x5 95, Workset 1x5 135#.

Cooled down with stretching like a retard who has no clue how to stretch. This is the next thing on my to do list to learn.



Diet for the day:



Is this enough food? Too much? This is me eating deliberately more than normal. I feel like my diet in general is decent, but since I'm not experienced at cooking I invariably am not eating enough vegetables. If someone could point me to a thread that has a bunch of awesome simple recipes for making vegetables delicious that would be good.

i feel pretty ashamed that it took me 3-4 rereads to get this. I guess its been 3 years since i came up with the name

Today was a rest day. To help recovery I did all of the easy Magnificent Mobility movements for about half an hour.

Diet:

36 fl oz 1% milk
12 oz 93/7 ground beef
1 slice cheddar cheese
order of steak fajitas at taco mac
36 oz miller lite beer

didn't bother fitdaying it because i have no idea the nutritional value of the fajitas.

Good day today.

I've been absurd sore in my quads all weekend from friday's squats. I was more sore today than on sunday. I was really worried this was gonna keep me from squatting today, and I didn't think there was a chance in hell that i was gonna be able to add weight from last workout. Today's workout consisted of:

5 minutes brisk treadmill walk, even though I basically couldn't walk from the soreness. This helped it dramatically.

Then I did the first 80% of the magnificent mobility exercises on the dvd for about 45 minutes. This was very hard, and I have my work cut out for me in this area. I'm thinking about doing this whole dvd (every exercise I'm capable of at least) daily for a while.

Then I walked downstairs to the basement, and miraculously I didn't have to waddle down the stairs like a retard (yay MM).

squat 3x5 85# - added 10# YESSSS
press 3x5 55#

I've decided I'm going to follow rippetoes novice program in Practical Programming and chill on doing cleans for a couple of months, substituting chinups instead. Problem is I am nowhere near capable of doing one. I tried a couple of fatmans and they just felt really awkward for me (not to mention painful since i was already gassed from the press and still sore from squatting).

So I decided (sigh) to do standing cable pulldowns for the first few weeks.

3x5 60#



P.S. I'm pretty sure I figured out why I strained my quad. Apparently it wasn't a strain, it was patellar tendonitis. The cause was a combination of highbar position (which puts much more pressure on this tendon apparently) and the fact that I was letting my knees get too far over my toes. Last workout I switched to the rx'ed lowbar position and this workout I stood the head of my bass amp at my toe and made sure not to touch it during my squat warmup sets. I think my form is much better now.

also if a moderator sees this, will you please change the thread title to Renton's SS Novice Log?

ty

christ, that was less than one minute

NO! Keep on trying.

TUBA (Terribly Useful Bass Amp) ftw

Flaked out on my workout on wednesday so made up for it last night. I'll do another one tomorrow and be on good schedule for monday.

3x5 squat 95# these were pretty hard but its cool to be able to add 10# two days in a row.

2x5, 1x2 Bench press 80#, 1x5 75# - lame, w/e i'll try 85# next time, and if i **** it up again i guess I'll micro load.

1x5 deadlift 150# - not too bad, i don't think i'll have much trouble adding 15# for next time.


Diet: haven't been keeping track, just trying to eat a decent bit of meat and drink around 1/2 gal milk a day. I'm eating fairly low carb (no carb but milk). I'm probably eating between 3k and 3.5k a day. I seem to be gaining about 1.5# a week. I had some pretty serious incontinence the other so im gonna start mixing fiber into my protein shakes.

It might help to take pictures of yourself weekly from a few different angle. Judging by your first post, if you stick with it you will make incredible changes. Having a record would be cool and might help motivate you.

edit: Also, eat some fruit. Buy apples, cut into slices and put a dollop of natural peanut butter on each one. Enjoy while watching television with the knowledge your biceps are growing.