thx for the advice

July 7

No gym today, 90 mins of soccer with no subs - great workout.

Calories: 2580
Fat: 92.5
Carbs: 289
Protein: 164.5

gym tomorrow, weight will start to be roughly where I was at before starting SS so I'll get some more form vids up for review

July 8

No gym today, wife worked late and there was a bit of strain on one of my hamstrings probably from gym + intense soccer twice in a row so took another rest day. Will be going Wed and Fri to close out this week.

Calories: 2975
Fat: 111
Carbs: 341
Protein: 158

Reminder for anyone who is concerned with these numbers I'm putting up, take a look at the spreadsheet link somewhere above to see what I'm actually eating and voice your concerns. I'm worried about the fat too but if you guys think it's fine I'm happy

What kind of hard boiled egg has 155 calories? Ostrich? I count 70, some apps count 80.

Fat doesn't matter unless you get almost none, or manage to find a twinkie from 1999 which has a lot of trans-fat.


Calories








protein











fat/carb amounts

Thx for the advice about fats. Google says eggs are 155 calories. Can you link to somewhere that says otherwise?

*Edit oh damn yea google and other apps say per 100g, which is 2 eggs. Damn. I will adjust my spreadsheet accordingly

**Edit so a lot of my days are ~155 calories less than what I posted above. Not a big deal, but will keep that in mind for future

Anything with mayo (potato/chicken salad etc) and whole fat cheeses. Not necessarily an awful thing, you are trying to put on weight, but a cleaner bulk is always better.

Looking at all of the foods it looks like convenience is a big thing. When I was working out hard in school while looking into becoming a PT, I would usually make 3 or 4 days worth of food at one time. Grill a couple pounds of chicken, make some lean ground turkey meat with some kind of seasoning etc and just bag them up / tupperware. It's super tempting to grab a quick sub or burger when you don't already have something made.

Good luck!

thx, yea I buy my granola, cottage cheese and yogurt etc. in bulk for easy access, and I hardboil 8-10 eggs at a time. I'll probably start cooking up more chicken etc. at a time too

July 9

Calories: 2740
Fat: 100
Carbs: 294
Protein: 182

workout	weight	sets
Squat	130	3x5
DL	150	2x5
Bench	105	3x5
Face pull	70	3x15

Form vids. forgive the angles, wife wasn't with me. Watched some tutorials and tried to improve my DL start. Stance shoulder width, foot in middle of bar, bend over and grip bar, bend legs until shins touch bar, lift.

DL side-on



DL front-view


Tried incorporating advice given ITT for squats. Bar lower on back, wider stance, deep breath before squat, chest out

Squat side-on


comments welcome

comments?

Also I have a question. My buddies are coming up for the weekend for our thrice yearly all-weekend video game marathon. What we do is the trifecta of nono's for people in my situation:
-Drinking
-Eating terrible food
-Getting virtually no sleep

I'm trying to make sure this weekend doesn't ruin my progress so far. I can't do much about the sleep (probably will only get 10-12 hours total from Fri-Sun) but I don't plan on drinking much, and definitely don't plan on partaking in any junk food activities. In fact I don't plan on really breaching my diet at all. So back to the drinking. How harmful is 12 beers over the weekend? What if it's only 3-4? How about if I switch to Gin?

I think the for a beginner that's the as good as they get. Just add weight and keep filming. I see some little things wrong but nothing serious. You will fix these with time. I would start by learning about what kind of footwear you should wear for deadlifting and what you should wear for squats.

#shoes
#betterdeadliftlockout
#reseteverydeadliftrep

And also that squat looks to be somewhere in between lowbar and highbar. Learn the difference between the two. Pick the one that naturally feels better for your body and master it. It will take a while.

Honestly I don't think alcohol affects strength training as much as people think. I would drink away (up to 6 per day) for just this weekend.

Now if you drink a lot and don't consume much food, that's a total facking disaster for strength training. So make sure to get quality calories in. I had some success with a diet composed purely of hard alcohol, some beer, corn tortillas, tons of steak and guacamole. Combined with some electrolyte drink, I was golden.

tyty

so what am I looking for in terms of shoes? why is it not good to wear standard running shoes?

You're not reaching depth because your femurs are in the way, get your knees out more.

You should probably read the book.

July 10

Calories: 2695
Fat: 104.5
Carbs: 301
Protein: 149

Soccer, 90 mins

See below,


And specifically, wrt shoes for squatting, the general idea is that non-compressible soles are more stable (less chance of tweaking an ankle or something) and transmit force more efficiently. Standard air or gel soles let your feet move around too much and just in general feel way less solid.

Just DL in socks or slippers because it decreases the length you have to pull and makes it easier to get your weight appropriate distributed (ie your heels will not be raised).

Also read the SS site linked earlier.

I did read the section on lifts and learned some things about form and execution and tried to apply them - are you seeing areas in my videos where I'm especially struggling?

Haven't had a chance to watch them yet (on vacation, lol internet quality), but I more just meant that I'm relatively certain your question re: proper footwear is addressed somewhere in there so I though you might have missed it. Also, re-reading it a lot early in as you develop awareness of the lifts helps because you can potentially better understand some parts that you only glossed over before, etc.

You want a low and incompressible heel. The kinetic chain starts at the floor and you want force to be transmitted as directly as possible. Springy heels are similar to squatting on a bed, or lifting something that's suspended by springs.

Chuck Taylors or other Converse, Vans or similar are fine and cheap.

Decent lifting shoes are around $100 and the really good ones are almost $200.

Despite what's on the internet versions of SS, rows are not a part of it and they're not a replacement for power cleans.

But you don't need to do those for a while either.

"It is a good idea for underweight trainees to keep deadlifts in the training program for as long as possible before introducing the power clean. Along with squats, deadlifts have the potential to add more muscle mass than any other exercise. If he can recover from deadlifting 3 times per week, he should do so for as long as possible."

That's from the section on underweight trainees in Practical Programming for Strength Training.

Even if you weren't underweight, you'd still want to deadlift every workout for 2-3 weeks to get it well above your squat. Your deadlift is low relative to your squat.

As long as I'm channeling Rippetoe, he would also tell you to eat more, to drink a gallon of whole milk a day (GOMAD), and that adult males weigh at least 200 pounds.

Thx for the advice. I don't think I'm able to GOMAD, but I may actually switch to 2% and still may be able to do a gallon every 2-3 days.

Good to know re: deadlifting for as long as possible. I think my DL will break away from my squat soon. My squats are starting to become difficult, whereas I think I can still do another ~20 pounds on my DL before it starts getting tough

A good overall beginner shoe that gets by for both deadlifting and squatting are minimalist shoes. I like New Balance Minimus.

Forgot to post Friday

July 11

Calories: 2285+
Fat: 68.5+
Carb: 281+
Protein: 142+
(+ indicates junk in the evening)

Exercise	Weight	Sets
Squat	135	3x5
Bench	110	3x5
DL	155	2x5
Chin Up	-	3x5
Face pull	70	3x15

July 12

Lots of junk but still ate a good amount of reasonably healthy food. Large breakfast out; eggs, bacon, sausage, wedges, toast. Chicken wings for dinner, but lots of chips, dip and few beers throughout the day. Back on track today.

ok i'm looking into minimalist shoes

@sun and everyone else: right now I'm DLing and Squating every workout, 3x a week, adding 5 pounds to each, each workout. Should I be adding more to my DL, since DL is supposed to be more weight? Or should I slow the increase of squats, since my most recent sets of 135 have begun to feel a bit difficult? (imo at the current weights above my DLs are much easier than my squats)

just get squat shoes imo. rogue and the big brands all have pretty affordable options. then maybe some chucks for deadlifts if you can't get away with bare feet.