Well I keep missing days and weeks that coincidentally fall on days I do the press and since it's the hardest exercise I always end up dropping weight instead of staying the same or whatever. I did need to work on form previously but I think I got that worked out. Hopefully I can get to like 100 and stay above that before I miss another day. Basically I need to quit being lazy because it's hurting all my lifts.

i think you would benefit from doing simple body weight excercises. squats, pushups, jumping up an down, etc. perhaps also doing them in a tabata type format.

i suspect others will disagree, but i get the sense that you are an overweight clumsy man. i think your base should include basic excercises without weights.

lolwut

Thanks for the tips Bruiser, but I'm certainly not clumsy. I am overweight and just need to lose some pounds. I'm lazy and probably still have a va-jay-jay when it comes to lifting heavy **** but I'm getting over it. I've played sports my whole life and, while I wasn't a McDonald's All-American, I was always a starter. I would say I'm pretty athletic. I think this program is best for me as I've never lifted weights seriously. I'm only 5'6" 180 26% bf, that's not so bad. If I was like 220 I could see where you were coming from tho. I think at this stage in my overall fitness that this program is perfect for me as long as I stop missing days.

Wednesday 4/29/09

Squat
3x5 @ 200

Kinda slow on some reps, especially the last one on 3rd set. Last 2 sets kinda got off balance on one rep.

Bench
3x5 @ 120

Gotta work on going in a straight path as it also was a problem on one rep of the last two sets.

Deadlift
1x5 @ 220

Alternate grip, really tried to work on choking the crap out the bar. It worked, this was easy but difficult(does that make sense?). In other words I wasn't really in danger of not finishing any reps. We'll see what happens once I get the weight back to where it previously was.

Ugh... I have so much crap to eat around my house. Tortilla chips, White Castle burgers, beer to drink, etc. I need to do something about this. I almost don't even feel like trying to lose anymore weight but I dunno... think I'm gonna add a HIIT session at the end of the week(Sat.) and see what happens with that, and maybe get another session in after lifting or something one day.

Are whey shakes(1 scoop, 120 cals) viable replacements for meals? I can kinda see myself eating somethin like oatmeal or eggs for bfast, shake, pb&j or ham/turkey sandwich lunch, shake, and then whatever for dinner, usually some type of chicken or porkchop with veggies though sometimes it ends up being fast food unfortunately. And then if I get hungry just drink water until it subsides I guess.

Wednesday 5/7/09

Squat
3x5 @ 200

This was tougher than last week so I might just stay at this weight on Friday, but usually I get in the gym and see people moving crazy weight and try to nut up and do it. Don't wanna kill myself tho.

Press
3x5 @ 75

I hurt my thumb this weekend and have an open wound. It bothered me slightly on the press but not enough to effect it terribly. I tried a couple power cleans with the bar only and just was very cautious and scared I might injure it more so I did some chin-ups instead. I should probably do these on Workout B days anyway.

Chin-Ups
2, 1, .75

The first set I jumped to the bar(it's kinda high and I'm short) and went into 1 and another, 2nd and 3rd sets I pulled up a step stool. I said earlier I was gonna pick up that Iron Gym Bar from Target. Think I'll do that this week and GTG.

Gonna try and do some HIIT on Saturday after my Friday workout. Gotta lose some weight.

Monday 5/11/09

Squat
3x5 @ 185

My knee had been hurting today so I wanted to go easier. Also working on getting depth but it seems the lower I try to go I can't seem to keep my knees from going forward at the bottom.

Bench
3x5 @ 115

Deadlift
1x5 @ 230

Still need to try and eat better. I think it's hindering my progress. I've been on this program 4 months now(this time around) and all my poundages are still super lower. Obv this has a lot to do with me missing days too.

Wednesday 5/13/2009

Squat
3x5 @ 190

Press
3x5 @ 80

Power Clean
5X3 @ 90

Power clean is still frustrating but I think I'm getting the hang of it.

Post on my nutrition coming up. It's kinda long so I'm separating 2 different posts for anyone who wants to skip it.

I've been trying to lose weight and it hasn't been happening so today I decided to write down everything I ate throughout the day. I can't say it was the typical day for me, as I think not getting enough protein might be hurting my lifts/progress(besides missed workouts/poor sleep) and I wanted to increase that.

9am- wake up
9:15- 1.5 scoops protein shake(late for school, had to do something quick for breakfast. Usually I don't eat anything)
12:30- .5 cup oatmeal w/ honey
2:45- 1.5 scoop protein shake before gym
6:15- 1.5 scoop protein, pear. I had to stop at store then my car broke down so that explains the gap and I didn't get the protein inside 30 mins. of workout.
8:15- bag of peanuts. I was in class and starving, couldn't wait to get home for dinner so just grabbed this.
9:30- Dinner. Enchilada casserole, salad, really small bit of spanish rice
10:00- gin and tonic lol long day

Other than alcohol I drank water all day. Not counting the shakes/oatmeal it was roughly 70 ounces I'm guessing, probably more.

I haven't taken this to fitday but the protein shakes were total ~540, oatmeal+honey 190, pear 81, peanuts 330! wtf..., and who knows w/ the casserole/salad/rice, gin I think is like 130 but I just eyeballed and didn't measure it.

All total that's 1,271 excluding dinner which had cheese, chicken, tortillas. Estimating 500 cals for this, but who knows, so let's say 1771.

Shakes have 108g protein, oatmeal 3, nuts 15, and I dunno about the chicken(maybe 20g, leaving it out of calcs tho). So 126+. My bf is ~25% and today I weighed 185 so that means lean mass is 75% of that right? So 138.75lbs. I probably just made it to 1g protein for 1lb "lean" mass(don't feel so lean).

I was doing 1.5 scoops to save calories but might just bump it up to 2 cuz I'm falling short of 1.5g protein for 1lb lean mass.

Before the night is over I'll probably have one more drink and another protein shake, so add like another 320 cals and I'm over 2,000 which I'm assuming to be maintenance for me considering I worked out today. And another 36g of protein which still isn't quite enough.

I guess I should add some sort of cardio to lose weight but everything I read is "ZOMG rest days are sooo precious and speshul!" so I get scared to do anything. So I'm stuck between trying to clean up my diet a lil(normally don't eat enchilada casserole but it's what my mom made today) and losing some more weight or just keep working out at this weight and just get hooge. First I gotta make sure I stay in the gym and quit missing.

Any help/comments are appreciated.

Friday 5/15/09

Squat
3x5 @ 195

Felt good, working on form seems to be paying off.

Bench
3x5 @ 120

Worked on squeezing the legs/glutes this time since it's something I was never doing. Seemed to help.

Deadlift
1x5 @ 240

Read some stuff in Genz thread and it helped me too. Also working on depth in the squat might be helping out.

Overall a very good workout. I don't think I was ever really making sure my body was tight enough all around and it's helped my lifts. Left arm kinda feels weird after that mixed grip on deads and a lil on bench but it's nothing major right now.

I'm starting to scrape the bottom of this protein bucket some I'm gonna put in an order for more and this time add some fish oil caps and maybe some creatine or casein.

Over the weekend my left hand started hurting. Maybe because of the mixed grip on DL, I dunno. Also my right arm is sore from playing Wii.

Monday 5/15/09

Squat
3x5 @ 200

Knee felt weird on 1st set. Having problem "sitting back" instead of "sitting down" not sure if that makes sense.

Press
3x5 @ 85

Power Clean
Tried to practice the lift with the bar only going from rack position to knees and back. Still can't get the right rack position. Maybe my arms are too long or something. My rack looks nothing like the one of the chick in the book. and seems pretty damn impossible for me to achieve right now.

1 attempt at a pull up, fail.

I was on an empty stomach going into the gym and after Squats I really felt out of it.

The power clean is the most frustrating exercise I've ever attempted and I didn't want to kill myself since I didn't feel 100% so I just skipped it. They really look sorta fun when I watch Olympic lifters do it but right now I utterly hate this exercise and I'm really considering just removing it in favor of rows or whatever other exercises they recommended on the wiki. Who knows maybe I'll give it another shot Friday but right now I feel like "**** the Power Clean."

Also found an online calculator that said maintenance intake of calories for me would be 2700 so only getting ~2000 or less on workout days and ~1300 on off days probably isn't too wise and might impede my strength gains. Kinda weird that I haven't been losing weight lately though. Guess I'll have to start doing cardio. But then I screw up my off days. This **** is so frustrating I swear.

Nothing scientific to base this on, but from my own experience cardio on off days isn't as bad as is sometimes implied here. If any thing, it keeps me active. Sometimes the off days make me lazy.

Give the cardio a shot. Take it easy. Record your results and see what happens. imo

The last few days my kneecap has almost felt like it isn't there, while walking around... I might need to go lighter on squats. Knee isn't getting any better. Missed yesterday because I never had a chance to go.

Missed this whole week. I was deathly ill. Well Friday I felt ok but instead of doing lifts at the end of the week I decided to do some cardio instead and start afresh on Monday.

Spent an hour shooting a basketball. Didn't seem that long tbh. Have some DOMS in my arms but I'm ok. It won't hurt my lifts. Thinking about just continuing at my previous weights. Also, gonna start playing bball on weekends I think, or maybe on off days, or both. Gotta get my wind back first though.

I'm basically a novice so take fwiw. I've been studying up on dieting a ****load lately so based on what I've recently learned:

- I think you are probably leaning a bit too much on the protein powder. You'd naturally eat considerably less calories (and lose more weight) if you got protein from solid, filling protein sources. I find that chicken breast and tuna (that come in can/pouch) are good cheap choices. The sodium can't be that great for you and it doesn't taste super good, but they are awesome for dieting because they are literally 100% protein and 0% carbs/fat, which leads me to...


- The staple foods in your diet seem to be very carb-heavy and protein-light. For example the enchilada casserole that was your main meal for that day was probably 60/25/15 c/f/p at best. Everything I've read would suggest that you practice a high protein and otherwise low calorie diet in order to promote fat loss / strength gains.

Also it seems like HIIT doesn't mix too well with lifting heavy unless you are a very fit individual. Maybe going with LISS wouldn't put you under so much stress.

Long duration/distance cardio is catabolic and will interfere with strength and mass. There's middle ground between that and HIIT though, and there are other way to improve conditioning besides running/cardio.

I don't mean to say a not long low intensity run/cardio session is going to be bad. Just that too long of a run/duration is definitely going to interfere with linear progression.

Thanks for the input both of you. Reminds me that someone is watching and helps keep me motivated.

That Enchilada Casserole was an outlier. I do eat lots of pizza/burgers though which, though they have protein, are carb heavy and have other factors that make them bad.

I plan to eat more chicken breasts/tuna this week and going forward. Chicken breasts don't taste all that bad to me if they're seasoned right. Gonna add some fish fillets too.

As for the powder, I'm trying to eat less so getting the normally suggested protein for strength gains sometimes is kinda tough when cutting calories.

As for the cardio, I think bball is a happy medium. And I'm gonna want to make myself more competitive once I start playing in games so it will help motivate my lifting. Only limiting factor might be my knee which was hurting this weekend after shooting around but it hurts after lifting too so whatever.

Been a while.

Anyway I did my first HIIT session today on the bike. 5 min warmup, 30 secs max 60 secs rest, 3 min cool down. Should I be doing some other warm-up before this or is the 5 minutes enough?

Gonna roll with cardio for now because I wasn't really losing weight trying to gain strength and eat at a deficit. So once I get to 160 or so I'll start SS again. I hope to be at 160 by November, hopefully earlier. That's like 3 lbs a week which I think is doable.

After 2 weeks or so of HITT, this weekend I walked into the cold section of the grocery store and felt a sudden burst of pain and my knee started to stiffen and sorta lock up. I started limping and had to go outside the store where it was warmer, which eased the symptoms. Hope I don't have arthritis in it or something.

I still think I'll keep going with the HITT since I hate long periods of cardio, and might start back up with SS next week too, but we'll see.

So I've decided to start back weight training on Monday. Did HIIT today, will play bball tomorrow and do HIIT again Saturday.

Also trying to watch my diet more closely. I plugged my food into Fitday and it was an estimated 1,785 calories, 120 fat, 74 carbs, 132 protein.

Had protein shake w water, eggs w pineapple, bag of sunflower seed kernels, broiled chicken w medium tomato, and 2 tbsp of natural peanut butter. Not too bad compared to other days.

On some random calculator my estimated daily need for maintenance is 2750 calories, another said 2600, so I think this is o.k. since I didn't lift. Lifting days I'd try to get closer to that total and eat more carbs. Need more protein overall though.

Gonna try to log my food for a few weeks to see how my diet is and where I need to make changes.

Had a crazy day Monday due to school and stuff so couldn't start lifting. I'll start next week. Still doing HIIT this week though.

Official weigh-in from last week: 186 lbs, BF% 26% roughly with a scale, not calipers

Diet will be somewhat trash for a couple weeks since I still have a bunch of trash in the cabinets/fridge but once that's eaten I will try to clean things up diet wise.

Any advice for where to start the weight at? Since I've done SS before I'm thinking like 115 squat, 85 bench, 165 DL, 55 press, then maybe 65 hang clean. Maybe I'll just hit the gym and see what feels right.

lol I'm such a pussy. Never started working out. Decided to wait until holidays are over, but that was really just an excuse. Plan on starting tomorrow since I didn't get too drunk today to wake up tomorrow. New Year's is a good reason to start again.

Third time's a charm amirite?

Plan

SS for a loooong time. I want to lose weight so after 2 weeks I'm adding HIIT at the end of workouts as well as chins/pulls mixed in somewhere. Won't be doing too much with diet to start but will try to cut back on drinking alcohol initially. My diet isn't the cleanest but it isn't terrible either(besides drinking).

Goals

Get down to 165. Should be doable by summer. Body fat in the teens. This will take all year I'm guessing and probably longer. Long term get down to 15% or so if possible. I'm around 26% now fwiw.

I have a means of taking video now too so that should help.

I had decent success without following the plan before. Hopefully I can focus and do it for real this time. If I'm not too shy I may post pics but don't hold your breath.

Oh yeah plenty of Double Doubles from In N' Out too. Seems like they worked for Kid Colin imo.

My knee hasn't been responding very well to working out, but then again I've been standing up all day at work.

I think I'm gonna just try and power through for now and see if the program actually helps my knee. For now all cardio will be restricted to the exercise bike(the real one, not the one you lean back and sit in).

Also I'm gonna try to start updating here on a regular basis but the weight I'm lifting is so low I doubt anyone will be interested for a while.

I've been in the middle of moving into a new place the last couple weeks and miss a bunch of workouts. That's bad.

On the good side I won't be too lazy to cook so my diet should improve.

As a result and based on some posts in this forum, I've picked up Gary Taubes' book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" to try and extend my nutritional knowledge and hopefully get a better diet, as I'm pretty sure that's the most problematic aspect of my health besides drinking alcohol.

I weigh around 185-188 now depending on the day, what I eat, etc. Ideally I'd like to get to 160 and I'm going to attempt to accomplish this on a low-carb/high-fat and protein diet. Cutting back on drinking will be tough and the biggest test but hopefully I can accomplish it. Depending on how effective it is I may or may not try a PSMF diet when summer gets closer. Hopefully it won't be necessary, but I really need to get my BF% down to the teens(from high twenties right now, estimated).

Hopefully I won't be so busy that I can't update everyday or at least more regularly.