Renton Rebuilds
08-15-2020
, 06:56 PM
Former log: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/8...kness-1604103/
This is an essay. Be warned.
I've been meaning to start logging again, but I decided not to do it until I achieved a minimal amount of consistency in my life and routine. It's disappointing and a waste of the reader's time to sporadically log three or four workouts and then disappear for another month, and it was just one more contributing factor to my self loathing. I have managed to string together some workouts in a row, enough that I feel like it's back to habit status, so here we are.
Life Update:
As the more avid readers among you will know, I was a professional poker player from 2006 until around 2016. The endpoint of that is a gray area because I began to win less than I spent on bills somewhere around that time; I played as a primary income until 2018. I was in some failing poker-related businesses until my abrupt departure from Cambodia in the summer of 2019, and lets just say the last 2 or 3 years of my life have been pretty tough.
Prior to poker my background was architecture. I worked in the field for a few years and it was my major in school. I even finished my degree as I was earning $80k/year or so playing poker part time. When I got back to the states, I was in like $5000 of debt (to real people, not creditors). My goal was to get any job as soon as possible so I could make good on my obligations, but I'd hoped to find something related to my field of study.
This proved difficult. Imagine being a recruiter and seeing a guy with 4 years experience who graduated college 12 years ago, and has a 10+ year gap of no work experience. I applied to like 100 jobs and only got 2 interviews in several months of looking. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to have a mother who was thrilled for me to move into her house and stay for free as long as I needed to get back on my feet.
After about 8 weeks of job search got me nowhere, I was offered a construction job from my sister's husband. Under my circumstances, I had to accept it. This job was pure misery. We were a two man crew and did door and window installation. Lots of heavy lifting, smashing my fingers, tweaking my back, getting hit in the face by ****, driving 2-3 hours to a job site to work for 6-8 more hours and then drive back home to do it again the next day. I did that for almost a year.
It wasn't all bad. He paid me pretty well, by construction standards, and I was able to pay my mom $400 a month in rent/groceries as well as begin paying my debts. I also learned a lot about construction after having been on the design side all those years ago. I was an awful construction worker, but my functioning pulse, non-meth use, and tendency to show up every day on time put me pretty far ahead of my competitors. By the time I resigned from that job in May 2020, I'd paid all my debt, bought a car with cash (a beater Mazda for 2200, but still), and had put >$5,000 in the bank. I also raised my credit score from 612 to 755.
I quit the job at the peak of COVID 19 layoffs, knowing how hard it would be to find a better job, but it was just time to leave. I was preparing to burn through my savings as I took my two-pronged approach to restarting my career; learning to code (long-term) while revamping my architecture portfolio and blitz applying to anything architecture/design/drafting related in the tri-state area (short-term). My resume looked a bit better with the recent construction experience, after all.
After about 8 weeks of applying, I landed an interview with a contractor in Chattanooga (my hometown). The position was project manager, and he was looking for someone who knew about construction but also had a design background and knew how to draw CAD (me, essentially). So now I have a job that pays decently well, stimulates my mind, and doesn't break my back every day. Everyone I work with is happy, almost annoyingly happy. It's super weird. It's a strictly 8-4:30 type deal where everyone gets to enjoy their life after that and not worry about work until tomorrow. Unimaginable.
Gym Update:
I pondered whether to continue with the old log, but I've decided that my swollen ego deserves to take up more internet space. All kidding aside, I feel that the last year or so of that log consisted of more failure than success and I'm eager to start fresh. As well, I feel that I've come full circle on a lot of the themes of that thread, for better and worse. I'll begin with the good.
One of the things I struggled with when working with my brother-in-law was the early morning gym session. The nature of the work we did was so miserable and draining that it was practically impossible to go after work. At the same time, we needed to leave so early for these out of town jobs that I'd have had to get up at 4AM to make it to the gym early enough to have time to do anything. I managed to string a couple of sessions in a row, but it never stuck. With my new job, I have to be at work at 8AM, and I live 45 minutes away. Going before work seemed to be the best option. I have to get up around 4:45, but it's a lot easier than when I worked construction. I've lined up a month straight of 6AM training sessions, which I'm pretty thrilled about.
I did the #29 Sheiko cycle MWF and my squat and bench are reasonably bounced back. I squatted 265 for fairly easy doubles last week. Yesterday I benched 175x2, my first PR in years. Touch and go, though. @8.5 though.
I have zero knee or shoulder pain. Avid readers might recall that I had tingling and pain in my left knee for years. It would seem that the 1000s of steps per day working construction rehabbed that.
I still haven't been able to deadlift without discomfort. For the last week of the cycle, I moved the deadlift day to Monday as an experiment to see if it would feel better with the extra recovery day. It didn't. I'm not ready to throw in the towel on deadlifting yet, but it seems like I need to go with limited ROM pulling until my lower back gets stronger. It's strange that my squat feels perfectly fine, as it's historically been the other day around.
I'm also not doing much/any accessory work. Even with getting up before 5am it's still hard to get to the gym with enough time to complete a Sheiko workout. I'm going to have to get up a bit earlier and get my rest time down so I can get through an actual program. Doing something like a BBM routine seems unrealistic at this point because I barely have time to do two movements, much less a third.
Huge caveat to that bench PR; it was just over bodyweight....
By far the worst full circle I've made from the old log is that my bodyweight has crossed the dreaded line of my starting weight. I weigh 170-171 now. I am a fat mess, there's no denying it. I'm quite sure I'm not as fat as I was back then, considering I bench 50% more and squat 100% more than then, but it's still not a pretty sight.
The weight thing is something that I've just been trying, and failing, to keep a lid on as I locked down the other leaks in my life. I certainly regret not prioritizing it, but here we are. Now that I'm starting to kinda sorta enjoy going to the gym again, and now that I have a job that doesn't suck a bag of dicks, it's time to tackle this head on. That's right people. We're going to bring back the logs. Stay tuned.
This is an essay. Be warned.
I've been meaning to start logging again, but I decided not to do it until I achieved a minimal amount of consistency in my life and routine. It's disappointing and a waste of the reader's time to sporadically log three or four workouts and then disappear for another month, and it was just one more contributing factor to my self loathing. I have managed to string together some workouts in a row, enough that I feel like it's back to habit status, so here we are.
Life Update:
As the more avid readers among you will know, I was a professional poker player from 2006 until around 2016. The endpoint of that is a gray area because I began to win less than I spent on bills somewhere around that time; I played as a primary income until 2018. I was in some failing poker-related businesses until my abrupt departure from Cambodia in the summer of 2019, and lets just say the last 2 or 3 years of my life have been pretty tough.
Prior to poker my background was architecture. I worked in the field for a few years and it was my major in school. I even finished my degree as I was earning $80k/year or so playing poker part time. When I got back to the states, I was in like $5000 of debt (to real people, not creditors). My goal was to get any job as soon as possible so I could make good on my obligations, but I'd hoped to find something related to my field of study.
This proved difficult. Imagine being a recruiter and seeing a guy with 4 years experience who graduated college 12 years ago, and has a 10+ year gap of no work experience. I applied to like 100 jobs and only got 2 interviews in several months of looking. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to have a mother who was thrilled for me to move into her house and stay for free as long as I needed to get back on my feet.
After about 8 weeks of job search got me nowhere, I was offered a construction job from my sister's husband. Under my circumstances, I had to accept it. This job was pure misery. We were a two man crew and did door and window installation. Lots of heavy lifting, smashing my fingers, tweaking my back, getting hit in the face by ****, driving 2-3 hours to a job site to work for 6-8 more hours and then drive back home to do it again the next day. I did that for almost a year.
It wasn't all bad. He paid me pretty well, by construction standards, and I was able to pay my mom $400 a month in rent/groceries as well as begin paying my debts. I also learned a lot about construction after having been on the design side all those years ago. I was an awful construction worker, but my functioning pulse, non-meth use, and tendency to show up every day on time put me pretty far ahead of my competitors. By the time I resigned from that job in May 2020, I'd paid all my debt, bought a car with cash (a beater Mazda for 2200, but still), and had put >$5,000 in the bank. I also raised my credit score from 612 to 755.
I quit the job at the peak of COVID 19 layoffs, knowing how hard it would be to find a better job, but it was just time to leave. I was preparing to burn through my savings as I took my two-pronged approach to restarting my career; learning to code (long-term) while revamping my architecture portfolio and blitz applying to anything architecture/design/drafting related in the tri-state area (short-term). My resume looked a bit better with the recent construction experience, after all.
After about 8 weeks of applying, I landed an interview with a contractor in Chattanooga (my hometown). The position was project manager, and he was looking for someone who knew about construction but also had a design background and knew how to draw CAD (me, essentially). So now I have a job that pays decently well, stimulates my mind, and doesn't break my back every day. Everyone I work with is happy, almost annoyingly happy. It's super weird. It's a strictly 8-4:30 type deal where everyone gets to enjoy their life after that and not worry about work until tomorrow. Unimaginable.
Gym Update:
I pondered whether to continue with the old log, but I've decided that my swollen ego deserves to take up more internet space. All kidding aside, I feel that the last year or so of that log consisted of more failure than success and I'm eager to start fresh. As well, I feel that I've come full circle on a lot of the themes of that thread, for better and worse. I'll begin with the good.
One of the things I struggled with when working with my brother-in-law was the early morning gym session. The nature of the work we did was so miserable and draining that it was practically impossible to go after work. At the same time, we needed to leave so early for these out of town jobs that I'd have had to get up at 4AM to make it to the gym early enough to have time to do anything. I managed to string a couple of sessions in a row, but it never stuck. With my new job, I have to be at work at 8AM, and I live 45 minutes away. Going before work seemed to be the best option. I have to get up around 4:45, but it's a lot easier than when I worked construction. I've lined up a month straight of 6AM training sessions, which I'm pretty thrilled about.
I did the #29 Sheiko cycle MWF and my squat and bench are reasonably bounced back. I squatted 265 for fairly easy doubles last week. Yesterday I benched 175x2, my first PR in years. Touch and go, though. @8.5 though.
I have zero knee or shoulder pain. Avid readers might recall that I had tingling and pain in my left knee for years. It would seem that the 1000s of steps per day working construction rehabbed that.
I still haven't been able to deadlift without discomfort. For the last week of the cycle, I moved the deadlift day to Monday as an experiment to see if it would feel better with the extra recovery day. It didn't. I'm not ready to throw in the towel on deadlifting yet, but it seems like I need to go with limited ROM pulling until my lower back gets stronger. It's strange that my squat feels perfectly fine, as it's historically been the other day around.
I'm also not doing much/any accessory work. Even with getting up before 5am it's still hard to get to the gym with enough time to complete a Sheiko workout. I'm going to have to get up a bit earlier and get my rest time down so I can get through an actual program. Doing something like a BBM routine seems unrealistic at this point because I barely have time to do two movements, much less a third.
Huge caveat to that bench PR; it was just over bodyweight....
By far the worst full circle I've made from the old log is that my bodyweight has crossed the dreaded line of my starting weight. I weigh 170-171 now. I am a fat mess, there's no denying it. I'm quite sure I'm not as fat as I was back then, considering I bench 50% more and squat 100% more than then, but it's still not a pretty sight.
The weight thing is something that I've just been trying, and failing, to keep a lid on as I locked down the other leaks in my life. I certainly regret not prioritizing it, but here we are. Now that I'm starting to kinda sorta enjoy going to the gym again, and now that I have a job that doesn't suck a bag of dicks, it's time to tackle this head on. That's right people. We're going to bring back the logs. Stay tuned.
Last edited by Renton555; 08-15-2020 at 07:17 PM.
08-15-2020
, 07:31 PM
08-15-2020
, 11:18 PM
08-16-2020
, 02:24 AM
Happy for you 
08-16-2020
, 09:30 AM
Quote:
Renton I’m super impressed by your life/career revamp. It’s not easy to go back to physical labor after having had a professional job at one point, and now you’ve gotten a better job that’s really good. Good luck with your log/weight loss and I look forward to seeing you make some progress
The nature of my job has me working all over downtown. I have an office on Rossville Blvd that I spend probably half my time in, and I live far away in Rocky Face GA. Maybe we can get together downtown for lunch sometime on a weekday?
Also, I just have never been a fan of training late in the day. Ideal for me honestly would be to go to work for a few hours and train at lunch, but this is the next best thing.
08-16-2020
, 02:30 PM
08-16-2020
, 02:34 PM
BBM does have a home workout template now...I haven't looked at it at all but...just sayin' .
.
