Them Gains

It’s been a few months since my last post, but I’ve been keeping up with my workouts and continuing to gain levels. I’m up to level 34 and 220,000 points on Fitocracy and more importantly I’ve been seeing some decent gains on my lifting and fitness in general. My bench press is up to 235 for 2 reps, squats are up to 255 for 5 reps and my deadlift is at 365 for 1 rep. Since I have no spotter or power rack I’m not planning to go above weight I can squat at least 5ish times and bench 2 to 3+ times (no 1 rep maxes.). I’ve only just started working overhead press into my routine, since I had been doing handstand push-ups for shoulders and I’m coming off of a minor shoulder injury. My max press so far is 112.6 for 2 reps, using an ez curl bar that I clean from the floor. The grip is taking a little getting used to but it seems to work.


I’ve gotten bit more serious about improving my lifts and have spent quite a bit of time researching workouts and exercises to improve my routine. My goal right now is to get in each of the major compound lifts—squats, deadlifts, bench press and overhand press—once per week as well as pull-ups, chins and dips along with other supporting exercises to fill in the gaps. I had been doing pull-ups three times a week, which led to some injury problems with my left lat; I think once you start getting into weighted pulls you just need more than 2 days to properly recover. I’ve also had some issues with my left shoulder, so I’m starting to work on shoulder flexibility and warmups with shoulder dislocations and YTL raises and being more conscious about form and keeping the shoulder blades tight while lifting. This seems to be helping a lot.


My weekly routine looks something like this:

Monday- Squats, overhead press, unweighted/low weight pull-ups, chin-ups, dips (high reps)

Tuesday- Cardio (running 3-4miles), Core work

Wednesday-Bench Press, Deadlift, Inverted Rows, resistance band exercises(biceps and tricep isolation), dumbbell shoulder exercises(front, side and rear raises. No heavy presses.)

Thurs- Miscellaneous cardio/high intensity infernal training. Running, cycling, heavy bag, jumping rope, etc. Whatever I feel like doing. Core work

Friday-Heavier weighted pull-ups, chins and dips. Handstand push-ups/lighter overhead press. Misc leg exercises if they aren’t too sore. (Barbell glute bridge, hack squat, pistol squat)

Saturday- Cardio, longer duration run or bike(45min-1 hour+). Core work

Sunday- Rest



I sprinkle in a few other things like push ups, calf exercises and grip work here and there, but don’t really do them on a normal schedule. This regimen has been going pretty well so far and I like having a balance of 3 days of lifting and 3 days cardio. It does, however, push a lot of lifting into each lifting session so I feel pretty destroyed after each one. I may swap some of the days around to optimize my rest. Deadlifts two days after squats can get a bit hairy.

Gaining Levels

Since joining Fitocracy a few weeks ago, I've risen to level 15 with about 23,000 points. It has been fun to have a place to log workouts, although it can be a bit time consuming if you aren't smart about saving common routines. The point awards are definitely unbalanced in favor of heavy lifting, but it’s still nice to receive some sort of reward doing workouts. I've starting using a more free weight in my workouts to add variety and earn extra points. I like body-weight exercises for their accessibility, difficulty that scales to body size and relatively low injury potential, but it is hard to find substitutes for certain exercises like squats. If you want really strong legs, you kind of have to move some heavy weight around.



I've been starting off slow to avoid straining myself too much and make sure my form is in good order. So far, I'm up to 250 on my deadlift, 210 on my squat and 205 on my bench press. Since I have no spotter and don't have a proper power rack (re-racking weight after squats takes a fair bit of control over the weight), I'm not planning to raise my squats. I'll mostly look to increase reps. I don't plan to bench on a regular basis, since I don't want a huge chest and find pushups and dips to be adequate for the most part. High maximum strength is less valuable to me than having a good amount of strength per pound and good stamina.

Fitocracy

I joined a social networking site called Fitocracy last week as extra motivation to get workouts in and vary my activities. Fitocracy provides tools for you to log your workouts, which are shared publicly with other users. You can "follow" other users and get followers of your own, so you can get a sense of the types of workouts other people are doing. You can also give "props" (basically "like") workouts are make comments. The site awards points for each workout based on the difficulty of the exercises you perform, duration, weight and sets. As you gain points you also gain levels, which gives you something to work toward over time. Although logging workouts with a lot of different exercises takes some time, it’s a nice way to create a log to remember what you've done. The public aspect of the site and the gaining of experience and levels is good for motivation. It also keeps track of your personal bests on all the exercises you log, so you'll know when you hit a new max.


My main gripe with the site so far is the point system. It gives huge rewards for lifting a lot of weight and relatively piddly rewards for cardio activity and certain low weight exercises. For instance, I ran 2.75 miles in about 24:10 last week which netted me around 330 points, I noticed someone else had logged 1 squat with 500 pounds for around the same amount of points. I feel like the points should be adjusted so that cardio and lifting are equal and rewards should take into account other factors like weight, gender and personal bests.


Despite its flaws, it has been fun to track workouts and it has motivated me to incorporate more types of exercises into my routine to grub for points.

Time Flies

Wow. I can't believe it’s been almost three years since I made a post! Time for a recap.



I finished the 2010 twin cities marathon with a not-that-great time somewhere around 4:40. I continued running and trained harder for the 2011 marathon, but I ran out of body salts about 2/3 of the way through and ended up walking 6-7 miles to avoid a total cramp up situation. My toe was and continues to be a nagging issue and some other concerns, mainly creaky knees, have crept up a bit. I decided to skip the 2012 marathon and have yet to sign up for or train for 2013. At the moment I run about once, maybe twice a week at the most and do other supplement my cardio with other things that aren't quite as hard on my foot like biking, swimming, miscellaneous aerobics and using a heavy bag.



My old Teva sandals have just about hit the end of their useful life. I still refuse to get rid of them, even after 2500+ miles and a right heel that is worn down into the soft padding. They have served me well, and I still slip them on for yard work sometimes, like mowing the lawn. I have since replaced them with a pair of modern Tevas that are somewhat looser and less comfortable overall, but they have, at least, allowed me to walk and run to some extent without the same discomfort produced by normal shoes.



I continue to lift 3 days a week, focusing on body-weight exercises. My typical regimen is a two sets each of 30 pull ups, 30 parallel chin ups, rotator cuff exercises, 15 handstand pushups and then some miscellaneous ab exercises, one set of 30 dips and a set of 65-75 elevated foot pushups. At the moment I'm doing lat pull downs with a resistance band instead of my normal pull ups due a bicep injury in my right arm, but I'm still able to do parallel bar chins. I've been doing this same work out consistently with a few variations here and there for last 3.5 years or so. It’s been effective at keeping me in good overall shape, although I've not been progressing at all.



The reason I decided to post again after so long is that I'd like to begin running a bit more and getting in better shape and there's nothing like an imaginary Internet readership to keep you motivated! If I can even boost my exercises by 5 reps or get one more cardio workout in a week, that would be a victory.




Let's turn up the heat!

Still Alive

Its been a couple months since I made my last post, but I am still alive and still training. Training has been progressing well--I haven't made a true training schedule, but I've been continuing my 3 day a week lifting routine and doing 3 days of cardio. I've been running 10 miles on Saturday mornings and ran 13.1 last weekend; I felt energetic enough to go another few miles, but I stopped because it was quite hot and I was worried about my hydration. I ended up going out for a 10 mile bike ride later that day. I also did a "sprint" triathlon over the course of a few hours on a different day. My brother and I went biking for a bout 17 miles and decided to go swimming afterward. I ended up swimming about 750m so I figured I'd finish off my backward triathlon by running a lap around Lake Calhoun which just a bit over 3 miles. My legs felt a bit odd running right after the swim, but I still made miles just under 9 minutes. My toes have stayed healthy during the last few months thanks to running in my sandals; my sprained ankle has progressed slowly, but it is not bothering me much. It looks like all systems to go do some runs of 15 miles+ over the next couple months and look for that four hour marathon time. My half marathon time last weekend was 2 hours 3 minutes but I wasn't pushing hard at all because I thought I might go for 16-20 miles.

Keeping it Together

My running for the past month or so has been hampered somewhat by my lingering ankle injury. I went for a 10 mile run last weekend, which felt OK, until about mile 6 when my ankle started feeling a bit weak, I was on pace to make it in 1.5 hours but slowed up a bit and ended up going in 1 hour 32 mins. On the plus side, my toe hasn't been bothering me and the sore bursitis/bunion spot has also been fine. Maybe being forced to rest my feet for a while was a blessing in disguise. I've continued doing my upper body routines and started doing some cross training in the place of straight mileage. Saturday mornings I am doing my longer runs, with short runs and other cardio on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm starting to realize that straight mileage isn't necessarily the answer for longer distance training. Sure if you want to be an Olympic class runner, you need to pound a lot of pavement, but I'm finding that cross training activities are actually improving my cardio and running more than running itself. For instance, I did the 100 burpee challenge yesterday (7:13, woot) and after that I hopped on the treadmill and it felt like I'd already been on it for an hour. It was like I skipped the laborious first 30-40 minutes it normally takes to get warmed up on a run and really start working the cardio side of things quickly. I've come to the conclusion that long runs are what's most important. Those 13-20 milers are what you really need to prepare for a marathon. All the 3-5 mile runs could probably be replaced by a mixture of other high intensity cardio and cross training activities without losing too much. I'm hoping that by limiting total mileage for a while, I can get my ankle back up to 100%.

Back on my Feet

I spent the past two and half week substituting biking for my cardio workouts while my ankle healed. After a couple of days the swelling actually increased and after 3-4 days bruising appeared along the bottom of my food and in my forefoot. Thankfully I could walk and bike without much difficulty, although I tried running a couple of times and immediately discovered it wasn't time. Through all of my past injuries I can pretty well tell the difference between superficial discomfort and pain that might cause further injury or set me back. A couple of days I ago I decided to run on the treadmill to test things out and I was able to go for 3.5 miles without much discomfort at all. Heartened by this, I ran again later that day with my GF for about 3 miles outside. The pavement was not as forgiving as the treadmill, and it probalby wasn't a good idea to jump in so fast with 2 runs on one day, but it wasn't too bad and I'm feeling good today. My legs are uncharacteristically sore today; I can tell I've taken a little time off. I don't mind though: soreness just means your body is getting stronger!