June 6, 2008
Velocity Diet Log, Weight Lifting
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Well the last couple of days have been very easy, even to the point of removing the ice from the shakes for bulk I’m just making them and drinking them within about five minutes. No mess, no fuss.
I’ve changed my weights program to a 5×5 setup just pushing max weight for everything. I’ve still got the four day split going, I’m just moving from high volume pyramiding to high weight 5×5. I have been reading a bit about the EDT program for fat loss and will see if this will be appropriate for me in the next program change.
I’ve been having very strange sleep recently with vivid dreaming and waking up at all hours of the night wide awake. Hopefully this settles when I go onto solid food, maybe it’s a hormonal response due to lack of something while on the shakes. I’m not feeling tired during the day as long as I keep rested, but I wonder what will happen when I start pushing again with the running and the cycling.
I had BJJ tonight and that went very well. I found that physically I was fine but mentally I wasn’t all there. I can’t wait to get back to eating solid food as far as performance goes. I’m not hanging for solid food, it’s more that I realise my energy levels will increase and I won’t be so cold anymore.
So it’s all going very easy and well indeed and I feel that I’ve had ood mental changes as well as physical changes.
April 8, 2008
Notes, Weight Lifting
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I feel like after a couple of years of exercising fairly intensely and making diet changes and sleep changes and activity changes along the way I have become quite good at noticing how these changes affect me. One thing that I’ve changed recently is having caffeine before my workout, either as a tablet or as a shot of espresso coffee. It really makes a noticeable difference to my workout and exercise.
My current routine is something like this. Wake up, have a shot of coffee, protein powder and a glass of juice then go for a 30 minute walk at 6km/hr. It’s a brisk pace for me but it doesn’t really increase my breathing that much, it more warms me up and gives time for the coffee, juice and protein to start being digested. Then I start weights.
The addition of the coffee and warm up has definitely increased what I can do that early in the morning and I’d suggest giving it a try yourself.
April 6, 2008
Other Sites, Weight Lifting
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Dave Tate is a fucking strong guy, he will eat you for his weekly cheat meal then he will squat almost 5x what you weighed. Possibly more.
Which means he’s fat right? Like all those guys that lift the really heavy weights, the strong men, not body builders. Not at 125kg and 11% bodyfat, I don’t think that counts as being fat. Nope, it doesn’t mean that at all and he’s putting up his full training and eating regime as well as a bunch of Q&A about how he diets down each year. It’s a really interesting read. This guy is dropping fat and gaining muscle throughout most of the diet while eating a stack of food.
His cheat meal is a pizza, 2 bags of Oreos, a box of pop tarts, some Pepsi and Tootsie Rolls! That’s one meal. The rest of his meals are extremely healthy but they are about 2-3x what I normally eat.
Now you and I can’t eat like this guy and lose weight, he does after all have a lean body mass that is about 20kg more than I weigh in total and while exercise is essentially his job he doesn’t train a hell of a lot more than I do. That still doesn’t mean I can eat like him but it does give you an idea of how these guys eat and you could definitely steal some ideas and apply them. Rather than eat 3500 calories a day like him, why not start at 2500 but follow a similar plan.
There’s a saying about getting rid of the stuff that doesn’t work and stealing the stuff that does. The V-Diet was basically formulated on the basis of doing the exact opposite of what normal people do, no matter how crazy it seems. Normal people eat whatever they want, they don’t lift weights with any purpose and I’m not sure many people count weight lifting as exercise that is as good as cardio. The V-Diet gets rid of normal food, puts weight lifting as your primary exercise and tells you to do a minimal amount of low intensity cardio. It works.
Dave Tate’s diet is pretty full on but there are some great tips on why a cheat meal is good and why you shouldn’t over complicate things when you’re dieting. I’d recommend taking a look and considering some of the material for application to your diet.
Dave Tate’s Dieting Log.
March 18, 2008
After The Diet, Weight Lifting
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Yesterday doing deadlifts when I was finishing my second set I went to set the weight down and as I got the bar near my knees my back cracked and gave way, the weights went smashing to the ground. I’d had a sore back from the previous week and I think my back gave up the ghost.
I continued to do the rest of the routine but it was really week.
I did weights today, it was just arms so not much lower back was involved and it was only a little weak when picking up weights from the ground, not really sore. I can feel myself taking it easy on the lower back and protecting it but I haven’t had to use any pain killers or anti inflammatories today so hopefully it will heal quickly.
It was really annoying as I love back day. Hurting my back on my favourite exercise meant I hven’t bee able to deadlift or squat properly and so I was quite annoyed at the end of the workout.
Hopefully I’m good to squat come Friday and good for deadlifts next Monday!
A bit of a set back, but nothing massive.
I’m hoping that the weight gain due to carbs and creatine will settle this week too and maybe there is another drop in BF% and weight.
March 10, 2008
Weight Lifting
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I’ve been squatting for only a couple of months now, since I got my power rack actually so somewhere in the middle of January. I’ve basically read a bunch of stuff and looked at some pictures and tried to pick a few things up but I was having trouble getting very low (past parallel really) and also with finding the groove or sweet spot on my traps for the bar. I was doing 20 rep squat sets and so the pain in my neck of back was pretty intense by half way through. I just grit my way through it and thought it must get better.
Then I found some youtube videos here and it has made all the difference! This morning I was squatting past parallel for 20 reps without any pain in my back. I watched the first couple of videos and then skipped to the bar placement and squat depth video which to me was the most helpful.
This morning it was like I hadn’t done a squat before the different muscles that were engaged and just remembering to get the hips out and push the chest up made a big difference. Once you get past parallel you really feel it in your arse and hamstrings too!
I did read some stuff on T-Nation last week about glute activation in squats and basically once you go to parallel and beyond glute activation almost triples while quad activation roughly halves (off the top of my head). So in the future I think I’ll do my warm-up full squats, my 20 rep full squats then a couple of small sets of half squats.
Anyway I definitely recommend following this link and watching Squat RX #1, #2 and #4 firstly. Then watch the rest if you want pointers on how to really get your technique down pat. It’s like I’m starting fresh again though so I will get all the basics down over the next week or two then concentrate on stuff in the other videos.