Essmitty's Log

[MysCat]

That's awesome news, essmitty! Congrats to your wife and to you for helping her with it.

[mjh]

That's all fine and good, but the REAL news is that my wife did her first 5x5 set of unassisted bodyweight squats She is so excited to make that milestone, she had tears in her eyes when she said to me "You owe me sushi!" I'm really excited and happy for her! Now looking back, she's amazed at how quickly she was able to work up to it. Less than 3 weeks ago she couldn't do 1 set of 5, now exactly 7 workouts into the routine, she can do all 5x5 and will start with 5lb on Wednesday! This is really great!

Fantastic!

Tell her that the stronglifts crowd is proud too. She's lucky to have a fella that will guide her through this with patience and unwavering support. Your log proves that stronglifts style training isn't only about getting big and buff. It facilitates pretty fundamental life improvements. Keep it up.

[mackanno]

Very happy to see your results guys. And even better that you as couple go at it together, keep it up!

I also have some allergies, but I have decided it is too much hassle to let the ruin the day. Ignore them and the sucker will eventaully go. What I do everyday though is wash my nostrils, usually when I wash my face. Clears the passages, just don't inhale the water too much, it's not very comfortable, .

[mjh]

In February I posted about my own knee and leg issues, but the forum switch botched the html and it was unreadable. That's been fixed now, and I've updated the thread, so you and your wife might be interested in having a look at Mickey's messed up pegs.

[essmitty]

Thanks for all the encouragement, everyone! That's what makes this forum so great!

MJH,
I'll definitely check out your log. Thanks for posting it. I read through your current one and was wondering what happened to the old one.

[essmitty]

Got really busy this week, so I'm posting this workout late, but I did do it on WED! Got another one this afternoon... I can't wait!

Warmup
5 min treadmill
5 min stretches

Squat
40lbs 1x5
60lbs 1x5
80lbs 5x5
Been feeling a little bit of pain in my right knee... unusual for me because I don't have bad knees. I don't think I was keeping my knees out far enough. As soon as I adjusted that, it seemed to subside.

Press
40lbs 1x5
60lbs 5x5
The weight was not difficult, but my for felt a little sloppy today.

Deadlift
90lbs 5x5
I was lazy and didn't want to put the bar on a stack of plates, so I jumped up 10lbs to 90lbs so I could slap the 25lb plates on it. It felt great! I wonder if the reason the deadlift didn't feel right before was because the weight was too light. The 90lbs gave my muscles a little challenge which I think helped stability. Does that make sense?

Pullup
5lbs 8/5/4
I tried the rucksack, but there's no way to tighten it around my waist and the angle of my body when doing pullups makes it so the belt doesn't rest solidly on my hips. I just held a 5lb dumbbell with my feet. I guess that will work okay until I get higher weight.

Overall it was a good workout. My wife did her full set of 5x5 squats with 2x3lb dumbbells held at her shoulders. She'll hold 2x5lb today. I'm still progressing in every exercise, but they're starting to get heavier. Somehow, I pulled a muscle in the back of my neck. I do this everytime I start working out again after a several month long break (it's been several years in this case). I call it the "Batman muscle". You ever see the Batman movies? He can't move his neck. He looks so funny because to look to the right or left, he has to turn his whole body. Well, that's what pulling this muscle does to me. It's not too bad this time. I think it happens when I'm straining and my neck is very tight. It usually happens when I'm doing the Bench Press, and I'm pushing against the bench with my neck (bad form, I know). I've felt the muscle *pop*, and I knew I was in trouble. This time, I didn't even know I did it until later in the day, and I can't imagine what exercise I did it on. It's feeling better today, so it won't hinder my workout. Anyone have that happen to them? How do I keep it from occurring?

[essmitty]

Posting late again... Work has been a killer. Anyone got a get rich quick scheme that works?

Warmup
5 min treadmill
5 min stretches

Squat
40lbs 1x5
70lbs 1x5
85lbs 5x5

Bench Press
40lbs 1x5
80lbs 5x5
Still feeling very light. Going to continue upping by 10lbs.

BB Row
40lbs 1x5
80lbs 5x5
I feel this exercise in my lower back. Maybe my form's not quite right? I'll have to take a video and post.

Dips
30lbs 10/7/6
I love these! I went up 5 lbs from last time and still pushed out one extra rep on the first set. YA!

[essmitty]

Warmup
5min treadmill
5min stretches

Squat
40lbs 1x5
70lbs 1x5
90lbs 5x5

Press
40lbs 1x5
65lbs 5x5
Last week I mentioned that I pulled a muscle in my neck. Today, I've determined that it was this exercise that did it. My neck is still tight and hurts when I stretch it to the side, down, or rotate on the vertical axis. I'll post a video and see if maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Deadlift
95lbs 1x5
Deadlift feels much better now.

Chinup
5lbs 9/5/3

[danmarmu]

Essmitty,

Hope all is well. Notice you haven't posted in a while. I hope you haven't given up.

Let us know how it's going.

[essmitty]

Dan,
Thanks for checking on me. Haven't given up... in fact, we haven't missed a work-out yet. I'm still keeping a paper log, of course, but I've been extremely busy at work and have not been able to keep up with the online log. I hope to start again soon.
Thanks!
-eric

[danmarmu]

Good to hear. I'm just glad you are keeping up.

[essmitty]

OK! I wanted to start posting again, but I'm still not going to be consistent after each workout. Next week I'll be out of town on business, then the week after that we're going on vacation! Still, I wanted to update:

We haven't missed a workout yet and we're still both progressing. I've only stalled on a couple of exercises, but they're all hard to do now! I've found that stalling isn't so much that I CAN'T lift the weight, it's that I can't do it with good form, so I make myself stall. Here are our current stats:

Cheree:
Squat: 50lbs 5x5
Bench: 55lbs 5x5
BB Row: 50lbs 5x5
Press 35lbs 5x5
Deadlift: 85lbs 1x5
She's still working on doing her first unassisted full pullup and dip. She's getting much closer and can see much progress.

Eric:
Squat: 145lbs 5x5 (I would be higher, but I hurt my back... I'll explain below)
Bench: 140lbs 5x5
BBRow: 115lbs 5x5
Dips: 47.5lbs 5x5
Press: 95lbs 5x5
Deadlift: 130lbs 1x5
Pull/Chin ups: 7.5lbs 5x5 (I stalled at 5lbs, and now I'm stalled at 10. I did 5,5,5,5,3 with 10lbs!)

Cheree's knees:
Her knees are great! No pain at all, though one of them started popping when she's doing warm up sets. After it's warmed up, it doesn't pop anymore. She's starting to really notice the increased strength in her legs and stability in her knees. She doesn't "baby" them anymore. She says she really notices it when using stairs, because it used to feel unstable before. It's funny, because she was resigned to not doing certain activities for the rest of her life because she was afraid of knee injuries. Now she's talking about wanting to go on a backpacking trip for our anniversary this September. This sounds cliche, but "squats changed her life!"

My back:
Last Wednesday, after squatting 140lbs, my lower back hurt a bit. Not TERRIBLY, but enough to know that something wasn't quite right. I didn't listen to my body and on Friday, I did 145lbs. I completed the 5x5, but my back hurt more. It's an "injury soreness" not just a muscle soreness. By Monday, my back was almost completely healed, but I didn't want to take any chances. I deloaded to 130 and did 5x5. Even with 130lbs, my back was still hurting when I was done, though not by much. On Wednesday (yesterday), I stayed at 130lbs and took videos. I'll post them in the forum in a bit and try to get some critique. After the workout on Wednesday, my back wasn't hurting at all, but I still want to make sure I'm not doing anything wrong. I want to keep moving up, but I'm kind of afraid, now... As soon as I post the videos, I'll post a link here, too.

[essmitty]

Okay, here's the link to the post with the videos:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10463

Tell me what you think!

[essmitty]

OK. I'm BACK!
Vacations, business trips, work, injuries, all got me out of the routine. All in all, I started 5x5 3 months ago, and I've missed probably 5 weeks of it!

I started the routine again about 3 weeks ago. 2 weeks ago, I hurt my back AGAIN just doing squats. I MUST be doing something wrong, but no one notices anything in the videos I've posted. I started really trying to analyze what I'm doing, and work on hip drive. I think I finally figured the hip drive out. My hamstrings and glutes are sore now after squats. I also *think* that in trying to keep my lower back from rounding, I'm hyper extending it and maybe that's where the injury keeps occurring. Anyway, I just squatted 140lbs 5x5 today and felt okay. No back pain. I think next week I'll start videoing every set and if/when I hurt my back again I'll have it on video. When I hurt it, I'm out of commission for about a week... it really hurts... so I'm hoping it won't happen. But if it does, I'll post it and everyone can see.

[MysCat]

Glad to have you back, essmitty. I was wondering how you and your wife were doing. Keep us posted!