Treunlneiss' Training Log

[treunlneiss]

Hey everyone. Well, this is my new training log. I'm going to use it to monitor my progress and discuss any problems, successes etc.
I should start by saying my real name is James, and right now I work out at my college in Chicago, IL. Its not the best gym, but it does have what I need to get this program underway. The only thing I'm worried about is someone telling me I can't overhead press there, since it could be dangerous but I'll have to wait until friday to find that out because I haven't done OH Press there yet. I hope I can because I would hate to have to use a machine, although I suppose I would use dumbbells. So anyway (sorry my ADD kinda took over) I'm 20 years old and haven't done any real lifting since leaving high school football. I'm starting fairly light to work on my form and make sure I don't hurt myself on exercises I'm not too confident or familiar with. Right now I'm somewhere between 6'2 and 6'3 depending on what shoes I wear and am 250 lbs. That said I really want to get stronger and enjoy lifting. Here are my numbers for my first workout:

Squat 5x5 135lbs
Bench 5x5 135lbs
Barbell Row 5x5 135lbs
Dips 3XF 200lbs (Assisted)

Alright I know those first three numbers shouldn't be all the same especially for starting out, but I'm confident in my Bench form and I really like to row (that dizzy feeling is awesome). Also my squat I want to make sure my technique is good and that I am not straining my back too much. I have a strong back but I have lordosis? where my lower spine curves a towards my butt a lot? and I don't want any back problems. I do have knee issues but, I have found that squatting does not hurt my knees at all as long as I keep my shins fairly vertical. So thats why the squat was so low. I figure I'll work up the weight pretty quickly on squats because I know I can squat at least 175 5x5 right now, not sure exactly when I'll stall on squat, but if I keep on Stronglifts, I'm sure I'll find out in a month or two. Now onto Dips, I am not terribly good at dips and used the assisted dip machine today because I couldn't do a full BW rep. Even with the assist I could only do about 3 or 4 before failure. I think I'll reduce the assistance every time I do dips until I can do a couple at BW. Other than that, I had a good problem free workout. I am looking forward to Friday so that I can get some OH Press and Dead lift in. I LOVE DEADLIFT btw. Idk why I just really like everything about it, from weight itself down to the strain of holding on to the bar. Well thats it for me today. Next post, probalby not as long, will be on Friday.

[helm]

welcome james, good that you're starting a log. doing the Sl routine is definitely a great way to get in shape and lose some of that fat.

start with weights where you are 110% sure that form is still ok, so you can work from there, keeping form at a high level. try to take some videos of yourself, the sooner the better, they will help you determine flaws in your technique. or if you post them here, others will cause even if you think your form is perfect, there's always something to improve, especially in the beginning.
some gym rules tend to be totally stupid. I trained in socks for half a year, until some staff guy started bugging me to wear shoes for safety, it's supposedly in the rules that I signed to obey. but he's walking around and working out in flipflops... whatever.
dips. I started barely being able to do one, now I can do 3x10, which is more than I'd ever have expected (on a good day though, I must admit). however, there was no assisted machine available, so I just kept trying for one more rep, and next time another one and so on... so just do it without the machine, even if you can only do one dip right now. in a few weeks it'll be quite a few more!

have a good session on friday, and have some fun with the deadlifts. indeed the most fun exercise

[treunlneiss]

Workout 2.
Today I did my 2nd workout. It went pretty good. The squats I bumped up because on Wednesday 135 was way too easy. The OH Press was very hard but I did admittedly try to lift a bit too much just because I wanted to establish my limit. Also because of peer pressure, I had to see if I could do it 5x5. Deadlift was quite easy at 185lbs, and the pull ups were a b!tch. I did negatives because I couldn't get all the way back up once. So that's how workout 2 went. OH yea after the pull ups I decided to do a few minutes of cardio.

Squat 155lbs 5x5
OH Press 115 5/5/3/3/1
Deadlift 185lbs 1x5
Pull ups (negatives until failure) 3xF

So thats what I did today in my 2nd workout. WO 3 post coming on Monday. Any input you guys have will be appreciated.

[jj123]

Heya mate

Good to see you starting this, pretty much same time I did.

Regarding your lordosis have you had a look at Mehdi's article on it??

http://stronglifts.com/lordosis-why-it- ... to-fix-it/


Be careful with the OP though, peer pressure is a dangerous thing lol. I'm currently struggling with the lift. Gotta watch that lower back for a start!!


Good luck mate.

Joe

[treunlneiss]

no problem joe, anyway thanks for the concern i didnt push it as hard as I could have because I didnt feel quite solid enough on those last sets, I have fallen on OH press before because the weight got a way from me so now if i start feel it sliping i just bring it down. And yes i have looked at the lordosis articles and am working on glute activation. Yea but they didn't know I knew I could lift it. They also didn't no that I was gonna try 5x5 so they were pretty im pressed. lol felt pretty good. And definitely everyone struggles with OH press shoulders just aren't as well adapted to lifting heavy loads as legs are. But I feel really good when i lockout that final rep.

[treunlneiss]

Ok didnt get this posted on monday because i had a ridiculous amount of homework to do. lol I worked out today and it was a easy session. I started off with a quick warm-up. Then I walked over to the squat rack and loaded up a light warm up set. The squats went pretty easily.

Squat: 160bs 5x5
Row : 140 lbs 5x5
Bench 140 lbs 5x5
Dips ( felt a bit stonger on these than last week. I managed to do 2 before failure. woot)

All in all farly easy workout. the pendlay rows are hard, but you definitely feel your lats doing some serious pulling. Bench felt alright, i'm not a fan a bench. However, I did have this one guy today who was in a squat rack benching for at least an hour. Thats all he did was bench then incline bench and he spent like 10 minutes just sitting on the bench every time he finished. It was really annoying to wait for that guy.
NOTE: It feels weird having everyone look at you because you're actually doing squats in the squat rack. I like it. Oh and while i was waiting for the bench i decided to do a quick set on a Hammer Strength bench press machine and was amazed at how little it felt like an actual bench press. Then i went ot the calf machine worked on my calfs with teh machine maxed for a while. I wish they had a calf raise machine instead of the machine because i need more weight to use. I did end up just using one leg to lift the 250lbs cause i dont need any more endurance.

[jj123]

Seems to be going well!!

Cant believe how far ahead most of your weights are compared to mine lol, although you are bigger than me & did use to play American football, that makes me feel better!!


Why are you choosing to do more work on your calfs though? Squat should be giving them all they need.

[treunlneiss]

@ jj i am working my calves for a few reasons : first I already have strong large well defined calves and the weights im squatting right now are nowhere near high enough to give my calves the workout they need.
2 because I was waiting for a squat rack to open up so i decided to try a few of the machines.

[javanek]

I can see the logic behind having something to do waiting for a rack. But I somewhat agree with jj123, calf work can be good, but I personally would put more focus on glutes and hams. Posterior chain is what gives you all your power for squats.

I need to add some rows to my workout. I've been working more on pull ups and that is the other exercise always mentioned to help. Well, that and push ups.

Looks like you have started off with a bang though. Keep it up, man!

[treunlneiss]

Yea I plan to keep lifting actually i'm going to go lift later tonight and then i'll post my next WO results. I definitely do try to keep focus on the glute and ham exercises but sometimes I just really dont want to do any more glute ham type exercises. lol don't get me wrong I love squats and I love deadlifts even more but sometimes I just wanna do something kinda easy and different. I suppose in a few weeks time I will have tried all of the various machines while waiting. Then I'll probably just go work out with the dumbbells until a rack opens up. Plus dumbbells give me a pretty good warm up.

[treunlneiss]

Sorry for the wait b/t WO its midterms time so I dont have too much free time. I managed to squeeze in a session today about an hour and a half ago. Overall I feel great after the workout, but it was a disapointing upper body day. My legs were fine squat went pretty easy, and deadlift I wanted to see if I could do 200lbs so I did 1x5. The main problem with deadlift is my grip is starting to get weaker and I hope it doesn't quit on 210 or 220lbs. I really like using overhand grip and don't want to change to over/under until I absolutely can't hang on to the weight anymore. Here are todays numbers

OH Press 115lbs 5/3/0/0 so i deloaded to 105 to see if i could finish out the last 2 sets and only got at 105 1x5 and 1x2 so that was quite disappointing. I'll stick with 105 next time and work more on form because I definitely tried to do it more exactly like mehdi says in the articles and definitely felt it more in the shoulders.

Bench Press 140lbs 5/5/5/4/4 On the 4h set the bench I was on wobbled a bit when I was trying to push off my chest and the last rep failed. The last set also failed on the last rep. More disappointed about his than OH press. Bench is my weakest lift I think.

Squat 165lbs 5x5 not too bad definitely starting to feel the glutes and hams activating strongly as I exit the hole.

Deadlift 205lbs 1x5 Lift wasn't too hard, grip strength will be surpassed withing the next 2 hopefully not for 3 weeks or so.

Chins 8x1 negatives really like how these feel love that burning in my back and biceps after the chins i tried to do a pull up neg. but my back pretty much told me 'Im done' I left my feet and pretty much landed on them immediately.

PS Yes i do know that I did bench today and that its not techinically the right day for it but my chest felt pretty good and i have the weekend to rest so i went for it. gonna have to stay on 140lb bench for now. Oh!!! and today there was no wait for the rack I walked in warmed up and walked right into the squat rack where I stayed for the next hour with nobody bothering me to use it as a bench station. Woot!! lol There was this guy who was really cut and was working out with all the machines and dumbells and when he saw me watching him he decided to go over to this v squat machine where you put ur back on a pad and then load plates on teh sides and then squat with your back supported by the pad and put up a whopping 180 on it. lol I would have respected him much more if he would have done real squats. I don't think he likes me because he didn't intimidate me at all.

[javanek]

Chins 8x1 negatives really like how these feel love that burning in my back and biceps after the chins i tried to do a pull up neg. but my back pretty much told me 'Im done' I left my feet and pretty much landed on them immediately.

Yeah, I know how that feels. I just keep reminding myself that it will pay off eventually. My back is still sore from doing them Wednesday.

There was this guy who was really cut and was working out with all the machines and dumbells and when he saw me watching him he decided to go over to this v squat machine where you put ur back on a pad and then load plates on teh sides and then squat with your back supported by the pad and put up a whopping 180 on it. lol I would have respected him much more if he would have done real squats. I don't think he likes me because he didn't intimidate me at all.

That's too funny! I love when guys do that in the gym. There was this one time when I guy who looked just like your average Joe sits on the bench next to the one I'm using. Watches me do one set and then loads what I have plus a plate. I was like thinking this guy was maybe more than he appeared. Nope did one descent rep, one wobbly-not-touch-the-chest half rep, then racked the bar and left. Not the bench, he left the gym. I guess he showed me. Bet his back killed him the next day.

Numbers are looking good though. Getting 205 on DL is pretty respectable. And I wouldn't stress about the bench. Somedays it just doesn't happen. Next time, dude.

[jj123]

Every gym seems to have at least one resident knob.

From the guy telling everyone what to do to the skinny teenagers messing around on the equipment lol.


Mate I had a spot for my bench today & it was so much better. I think with this I should be able to get my lift for it up a fair bit. Just felt more confident with the bar probably because of the safety aspect & also the mental aspect of when they go to assist you (most times they aren't really pulling up on that bar at all, the mind is a powerful thing!)


J

[treunlneiss]

Yea i've been asking around trying to get one of my friends to come lift with me or one of the guys who does lift to lift with me but havent had any luck yet. I know my roomate says he might but he complains too much and im pretty sure he won't stick with it pass a workout or two.

@javanek
yea i know you have to have bad days sometimes, i think im going to try to eat more protein than i currently am maybe i'll buy some whey too so i can mix it with milk or w/e to get the protein i need because there is not way im even close to body weight g/day in protein right now. I'm more worried about the OH though because i like that exercise alot more than bench.

[jj123]

Don't count on friends for training lol, I've spent time putting routines together before for a few to find their interest gone within a couple of weeks or so. Could you ask guys training around you? Or 1 of the people working there?


Might be a good idea to get some whey then mate. Optimum Nutrition stuff is pretty good.

What I've done is worked out amounts for how much protein, carbs & fat I need for 1 meal & then sat down & designed meals that are exactly (or really close) to these amounts. It takes a while but obviously well worth it.