Vhalros' Training Log

[vhalros]

Hello, I'm a 28 year old male graduate student living in the Boston area. I began Strong Lifts on June 15th of this year.

I've been practising shotokan karate for about four years, and jujitsu and muay thai for about one year. I had intermittently done some strength training, mostly body weight work outs with pullups, pushups, etc. but had never undertaken a serious strength training program before. This changed when one day some of my fellow graduate students asked for my advice on strength training, and so I decided to learn more about it (I'm like the free alternative to a competent personal trainer, I guess). I've already ingested Rippetoe's "Starting Strength" as well as Pavel's "The Naked Warrior" (what the hell, it was in the library ). So the three of us have been doing SL 5x5 for the last two and a half months.

I've been maintaining a journal elsewhere, but have been persuaded to keep a public one here as well.

Current Stats:

Height: 6'0
Weight: 195 lbs
Body Fat: 15%, estimated with callipers

These are not one rep maxes, but what I have been doing 5x5:

OHP: 110 lbs
BP: 165 lbs
Squat: 240 lbs
Deadlift: 250 lbs

[bobu]

No, I wasn't referring to you but I'm glad to see you start a log. I'll be watching . Not bad for 2 months!

[atypical1]

Great job on starting a log. Those are good solid numbers you have there. Give it a few more months and you'll be really lifting some good weights!

james

[vhalros]

So the school gym is closed until next Wednesday, so I've made this a rest week for weights. However, I'm still doing karate, and there is a bit of conditioning involved in that.

We were also kicked out of our usual room for karate, so I improvised in a field
I only have one student during the summer, and sensei worked him really hard on Sunday so today was light.

50 paces front stance
50 paces back stance
50 paces fudo-dachi

Two 2 minute rounds of jab, cross, front-leg front roundhouse on pads (not to much pad work today, but a little just for fun).

Then we did:

5x5 pistols. I can't quite get to the ground on these yet; I used a bench the height of which was just below my tibial tuberosity.

3x10 inclined push ups, feet at shoulder height.

3x20 wall walk planks.

I also managed to do a single one handed pushup on my left arm today. Could not seem to repeat it for the life of me, but I guess this means I'm getting better at them.

[vhalros]

By the way, I hope its not some kind of etiquette violation for me to post non-strength work outs here. I want to keep track of how the different elements of my training may be affecting each other, so it is easiest if I keep it all in once place.

[bobu]

It's your log for your use so I think its important for you to post whats relevant to your training. Lots of members post non weight lifting workouts.

[vhalros]

Today:

7x100 rope-jumping, with a weighted jump rope (each handle weighs about a pound). Jumping rope is a relatively new addition to my routine, so I'm not so great at it yet. I felt like I couldn't do any more after 5 sets, so I made myself do two more. I think I may add more to a single set in the future.

Also one set of five pistols on each leg, at the height of the tibial tuberosity.

[vhalros]

Back to the gym after about a 10 day lay off. I spent many of those days moving to a new apartment, so it was not exactly "rest". Any way, today was a little disappointing:

Squats 240 lbs : 5/2/0/0/0
B. Press 165 lbs : 5/4/2/2/2
Inv. Row : 6/6/5
Push Up, 1 arm : (2,2)/(2,2)/(2,1)
Rev. Crunch 3 Kg : 6/5/3

The push ups were with my hands elevated to mid shin.

This is considerably worse than my last work out; I'm not sure if I'm just still tired from moving, or it was too long a lay off, or I'm just not used to working out in the morning. I'll try more coffee and see how I do on Wednesday

Also I don't know where my gym buddies were, they did not show up today.

[bobu]

Back to the gym after about a 10 day lay off. I spent many of those days moving to a new apartment, so it was not exactly "rest". Any way, today was a little disappointing:

Squats 240 lbs : 5/2/0/0/0
B. Press 165 lbs : 5/4/2/2/2
Inv. Row : 6/6/5
Push Up, 1 arm : (2,2)/(2,2)/(2,1)
Rev. Crunch 3 Kg : 6/5/3

The push ups were with my hands elevated to mid shin.

This is considerably worse than my last work out; I'm not sure if I'm just still tired from moving, or it was too long a lay off, or I'm just not used to working out in the morning. I'll try more coffee and see how I do on Wednesday

Also I don't know where my gym buddies were, they did not show up today.

It could have been any of those reasons or just one of those things. When I take a week off I find I do better if I deload 10-20% based on whether I was at my maxes or not.

[vhalros]

Workout from 9/9/09, posted today, weights are in pounds unless noted.:

Squats 240 : 5/5/3/5/3
OHP 109 : 5/5/5/5/5
DL 248 : 5
Chins 0 : 3/3/2
Wall Walk Planks (steps) : 18/13/7

Better than Monday, deads felt really taxing. I went to the gym at 6:00 PM this time.

[vhalros]

Workout for 9/11.

Squats 215 : 5/5/5/2/5
Bench 165 : 5/5/5/4/2
inv. row : 8/6/3
One Arm Pushup, mid shin: (3,3)/(2,2)/(3,3)
inv crunch 3 kg: 5/5/4

Still couldn't complete 5x5 on the squats, even after deloading. I guess I'll stick to 215 for the next workout. Its also time to deload on the bench press. I did this workout at 8:00 AM. I'm defiantly not at full strength in the morning, but maybe I just need to get used to it. My flexibility also sucks early. At any rate morning workouts fit better into my schedule, so I think I'm going to force myself to go even earlier on Monday.

[Shox]

Your training schedule looks brutal! What are your aims? You aiming to put on a lot of mass or just strength, wont this affect your shotakan?

[vhalros]

Shox:

Well, the idea is for the strength training to make me better at shotokan, so yes, I certainly hope it will affect my shotokan, but in a good way It seems like one thing strength training is "for" is to improve performance at other activities, and that's what I'm doing with it. I want to my movements to be stronger, faster, and more powerful.

There for, my plan is to do StrongLifts 5x5 until I can't make progress on it any more, and then switch to an intermediate program with a focus on power/endurance. Most likely I will use the Texas Method from Rippetoe's "Practical Programming for Strength".

With the weights shotokan, and jujitsu, I do spend about 12-14 hours a week training. I try to keep aware of interference, mostly by monitoring my energy levels, or seeing if I'm regressing in strength. So far this has not happened (we cannot blame my current stall on squats/bench on shotokan, since its been on break since the last workout I posted here. Plus it seems fairly normal to start to stall around this point in my progress). Jujitsu is starting up again after a long break, so we will see how that fits in

Part of the reason I'm able to do this is that I was doing karate for four years before I started StrongLifts, so my ability to recover from that sort of workout is pretty high. I would probably kill myself if I picked them both up at once starting from sedentary.

As an aside, having done karate for a while has been really useful for strength training. My flexibility started out very good, as did my proprioception, and my ability to learn forms.

[vhalros]

Karate Workout

Karate is back after a brief break.

Today:

15 minutes Ran around in the dojo, run broken up intermittently by 3x20 pushups, 3x20 crunches. (3 was the total number of sets of pushups, as well as the total number of crunch sets).
Stretching 15 minutes.

Basics:
20 steps each, fudo dachi to front stance, cross, with the following blocks:
rising block, outside block, inside block, down block.
20 steps back stance, knife hand to fudo dachi.

20 steps, fighting stance, jab, cross, front kick.
20 steps, jab, cross, side kick, back kick.

Kata:
10 repititions of heian godan.

Sparring:

3 rounds of 3 point sparring. Probably lasted about 10 minutes in total.

3x10 knuckle pushups while waiting for the other guys to finish sparring.

Then 100 jumping jacks, since I couldn't do any more push-ups.

Other Stuff:

Horse stance for 30 seconds with a 205lb guy on my shoulders, as low as I could go.

2x10 push ups with stability ball (hey, my arms were working again by this point!)

2x10 ab rolls on stability ball.

1x10 jumping squats.

1x10 squat kicks.

Five more minutes of stretching at the end.

I feel like I've worked out, but don't feel too exhausted. Good practice. I think some of my kicks are getting predictable, need to work on that.

[Shox]

Ah cool, i used to do ju jitsu and kickboxing for about 5-6 years but kinda just stopped doing it as other things took over ;x