90 Day Transformations

End of Beginner Program

So I ended the Beginner Program with a bang..  225 on my deadlifts this morning.  Bam!

Time for a recovery week and then on to the Intermediate Program!  I'm stoked.

215

Just a quick numbers check-in.. 215 pound deadlifts, 135 pound squats.  Of course, the guy who got on the squat rack after me put up 500 for real pounds in his last set of squats (I had to break out my ipod touch calculator to add up all the 45 pound plates he had on the bar). 

Follow up..

So I put 140 up 8 times for my first set of bench press when I was supposed to only be able to do 6 of 135.  Looks like I'm adding some weight next time.

Very well, proceed.

Final Stage of Men's Health Beginner Program

Welp, this is it..  I'm on the home stretch of this first 6 month program.  The Intermediate Program will start in about a month from now. 

The final phase of the Stage 4 routines are exactly the same as the previous phase except for the following:

1.  Instead of doing the sets of the big exercises like this... 
set 1, 10 reps
set 2, 8 reps
set 3, 6 reps

I do them like this...
set 1, 6 reps
set 2, 8 reps
set 3, 10 reps

Naturally, a set is using the weight I can only make it to six, eight, or ten with.  So I start each exercise heavy, and work to light.  Should be interesting to see how much more, if any, I can lift at the beginning of the routine as opposed to the end of it.  For example, currently I'm able to do 135 six times without a spotter on my last set of bench press.  Will I be able to bench 145 six times at the beginning?  I'm totally gonna try it (with a spotter). 

2.  There are two warmup sets instead of one.  Ergo, each exercise gets 5 sets.  Sweet!

There are three routines that are done a total of three times.  That's three weeks.  Then I'm done with the Men's Health Beginner Program!

Here's a question..  What's the deal with no safeties on the bench press stands at 24 Hour Fitness?  What with all the liability exposure they have at public gyms one would think that they would have bench press stations that have safety bars on them so in case the user drops the weight or can't get it back up, they can just let it down on the bars.  I mean, aren't most injuries and deaths caused by bench press accidents??  I have safety bars at home on my squat rack and they give me a little extra confidence to push up that last rep without fear of dropping the bar on my ribcage or getting stuck under it with nobody else home.  Maybe it's just 24 Hour Fitness that doesn't have them. 

Anybody else go to a gym that has safety bars on the bench press stations?

Resolutions..

Those of you who received P90X for Christmas or bought it for yourself as part of your New Year's resolutions should be finishing up your first round of P90X this week.  If you did, congrats!!  If you didn't, well... 

Just keep going.

Just Keep Going...

Sometimes I have to remind myself that transformation takes time and that each and every single millimeter of new muscle has to be earned through hard work. 

Back when I was doing P90, I was so ready to be in shape that I scrutinized myself in the mirror even during the first week, looking for any sign that what I was doing was working.  Of course it took much longer than a week to start seeing my jawline and for my pants to start feeling a tad looser..  But not nearly as long as one might fear. 

On my current program I have guesstimated that I have probably gained somewhere in the neighborhood of about 6 pounds of muscle.  I have agonized over the calculations, but without an actual reliable measurement of my current body fat, I'm still just guessing.  I could be off by as much as 5 pounds for all I know.  Who knows?

What I do know is that I am definitely picking up some new muscle in some interesting places.  Since I started doing the real deadlifts and squats, my quads, hamstrings, and glutes have all firmed up and gotten a little bigger.  Most noticeable are my hamstrings, which are visibly bigger and bulging where they used to be borderline concave.  Doesn't seem to take long, does it?  Also, my triceps and forearms are filling out as well as my shoulders (finally).  I am also experiencing a kind of general, all-around thickening.  It's hard to explain, but I just seem to be a bit more substantial, muscle-wise.  Also, much stronger.  This is all very good and very encouraging. 

But I have to continue to remind myself to just.. keep.. going..  So in that spirit, despite having been sent to New Jersey to work my usual 7 day a week gig, I have been getting my workouts in on their appropriate days.  No shit.  I do have to go to the gym, but thankfully there are a few 24 Hour Fitnessii in the area here that I can use.  I've had a membership to 24 Hour for years and only use it intermittently. 

I just started the second to last stage and here are the new logs:

   

I promised photos at the end of the Beginner Program and I won't renege on that.  I will say that since I am in a mass gain phase I am probably going to leave my shirt on for the photo shoot.  My abs aren't quite ready for prime time anyway since my dietary focus is to make sure I eat enough food and not like it was under P90X where I didn't want to eat too much food, if you get my meaning.  I'm far from fat or even overweight, but we don't need to see the love handles when we are really interested in the guns, am I right or am I right?  I may change my mind on that in the mean time since when I am on the road I generally eat really, really clean and never drink alcohol.  At this point I honestly couldn't care less if I am carrying around an extra 10 or so pounds of fat.  I know how to get rid of that in a jiffy (wink).

It's worth mentioning that the ab routine in this program is kinda lame, at least as far as P90X standards go.  I've been modifying the prescribed exercises to make them more difficult (I feel like I may have mentioned this a while back).  Currently, I am doing Mason Twists with a 5 pound medicine ball and I'll be damned if I can't get up to 50.  Tony would be so proud!  I also end up doing more reps when I feel like it.  At this point, it's two sets and the book asks for 10-15 reps, but I try to do 15-25 (and the Mason's I just go until my guts fall out).

Anyway, keep up the workouts, everybody.  Swimsuit season will be upon us very soon. 

ps--I forgot to mention that I just learned a new Apple trick for screenshots.  Shift>Command>4 lets you drag a box around the thing you want a screenshot of.  Sweet!

This Is the Greatest and Best Recovery Week in the World. Tribute.

So, it just so happens that I've decided to take a recovery week on the week of my buddy Shannon's wedding to his wonderful betrothed, Marie.  It's been about 5 or 6 weeks since I sold my house, which was my last so-called recovery week.  More like recovery month, that one.  But it's not like I was sitting around on my tookus - I was moving furniture all over creation.

But the timing was actually almost perfect because this week I would have wrapped up this stage of the program were it not for the fact that I have to fly out of here at 6am to Los Angeles (yes, that means I have to be out of bed at like 3:30am - what was I thinking again?).  I did my last Upper Body routine for this stage this morning and I have one more Lower Body routine to do, but I'm going to do that next Tuesday and then just start right in with the next stage after that. 

With this recovery week and the last two stages to go, my calendar tells me I will be done with the Beginner Program Friday April 30th.  Since I started this program on September 28th, when I finish it at the end of April it will actually be 7 months instead of 6 (I had that extra month off when I was doing the whole thing with the moving and the packing and the cleaning and the glavin).  No biggie.  The journey's the thing, right?

I'm pretty proud of my results so far and I promise to have some photos up at the end of April so everybody can see the before and the after.

The Intermediate Program introduces some new exercises and techniques (ever heard of "wave loading?") and all three programs follow the same basic path (and that P90X follows loosely as well):  Phase 1 - muscle/joint/neural adaptation, Phase 2 - hypertrophy, Phase 3 - Strength, Phase 4 - Strength and Power.  Pow!  I plan to start right in to the Intermediate Program May 10th after a recovery week.

Grip Training..

I forgot to mention that I also added grip workouts to the last two upper body workouts of this stage.  I take two 10 pound Olympic plates, smooth sides out, and grip them in one hand for as long as possible (to failure).  Then do the other hand.  I do 3 sets of those.  I could hold them for almost 50 seconds each in the first set, almost 40 the second set, and about 30 the last set.  I think once I can get the second set over a minute I will up the weight. 

Rock n' roll.

Almost Done with Stage 3 of the Men's Health Book of Muscle Beginner Program

At the end of this week I will start weeks 18-20 of the 27 week Beginner program (about a half a year).  I started this program, according to my calendar, on September 28th of last year.  The end of next month would officially be the end of the program for me, but since I took a bit of time off over the holidays and then nearly 4 weeks off when I sold my house last month to pack, clean, donate, trash, give away, move, and then get settled in my new, albeit temporary, quarters I've had to add about 6 weeks or so to the overall length.  Not a big deal, really.  The breaks could have been considered extended recovery periods and when I got back to my program I definitely felt stronger as my muscles had plenty of time to heal.

I just finished the last of 4 upper body workouts and have one more lower body workout as part of this phase I am in at the moment.  The next phase has all the same exercises, but fewer reps, which means more weight.  So instead of whatever weight I can do with 10-12 reps, it's now 8-10 reps.  The tempo is also a bit faster.

Here are my workout sheets from this current stage..

  

And the logs for the next phase..

  

I apologize for my horrendous penmanship.  Also, I can't find my snapshot camera charger (sorry goons) so I had to use my phone to take those top photos.  I started just logging my weight with my clothes and shoes on instead of either weighing myself in my undies or guessing how much my clothes and shoes weigh.

In the stage that follows the next one, there are 3 workouts instead of two - looks like Workout A is chest and back (with a little bit of arms), Workout B is lower body (deadlifts, squats, good mornings, etc), and Workout C is a vanity workout with mostly arms and shoulders, with a little chest and back thrown in for good measure. 

By the way, real squats and real deadlifts leave me more sore for longer than any workout I have done yet.  Using a bar and a challenging weight is a bit different than doing bodyweight only or dumbbell reps like we do in P90X.  I love them!  It took me through the second lower body workout to get to where I knew I was doing the exercises correctly so I haven't done a shitload of weight yet.  Also, I did quite a bit of searching around the interwebs for videos and tutorials that demonstrated proper form and here are the best ones I could find (if anybody else knows of a better one, please feel free to mention it in the comments):

http://stronglifts.com/how-to-squat-with-proper-technique-fix-common-problems/
http://stronglifts.com/how-to-deadlift-with-proper-technique/

They say that a great way to make sure you push up through your heels is to raise your toes, which I wish had thought of months ago.  Seems to keep my knees from going past my toes or from pushing up from my toes, which we all know is bad form. 

Overall, still loving this program and I still think the best part about it is that it changes up every 2-3 weeks, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, for more than 6 months.  And then there are still two more complete 6 months programs after this (intermediate and advanced)!

I still haven't decided if I am going to do a round of Insanity or P90X after this first program or if I am going to dive right in to the Intermediate Program.  I'll call an audible when the time comes.

Keep up the good work, everybody!

Workout Logs for Stage 3

I'm starting Stage 3 of the 4 stage Men's Health Book of Muscle Beginner Program and I finally get to do some real squats and deadlifts, instead of bodyweight P90X style ones (my legs are still sore from Monday's lower body workout of pistol squats and King deadlifts).  Here are my workout logs I just finished in OpenOffice..

 

Pretty cool, huh?  It takes up less space to just type "Nosebreakers" than it does "EZ Curl Lying Triceps Extension."  I'm not sure if these would be useful for download for anybody since they are right in the middle of the program, but I have all my prior workout logs (they have improved considerably over time).  I'd be more than happy to post them if people are interested.

I finished my last upper body workout today and I have one more lower body workout to go on Monday and then I'm right into the first of two mini-stages in Stage 3 (two weeks each).  The final stage - Stage 4 - has three workouts broken up into two mini-stages, which are performed one time a week for three weeks each (a total of 6 weeks).  So, if my math is good, that's 10 more weeks of this part of the program.  I think I have two more recovery weeks in there before it's all said and done. 

Then I'm done with the Beginner Program and it's on to the Intermediate Program, which lasts for another 6 months.  Yeah, I'll be taking a break in there. 

Weight this morning, 182.