12 Week Experiment: Week 11

Day 1: A
Squat: 235lbs.
Bench: 175lbs.
Upright Row: 130lbs.

 Day 2: B
Squat: 240lbs.
Press: 115lbs.
Deadlift: 245lbs.

 Day 3: A
Squat: 245lbs.
Bench: 180lbs.
Upright Row: 135lbs.

"Accumulating injuries are the price we pay for the thrill of not having sat around on our asses."
- Mark Rippetoe

Every now and again a quote, a quip, a bit of wisdom comes by at just the right time. Last week I ran across the quote above as I was rehabbing an injured hip, and feeling grumpy over a missed workout. For those who don't know, Mark Rippetoe is a national level strength training coach, and one of the pioneers of peer-reviewed strength training. His quote not only made me smile, it got me out of a slump, and back into the gym.

I've also been thinking a lot, as this experiment winds to a close, about the future. What comes after? Stronglifts isn't meant to be a 12 week program, then on to the next. Stronglifts is meant to be a long term investment, with a 12 week "intro" as I near the end of my 12 weeks, I feel strongly that I should continue, and that continuing would be beneficial. However, I spent some time asking myself why. I ran, a fair amount, to train for the Corporate Challenge, I've done Judo, and BJJ, on and off for years. Yet nothing has ever come as easily, or with the same enjoyment as weight lifting. In the end, after much consideration I've come to the following conclusions:

1) I'm not a runner, I never have been, Biologically I'm simply not built to be a runner. I loathe the activity, and only enjoy running when it's the final 100m kick to the end.
2) I'm a recreational martial artist. Simply put, the dedication required to be good escapes me. I don't want to train four, or five, days a week, for hours at a time. I don't want to be away from my wife for that long. On top of that, I'm too competitive to know that I'll never be good at my current involvement while at the same time knowing I'm not willing to give more.

What does this have to do with lifting heavy things? I guess, when you find something you're good at, and makes you happy, do it. Even if that thing is lifting heavy things, then putting them back down.

12 Week Experiment: Week 10

Day 1: B
Squat: 225lbs.
Press: 110lbs.
Deadlift: 225lbs.

Day 2: A
Squat: 230lbs.
Bench: 170lbs.
Upright Row: 125lbs.

Day 3: B
Squat: 230lbs.
Press: 115lbs.
Deadlift: 235lbs.

The second day this week went poorly, to say the least. I've hurt my hip, and I'm finding it hard to lift significant weight. I aggravated the injury on Monday, when I attempted to squat 230lbs. I dropped the weight, and considered scrapping the entire session. In the end I finished, but my form on the forth, and fifth sets was so poor as to be almost not worth considering.

I took several days off, to let my hip recover, and I'm going back tonight to pick up where I left off. Unfortunately, with being out of town this weekend that means that I won't finish this week until Tuesday of next week.

This pushes Week 11 out through when I should have been finishing the program. It's not terrible, just a little frustrating.

12 Week Experiment: Week 9

Day 1: A
Squat: 210lbs.
Bench: 160lbs.
Upright Row: 115lbs.

Day 2: B
Squat: 215lbs.
Press: 105lbs.
Deadlift: 215lbs.


Day 3: A
Squat: 220lbs.
Bench: 165lbs.
Upright Row: 120lbs.

Had my first hiccup at the tail end of week 8. As a result both my squat, and overhead press won't go up for the first lift of this week. I'm confident the squat was just a hiccup, but the press worries me. It's not a lot of weight, but my shoulders have always been a problem for me.

Part of me is shocked that I've kept this up for 8 weeks already and have only slipped one workout behind. I keep telling myself that I'll catch up, but I guess it doesn't really matter. I'm lifting, I feel fantastic, and I've started to include cardio in my off days. This should help me lose some weight.

All in all, I feel good. I'm lifting, and I'm curious to see how this all turns out.

12 Week Experiment: Week 8

 Day 1: B
Squat: 200lbs.
Press: 100lbs.
Deadlift: 195lbs.

 Day 2: A
Squat: 205lbs.
Bench: 155lbs.
Upright Row: 110lbs.


 Day 3: B
Squat: 210lbs.
Press: 105lbs.
Deadlift: 205lbs.

Not much to say, keep adding weight, keep lifting. Form is improving, and I'm feeling fantastic. Not much of a visible change, but I'm ok with that. I hit 200 last night (Day 1) and am looking forward to the start of week 10, where I should hit 225.

Two Inch Difference

It's common knowledge that the squat is one of the best, if not the best, exercise for your lower body. Executed properly a squat works your legs, hips, and core muscles. Helps to strengthen your back, and generally will make everything below your belly button bigger, firmer, and sexy as hell.

The Squat, done properly, is also a great exercise to rehab your knees. Have knee pain? Stiffness? Then squat. Build up the weight slowly, and you'll see a sharp reduction, to complete elimination of knee pain. For the past six and a half weeks I've been squatting regularly. For the first six weeks I had no knee pain, and at worse a twinge in my lower back. However after my workout last Saturday my knees were on fire. Absolutely screaming. I stretched, and babied them over the weekend and tried to figure out what I had done wrong. My previous workout, at 180lbs itself shouldn't have caused the amount of pain I was experiencing, so what had gone wrong?

As I was stretching, and doing a few Hindu Squats, I realized I was compensating for the pain in my knees by rolling forward as I came up out of a squat. Imagine this, when you're doing a full squat your knees shouldn't come forward of your toes. You should drop your butt backwards, drop into a squat, then drive your hips forward to stand. This motion engages the muscles in the legs and keeps your knees from having to support the weight. This is the major reason why squats, done properly, are good for your knees. You don't lift with your knees, but with your legs, and hips strengthening the muscles that support your knees. By rolling forward I was, in effect, lifting with my calves, and knees. A recipe for disaster.

With the source of the pain located, my bad form, I set about rectifying the problem. For years I've squatted high bar. Where the bar rests across the top of my traps, at the base of my neck. This is how I learned to squat back in High School and I've never taken the time to re-learn. High bar squats are easy to do, it's a fairly natural position for the bar, and it's easy to control the bar. However I was finding that at higher weight two thing were happening. First, the bar was rolling forward as I squatted putting pressure on my neck. While not painful this certainly wasn't comfortable. As I looked into the cause of my bad form I found that high bar squat, as it placed the bar higher on your body, and forward of your center of gravity caused two issues. One, you were more prone to arch your back, which would explain the back pain I was feeling, and two you took more of the weight on your knees. I figured something had to change.

So, I went back to StrongLifts.com and looked at how they suggested you squat. I figure the program I was following might have some suggestions. Their suggestion, was to squat low bar. In a low bar squat you don't place the bar on top of your trapezius where I had been squatting, but instead on top of your deltoids. In layman's terms, if you run a finger down the back of your neck you will find a bony bump, right at the base of your neck. Just past that is where you squat high bar, and it's the bar pressing on that nub of bone that causes pain. For low bar, imagine you're squeezing a pencil between your shoulders, Your arms back, elbows pointed behind you at a roughly 30-45 degree angle. If you're holding this posture, and roll your head back you'll feel a shelf of muscle. Those are your deltoids. Large slabs of muscle that cross your shoulders onto your back.

When squatting low bar you place the bar on this shelf of muscle. The difference is a matter of inches. The difference in the lift is incredible. Having the bar further back forces you to squat with a straighter back, and more upright posture. This eliminates back pain. Having the weight behind you forces you to drop back under the bar, in a good squat form, and makes it difficult, to nearly impossible, to come forward onto your toes to engage your calves. This further protects your knees.

In short, I did five sets, or five reps, at 185lbs and have no knee pain, and no back pain. Though I will admit my butt is a little stiff.

12 Week Experiment: Week 7

Day 1: A
Squat: 185lbs.
Bench: 145lbs.
Upright Row: 100lbs.

Day 2: B
Squat: 190lbs.
Press: 95lbs.
Deadlift: 185lbs.


Day 3: A
Squat: 195lbs.
Bench: 150lbs.
Upright Row: 105lbs.

Squat form has degraded a little, I realized last night, as I wrapped up week 6, that as I was coming out of a squat I was coming forward to engage my calves more. While this will help me keep up the linear gains I've been enjoying it's not good for my knees. I need to be mindful of my form in my later sets.

Deadlift is getting heavy too, even though it's less weight then my squat, and I have no trouble getting the bar off the ground my grip isn't quite up to par. Something else to work on I guess.

I was shocked I completed my push press last night as well, 90lbs doesn't seem like much but pressing that much over your head gets heavy quick.

The objective is to start running this week as well, to see if I can't cut some weight while lifting. Let's see if the weather cooperates.

12 Week Experiment: Week 6

Day 1: B
Squat: 170lbs.
Press: 85lbs.
Deadlift: 165lbs.

Day 2: A
Squat: 175lbs.
Bench: 140lbs.
Upright Row: 95lbs.

Day 3: B
Squat: 180lbs.
Press: 90lbs.
Deadlift: 175lbs.

I'm still off track, I meant to get back to a normal schedule last week, but life conspired against me. In short, I finished week 4 last night, and will hopefully get all three lifts for week 5 done during week 5. If it doesn't work, I guess I'll try week 6.

I got through my first Bench milestone. 135lbs, and it went up smoothly. Frankly, it was the only thing that went well last night. Rows hurt, squat hurt, everything hurt. I'm at the point where I need to do warm-ups for all of my lifts, and that means spending more time in the gym then I'm used to. While this isn't a bad thing I'm used to in, and out, in thirty minutes or less. With the added lifts, and rest between sets, especially on squat, I'm not getting out of the gym until 45 minutes. While that's not terrible, it's a pain.

In better news all my lifts continue to go up. Let's see how long it lasts.