The essentials

There are essential fatty acids. There are essential amino acids (from proteins). But there's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. None. Why not? Because they aren't essential to living. Dr. Michael Eades explains this really well, even if others don't understand his points. We don't have to get what glycogen we need from carbohydrates; our bodies can make them from the protein we eat via gluconeogenesis. Further, we don't have to worry too much about how much we eat if we're eating minimal carbs; our bodies do a really good job of regulating our weight as long as we're not overfeeding on carbs.

I have been eating very low carb (maybe 50g per day, none from processed foods) for about 18 months. I have never felt better. I have a check-up in a couple of weeks and I can't wait to get my blood test results back. I'll definitely share them when the time comes.

Easing the hand stress on deadlifts

I got my Lynx Performance Grips yesterday in the mail — just in time for my heavy deadlifting this morning. I still have the big exposed piece of flesh on my hand that I wrote about previously from my last heavy deadlifting session (and that was the impetus for their purchase along with the recommendation by Eric Cressey).

My impressions of this product? Good stuff. I have lifting gloves but I have found that they make it more difficult for me to hold onto the bar so I have tended not to use them much with heavy lifting. With these grips I immediately noticed the decrease in strain on the skin of my hands. No surprise since these are not much more than a couple millimeter-thick piece of rubber placed in between my hands and the rough texture of the bar. I'm guessing this will lead to a decrease in the level of callouses that I currently have. The question in my mind was how much these would affect my ability to hold the bar. It appears that, overall, they didn't increase or decrease my ability to hold the weight. Given the increase in comfort and the decreased odds of ripping the skin off my hands, I will continue to use these grips when deadlifting heavy weights.

Go ahead and eat the ice cream

I saw a commercial this morning for Kellogg's Special K Chocolatey Delight cereal. It was pointing it out as a "healthy alternative" to chocolate ice cream. (I'll use Breyer's Chocolate Ice cream as my specific point of comparison in this post.) Let's look at the facts.

	Cereal	Ice cream
Serving size	3/4 cup	1/2 cup
Calories	160	140
Protein	2g	2g
Fat	2g	7g
Carbs (net)	24g	16g

Now let's look at the first few ingredients of each:

Cereal

rice, whole grain wheat, sugar, chocolatey chunks (sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa, soy lecithin, artificial flavor, milk), high fructose corn syrup, salt, malt extract...

Ice cream

milk, cream, sugar, cocoa, whey, natural tara gum, natural flavor

So, what do we have here? They're both about the same calories, though the cereal (with milk, since that's how people eat it, and since that's how it's shown in the commercial) is marginally higher. Protein is a wash, and insignificant at that. Fat is higher in the ice cream, but that's fine for me. Carbohydrates are significantly higher in the cereal and, since it's lower in fat, these carbs will hit the blood stream quickly and be converted to fat quite rapidly by the body. This is especially true in the scene depicted in the commercial where the lady is apparently eating the cereal as a late-night substitute for the ice cream.

Now consider the ingredient list. For cereal, it can basically be translated as this: sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar (plus some trans fat), cocoa, sugar, salt, sugar... Amazing. Now for the ice cream: sugar, fat, sugar, cocoa, sugar, gum, flavorings. Neither of these is particularly impressive, though the cereal is much more clearly a manufactured food that isn't handled well by our bodies.

To be clear, I'm not selling this ice cream as a health food. Far from it. But, if given a choice between the two, I would definitely eat the ice cream instead of the cereal because I believe it would have less of a negative effect on my body (and would also be more filling because of the additional fat it contains). So, if the ice cream is calling your name from the freezer, and if you're tempted to substitute the cereal — forget it! Go ahead and eat the ice cream!

Living away from the city

One of the joys of lifting in Saline is that we're out in the boonies. Saline is a town of about 7500 located about 5 miles southwest of Ann Arbor. Surrounding Saline is nothing but farmland. We live in the northwest corner of Saline on a cul de sac. On either end of it is woods which back up to fields. I leave my house about 5:45am or so; of course, it's still dark. This is a great time to observe the sky and wild life. This morning, while the wet snow was falling, I passed a doe and two fawns in the yard of a house at the entrance to our cul de sac. The two fawns were playing with each other while the doe was watching my car.

It was a nice way to start the week.

Benefits of a deep tissue massage

I got a massage yesterday for the first time in almost a year. Oh, did it hurt. But in a good way. I have another one scheduled for next week.

I am extremely tight all over. I have mobility issues in my ankles, hips, shoulders, neck, and wrists. (Yeah, that's all.) In a 2 hour session, my massage therapist only addressed my shoulders, upper chest, and neck. By the time she left I could almost look directly to the right or left without turning my whole body. Yes, I know most people can do that, but I'm not most people. I could also almost lift my arms directly over my head. (Yes, I know...) I'm hoping that by the time she has broken me down in a month or two that I'll be able to do a squat and hold a loaded barbell over my head. I can't do that now because my hips and shoulders pitch the weight too far forward for me to hold the weight. We'll see.

I used to make fun of people who got this type of massage. It's no walk in the park, let me tell you. I usually have a pretty bad headache by the time she leaves and generally feel crappy all over (like I did last night). So I went to bed at 8:30 and slept until my usual 5am wake-up (yes, that is 8.5 hours of sleep!) and woke up feeling like a million bucks. My goal is to be more diligent with the foam rolling and stretching after I lift this next month. We'll see if we can get my body moving with a bit more freedom.

Vegetarians love their meat scares, don't they?

In a letter to the editor of the Ann Arbor News on April 1, 2009 entitled Meat-laden diet proves unhealthy, Albert Everett latches on to the recent National Cancer Institute study about the dangers of red meat. He made so many poorly reasoned points that I couldn't help but respond. Here's the letter that I sent to the News:

Mr. Albert ("Meat-laden diet proves unhealthy", April 1, 2009) makes the unfortunate mistake of confusing correlation with causality. Just because open umbrellas are seen when it is raining does not mean that the umbrellas caused the rain. The observational studies that he cites cannot be used to prove causality though it is very good at generating hypotheses that might be tested at a later date. That is, these studies raise questions that are possibly worthy of future investigation, but they should not influence our decision making. In this case, I don't believe that confirmatory studies will ever be found because so many other studies have found exactly the opposite (that is, saturated fat providing health benefits). Remember that humans lived for 99% of our history primarily as a hunter and meat eater; we couldn't have changed the direction of our evolution so quickly since the dawn of agriculture. You may make the choice not to eat meat, but that doesn't mean that it is the healthy choice.

Further, in the recent Archives of Internal Medicine report, the subjects did not differ just in the amount of red meat they ate. The subjects that ate more red meat also ate more junk food, smoked more, drank more, didn't exercise, etc. And so they were less healthy. I don't see any reason that meat should be implicated any more or less than any of the other factors. In fact, who knows if meat had any effect at all. From this study we can't know anything at all about the effects of meat. Maybe it was the bun with the meat and the colas they drank. Who knows?

Two other studies were recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition related to this discussion. Neither was reported in print or by TV. One was a meta-analysis of 13 other studies; it found no evidence of a relationship between animal fats or animal proteins and colorectal cancer. The second study showed that vegetarians don't live any longer than non-vegetarians; further, it showed that vegetarians also have a higher incidence of some cancers (and lower incidence of heart disease). Yes, the first was a summary of observational studies while the second was an observational study so the same caveats apply here as I described above; they are hypothesis generating and possibly worthy of further study. However, studies such as these, which go against the media's predisposition against meat, are rarely ever reported. My recommendation is that readers don't rely on the media for their nutritional information. Go online and do research for yourself.

Millions of people worldwide, including myself, eat large amounts of meat, eggs, cheese, and nuts while limiting the amount of carbohydrates from sugar, grains and fruits because we believe this is the healthiest way to live. I, right along with Mr. Everett, worry about the health of our population, though I am worried that they will continue to follow the misinformation propagated by the media.

I don't know how much good it will do, but I feel better.

Dieting "facts" I've had to unlearn

Last night I was reflecting with my wife on all of the nutrition and dieting "facts" that I have had to unlearn in the last two years while I have dived head first into this area. Basically everything but "green vegetables are good for you." Let's see what I can come up with:

1. Losing weight is as simple as "calories in - calories out".
2. Exercise is a necessary key component of weight loss.
3. Red meat is bad for you.
4. Saturated fat is bad for you.
5. Eating fat worsens all of the cholesterol measurements.
6. High cholesterol is a necessary precursor, and perfect indicator, for a future heart attack.
7. Low cholesterol is a nearly fool-proof protection against a future heart attack.
8. Canola oil is good for you.
9. Lard and butter are bad for you.
10. Margarine is a great substitute for butter.
11. Lots of fruit is good for you.
12. Fruit juice is good for you.
13. You need to worry about getting enough Vitamin C through fruits.
14. The RDA for Vitamin D is enough for those of us living in Michigan.
15. Fat is something that needs to be limited.
16. Protein is something that needs to be limited.
17. You need a majority of your calories to be carbohydrates.
18. Whole wheat grains (in bread and pasta) are good for you.
19. We need lots of fiber in our diet.
20. Drink lots of water on a regular schedule, even if you're not thirsty.

This is a truly amazing list. (I'm sure there are more but this is what I could come up with off the top of my head.) No wonder I get bitter when I reflect back on all of this. I was a "smart, health-conscious consumer" who paid close attention to nutrition and diet news and look what I learned: I learned how to kill myself with my daily food choices.

Lifting when you don't wanna

It wasn't that I was sick or anything. And it wasn't like I really was dreading going to lift. No, it was just that I wasn't really fired up to lift. I usually am, so that was sorta weird. And it was a "heavy" day, a day that I usually love. But I was just a little low on energy. I still lifted, finished the whole workout, but I took longer in-between sets as a means of compensating.

It probably didn't help that this is a ridiculously tiring workout. The first superset was chin-ups and DB decline bench press. That is just a warm-up for the deadlift and single-leg standing calf raise. On the deadlift I did 25 reps of 290 OTB (335 total). It took me 8 sets with 3 of the last 4 sets being doubles. Boy was I tired. And on the 25th deadlift I tore a huge callous off the middle finger of my left hand. Ouch. It was going to be the last rep no matter whether it was my 25th rep or not — I wasn't lifting any more with that hand.

On that topic, I just ordered Lynx Performance Grips. They're recommended by Eric Cressey as being easier on the hands. I guess I'll find out if they work.

Tightness abounds

I am so tight today. Especially my hamstrings. I'm thinking it must be a result of the 50-reps of squats yesterday (combined with dog walk/runs every day and basketball 3 days a week). I'm always quite happy when Sunday rolls around and I can rest my body. This is the result of having two different exercises that I like to do too much to skip. I just need to keep doing my mobility work every day before I exercise and get better at doing my stretching afterwards. I also am looking forward to getting a massage sometime this week (my massage therapist is getting back in town after an extended trip to Central America). It's gonna hurt.

Third day of Get Big

Today's protocol was to lift "light", which means lift a weight I can lift 20-22 times (quickly and under control) and do each exercise for a total of 50 times. The book says to do 25 reps but I'm assuming this was a typo since every other "light" day had 50 reps. Here are the exercises:

• Superset
  • High pull, 50 lbs OTB
  • DB incline press, 35 lbs
• Superset
  • Squat, 90 lbs OTB
  • Hammer curl, 20 lbs

(BTW, when I write "OTB", I mean "on the bar", meaning that the weight of the bar isn't included in the weight that I'm recording.) I'm sure that I went too light on a couple of these, but I find it really hard to figure out what weight to use for these high rep days. Even when I'm done I'm not sure whether I could have done more. I'm always so tired aerobically that I have a hard time figuring out if my muscles could have done more. So next week I'll be doing more on each of these exercises.

Today's program only took me 32 minutes. I'm sure that I will be able to do this more quickly next time. I took a lot of time between the two supersets. I wasn't really into it this morning — real tired from getting up with one of our dogs who wasn't feeling very good last night — so I struggled a bit with energy. That's okay. I know it'll be better next time.

News about red meat, cancer, vegetarians, and nitrates

I learned much about nutrition this week, but probably more about the media and nutrition. This is a story that keeps repeating itself, much to my disappointment. I'm ever-hopeful that it'll stop, but that hasn't happened yet. What am I talking about?

• A study about the dangers of red meat has been in the press a lot recently. What does it really tell us? Nothing. Don't worry. Eat all the red meat you want. Here is Mike Eades's analysis and Jimmy Moore's take on it.
• Another study reported that there is no link between animal fat or protein and colorectal cancer. No matter how many times this old wives' tale (that there is a link) gets repeated in the press, it still isn't true.
• Another study on vegetarians found that what we think we know isn't always so. As Eades put it in his blog, "You would think that if a study came out from a prestigious institution (Oxford) published in a top-line scientific journal showing that vegetarians don’t live any longer than non-vegetarians and actually have a higher incidence of some particularly nasty cancers (but slightly lower rates of death from heart disease) it would be newsworthy." But it's not. It hasn't been discussed or covered at all.
• Finally, I've always "known" that nitrates and nitrites are just ready to kill me if I eat too much bacon or hot dogs. What? It's not true? No, it's not true. Don't worry about nitrates and nitrites. There's actually pretty good evidence that they are good for you. Who knew?

That's enough to blow my mind for the day.

Second day of Get Big

Today was much different than the first day. Today was exclusively unilateral work. I did all of the following as one big giant set (that is, exercise 1, then 2, then 3, then 4, and then start back with 1 again) with minimal rest in-between. I had to go take my daughter to school for a club meeting (before school) so I had to finish quickly:

• 1-arm bent over row, 65 lbs
• 1-arm shoulder press, 40 lbs
• Bulgarian split squat, 2x40 lbs
• Standing 1-arm triceps extension, 20 lbs

The first exercise was supposed to be a 1-arm seated cable row, but the cable machine is still out of order. This substitution seamed to be fairly reasonable. I will increase all of my weights next week. I tend to underestimate the weights that I can do during the first week of a new program. That's going to be especially true with programs from this book with its emphasis on lifting speed.

I finished all of these in 28 minutes. Pretty amazing. With the combination of giant set protocol and unilateral work, I could basically eliminate the rest time in-between exercises. The benefit of unilateral work is basically two-fold. First, it reduces the overall weights that can be lifted and thus is easier on the body (at least, that's my experience with it). Second, it also naturally takes more time to complete the exercise since you have to do it separately with each side; this extra time can be counted as "rest time" between exercises although you're actually working out.

Starting the "Get Big" program

Today I completed the first workout in the "Get Big" program in Huge in a Hurry by Waterbury. It was a killer. The protocol for today was 25 reps of a heavy weight (a weight you can lift quickly and under control for 4-6 reps). Here's what I did:

• Superset
  • Chin-up, 35 lbs (on my belt)
  • Deadlift, 315 lbs
• DB Decline Bench Press, 2 65 lb dumbbells
• Single-leg calf raises, 140 lbs (Smith machine)

The program calls for barbell decline bench press, but we don't have any kind of set-up where that would be easy to do. So I had a buddy load me up for the 5 sets. Next week I'm going to go up in all of the lifts.

It took me just over one hour to complete this workout, not including the mobility warm-ups before or the stretching afterwards. I was absolutely whipped after completing it. I had my protein shake before, a protein shake right after I got home, and then I slept for about an hour. I was wiped out. I had a meeting at 10am that I almost slept through. I'm okay now, as I write this, but I'm glad I was able to take that nap.

I'm also surprised that it took that long. Let's see why it took that long. Assuming that there's 4 minutes of tear-down and set-up time between the exercises, and that each set takes 2 minutes including rest, and each 25 reps took 6 sets, then that would be 4 exercises x 6 sets/exercise x 2 min/set + 3 breaks x 4 min/break = 48 + 12 = 60 minutes. Wow, I didn't know I would be that close. I also don't think it should have taken that long. I could probably get 15 seconds off the time for each set and maybe 1 minute off the break between exercises. Both of those would save 9 minutes total. I'm going to set a goal of finishing this program in 52 minutes by the end of this program (if not before).

Miscellaneous ramblings

No theme today, just a couple of points that I need to get off my chest...

• It drives me crazy to hear people use the word "diet" as if it there were some short-cut answer to their weight loss issues. You don't "go on a diet" and then "come off the diet" unless you want to "lose weight" and then "gain all that weight back again". A diet is a way of eating. You either eat, and maintain, a healthy diet or you don't.
• My wife watches the Today Show, and Joy Bauer is their resident diet guru. She can't get it through her head that saturated fat isn't the devil's food. Hasn't she read Good Calories, Bad Calories or watched Fat Head? Science has put this question to rest.
• Speaking of Tom Naughton (i.e., the Fat Head guy), he has a new blog.
• Adding an active dog to your life is as good a way as any to increase the amount of sprinting that you do in a day. We just got a 2.5-year-old mutt (border collie/hound) who loves her daily runs. We got about 1.5 miles or so every day and it's sprint, walk, sprint, walk the whole way. She doesn't like it when I rest too much.

Substitute exercises

The lat pulldown machine at the rec center is broken; actually, the lower cable is broken and they are replacing both cables. Why it takes a week to replace the two cables, I have no idea... Anyway, a lady that I have been helping navigate through the world of lifting was there for her usual Thursday morning lifting (before her kids get up and while her husband is still at home, I guess). She was a little befuddled as to what to do for lat pulldowns and seated cable rows since the machine was out of commission. This is a common issue with most lifters — what to do when a machine is broken, or a piece of equipment is unavailable, or you're working out at an unfamiliar location? It can definitely throw new lifters a curve that is difficult to handle.

I guided her to try pull-ups and barbell bent-over rows. She could only do a couple of pull-ups so I had her do another half-dozen let-downs (or negative pull-ups). She did a great job considering she couldn't even remember the last time she had tried to do a pull-up. She noted how hard the pull-ups are — understatement of the day! Then I coached her through the barbell bent-over rows. She had a hard time understanding the position of the back (ramrod straight and close to parallel to the floor) but, after that, she worked at them real hard and did a great job.

So, here she was, a newbie who wasn't going to be able to do a couple of the exercises she had hoped to do during her precious time lifting. But she asked around, kept a good attitude, kept an open mind, and learned two seriously good exercises. There's a good lesson here for all of us.

My wife's lifting program

I was talking with my wife the other day about her lifting program that I designed for her. No, I'm not certified in any way as a personal trainer, but I know some things, and I know the issues she has with her body. Also, for whatever reason she didn't make any real progress with her previous personal trainer so what did we have to lose?

The program that I designed is highly influenced by New Rules of Lifting, New Rules of Lifting for Women (both by Schuler, Cosgrove (plus Forsythe on the second)), and Eric Cressey. As such, every day there is some kind of multi-joint, complex lift involving heavy weights. The adaptations I have made for her involve her bad knees (seriously in need of second surgeries on both joints) and her weak hand strength. To address the first we (at least for now) don't include lunges or deep squats but we do include Romanian deadlifts and limited depth squats. To address the second we include farmer's walks almost every day as well as other lifts that involve her holding suspended weights.

Nancy (that would be my lovely wife) was commenting both about how much she enjoys all of the back and core work, and about how different all of this is than what she has done before and what she has observed other ladies doing in the gym. She said that she hasn't ever done anything like the volume or weight we are doing in working her midsection — seated cable rows, wide-grip cable pulldowns, bent-over rows, push-ups (incline, for now), Pallof presses, planks, woodchops, reverse woodchops, and more.

In addition, she is doing these in different configurations, 3x15, 4x8, and 5x5. She had never done more than two sets of any exercise before and, further, had always done nearly a dozen different exercises in any one session. She's doing 5-7 exercises each session but doing them multiple times. She's also never done anything other than sets of 10-12 before. I'm trying to build strength, not muscle, so we're trying to get her body used to lifting heavier weights. This is going to take time, but she's in no rush. We'll just take the progress slow and steady like the turtle.

As to the second point about how she's doing stuff different than other ladies, just the other day we watched a lady do (I bet you can guess) triceps extensions, curls, and cable-pushdowns with little tiny weights. And this was while Nancy was supersetting wide-grip lat pulldowns and barbell bent-over rows. She pointed out how it just made sense to work the big muscles in her body and not the tiny auxiliary muscles if she wants to see any real change. Makes sense to me.

"There are no bad foods, just bad portions"

This is one of my favorite stupid diet-related bits of advice that is going around. Are you kidding me?

I heard this said this morning on the Today show by some diet "expert". Oh, how I hate that saying. It's such a counter-productive, feel-good, dieting-isn't-that-hard type of saying that gives people false hope. Let's think about this for a moment.

• Ho-hos?
• Chocolate chip pancakes?
• Cheese fries?

Yes, these are outrageous choices, but I routinely ate these (in vast quantities) a couple of years ago. While it is technically true that certain portion sizes of the above wouldn't be harmful, let me make two points:

• The portion size might be reasonably described as miniscule — maybe a quarter teaspoon of any of the above wouldn't be too harmful. But, and to my second point...
• Who could or would eat such small portion sizes? Can anyone honestly say that they could open a pack of Ho-hos and eat one tiny small bite and leave 1 and 15/16 Ho-hos in a bag to be eaten over the following 31 days? Go ahead and raise your hand. I'll wait.

I'm not even going to argue about hi-carb foods that I think are disastrous but that most people would eat without a second thought -- potatoes, rice, beans, bread, pasta. Just focusing on the above foods and the acceptable portion sizes it's pretty clear that the above guideline doesn't contain much information that would help the dieter reach his/her weight loss goal.

Or become truly healthy.

If you're serious about losing weight and/or achieving true health, then I recommend that you revise the above guideline to "There are lots of bad foods that I should avoid. I also need to watch my portions if I'm serious about losing weight."

It's your choice what you put in your mouth. Become an informed consumer. Decide what foods are appropriate for you on your diet and stick to it. Monitor your progress and revise your food choices and volumes as necessary. Be ever diligent. Continue for 100 years or until you die.

Managing my energy level

The last few days I have had trouble with my energy. I'm fairly sure this is linked to my new basketball habit. My body is a bit sore, but the main problem is that my energy level is just not where it should be. It feels like I did when I started lifting. I got through that by simply continuing to work through it and giving my body time to catch up. That's the strategy that I'm going to use this time. I'll give it a couple of weeks and then re-evaluate. I'll also be sure to eat enough every morning before and after my lifting and hoops so that I maintain my muscle.

I'll report back in a couple of weeks.

Persistence and consistently good decisions

A really nice article was posted today at Mark's Daily Apple entitled You're not going to change overnight. This article hit home with me because it squares so well with my situation a couple of years ago. I lost 35 lbs of fat in 5 months or so. How did I do this? Some magical diet? Some new exercise gizmo? No, and no. I did it by eating right (low carb, high fat and moderate protein), eating moderate portions (somewhere around 2000 calories daily), and weight lifting 4 days/week. And I did this consistently for 5 months. No slip-ups, just dedication to the cause.

Yes, I eat more than that now. A lot more. But I still lift 3-4 days/week (depending on my current program) and exercise another 1-3 days/week. I never looked for a short-cut when I was trying to lose fat. I knew it was going to be a long, hard process. I had taken years to put on the weight, why would I think that taking it off would be a quick affair? Every day I woke up and tried to make it through that day by making good decisions. I didn't worry about the previous day or the next day. I just focused on decisions I would make that day, and tried to focus on making that day the most effective it could be.

It wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard either. It just took a bit of persistence and consistently good decisions. And it paid off in the end.

Basketball post-mortem

Woke up this morning. Checked all my limbs and everything was in pretty good working order. My groin was a bit tight (especially near the front) and my ankles were still sore, but generally I was moving okay. Went through my usual warm up and lifting and all seems well. I was a bit more tired than usual and took longer to recover after lifting, but it wasn't anything serious.

So I guess this means that I'm going to keep trying this basketball thing and monitor my energy level and my lifting progress.

Playing basketball

The Huge in a Hurry program calls for lifting 3x/week. This might be good for some people, but it makes me nervous. I need to stay in a habit of going to the gym. I don't want to have the decision facing me when I get up "should I go to the gym this morning or shouldn't I?". Don't want it. I want to simply go to the gym. It's what's most comfortable for me. Maybe I can miss a day or two here or there due to other circumstances, but I generally want my plan of activities every day to include going to the gym.

So, like I said, this program calls for lifting 3x/week. I've been looking for what to do on those other days. Can't really lift because this program has full body workouts all three of those days. Not going to do treadmill or bosu-ball aerobics or spinning or whatever. Just not going to do it. Too boring and not the benefit that I'm looking for. So, what to do?

Well, on M/W/F a bunch of guys about my age (some younger, some older) play basketball in the gym from 6-7am or so. Then they come up to lift afterwards. They're all a good bunch of guys. I played a bit (rec & ed type stuff) and frequently shot on the hoop in our driveway when I was a kid, but I've had a hit-and-miss (mostly "hit") relationship with the sport as an adult. The last time I played hoops was about 8 years ago playing with a bunch of guys about my age; I got a concussion and was knocked out with an errant elbow. The previous time I had played hoops (about 5 years before that) I got a broken rib when taking a charge (knee driven up into my rib cage); not a good deal. Both of these soured my desire to play the sport so it is with some reluctance that I went down to the gym this morning.

Ended up having a lot of fun. The guys were a bit surprised to see me in the gym but they were nice to me. I'm more of a pass-first, get-the-rebound, set-the-pick kind of guy anyway so I don't tend to take too many shots away from the other guys. Played about 45 minutes before I had to leave to pick up my daughter from her early morning session of her softball tryouts.

It was quite a shock to my body. All of the muscles around my hip girdle are quite sore. Haven't had to stop and start and accelerate (other than lifting) in a long long time. If I can keep it up, I can imagine that this will be good for my body composition. Tomorrow is going to be interesting since I will be deadlifting. Doing those will tell me a lot about how my body can handle this activity. I don't want to take away from my 3x/week lifting, but this might be just the thing to keep me interested and engaged. We'll see.

Losing max strength

I haven't done heavy bench pressing for a couple of months. I'm not doing any serious tricep or chest work this week (or next) so I decided to get a few sets of heavy bench in this morning. I did a few reps at 90+bar just to warm up. Then I put another 50 on, so that was 185 lbs total. Since my max is 225 (tested back in December), I wasn't too worried about it. Well, maybe I should have been. I got a set of 3, then 2, then 1. I could probably have done more in the second and third set but I didn't have a spotter and didn't want to push it. But still. Hmmm.

I'm surprised. It's not like I'm weak or anything. And it's not like I'm worried about getting that strength back. But I'm still surprised at how heavy that weight felt in my arms. I'll just have to keep this in mind when I start to lift heavy again. I'm going to need to build a base up before I start pushing for a new PR.

Sets and reps or just total reps

I'm just starting to follow the programs in Chad Waterbury's Huge in a Hurry. I'm only on the second week of the "Get Ready" program, so I can't comment too much about the effectiveness of the program. (Though I will later.) But what I am going to comment on is emphasis on total reps done in varying "chunks" (my term) versus the usual sets and reps prescription.

In short: I like it.

Okay, you probably want a bit more details out of me.

Waterbury's method feels like it will enable faster progression or, at least, more fluid progression. Let me explain with an example. Right now, using the standard sets/reps specifications, I am using 2 70 lbs dumbbells on the incline chest press (that's not me!) when doing 5x5. But, problem is, I can't do 5x5. I can do 5, 4, and then I drop to 65 lbs for the last 3 sets of 5. That's not bad, but doing this I have been stuck at 70 for 6 months. I can do 5x5 of 65 lbs without much problem but I haven't been able to get even 2 sets of 5. Not good. I haven't been able to figure out how to progress.

Let's see how Waterbury's method would work. I am supposed to choose a weight that I can normally do from 4-6 times and get 25 reps in. That would be 70 lbs. So I do 4, and then 4, and then 3, and then 3 (that's 14 so far), and then a couple sets of 2, and then drop to 65 to finish up. That allowed me to do 18 reps at 70 which has simply got to allow me to progress faster than I would otherwise. I'm a big believer in stress making the body adapt, so this just feels right.

I'll report back on how this actually turns out, but I'm hopeful.

Duuuude,what were you doing?

Yeah, that's what she said to me. Funny.

I had just finished doing dips. I had a dip belt loaded up with 65 lbs and had done 25 total reps. It's not that this is a weird thing to do (in my opinion), but certainly I don't see anyone else at the rec center at that time of the morning doing dips with additional weight.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" Smiling, shaking her head. She's one of the ladies who does spinning in the next room a couple days a week. I see her and wave and smile every time we pass because she always has a smile for me. We've talked a couple of times but she's usually behind a glass wall or running on the treadmill when I see her so we don't talk too much. She usually only comes into the weight room to get a couple of light dumbbells. I haven't ever seen her use them so I don't know what she uses them for. But this time she was dressed to leave since she had finished her workout.

"No, not really. Just trying to do dips, make them a little harder than just my body weight." I explained how I use the dip belt instead of the chain that the rec center provides because at least it doesn't leave bruises on my hips. She wondered if it hurt my back. I said, no, the weight hangs from my hips and is actually fairly comfortable. I ran over to the dip station and showed her what I did. She just shook her head. "Wow, duuude..."

Fun conversation.

Introduction

I'm a 46 year old male in generally good health. In May 2007 I weighed 196lbs. I woke up one morning and decided that I simply was not satisfied with the state of my body and that I would listen to "experts" (whom I have done my best to identify) until my next birthday (April). I started lifting weights a couple times a week and cut my caloric intake. After that I really started watching what I was eating and moved to a 40/30/30 (carb/prot/fat) diet in July 2007 at 2000 calories per day. I determined through a variety of methods that 2400 cal was my maintenance level. I followed some New Rules of Lifting programs for about 4 months, lifting 4 days a week and doing interval training on another two days of the week. I completed the programs titled Break-in, Fat Loss I, Hypertrophy I, Fat Loss II, and Fat Loss III. In mid-November I started some fitness programs by Craig Ballantyne just to shake things up. I used those programs through the end of the year and went back to NRoL in January.

By September 2007 I got down to 181lbs; however, I got stuck at a plateau for a couple of months and I thought it might be my diet. I wasn't worried too much because I figured my body was adjusting to its new weight; further, I was lifting some pretty serious weights at the time so I'm sure that I was putting on some muscle at the same time. I'm now down to about 16% body fat (as determined by the charts in Protein Power) and 149 lbs lean body weight. On my pants I've dropped my waist from 38" to 33".

By the beginning of December 2007 I met my weight loss goals:

• Weight: 168.4
• Body fat %: 13.5%
• LBM: 145.7
• Waist: 33.0"
• Chest: 40.0"

I kept lifting throughout 2008. Finished working through New Rules of Lifting by August. Really an amazing introduction to lifting — I cannot recommend it highly enough. I then completed a couple of programs from Chad Waterbury's Muscle Revolution and loved the challenge they presented. By the end of 2008 my 1-rep maxs were the following:

• Bench: 225 lbs
• Squat: 365 lbs
• Deadlift: 405 lbs

I now weigh 180 lbs and am at 14-15% body fat (by my Tanita scale). I am fully committed to eating low carb. I eat mostly meat (beef, chicken, poultry, pork), eggs, nuts, cheese, green veggies, and dark chocolate (>80% cocoa). I also lift 3-4 times per week every morning for 30-60 minutes before I go to work. I've recently started helping my wife as she begins weight lifting. I have encouraged lots of people to lift weights as part of a healthier lifestyle.

This blog will contain my reflections on lifting, nutrition, and health as I read more and try to live the healthiest life I can.