Chamber36's strength & fitness log

[Chamber36]

So I decided today I would start logging my strength gains and plans.

I'm not quite so strong yet.

Right now at 12 AM, about 24h after drinking half a bottle of whiskey, I can do 17 pushups and about 4 pull ups with good form.

Last time I benched it was 50kg's for sets of 10.

I'll write down the rest as I discover what's going on exactly with my body.

 

[Ronaldo7]

Quit the whiskey and sleep early. That's where you should start.

 

[Chamber36]

well I can bench 50kg's 20 times now pretty easily.

I bench 55x10 now.

Can also do a full leg raise while hanging from pull up bar for about 5 reps, and I can do windshield wipers.

My physique is improving constantly. Making all kinds of gains. Also brought home a HB7 for a ONS last weekend. So I am reaping some rewards already.

Gotta keep hittin the gym though.

I can do pushups for 5 sets of 20 sets, to make 100, if I take 5 mins rest in between, but my shoulders and wrists are a little messed up the next day if I don't warm up. I can do a 1 minute pull up isometric hold, or I can do about 7 pull ups before my shoulder starts hurting.

I'm listening to A Navy SEAL on how to improve pull ups.

According to him, from 5 sets or more it goes from strength training to endurance training. To increase endurance there are a number of methods.

There is the pyramid method. Going up from sets of 1 to 10 reps then back down from 10 to 1. If I start to fail at for example the 4th set, do them assisted, or negative, jumping etc. Do about 3 or 4 failure sets. If there's no way to go back down the pyramids, do supplemental exercises like dumbbell rows, bicep curls. Go from harder to easier exercises.

Also there is a superset method of doing 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, and 300 sit ups in a certain amount of sets, each set spanning 2 minutes. No rest in between sets.

There is also the pull-up push. You take the maximum amount of pull ups you can do, multiply that by 5, and do that every day for 10 days. You can mix up the sets and reps as long as it adds to that max amount. For example pyramid it up and back down, or do max rep sets. Or you can just do 5 equal sets.

On days you work out, add the 5xmax reps. On days you don't work out, just do it throughout the day.

There is also greasing the groove. Do about 2/3 of your max, 4-6 sets, 4-6 times a week.

There is also the Armstrong pull up method.

Also, according to science most strength is built during the eccentric portion of the reps.

 

[Chamber36]

So it's basically been a 14 months now since I started hitting the gym.

I have NOT been tracking my progress. I just know that I made some gains, then some losses, then some gains, then some losses again.

I had to quit working out for about 1 month or so just to focus on school. To be honest I'm not even sure that was a good idea. I might have been better off working out sometimes to clear my head.

I gained about 10 kg, which is about 22 lbs, mostly in the torso and in the legs I made muscle gains. I got bigger lats and chest now, though my arms don't look much bigger.

I can now easily do a skin the cat, and a wide grip pullup. Also, I cured my own back pain.

So let me log my last workout (It was supposed to be a chest/arms/shoulders workout):

Warmup:

Pyramiding up and down pushups, 1-10 and back down to 1. Equals 110 pushups. Between the sets I did som lateral dumbbell raises to warm up the shoulders.

Some hanging rows, just a few to flex the back.

Swinging from bar to bar a little.

Spent about 1 hour doing kettlebell training, all types of different experimentation. I notice it's good for the rotator cuffs and the lower lats.

Then Boxed against the punching bag for about 45 minutes.

I think I used to train much more disciplined when I just started working out.

 

[Chamber36]

Next time I might try training for time instead.

For example see how many pushups I can do in 1 minute, or see what weight of kettlebell I can swing around for 1 minute.