More blathering...

I wanted to put this down somewhere. I was thinking about dropping it into a Word doc... but I've been posting here a lot over the past week or so & since this ties directly into my posted training sessions I decided to dump it here. I eventually plan on setting this blog up with a full profile... so that people can actually find it... or avoid it. Afterall, I want to be fair. Nobody wants to scare the children.

On to business.

I tried to go over my previous lifting logs. I had been doing the math of weight progressions, trying to project what I can expect or hope to attain within the first 90 days. That was painful. Honestly, I have to assume that this Gibbon could have done a better job tracking from one date to the next. It appears that on fully 1/3 of these training dates I didn't bother to log the year. Some don't have the month. One has virtually nothing... but it does has some illegible comments.

There are scriblings from 2003 & 2004.... which is odd because I don't even remember training during that period on that particular program. Then againm this was when I was working at the estate & I was training during part of that time... unitl my wrist gave out on me completely.

To be honest, I was almost as disappointed with this as I was when I realized that I'd erased 70% of the videotape of my last 2005 workout. Yes, the best one I'd ever had... IN MY LIFE!!! Wait! Didn't I say on to business? Darned ADD!

Okay. Here we go! I took the last sessions weights & in a moment of extreme conservatism I decided that my optimum weight increases would be 2.5 pounds per workout. At that moment I thought it was fairly realistic. Then I looked at the old log pages. BS he says! I was consistantly adding 5-pounds per training session every week. Now, to be proper, this was only training twice per week. But as I recall, these weight increases were coming fairly easy, even when I was approaching 225-pounds, which would have been another PR for me.

So where does that put me? It puts me here: If I calculate these increases at 5-pounds per session x 3 sessions per week x 12 (90-days or three months - roughly mid-May)[15 * 12 = 180 + 70 = 250]... Yeah. So that shakes out as follows:

Overhead Press @ 112.5 pounds
(The overhead presses are going to be less weight of an increase weekly. They'll be 2.5 or more likely only 1.25 pound per session.)

High Pulls @ 270 pounds
(My math wsa off when I originally wrote this. I thought that looked a bit light.)

Squats @ 250

Bent over rows @ 250

After looking at the logs I can say with sincerety that the squats are almost guanranteed to progress at 5-pounds per session. There are a few things that could stifle that: work intefering or simply not being able to add that much more than twice per week. Honestly, I could have been working the squats considerably harder the last time. As I posted on the ROundtable back then, I wasn't even really working that hard to get the weight up. I barely noticed the weight increases. I was able to maintian form & control.

So tentatively... I think we'll be driving for a 225-pounds squat by June rather than than September. It's hard to tell with the presses. It looks like I added 2.5 pounds a few times & made the reps but then it would be four or five days until I trained again. Presses are my weak point. I've always struggled with bench & overhead movements & excelled in the squat & deadlift. It's my tiny, child like arm structure dang it! I've got wrist like a 12-year old girl! So I suspect that adding 1.25 pounds per training session is likely to be my limit if I want to be able to make reps every session.

Then there's the issue of the high pulls these may or may not get adjusted. I'd like to be moving that up along with the squats... but it's a more complicated move. It still needs a lot of work. Ultimately, if the squats actually do get all the way up to 250,,, or even to 225 by June I don't think there's going to be a problem with any of the other lifts. In my experience, once I start approaching my body weight, things start goingnuts as far as strength gains & body composition changes. Something gets turned to 11!

I'm coming back from a lower point. I'm starting out with lighter weights. The deciding factor here is going to be consistancy! I have to make my training schedule & not skip workouts. I feel like I'm more prepared to plan & set goals this time that I ever have been in the past. I'm hoping that's true.

I should have added in here... that in the previous cycle, as I was only traning twice-per-week (sometimes not even that) that I effectively lost nearly two-dozen training sessions. At 5-pounds per week, that's 120-pounds not going on the bar. I ended that cycle at 212.5 pounds in the squat.