Michigan Muscle Boy

Onward

Well, the strike continues or maybe not, but I've decided to move on.  As a new faculty, I'm not on strike because I am in a weird gray zone, and the president of the union advised us all not to go on strike.  I'm also not picketing but have brought various sustenance to the picketers.  They're colleagues.  I've never been in a situation where I was on the opposite side from management.  It's a stressful line to tread, hence the last post.

I responded to comments on that post.  I really appreciate the support.

We've been doing a lot of workouts, and I have not been reporting on them too well.  Here's where we stand.  Right now, we are concluding a muscle definition phase after having started our metabolic diets.  We did the muscle definition phase to figure out how it worked before Nancy got hot on her competition.  We're doing one tomorrow, so I'll write up what it is like then.

Next week, we may begin a three week max strength period.  When we have done max strength in the past, the one thing I have remarked is the level of mental concentration it takes.  I wonder if now is the time to do it. 

Diane, a reader who commented on the last post, notes that she has done some figure competitions and is interested in following Nancy's progress in her preparation for the next bodybuilding competition (here and here).  Diane, I highly recommend looking at Serious Strength Training.  For female bodybuilders, they focus a lot on max strength and muscle definition.  We will do more hypertrophy than they recommend, probably all of October, November, and December.  In our most recent podcast, Nancy and I discuss some of her training goals.

On to Mixed Training

We're heading into a combination of max strength and hypertrophy training.  The goals of this cycle are to increase strength, not necessarily size.  We're going to do that by starting to mix in some max strength work.  The first week is really done at hypertrophy levels.

Last Day of Light Chest

As I've been saying, the second round of light in this program is not light.  It's kind of nice to see progress though.  Seventy percent of 1RM used to be really hard to maintain.  Now, I can pretty much maintain it for four sets of ten with 60 seconds rest.

Here's yesterday's workout in weight/repsXsets format with target percent of 1RM in parentheses:

• Incline flye (70%): 30/10X4
• Bench (70%): 135/10X4
• Nautilus shoulder press (70%): 110/10X3; 95/10X1
• Dumbbell side lateral (60%): 12/10X4
• Dumbbell shrugs (70%): 50/10X4
• Seated calf (70%): 110/10X4
• Reverse Free Motion Curl (70%): 50/10X2; 60/10X2

Light Squat Day 3

Nancy and I were remarking today about the fact that we were squatting two to three days per week.  More exercises went up to 70% today.  Next week's medium effort will be like the hard week we had last week.  We seem to be holding up.

Here's the workout.  We did 60 seconds rest (the hypertrophy reset period).  Stats are in weight/repsXsets notation.  Target percent of 1RM is in parentheses.

• squat (70%):  165/10X4
• Free Motion Leg Curl (65%):  25/7X4
• Smith lunge (70%): 123/10X4
• T-bar narrow grip (70%): 105/10X4
• lumbar extensions: 12X4
• BOSU crunch: 12X4
• Decline skull crushers (70%): 70/10X4

Women, Hypertrophy, and Weight Gain

Nancy and I continue our discussion of how much weight women should gain as they attempt to build muscle mass.  Since that podcast, we have found some interesting academic research that I summarize in the show notes linked above.  The bottom line is that women seem to make fewer muscle gains than men for a given exercise program but can still make substantial gains.  We have some numbers on how much now.

I think we need a squat program

Nancy and I completed our 1RM measurements.  You can watch our chronicle of events over at Muscle Ventures.  We talk about our strategy for measuring 1RMs and then show ourselves doing them.

I don't think we got down far enough on the squats, as yo can see in the picture of Nancy at the left.

My major takeaway from the 1RM exercise is that we have to work on both strength and technique.

Our periodization program over the summer

So, The Big Girl has posted about our adventures with 1RMs and Chris D. is asking about how long we will spend in each phase.  Well, periodization programs are broken into macro and micro cycles.  Micro cycles are usually just a week's worth of training.  Macro cycles are usually 4 to 6 weeks focusing on things like hypertrophy or power.

Our macro cycle strategy takes some explaining.  As I mentioned before, we're doing a program we found in Planet Muscle and we're supplementing that with Serious Strength Training.  This is very much a learn as we go adventure, so we're open to advice.  Here are our macro cycles for the summer:

• June 5 – July 2:  Hypertrophy
• July 3 – July 30:  Power & Strength
• July 31 – August 6: Active Rest
• August 7 – October 1:  Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy really focuses on making your muscles bigger by breaking them down and letting them rebuild.  Hypertrophy is a consideration for bodybuilders who are very looks oriented.  It is also a consideration as you get older and your rate  of muscle mass loss accelerates.  Power & Strength focuses on building muscle strength as well as explosive power.  Active rest is really just giving your body a break while doing whole body strength workouts.

It seems what makes sense during this hypertrophy phase is to come back to exercises that will help us get more acclimated to our 1RM benchmark exercises.  Now, that we are getting a slightly better handle on 1RM, we should be more efficient at measuring them.  What I am specifically excited about in all of this is our focus on measurement.  Also, by benchmarking standard exercises, we'll be more in touch with the majority of lifting bloggers who all seem to be into power and strength.

Chris Dorr had a point about those 1RMs

Chris Dorr suggested this morning that trying to do 5 1RM measurements in one sitting would be a lot.  Well, he was right.  We managed two:  bench and deadlift.  We're going to do squat tomorrow.  Then, we're calling it a day on these.

Ralfe Sean also proved prophetic.  Nancy and I have not been pushing the 1RMs, and it shows in our numbers, particularly the bench.  Due to shoulder issues, I had not done a bench press in a while.  The thing I found was that it was difficult to get power off the bench.  I only did 180.  I could probably do more in a close grip 1RM.

Deadlifts were a somewhat better story.  I stopped at 220, but I thought I could get a lot more.  It's just that I started too low (180).  On that one, I have back fears.

So, it seems the task we have set ourselves is to focus on improving on these basic exercises.  We'll see how things measure up in a month or so.  Here's our 1RMs:

• Bud
  • Bench:  180
  • Deadlift:  220
• Nancy
  • Bench: 120
  • Deadlift:  125

1RM Periodization Madness

So, we're going to do our 1RM measurements tomorrow (Tuesday) as we start our periodization program.  I received a nice bit of advice on my last post on this topic.  First, as Chris D. points out, you can pretty much do 1RM on any exercise but some would be silly.  Second, you can approximate the 1RM based on what you can do at higher RMs as Ralph Shaw informed me, and one of my reference books, Serious Strength Training by Bompa and company, even includes a reference table for doing this.  Perhaps more important was Ralph's point was that you improve on what you train for.  We'll we're following the 1RM wonder Bompa now, and we're going to give this a shot and see where it leads.

So, now we've decided to do all of our 1RMs tomorrow.  We're going to train together Tuesday and Wendesday this week (maybe Friday).  It seemed we should just try to get it over with to have a performance benchmark to measure against.  I'm wondering if this is our smartest move as we want to do five (Nancy's wildly ambitious), and it seems warm-up and recovery are key.  Here are our 1RM exercises:

• Bench press
• Squat
• Deadlift
• T-bar row
• DB shoulder press

If you drop a note on the blog before 1:15 tomorrow, you can save us from ourselves.  Otherwise, you can read my report tomorrow.

Weight Lifting Periodization Training

The Big Girl and I have generated a new podcast on our upcoming periodization training program.  Our podcast notes contain a lot of links to relevant resources and some discussion of the details.  Suffice it to say here that I think the big benefit will be the addition of variety.  In particular, we will be adding stuff we have never done before, like various powerlifting speed moves. 

I suspect we'll turn this one into a series, maybe periodization training 2006.  We're doing short podcasts.  Folks we've talked to locally seem to have picked up on the story aspect of our series on the last month before Nancy's bodybuilding competition.  Food for thought.  Probably makes sense to turn this into a series.