I've picked up the eating, and abandoned my previous approach in the hopes of increasing muscle mass a bit more rapidly. Not that I'm going to become a mass monster overnight, but the fact that I'm at the same body weight 4 weeks later is quite discouraging. I'm attempting to perform a "clean" bulk to the extent that I can - mostly whole foods, with a mix coming from protein (1+ g/lb per day), carbs and "good" fats (olive oil, nuts, etc.). We shall see how it works out. I do feel like I'm not as lean as I was before, so who knows.
Finally got 265 on breathing squats today. To say I was happy would be a vast understatement. I racked it after 5 reps on my first attempt, deciding I "didn't have it," then reminded myself that this was exactly the type of shit I'm trying to get away from. Then I also reminded myself, "it's only a little bit of pain. It goes away." The same shit I talked about last week. So, I got under the bar again, and away I went. The only real issue was that after I got to 15 without too much trouble, I started looking ahead to 275, and how great it was going to be after I accomplish that. The thing that had gotten me to 15 reps - focusing on each individual rep as it came - went out the window, and with it, I damn near failed the last rep or two. Sun Tzu has a quote about that type of thing in Art of War; I don't remember it exactly, but it's something about letting your guard down after a victory. Basically, don't count your chickens.
The rest of the workout was a bit mediocre in that I didn't come close to beating my reps on incline bench because I was so wiped, but I really didn't care. Upright rows and tricep pushdowns were being done with higher resistance, so I was just setting new numbers with them anyway.
Finally, a note on breathing squats. After perusing videos on YouTube of "breathing squats," it occurred to me that I'm the only one who's read the fucking book. Breathing squats are not just a set of 20 rep squats. It is performed with 2 deep breaths, then a 3rd (holding it during the descent, exhaling on the way up) between EVERY REP. As it says in the book (Super Squats by Randall Strossen), a good set should take 3-5 minutes. Note that I'm not shitting on people doing 20 rep squats - they're hard as hell, and good on people for doing them. But they're not breathing squats.
Breathing squats - 265 - 1x20
Incline bench - 155 - 12+3+3
Upright rows - 75 - 15+6+6
Gray band tricep pushdowns - 16+6+8
Face pulls 2.0 - 1x50
No comments:
Post a Comment