shypht's Fitness Profile

shypht's Journal

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  Entering another week

  The joys of on-again-off-again working out. -- This month, I've decided to get back at the gym. I've been saying 'I should get back to working out..' for a few months now, but just recently my tune has changed from 'I should be working out' to 'I want to be working out.'. There was a few times where I had bought my gym bag into work with the intent of going during my lunch and for some reason not going, and then one day it clicked 'I WANT to go to the gym', and thus started my return back to the gym. My first week back, I was mostly going in over my lunch break at work to do cardio. My ramping up into gym-mode is frequently the same. Going during lunch for some cardio just to start building up the base, then switching to going before work for a week - but just sticking to cardio. This is to get my body used to waking up early enough to go into the gym. Usually the first week, I'm groggy, not very happy about it - and don't feel like I'm in a good state to be lifting weights. Then, usually near the end of that week / the start of the next week - I'm feeling good enough to start mixing weights into the routine. This time back at the gym, I'm deciding to try the StrongLifts program, and sticking as close to it as I can right now. In the past, my attitude towards weights has generally been 'Stick at X weight until it feels easy, then progress from there' - now my experience in doing that in the past, is my progress is really slow and my estimate of what was 'easy' vs 'not easy' is fairly subjective, and found myself not really pushing as hard as I could. When starting with StrongLifts, I didn't quite do an empty bar for every movement, as I have done squats / deadlifts / etc in the past, so I started off with an extra 20lbs for a few of the movements. I'm trying my best to stick with the 'increasing the weight by 5lbs each week, and if I fail on something 3x in a row, going to deload'. So far, I've been making solid gains with my squats, deadlifts and chest press. I'm now upto 95lbs on my squats, 95 on my deadlift, 85 on my chest press. I'm able to complete 5x5 on the Squats / Bench without fail, and the 1x5 with the Deadlifts without fail and feeling good in the process. The one that I am happiest about is my bench press. This has been a problem area for me for years, mostly due to some shoulder problems I've had in the past. In my recent bursts of working out, I've either completely ignored this, or gotten up to maybe 60lbs max while on a machine. Some physio-therapy, and some rehab later - and it's feeling much better, and I'm thrilled to be up to 85lbs on 5x5 without feeling any pain or discomfort in my right shoulder in the process. I think I will be able to keep progressing with these no problem for a few more workouts. The two that seem to be kicking my butt right now, are the overhead press, and the barbell row. I think I may have been a bit to eager on these at the start, and will benefit from de-loading back down to an empty barbell with them. Today, I couldn't even complete 1 rep of the row with proper form at 85lbs - so I downloaded to 65lbs for doing 5x5, but was finding it very difficult to maintain proper form. I think I may just need to suck up my pride, go all the way back down to an empty bar for this one and start building up from there. The one thing I am really enjoying about this though, is bumping things up by 5 each workout, even if it felt difficult on the current one. You get to see a bit of progress each week, and I am surprising myself at being able to handle that extra 5 pounds on most of the movements no problem. Instead of just beating a dead horse at the same-weight until it felt easy, pushing that extra bit of effort for the 5 more pounds is enjoyable. Going to try sticking to this program for at-least 10 weeks and see how it goes.

  Posted about 1 year ago by shypht

  
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  Hi!

  Thanks so much for the advise! I will def keep that in mind!

  Posted over 3 years ago by asha09