Fitness Checkin

[KJbushway]

I only maxed out once, and that was at the end of the class. Those numbers up there are my max. That day, I couldn't literally feel my arms, I tried to do a simple easy push-up and I couldn't bend my arm.

[John O.]

RoJoHen wrote:

---

Do you try to max out every time you lift?

Not really, no, I only deliberately max out once a week, usually on Saturday - although sometimes I choose to make Saturday my extra rest day instead. I'll just like pick 2 muscles - say biceps and quads, or chest and upper back, or something, and max out in order to generate benchmarks, that way I can see if I'm plateauing or what.

Sometimes I end up with new maxes during the week but it's not a deliberate "I'm going to max out today". It just comes about as a result of a "push to your personal limit, not a number you wrote on a page" philosophy. It just depends on how I'm lifting and how hard it feels. I suppose that in reality, my maxes increase artificially quickly sometimes if I don't have a spotter one week so my "max" is really only as hard as I can max out while still being safe, whereas the next week I have a spotter so in addition to the gains I may have made since the previous week, there's some portion of additional effort I'm able to put directly into the push rather than the balance and so it gets artificially inflated a bit. I'm sure there's also fluctuations based on sleep, nutrition, etc.

Usually the way I end up generating a new max is simply that on my final set, whether it's 3rd or 4th, I will increase by a larger increment of weight than I did on the 1st-to-2nd set, and sometimes that increment might push me up to a larger weight and I'll do it to burnout.

Today I pushed my 2-hand curl max to 170 simply because I am home for the holidays and even though I did arms yesterday, the cable stack on my regular gym only goes to 150 and I managed to (not so safetly) get it to 165 by putting a 10 and 5 on the plate key. But the gym in my hometown where I went today must have a newer or larger version of the same Icarian machine because it goes up to 200, not 150, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and try 170.

i also got an opportunity to use the ankle weights I used to love (the gym I went to today is actually the gym I went to for about a year and a half before I moved to graduate school so I know it). Anyway I used ankle weights back in the day quite a bit - on leg raises, pullups, box jumps, etc - but my new gym doesn't have them. They have a belt w/ chain but I don't understand how anybody uses that for pullups, it crushes my crotch against the chain and digs into my lower back w/ the edge of the weight belt, it's insanely uncomfortable. Since I used to train as a Marine, I always placed a lot of emphasis on pullup counts and I found that going from doing large numbers of pullups to doing weighted pullups (got up to doing about 6 with 100 lbs or about 15 with 60lbs) generatd quite a bit more size in my lats and shoulders than just doing like half a dozen sets of 20 or 22 unweighted - AND it pushed my unweighted max pullups to around 35, WAY higher than the 20-22 I was able to do back in the MC days.

[RoJoHen]

Pullups are awesome. I really need to get back in the habit of doing them again. Seriously, I was in such awesome shape a year ago. I don't know what happened.

[KJbushway]

^ I have trouble with those. I can easily do push-ups, but my wrists are such that it prevents me from doing the real amount I can, plus my arms are never in the same position.

[RoJoHen]

Deadlifts today! I feel like vomiting. That means I did them right, right?

[KJbushway]

I love dead lifts, I could go really heavy on those.

[RoJoHen]

I love them, too. I've just been slacking lately. I used to do them once a week and built myself up to do them really heavy, but it's been a long time since I made them a regular part of my routine that they totally kicked my ass today.

[KJbushway]

I do manual labor, lifting heavy things with my back instead of my knees. Like lifting 80lb tv striaght up. So when I started dead lift, I was already really good at it.

[RoJoHen]

Unless you're doing them stiff-legged, you should still be using your legs to do deadlifts.

[KJbushway]

right. I am doing stiff legged now becuase I am using dumb bells.
But before I eventaully learned to use my knees when dead lifting.

[John O.]

I have not done deadlift in quite some time but quick question - your knees are supposed to remain locked out aren't they? You're generating lift with your hamstrings, glutes and stability in your lower back right? I have seen a handful of people at the gym deadlifting and some are, to various degrees, bending their knees on the up stroke. I always thought you were supposed to remain locked out at the knee.

I love pullups - with 4 or 5 different grips you can accomplish a stellar entire upper body workout. Some gyms have assisted pullup machines that reduce the amount of your body weight you have to lift on the 'pull' to help a person get to the point of being able to do 1. When I first started training for the Marine Corps PFT, I remember the training curve for pullups being very steep. It took me about a month to go from doing 1 to 3, but then only about another 6 weeks to go from 3 to 17 or so.

Then, once again, it took another awhile, i'd say 2 months or so, to get from 17 to 20. I had to do 7 or 8 sets of 12, pushing up to 7 sets of 16, a day, to get up to 20. I plateaued at 20 for awhile until I started doing crossfit, then I managed to break to 22-23. Then I was stuck there until I picked up the weighted pullup training, after about 6mo of that, I got as high as 35. I lost that though when I changed gyms and lost the ankle weights.

[RoJoHen]

There are different kinds of deadlifts. A traditional deadlift has you starting in a squated position with the weight on the floor. You then push up with your legs until they are straight and you slightly thrust your hips forward until you are standing straight up.

Stiff-Legged Deadlifts are another kind of deadlift where you keep your knees locked the whole time.

[RoJoHen]

Much as I expected, I was exhausted all day today from my deadlifts yesterday. Even so, I went to the gym tonight after work and did shoulders and triceps.

[Shatnertage]

Since getting my weight bench, I've been doing four sets of ten for my presses. For years, I've been three sets of ten.

What do you guys do? And does it matter? I did bench/decline/incline today, and I was really feeling it.

[Roger Wilco]

Shatnertage wrote:

---

What do you guys do? And does it matter? I did bench/decline/incline today, and I was really feeling it.

I never do more than 8 reps per set on anything except abs exercises.

@anyone who knows stuff: is there any benefit to using an double overhand grip rather than over/under on deadlifts? For me the limiting factor on deadlifts is grip strength (I'm at 100kg 8x4sets at the moment) and what I usually do is start with over/over grip because it's more difficult and then switch to over/under when my hands give in but I have no idea if there's any benefit to doing that instead of just going with over/under immediately and maybe increasing the weight a little more.