Here I Go Again

I’ve been thinking about new year’s resolutions for a few weeks now. Even though we’re now ten days in I still haven’t settled on any.

In the meantime, though, I have started another cycle of strength training. Yesterday was leg day, the focus of which – naturally – was squats. Ten sets. Five warm-ups: 20×45; 10×95; 10×135; 10×185 and 10×205. Five working sets: 10×225 across. Total weight moved: 20,250 pounds. Accessory work included 50 preliminary body weight squats and 5 knock-on sets each of quad extensions, glute/ham extensions and hamstring curls.

There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed full squat.

So says Rippetoe in Starting Strength. All of which sounds true to me, especially the part about central nervous system activity — I didn’t get much sleep for all the buzzing in my CNS last night (although that might also have been a result in part of working out late in the day and taking a lot of caffeine along with the B vitamins and amino acids in my workout drink).

In any event, the lack of quality REM sleep didn’t stop me from going back to the gym to get some more today — dead-lifts, in particular – an exercise that Rippetoe describes as

… more functional in that it’s very hard to imagine a more useful application of strength than picking heavy *h*t up off the ground.

Whatever the functionality of dead-lifts and the supposed superiority of squats in stimulating the CNS, it’s dead-lifts that generally kick the ass of my nervous system, and today was no exception

This afternoon, after 25 roman chair back extensions and 25 side extensions on each side, I did ten sets. Five warm-ups: 20×135, 10×185, 10×205, 10×225 and 10×225. Five working sets: 10×235, 10×235, 7×235, 7×235, 5×235. Total weight moved: 20,265 pounds. I might have gotten more but my grip was failing on the last three sets, preventing me from completing a full ten reps.

So I dead-lifted only about 15 pounds more than I squatted yesterday, but it was much more stressful. By the end, my forearms and hands were spasming and my lower back was twitching and I had a terrific headache for a few moments. It may have been the knock-on effect of doing deadlifts a day after having done squats and not having gotten enough rest, but it’s pretty consistent with my past experience. Next time, though, I’m breaking up squat and dead-lift days.

Finished off with 5 sets of pull-ups, 10 reps each, with a 45 pound offset – again because my grip was still shot from the dead-lifts; (still it’s obvious I’m going to have to work harder on pull-ups, as I wouldn’t have been able to do unassisted body-weight reps; it’s been too long since I did).

Looking forward to a good night’s sleep and a day off the iron tomorrow. Maybe just some serious cardio intervals. I’m carefully considering doing one or more of Lyle MacDonald’s Stubborn Fat Solution Protocols to get rid of the lower back quarter panel grab handles that are the only remaining subcutaneous fat deposits of any significance that I have and that have to go if I want to get down to 10%BF and/or have any sort of respectable V-taper