|D_J^B_J|: Thanks for the comments sport! I think the amount I'm eating and being consistent with it has been key to my progress. I think I'm right on the edge of eating too much, i.e. if I ate any more, it'd just go on as pure fat.
I try to go to bed around 10 - 10:30pm and never set an alarm clock to make sure I get as much sleep as possible. I usually wake around 1-2pm to go pee, and I pop downstairs for a mouthful of cottage cheese and a big glass of milk. Which means I usually end up waking yet again in the middle of the night to go pee again
. I usually wake between 6.30 and 7.30am, so that's about 8 interrupted hours I guess. I've not been getting to sleep that easily this week though and I've been tired during the day.
As for other stresses, I have a full time job, but it's pretty stress free because I never do any work
Seriously, it's a well paid office job, but they're planning on sending all our jobs to India in January and making us redundant, so none of us are doing much at the moment. It's alright for some, eh? But I also have a house that I'm renovating, so I spend time on that every evening and weekend, which means I don't really get a break from one week to the next (apart from when I go to work
). The extra work on the house obviously isn't affecting my progress though.
What I will say is that I put my weight training above everything else and fit everything else in around it. If it means stopping work on my house so I can go home to go to bed, then I'll drop my tools and go home. If it means being late for work because I'm working out, then I'll be late. If it means having all my colleagues bitching at me every day because of my smelly food... You get the picture
I'm setting PRs, so I'm happy.
I write too much
BW: I think each week my grip has only just been good enough and I'm always about to drop the bar as the 5th rep is going back to the floor. When I've used straps, it's been because I've found deads hard because of other reasons, e.g. gardening the night before, so all my muscles were weaker, not just my grip. I think chalk has definitely helped the past couple of weeks, so it's probably bought me some time. I can't imagine holding on to the bar next week without straps. I always feel as though I'm at the limit.
I hadn't even considered the 9 rep warmup being too heavy. Doing lighter warmups would mean spreading the sets out even more, and you're the one who didn't like spreading yours out
Besides, if I go lighter, the bar will get lower as the plates are smaller, although I guess it wouldn't matter too much as the weight would be more manageable. I might try 50kg next week, thanks.
Jim, I might appear patient, but most of the time I feel as though progress is painfully slow, especially with bench presses. But when I look at the increases in percentage terms, I realise I'm doing pretty good at the moment. I don't want to do anything that might compromise the gains like doing the odd single here and there. Like I said earlier, if I carry on adding 2.5kg to my deads each week, I ought to be doing 5 reps with three plates in four weeks time, which scares the hell out of me! At the moment, I can't imagine ever being able to lift that amount, never mind doing 5 reps.
My favourite exercise is turning out to be the military press. It's the lightest of all the lifts, but it's going up as fast as my bench in kg terms. I haven't looked at the percentages, but it must be pretty good.
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I don't actually have three plates yet, so it'd be one plate and all the shrapnel I have.
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