on-line journal thread...

[circusgirl]

The purpose of my posting a thread on myself is to motivate me to make it to EVERY SINGLE workout in my new 5-day split and do EVERY SET.

Today I did the last day of my 2-day split:

bench - 30kg, 3 sets of 6, last one was more like 5. Remember not to rack up 40kg next time without CHECKING I can lift it off my chest first - doh! Luckily someone else was there to help me out.

dumbell fly - 2 5lb dumbells. Dunno why this one is so much less than bench. 4 sets of 8.

Shoulder press - 4 sets of 8, 1st 2 sets 5lb dumbells, 2nd set 2 7.5lb dumbells. I need more shoulder exercises, got some from exrx.net.

Those wondering, the weights on the barbells are in kg but the dumbells are in lbs in my gym.

abs - weighted crunches. Didn't work these enough for my liking. Need to do a PROPER ab workout tomorrow. Cable machine was being hogged. grrrrr. 5 sets of 10 holding 10kg weight. Abs don't feel worked out at all, no burn.

biceps - alternating standing curls, preacher curls. 5lb dumbells in each hand, 3 sets of 8. Biceps hurt now. good.

triceps - tricep kickback, 5lb dumbell. 3 sets of 8. Damn, this one burns!

Tomorrow will do some back exercises and more abs. Lateral raise, back hypers, assisted pullup, bent over row. weighted crunches, bigger weight this time (20kg), hip raises and side bends. Too pussy to try the medicine ball workout. And we don't have a decline bench, the only thing missing from the gym.

New split -

Monday - chest/tris
Tuesday - shoulders/bis
Wednesday - back
Thursday - abs
Friday - legs

Mon-Fri 1 hour taekwondo plus 20 mins stretching. We'll see how I manage with this. Problem is tkd works my legs a helluva lot, which is why the leg day is last in the week - no tkd for 3 days after burning those quads...

 

[Mike P.T.]

Good luck hun. Only thing I would change is I would do Back the day before biceps and not vice versa, unless you don't want to prioritize the back. Reason being is that biceps are involved in pulling movements that are used in compound back movements. If you train biceps the day before which is the smaller muscle group you may not be able to sufficiently hit your back muscles the next day. On another note too, lateral raises are a deltoid exercise so you can add that to a shoulder exercise.

Overall looks good. What are your goals btw?

 

[circusgirl]

Thanks! Will change my split around.

Goals - one day compete as a powerlifter. In the immediate future, 1. squat bodyweight 2. bench bodyweight. And clean up my diet, progress on that is slow as I am a binger BUT it's improving bit by bit.

 

[Arioch]

Do you want actual advice from a powerlifting standpoint right now, or are you content with what you are doing?

 

[circusgirl]

Yes please Arioch! That would be cool!

 

[circusgirl]

Hey, I'm going to ask about this over on the powerlifting board.

 

[circusgirl]

Did first powerlifting split day.Max effort squat day. Got up to 60kg for my good morning 1 rep max! yay! me happy! Tomorrow s intervals and Thursday max effort bench day.

As I'm away this weekend I won't get a dynamic effort day in for either, so I'm going to repeat the first week next week with all 4 days. I plan on intervals twice a week, lifting 4 times a week, and some intervals on one of the bench days too.

 

[circusgirl]

so far so good...

Today was max effort squat/dl day. I am pleased with myself, I good morninged 60kg, whihc is 5kg more than last week. My lower back hurt though - I think I was rounding my back slightly coming back up. This might also explain why I managed 3 reps at 55, 1 at 60, and none at 62.5.... Next time I'll go up in 2.5 from 55, so I'll have a few hard 1 reps until 60kg, and pay more attention to form.I was kind of afraid of the weight though, like I would drop it on myself (unlikely seeing as I had set the safety bars in place to stop that happening).

Also did lots of weighted abs exercises, smoe leg raises (can't really to straight leg raises as I lack the ab strength, so I do bent leg raises), some killer sets of back hypers and leg press (don't have a glute ham raise machien in the gym and leg press seems to exercise the same muscles).

I'm enjoying this whole pwoerlifting training thing .

Managed to stick to a fairly low-carb (for me) and high protein diet today. All that MRP powder is helping...

 

[circusgirl]

jesus my lower back aches!!!!!! Worked out why - not QUITE enough of an arch yesterday... due to being nervous about being able to lift the weight, need more confidence, argh....

At least I won't do that again.

 

[circusgirl]

woohoo - benched 40kg today! well, nearly almost - I got someone to spot for me and he said I was about 2 fingers' pressure off the lift. I had managed 37.5 a minute or two before that. That's up 5kg on last time - beginner gains are starting to kick in...

Although I suspended lifting last week as the festival was on and my friends were here. Sothat's a gain of 5lb a week - about standard. It's tempting to want to lift huge amounts of weight right away but then I'd turn into a bozo who does 4 inches of range of movement heheh.

I think my bench technique needs a lot of work. I managed 3 reps at 35, so I'd imagine 1 rep should be ok for more sets. Noticed this yesterday as well - my 1-rep max was only 5kg over my 3-rep max. Although maybe this is normal. Anyway, my triceps hurt in a good way. I could barely do the last set of tricep exercises - after 6X10 lying extensions, 3X15 dumbell one arm press (I'm assuming balance is the key here, I used a light weight and concentrated on technique, rather than lifting the max - my arms tremble to and fro to much, I need stronger stabilisers, duh! that's obvious), the last one, push down machine, I did 2 sets of 10 on the lightest setting (20 lbs, both tris together) and could barely push open the door to the changing room afterwards! That's good, it means I pushed to the max. My chest isn't particularly stiff though, means theese exercises mainly concentrate on the tris and stabilisers for the moment I guess, seems like a good idea to me.

I'm getting the hand of tensing the body and driving the legs down during the bench movement. Now I need to get the hang of taking advantage of the stretch reflex, as for the moment I tend to wait too long on the way down (5 seconds or so). I'm also a bit shy of kiai-ing when lifting, I haven't seen many martial artists in there and I'm not sure how it would be received! Pity, I could lift more if I did, but maybe not with correct form.

My fingers are also stiff now - tired forearm muscles??? heheh.

2 hours of karate tomorrow (switched from tkd - any sparring in this club is self-defence oriented). I like karate. It's way more fun than the treadmill! Plus my technique on basic punches/blocks has improved aftr just one session, kicks the pants off the tkd instructor who has a school in the centre of the city here... and the location is better, same sports centre as the weights gym, so no extra fees.