5-8

DB Incline Bench
50x12
60x10
60x10
60x10

Chin Up
+45x4
+35x3
+25x4
BWx8
(This was probably a bad choice to go with such heavy weights to start. Although it is cool to do chin ups with a plate around your waist.)

Inverted Row
BWx10
BWx10
BWx8

Superset with Bench
185x8
185x7
185x5

DB Pullover
60x10
60x10
60x10

Superset with DB Lat Raise
15x10
15x10
15x10

Skullcrusher
65x10
65x10
65x10

Superset with DB Rear Raise
15x7
10x10
10x10

5-4

Sick today, but worked out anyway... Read somewhere that it was good for you to sweat a bit when you're sick...

Box Squat
225x3
215x4
215x4
210x6

Speed Deadlift
175x9x2

Walking Lunge DB
60x6/leg
50x8/leg
50x8/leg

Reverse Crunch
3x15
Plank
3x30sec.

Trying some high-frequency training stuff too... working on bicep and forearm. Basically I'm going to start doing this (probably plus a little bit of weight) each day of the week for around a month to build some strength. I'm hoping it will help me deal with the big dumbbells a bit...
EZ Curl
65x12
Reverse Curl
55x10

5-1

Speed Bench
10x3x135lbs. (From one of Eric Cressey's Maximum Strength workouts. We're working on bar speed through the lift)
Close grip bench
185x6
185x6
185x6
185x5
One Arm DB Row
90x5
95x5
90x5
90x5
Inverted Row
3x10xBW
Scapular Push Up
3x15
EZ Bicep Curl
55x10
65x8
65x7
Roman Chair Sit Up
3x15xBW

4-28

Circuit day
4 times through, 15 reps each:

Push Up
Reverse Lunge from Deficit
Roman Chair Sit Up
DB Fly
Bulgarian Split Squat
Reverse Curl
DB Row

4-27

Legs today
Squats
185x6
225x6
225x6
225x6

Still missing some explosion on the way back up on the squats... hope I can remedy that.

Rack Pull
225x6

Then decided just to do deads....
245x6
275x5
295x4
Then Jim maxed at 330, I got pissed it was more than mine and threw on 350... Did it, then Jim did it too. Good joooooorb, Jim!

4-26 - Castle Crashers, Bacon Explosion, New Plants

Bench Press
185x7
205x5
205x5
205x4
4x4 Chin Up (BW+30lbs.)
3x8 Suspended Inverted Row Superset with
3x6 Dumbbell Bench (with my new 90lbs. dumbbells.... pretty heavy, but doable)
3x8 Dumbbell Row (this was sort of stupid... did 90's, then 60's because I didn't think I was using good tech., then did 105 on the EZ Curl) superset with
3x10 Dumbbell Shrug (90lbs. dumbbells)
Finished up with some curls, kickbacks, reverse crunches and planks.

I downloaded this sweet new game on XBox arcade called Castle Crashers. You can play up to 4 players and it sort of has that Golden Axe feel from the arcades in the 90s. It's got some fun medieval trance music going on throughout the gameplay, and there's a role-playing element to it with character customization that's pretty cool..

Looking forward to the Alumni game this weekend. We're going to attempt the Bacon Explosion Sunday morning... We'll probably do the oven recipe though, but it looks delicious!

Bri and I also went over to the Franciscan Monestary by my house to buy some vegetables and herbs for the extra space in the yard. Who knows how this will work out, but from their limited selection (we went on Sunday of the weekend sale) we picked up some little herb that smelled like bacon (can't remember the name, but it's not one you eat), Parsley, two spaghetti squash plants, and a pumpkin plant. We'll see how all that goes... The vegetables should be interesting with the dog wanting to dig up the yard...

4-23

Legs today... We did a circuit 4-21 that included two sets of 20 minutes:

Push up
Pull Up
Roman Chair Sit Up
Inverted Row
Lunge
Rear Delt Raise (I don't really know what this thing is called)

Reverse Lunge from deficit
Back Ext
Skull Crusher
Bicep Curl
Single Leg Romanian Deadlift
Med Ball V-Ups

Todays workout looked like this:

Box Squat 5x4 (I did 195 for 4 sets and 205 for the last... First time doing box squats...)
Speed Deadlift 10x3 (all reps were fast and done with 165lbs.)
Bulgarian Split Squat 4x6 (50lbs. DB's in each hand)
Reverse Crunch 3x15
Plank 3x30sec.

And ended with a round of disc golf on campus...

Lifting Breakdowns

I found this on www.t-nation.com in one of their articles. It's supposed to be a breakdown of where a well-balanced lifter should be. It definitely makes me seem a little out-of-proportion. Here are the percentages:

Deadlift — 100%
Back squat — 71.4 %
Bench press and pull-up — 55.6 %
Front squat and close-grip bench press — 50 %
Hang clean — 45 %
Dumbbell bench press (two dumbbell total) and one-arm row (two dumbbell total) — 43 %
Push press, jerk, and dumbbell incline bench press (two dumbbell total) — 40 %
Dumbbell overhead press (two dumbbell total) — 32.5 %
Hammer curl (two dumbbell total) — 31.5 %
Dumbbell curl (two dumbbell total), barbell curl, and dumbbell overhead triceps extension (one dumbbell) — 30 %
Bulgarian squat (weighted) — 27.5 %
Lunge (weighted), split squat (weighted), and press-down — 25 %
E-Z bar skull crusher — 24 %
Dumbbell skull crusher (two dumbbell total), preacher curl, and concentration curl (two dumbbell total) — 22 %
Seated calf raise and pec fly (two dumbbell total) — 20 %
Single-leg Romanian deadlift (one dumbbell) and standing calf raise (one dumbbell) — 13 %

So, basically, based on my deadlift, the lifts should be:
Deads - 325
Back Squat - 232
Bench and Pull - 180

Based on Squat, they should be:
Deads - 370
Back Squat - 265
Bench and Pull - 206

Based on Bench:
Deads - 450
Back Squat - 320
Bench and Pull - 250

Damn, my legs suck. I should've linked the article in, maybe I'll find it again later. You should check your numbers and see what you come up with. I guess my ideal plan would be to get to the numbers based on my bench!

4-20

Maxed on squat and deadlift today... Here are the numbers:

Stills
- 325lbs. Squat
- 315lbs. Deadlift

Alan
- 265lbs. Squat
- 325lbs. Deadlift

Like I said... need some work on the squats, but we're posting somewhat better numbers than we expected.

4-19

Before I go into today, I'll just mention that we did a nice, short, 23-mile ride yesterday at Sligo. It went pretty well, but I need to be able to finish a short ride like that a little stronger.

Today we decided to max out a few lifts. Bench and 3RM on Chin-up.

I pushed 250lbs. on the bench and pulled BW+60lbs. 3 times on my chin-ups.
Stills did 200lbs. and 15lbs, a good start. Hopefully I'll be able to post better numbers for both of us in a month or so.

We did a quick workout afterwards:
Shrugs
10x155lbs.
10x175lbs.
10x175lbs.
Superset with Inverted Row
3x10xBW

Then, Prone Trap Raise
3x10x10

DB Shoulder Press
3x6x50lbs.

Close-Grip Bench
3x8x145lbs.

DB Hammer Curl (Turning palm flat on negative portion of lift)
8x35lbs
2x10x25lbs. (I thought I picked up the 30's for the first set, so I dropped to 25's for the second! WHoops!)
Superset with Roman Chair Sit Up w/6lbs Med Ball
3x12

It went ok today. I was a little tired, so I think my workout might have reflected that a bit... We'll max our leg lifts tomorrow and see how that goes.

4-16

Good workout yesterday... Did lower body (Going to start posting weight so I can keep track of it).

Warmed up with 3x15 40lbs. DB Swings and 3x10 Step up into reverse lunge w/body weight - superset
Back Squats (I said I need a lot of improvement, but feel free to laugh a bit if you need to...)
8x135lbs
8x185lbs.
6x205lbs.
5x205lbs.
5x205lbs.

Deadlift (first time doing these as part of a regular workout, sort of had to dial it in)
8x115lbs.
8x165lbs.
8x195lbs.
6x215lbs.

Walking Lunge (60lbs.) and Back Ext. (25lbs.) - Superset
Suspension Leg Curl and Roman Chair Sit up - Superset

Then I was wondering about 3RM in Chin up so I had to try it with the 45lbs. plate... Pulled off 6 reps with BW+45lbs.!

And we're done! Hoping to start pushing a little more weight in the next few weeks...

In other news, I've been pretty much on target in The Bigger Dance so far. 2 surprises for me: Jessica Simpson somehow pulls off an upset against Beyonce and Penelope Cruz (I have her in my final 4!) barely squeaks by Anne Hathaway, 32-31.

Most of the first round has been blowouts so far, but I feel like I have a few more losses coming... I did pick Erin Andrews over Bar Refaeli after all...

4-14 Circuits

Stills, Frodo, and I did a pair of 20 minute circuits for some cardio yesterday:

Warm-up:
3x20 dumbbell or kettlebell swings

#1
Reverse Lunge from deficit
Sit up on Roman Chair
Good Morning
DB Row
Med Ball taps
DB Lateral Raise

#2
Step up and reverse lunge
Back Ext
EZ Curl Pullover
Floor Wipers
Suspension Push Ups
DB Front Raise

Yup, pretty sweaty, good stuff....

The end of Easter Weekend (Post #100!)

So, the weekend ends... It was a ridiculously long weekend of Halo 3, Capstone research/writing, and working out...

I'm now sitting at 20 pages on my paper (if you count the 2 attachments I'm at 26), and I need to have 25-30 to be done with it. There are still some small details to finish up, but I'm feeling pretty good about where I stand right now. I should have it in the mail and to my prof. by April 22.

Stills got back from vacation earlier enough for one more workout:

Bench Press 3x10
Chin Up 5x5-6 w/10lbs. extra
Inverted Row and Single Arm DB Bench - Superset
Single Arm Shoulder Press and DB Fly - Superset
Reverse Curl and Plate Drill (call it what you want, moving a plate around your head...) - Superset
DB Kickbacks and Curl - Superset

I felt pretty good about the workout, but I still feel like I should be doing some more weight on the bench. I did sets of 10x185, 5x205 (and then repped out 4 more with a few seconds in between each) and 5x195 because I was pretty much spent from the 2nd set. I'm wondering if I should stick with sets of 4-6 or if I should drop the weight some and keep with the longer sets... I'll have to think on that a bit, but it probably doesn't help that I'm only doing 50lbs with the DB bench stuff. It's definitely too light for me, but bigger dumbbells are so damn expensive!

Ah well, circuits tomorrow and lower body again on Thursday.

Legs 4-11

Kyle came to participate today... It's good to have someone drop by to keep me motivated. Here's the workout:

Squats 3x10
Leg Curl on Suspension 3x10 and Bulgarian Split Squat 3x10 - Superset
Reverse lunge from deficit 3x10 and Back Ext. 3x10 - Superset
One arm DB Clean (no press because of ceiling!) 3x10 and DB Swing 3x10 - Superset

Quick workout, but it felt pretty good. Got a good sweat out of the cleans and swings...

I'm a little embarrassed to mention the weight I'm squatting at this point, but I've been slacking on my legs... My summer goals include doing reps at or above my one-rep max on bench (currently 250lbs.). Hopefully I can push that to at least 250 if not 275lbs for 3x10 by the end of summer.

Nice glass of chocolate milk as a finisher! Now back to this capstone paper I'm working on...

Workout/Rehab time

Now that Ultimate season is basically over with/slowing down, it's time to start hitting the weights a little harder and time to let my left heel and right shin repair themselves (unconfirmed, but I think the shin might be a stress fracture... it's kept me up a few nights since our last tournament).

I was a little hesitant to mention that I'm doing my second circuit workout of this week, but I heard some information yesterday that made me feel better about not being 100% over the soreness from last weekend. I would only feel guilty because I should start hitting the legs harder now that I'm not prepping for a tournament every weekend. Anyway, I was told that I played 135 of our 161 points this weekend! Now I don't feel so bad about walking around like an old man...

Anyway, I just hooked up some new weight equipment... I've been hearing about this TRX stuff for a while and I figured I could do something cheaper in my basement gym, so I went to Home Depot and bought 2 lengths of chain, a couple carabiners (to adjust the lengths), and 2 short lengths of hose for handles and created my own suspension system. I'm pretty excited because it means I can add that to the workouts for an added boost to the core.

So here's the circuit for today:
Reverse lunge from deficit (basically, reverse lunge with your front leg elevated)
Back Extension
V-Ups w/Med. Ball
Stiff Leg Deadlift w/Shrug
Close grip bench press
Bulgarian Single leg Split Squat
Inverted Row (on the chains)
Kettlebell Swing
Push Ups alternating hands on a medicine ball

I think we'll probably go for 25-30 minutes with 10 reps at each exercise... I think Jim's joining me today, so maybe I'll think of a second set to punish him with once we're done with this one.... hmmmmmmmm.....