Workout Selfies: Weight Lifting Going Well
>> Tuesday, December 17, 2019
After getting injured in August, I started lifting more. A lot more. As I was a few weeks into growing my beard in mid-November (about exactly a month ago), I was feeling so good/egotistical at the end of a workout that I snapped a selfie in the Hamline locker room mirror:
I think this is the biggest my arms have been.
No full frontal, but here's some nips for you kids.
Here's the ultimate "dude compliment." An acquaintance from high school (who's been a Facebook friend for years) is about to be re-deployed overseas for 6 months and wants to work on building muscle. He wrote me noting that I was looking beefier and wondering what I do. I wrote him a long note. Long-story-short, here's what I've been doing lately:
Slower "supersets" of opposing muscle groups. So chest/back/chest/back/etc. And bicep/tricep/bicep/tricep/etc. In the past few years, usually 3-4 sets of each was a decent workout. In the last few months, I've been just doing more: usually (and regularly) 5 sets. (A "quick" day is 4 sets, and it's not uncommon to do 6 sets.) And I've been moving up in the weights I've been using.
It's been a simple combo of not being afraid to move heavier weights along with more time in the gym that has been adding some muscle. In the last few years, a decent upper body day was 40 minutes or so. Now it's an hour.
I usually alternate between the bench press for chest, and then some sort of rows for the back (dumbbell rows, machine rows, or cable rows).
Then I do lats and shoulders. I have a swimming injury with my shoulder, so I do some physical therapy exercises for 8 minutes as my shoulder routine. For my lats in the past, I've usually done normal cable pulldowns. But I've started doing a LOT more pull ups in the last few months. I've done more pull ups in the last 3 months than I've probably done in my lifetime before that. Seriously. (Every so often in the past, I'd do a set of pull ups. Maybe not even once/month. In the last few months, they started becoming nearly all I do for my lats. Thinking back to my last week of workouts, I think I did ONE set of cable pulldowns, and I've done 20 sets of pull ups!)
Finally, I end by alternating biceps and triceps. I have a forearm issue that makes "regular" curls a bit painful, so I do hammer curls for my biceps. And then cable pulldowns and/or a dumbbell over my head and/or body-weight dips between 2 benches for triceps.
So recently, I did:
- Bench: 135x8, 155x8, 155x8, 165x8, 135x12
- Back (machine row): 100x15, 115x15, 115x15, 100x15, 100x15
- (Alternating sets between bench and back)
- Pull ups x10, x8
- PT shoulder exercises
- Pull ups x10, x9, x8
- (Earlier pull ups are not QUITE to exhaustion, but the last few sets are. They get brutal.)
- Hammer curls: 30lb x36, 35lb x22, 35lb x24, 30lb x34, 30lb x30
- Tri cable pulldowns: 60x16, 60x15, 70x14, 70x14, 60x16
- (The hammer curls I do 1 arm at a time but alternating as I count: so ONE is left arm, TWO is right arm, THREE is left, FOUR is right... until I hit over 20 reps with 35 lbs or over 30 reps with 30 lbs)
As you've maybe noticed, I add weight throughout each muscle group, and then end with a slightly lighter set with slightly more reps. Generally.
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Lately, I've been lifting 3 days/week very regularly, and once/week (or once every-other week) I'll do something a bit more "circuit-style." I'll do something like (chest, back, lats, biceps, triceps) x 6. That's a totally different burn. I did that this last weekend, and it's great. I generally use more machines doing this because they're easier to hop around on.
When I did that circuit-style workout this past weekend, I did 52 pull ups, which might be a daily PR (I MAYBE did more a few years back when I did crossfit-like workouts in my garage, but I don't think so). I did rounds of 9, 8, 9, 9, 9, and 8 pull ups. (I can't do as many at a time with the circuit workouts - I move between the exercises a bit faster, and I'm never that rested.)
That same day, I focused on slightly lighter weight and higher reps, and I did exactly 200 bicep curls over those 6 rounds.
So if nothing else is going right (as I'm not swimming, biking, running, or stretching right now), at least I'm doing OK in the gym. If I have a day I have to miss a workout, I might consider coming back and trying to set a pull up PR. I think years ago (when I was about 15 lbs lighter), I could do 12 pull ups. I'm pretty sure I can break that now, but I'd have to try it to be certain. I'll report back if I do.
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