Archives for general (page 3)

Time to get serious. As you all know, I will be lifting in the first ever virtual meet on Feb 9-11th, 2007. My lifts currently suck (pardon me), especially the bench which is just a teensie weensie bit, as in 0.5 kg/1 lbs, above my bodyweight of 104.5 kg/230 lbs. With that meet being scored by relative strength formula, I feel I am giving away too much by having all this extra lard with me on the platform. Some itsy bitsy leverage benefits aside, the spare tires don’t give much of a hand under the bar. Furthermore, I wouldn’t mind being liberated from my gut, however powerliftish it might be. Don’t think I need the fat anymore to look like I lift weights. Case closed, it’s gotta go!

The plan is as follows. I embarked on a cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD) 20 weeks out from the meet, on 17 September 2006 to be precise. I will be peaking on the same nine-week Extended Russian Routine I used before the one-man meet in August; this leaves me with eleven weeks of dieting at most, probably only ten as I need a week off before the meet. I could also do the first two weeks of the peaking cycle on the diet before switching to regular calories, but I’m not counting on that just yet. In practice, this means dieting up until the first week of December, then peaking until the first weekend of February and a week off before the meet.

To establish a baseline, I had my cholesterol checked at a local branch of the Finnish Heart Association before starting the diet. I was told I was a rare sight compared to the typical elderly patient with heart disease, but it was cheap and is the only place I know of which doesn’t require seeing a doctor first. After waiting half an hour with Rufus, the results came out as a total fasting cholesterol of 5.15 mmol/l broken up into 3.36 mmol/l of LDL (”bad”) cholesterol, 1.15 mmol/l of HDL (”good”) cholesterol and 1.41 mmol/l of Triglycerides. If we put Anthony Colpo aside for a second in order to blindly stare at the Finnish recommendations, we can see that my total cholesterol (<  5 mmol/l recommended) and LDL (< 3 mmol/l) are slightly elevated while Triglycerides (< 2mmol/l) and HDL (> 1 mmol/l) are where they should be. “Getting rid of a few kilos should solve that easily”, the nurse said. Last time I was on this diet, my total cholesterol increased, but the ratio of HDL to LDL improved markedly which is a good thing; going to be interesting to see how it goes this time around.

Finding someone proficient in wielding calipers to measure bodyfat was much harder. Finally, the front desk at Töölö Gym referred me to Kirsi Halme, a certified personal trainer from the Fitness Academy of Finland. I had to wait for a week due to her being on sick leave, but it was worth it. She promptly received me at 9am in a small room at the gym and with sure hands measured my biceps (19mm), triceps (15mm), subscapularis (25mm) and suprailiac (17mm) for a total of 72mm or 24.4% bodyfat (for fun, she also checked it electronically resulting in 23.5%). It took less than ten minutes and only put me back 7 euros. Seems like I am not only packing it in the form of spare tires, I also have quite a formidable coating on my back as evidenced by the subscapularis spot. And no, I didn’t have Rufus’s bodyfat checked.

Time for some math. 24.4% bodyfat at 104.5 kg/230 lbs means I carry 79 kg/174 lbs lean body mass (LBM) and 25.5 kg/56 lbs fat. The Body Mass Index (BMI) puts me at 31.2 and smacks an obesity stamp across my forehead. The absurdity of applying the BMI on weight trained individuals with their above average muscularity becomes obvious when we consider that in order to reach a “normal weight” of 20-25 BMI, I should weigh 67-84 kg/148-185 lbs at my height of 183 cm/6 feet. The lower end is 12 kg/26 lbs BELOW my lean body mass (-17% bodyfat?!) and the upper end would put me at 5.9% bodyfat, well below the recommended healthy range of 8-19%. If we consider 15-18% bodyfat to be normal, someone falling into this BMI bracket would be carrying 57-69 kg/126 lbs-152 lbs LBM. Given the average of 63 kg/139 lbs LBM, I would be carrying roughly 16 kg/35 lbs more muscle than the average normal weight man my height. Granted, this is a very sketchy picture at best, but it does give some indication of where I stand in the grand scheme of humanity.

If we presume eleven weeks of dieting and an average weekly fat loss of 0.7 kg/1.5 lbs per week, I would drop around 8 kg/17 lbs, i.e. down to 96.5 kg/213 lbs at 18% bodyfat assuming zero muscle mass loss (reality will bite). I could then easily shed about 2.5 kg/5.5 lbs more for the meet weigh-in by normal water weight manipulation, putting me at 95 kg/213 lbs for the meet when allowing for a realistic 1 kg/5 lbs weight gain during the peaking cycle. With a Wilks score of 236.4319 for my current PR total of 395 kg/869 lbs at 104.5 kg/230 lbs, I would need to get a total of about 347.5 kg/766 lbs for the same score at 95 kg/213 lbs. I have a hard time seeing my total plunge 47.5 kg/105 lbs, so, increasing relative strength would appear to be a given even when allowing for decreased weight on the bar. Furthermore, the peaking cycle is likely to restore at least some of my strength. As a point of reference, replicating my current total at 95 kg/230 lbs would amount to a Wilks score of 245.7011, a 9.2692 point gain. If I were to take the other route of adding strength instead of dropping weight, it would take a total of about 410 kg/904 lbs total at 104.5 kg/230 lbs to equal that, i.e. a 15 kg/33 lbs gain (say, an 145 kg/320 lbs squat, 110 kg/243 lbs bench and 155 kg/342 lbs deadlift). When push comes to shove, I would be happy with weighing in at no more than 96 kg/212 lbs and posting a Wilks score of at least 240, but the truth be told, in my dreams I am breaking the 400 kg/882 lbs RAW barrier. Long term, I want to start keeping my bodyfat between 15 and 18% so that I could easily be reasonable competitive at a meet, real or virtual, without having to diet extensively. Given my current LBM, this would mean a training weight of roughly 90-93 kg/198-205 lbs and competing at the upper end of the 90 kg/198 lbs weight class. Draconian as it may be, another diet is needed after the meet to put me down at 15% bodyfat. That’s long-term planning for you.

More detail on how I am setting up my dieting training program, a modified version of the Pure Power Mag 16-week Squat Routine, will appear shortly in the luminous guise of the first weekly summary in a looong while. Hold on to your hats if you have ‘em, a backblogging storm is brewing. If it wasn’t obvious, this entry should have appeared in September, at the time of press I am already at week 7 of dieting. Sheesh.

The blog has been slow of late, but there’s a lot of work going on in the background both relating to my powerlifting projects and other obligations. As you might recall, the intention was to have the virtual meet site up in September. As you can see from the banner, I have finished the general site design but there’s still a lot of content to be done including editing the video clarifying the meet rules. The meet is very much on, but you will have to wait a bit longer for the site. Then again, I think it will be worth the wait. Updates on my dieting, training and the recent visit up to Toffe’s Gym will appear over the next few days or so. Meanwhile, may I suggest a warm cup of Miso soup?

I was the last man to leave the gym on Sunday at midnight. Today, Monday morning, only a few hours later, word has it that the gym is suddenly closed with a sign posted on the gym door. There is a small announcement on the Finnish language version of the Metal homepage that translates loosely as follows:

Dear gym customers!

The gym is closed. The gym business has moved into the hands of another company which failed to reach a new rental agreement. The gym will shortly reopen in some capacity at a new location.

We regret this sudden change! We ask those customers who have paid in advance to contact us by e-mail so that we can arrange to reimburse the unused visits.

The location of the new METAL sport & wear store in the metropolitan area will be announced shortly!

Metal Gym

Looks like I need to find a new gym. No more reverse hypers, cambered bars… sigh.

No wonder Metal Gym closes at midnight… Thanks to Måns for revealing the dark truth to me, looking back at recent workouts, you can even see me, gasp!, squat on top of HHHHHIIIIMMMM!!! If the posts suddenly stop, I am probably screaming in the clutches of the Floor Press Zombie. Ssssh… what was that noise?

In my quest to find a core-centric training program with a suitable does of accessory work to address my weak points on the squat and bench, I remembered a squat routine in an old copy of Pure Power Mag that I acquired about a year ago. This one has a lot of competition squat work spiced with paused squats, front squats, quarter squats, lunges and step-ups (cycled, not all at once) and comes with suggestions for how to bake in the bench and deadlift work. My preliminary plan is to do at least the first seven weeks of it (the first cycle of the three cycles that comprises this program) and then likely continue with the second cycle of six weeks while skipping the final peaking cycle. That would carry me into December, after which it is time to start the final meet preparation cycle for the virtual meet on February 9th-11th (not sure on what day I will be lifting yet). This would also be a weight loss (hopefully as in fat loss) cycle as I will be on a cyclical ketogenic diet (very low-carb diet, high fat and protein for 5½ days in a row followed by a high-carb low-fat phase to rebuild glycogen stores and raise hormone levels). I lived on this for well over a year straight in my bodybuilding days, so I am quite familiar with how it works (for those of you who read Swedish, here’s a rather extensive walk-through of the diet that I wrote back in 1998). I’m not going into the diet nitty-gritties just yet, but suffice it to say that the workload and array of exercises should be plenty enough to deplete muscle glycogen before the weekend carb loading. I haven’t had time to think about it much yet, but I am tentatively thinking of just plainly using the same percentages as for the squat on the bench and, possibly, also the deadlift (if it’s not too much) with accessory work to focus on my weaknesses. I might need to adjust weights down a bit since it is likely that the weights will drop some while dieting (the goal is to increase relative strength, I can take a temporary hit in actual weights). I plan to begin the program and diet on Sunday evening. Still have to get my cholesterol and fat percentages (skin folds) taken to establish a baseline to compare progress against, but other than that, I am set.

Made a calculator for the squat routine, here’s how the cycle looks for me without any tweaks (kilograms, pounds). To get a better view of the squat progression you may want to view this version without the bench and deadlift clutter in there (kilograms, pounds). I’d appreciate any thoughts you may have on this, also let me know if you find any problems with the calculator.

You know how everybody always says the internet gives the small fish enough mojo to connect into one whopping Golden Horde with the power to transcend the traditional boundaries of time, order and space? The idea of staging an international raw meet with near simultaneous lifting venues around the world has been brewing in my head for at least a year now. I don’t know about you, but personally I feel this could give us bloggers the opportunity to be a bit hordish in the spirit of camaraderie and learning from each other. Besides, the idea is wickedly cool, isn’t it?

Here’s how I propose this will work. Every participant will take three attempts on the squat, bench and deadlift and capture them using any convenient equipment which can handle video files (such as a video enabled digital camera, a camcorder or even a mobile phone), much like I did last week, making sure that especially the depth of the squat and the bar touching on the bench are clearly visible. The footage is then submitted via the internet (I provide the server space) for judging. Final results will then be calculated based on one of the relative strength formulas (such as Wilks) taking bodyweight, age and gender into account. The rest, including the weigh-in, adherence to the equipment rules and drug-free status, falls back on personal old-school integrity. This meet is RAW in the sense of the 100% RAW Powerlifting Federation; the only equipment allowed is a belt. The technical rules (pdf) would be those of the 100% RAW Powerlifting Federation (or the IPF if more lifters feel comfortable with that), sans the signals from the judges of course (there must be a visible pause on the bench). Since most participants will not be blessed with qualified spotters, the use of power racks and similar safety devices are encouraged as long as they don’t affect the lift (if the bar touches the safety pins it gets red lighted). In the spirit of fairness, a walkout is required on the squat even if a monolift is used. Equipment rules would similarly be lax allowing any straight bar and bench to be used as long as they appear standard enough… and no, you don’t need expensive calibrated plates. The dress code does not require a singlet, but whatever you wear must be tight enough to allow for accurate judging (normal gym pants as opposed to, say, a toga or a sari) - one option would be to enforce bare knees and elbows, i.e. T-shirt and shorts. Chalk and ammonia capsules are OK. There’s no meet fees.

Since this is a bloggers’ meet, every participant is encouraged, but not necessarily required, to blog their meet preparations in a blog, journal, forum thread or a similar publically accessible medium on the internet, in whatever language. Previous blogging experience is not required, how far you want to go beyond just scribbling down your workouts is up to you. Everyone’s mileage will vary, but two months or earlier out from the meet would be a good time to start a blog (free blogs are available at a multitude of sites nowadays, such as Blogger; your favorite lifting forum might also allow journals). If this thing takes off, I will create a meet web page with links to all the blogs of the participants along with the nitty-gritties of participating. The idea is to encourage a positive atmosphere were participants learn from each other and motivate each other to good meet results.

After the meet, an edited meet video based on the submitted footage will be released for free download. Pulling all the different lifting environments together as a whole should be exiting watching even if the weights to topple Coan might not be there. No one will claim that the results are “true meet results” or that this is an alternative to traditional federation meets (do make sure that your federation allows participating if you are a competitive lifter). This is about lifting together and learning from it. Let’s leave the serious mask at home and blow our PRs away, for the fun of it!

To make it very clear, lifters of all experience and strength levels are warmly welcome to enter, novices and veterans alike. If there is a wide spectrum of strength levels, creating a few classes based on relative strength is always an option to ensure that everyone competes against lifters of a similar strength level. SO… is there any interest out there in participating in this? If so, please comment below and share whatever suggestions and thoughts you may have plus indicate when you would like the meet to happen (am tentatively thinking early 2007 to give everyone time to prepare) - also spread the word about this, the more the merrier (up to a point at least, if there’s more than thirty or so lifters we might need to limit the amount of participants). We also need at least one judge, preferably three, who should have at least some experience of powerlifting meets either as a competitor or spectator. Naturally, judges cannot lift (if there are categories, they cannot judge their category). If there is interest, this might well turn into an annual thing, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Anyone?

I already mentioned this in a comment, but as a general announcement the annual fall workout(s) at Toffe’s Gym will take place on September 8th-10th. If anyone is against the odds able to join Måns and me for a fun-filled weekend with outdoor lifting, sauna and copious amounts of good food, shoot me an e-mail. Also let me know if you require more weight than 300 kg/660 lbs so I can make arrangements.

Helsingin Sanomat, the leading newspaper in Finland, recently carried an interesting article on a city constructed outdoor gym in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. All the equipment is made of scrap metal gathered from here and there, but, to paraphrase the article, the view towards the sea is luxurious. As you can see from the attached picture, the lifting bars are made of iron rods with rusty car rims functioning as plates. While many of today’s top of the line rims weigh in at under 5 kg/11 lbs, older rims such as these weigh around 10 kg/22 lbs a piece or more. With three rims per side and a resonable bar weight estimate of 7 kg/15 lbs, my guess is that the guy in the picture is working with roughly 65 kg/143 lbs. One of the lifters interviewed for the piece states that exercising became something of a national pastime after the 2002 Soccer World Cup when Senegal beat their former colonial ruler France and, against all odds, advanced all the way to the quarterfinals before being sent home by Turkey. Indeed, this seaside gym buzzes with life in the evenings being mainly favored by young men from the nearby university. In sum, this is very very cool and something special as far as outdoor gyms go. That’s a dedicated bunch right there.
[ Source: Minna Nalbantoglu: Dakarilaisia opiskelijoita ei kiinnosta pyrkiä laittomasti Eurooppaan, Helsingin Sanomat, 27 June 2006 ]

On June 9th, Sanna, Rufus, dad, and yours truly drove the 460 kilometers/286 miles to the summer cottage. It was the first time Rufus had been in the car for longer than about half an hour, but he made it much better than we had expected and we all arrived happy with our ears intact. I had material reasons to be happy too since I had gotten four extra 20 kg/44 lbs plates for Toffe’s Gym bringing my total up to eight big wheels. They weren’t lonely in the trunk having 2.4 kg/5 lbs of whey protein, 2 kg/4 lbs of maltodextrin and 24 green tea energy drinks as travelling companions. The plan is to be at the summer cottage up until about the beginning of September interrupted only by a wedding and a huge gathering of my side of the family. It’s going to be a loooong family vacation and outdoor training season this year.

Maxing out may be hard on the central nervous system (CNS) and it will sometimes play with your head, but dropping down to singles above 60% of the 1RM is not precisely hard work. If you take a look back at my workouts, you will see that my total volume of training above 80% has been low, basically consisting of singles and the occasional heavy accessory work. At this time, I think there is lots to be gained by pushing up the volume and easing up on the singles for a while. Singles will improve neural efficiency and neuromuscular coordination, vital components of maximum strength, but is too heavy to increase hypertrophy and muscular strength. This is where accessory work comes into play in Westside thinking, but rarely have I been doing enough sets and reps to really give my muscles a run for whatever money they have in spite of periodic plans to crank up the assistance volume. Right now, my technique work is also in an unprecedented state: I am working with a radically new bar path and wider grip width in the bench press, am learning the sumo style of deadlifting and am getting my raw squat act together. Putting these two factors together, it makes a lot of sense to switch to a program that has me working all the three powerlifts several times weekly (technique) with a larger volume (hypertrophy, muscular strength) than now. After considering many options, I have settled for the Extended Russian Routine (calculator) after seeing it recommended by fellow Finnish raw lifters.

The Extended Russian Routine (aka Russian Extended Peaking Cycle) consists of three workouts a week for nine weeks: day 1 is heavy bench/light squat, day 2 heavy deadlift and day 3 heavy squat/light bench (note that some people prefer to squat first on day 1 in order to duplicate the competition lift order, but I prefer to follow those who focus on the heavy lift first while fresh). It’s a standard weekly rotation over seven days with one day of rest between workouts and two days of rest before starting over. The first four weeks drive up the volume from 6 sets of 3 reps to 6 sets of 6 reps (one more rep per set per week) with the weight remaining constant at 80%. After that, the volume is decreased by one set a week on the heavy lifts while the intensity is raised by 5% every week until everything culminates at a single with 105% in all three lifts. The most challenging week to me appears to be week 8 though, where you are asked to double your PR - make that and you should have 105% in the bag. The light lifts remain constant throughout the program at 6 sets of 2 reps at 80%, but the weights are liable to feel lighter as everything else is pushed through the roof. With no deload/lightened weeks in sight, this is a rough program that leaves little room for soreness and aches, although it’s OK to occassionally skimp on the light sets if needed. This is especially challenging as the sumo deadlift hits much the same muscles as the squat. If assistance work is done, it must be brief enough not to cut into the recovery between workouts.

There you have it. Here’s my cycle based on a projected 127.5 kg/281 lbs squat max, a bench max lightened to 97.5 kg/215 lbs to take the new technique into account and a current sumo deadlift max of 140 kg/308 lbs. Successful completion would mean reaching my deadlift goal, moving up to my old bench PR in the new tuck and flare style and finally transfering that 130 kg/286 lbs parallel box squat to a free squat while laying a solid muscular ground for added strength gains. Wish me luck.

	TUESDAY	THURSDAY	SATURDAY
1	BP: 6x3@77.5kg/171lbs (80%) SQ: 6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 6x3@112.5kg/248lb (80%)	SQ: 6x3@100kg/220lbs (80%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)
2	BP: 6x4@77.5kg/171lbs (80%) SQ: 6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 6x4@112.5kg/248lbs (80%)	SQ: 6x4@100kg/220lbs (80%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)
3	BP: 6x5@77.5kg/171lbs (80%) SQ: 6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 6x5@112.5kg/248lbs (80%)	SQ: 6x5@100kg/220lbs (80%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)
4	BP: 6x6@77.5kg/171lbs (80%) SQ: 6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 6x6@112.5kg/248lbs (80%)	SQ: 6x6@100kg/220lbs (80%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)
5	BP: 5x5@82.5kg/182lbs (85%) SQ: 6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 5x5@120kg/264lbs (85%)	SQ: 5x5@107.5kg/237lbs (85%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)
6	BP: 4x4x87.5kg/193lbs (90%) SQ:6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 4x4@127.5kg/281lbs (90%)	SQ: 4x4@115kg/253lbs (90%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)
7	BP: 3x3x92.5kg/204lbs (95%) SQ: 6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 3x3@135kg/297lbs (95%)	SQ: 3x3@120kg/264lbs (95%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)
8	BP: 2x2x97.5kg/215lbs (100%) SQ: 6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 2x2@142.5kg/314lbs (100%)	SQ: 2x2@127.5kg/281lbs (100%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)
9	BP: 1x1@102.5kg/226lbs (105%) SQ: 6x2@100kg/220lbs (80%)	DL: 1x1@150kg/330lbs (105%)	SQ: 1x1@132.5kg/292lbs (105%) BP: 6x2@77.5kg/171lbs (80%)

At the time of writing, I have just begun week 4. This blog is engaged in hot pursuit.