Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Is this thing on?

Ok folks I'm back. Sorry about the lag, but you probably weren't here reading any way.
Over the break I finished another cycle of 5/3/1.
Here are the numbers:
New Pr's all around:
Military: 6 at 155
Deadlift: 9 at 395
Bench: 8 at 215
I've slowly built up my 1 arm row to sets of 12 at 90 lbs, and I'm generally feeling strong.
The bad news is I've picked up some fatness. Too much fatness to be honest. I'm sitting in the upper 220s which is a bit much on a 5'10" frame.
Not a problem. Tighten up the diet, and add a little more metcon (my conditioning is terrible right now) and the weight will come off. I'm going to keep riding the 5/3/1 wagon to keep my strength, but am going to dial back the assistance work to keep from burning out. Upper body days I'll add 3-4 sets of rows, lower body days will be 2 sets of 5 of the exercise for the day.
Food changes:
no more lunches out.
smaller dinner portions.
desserts on the weekend will be reduced to fruit and greek yogurt.
more water.
That should cover it.

I should say this is not a "new years resolution" or some b.s. This is me taking a month (December) to work on hypertrophy: eat whatever I want, lift with more volume, and condition with less. Monitoring my body weight and performance, and deciding that it's time to dial things back. I'm going to do this for a month and see where I am. Further decisions will be made from there.
New years resolutions don't work because people make binary resolutions (on or off), and once they have a minor setback the resolution is "broken" and they go running for the fridge/smokes/booze/clown car/whatever. Make decisions, not resolutions. Try different methods, and see if you get improvement, that way you don't "fail" you just "proved that method doesn't work for you." The latter leads to a healthy mindset, you can do it you just have to figure out the best way. The former leads trying and failing over and over, which leads to depression.
Decide (resolve if you must) to fix problems in your life, but try as many methods as it takes. Don't fixate on the method, focus on your goal, and you'll get there.


Mahalo

2 comments:

Jesse said...

It appears that me, you, and CES are all in the same boat...

J.B. said...

It happens. I saw it coming and just went with it, did more training focused on adding muscle mass and let the chips fall... mmmm chips.