A weighting game

[peterbirks]

I haven't written much about the training recently, partly because I'm sure that it would become tedious if I did so at length with any frequency, and partly because the progress has been slow and steady rather than exciting. But progress there has been.

We've actually given the dead lifts a rest for a short while - focusing instead on individual muscle groups and building up the strength in these. On Monday I broached the tall "pull-up" machine for the first time. Basically this is a very high machine that you can use either to push up your entire body weight when in a vertical position (think vertical push-ups with your feet dangling in the air at all times) or, if that's a bit girly for you, actually trying to pull yourself up from a vertical hanging position so that your elbows are at 90 degrees - rinse and repeat.

Relax, I didn't go for that. What we did was personal trainer Nick (henceforth PT Nick) 'pushed' me up to the 90 degree position, and then I tried to let myself back down to the vertical hanging position as slowly as possible. Then he pushed me back up again. We did just 2 x four reps of this, interrupted with a 30-second stint of me hanging on the handlebars and just trying for the smallest upward movement (little more than the hint of a shoulder shrug), repeated 10 times. This was a bit like that scene early on in Kill Bill when Uma Thurman is trying to will her toe to move. Just get a little bit of movement going, and eventually the full lift will come.

I hadn't realized until a couple of days later how much this Monday session hit my "lats" (those muscles at the side of your back that start low down on your ribs and move up diagonally past the side of the shoulder blades to the top of your arms) when they and my triceps were still hurting. For the first time I actually took a day off any training at all so that they could recover. A pity that it took until Thursday until I realized this was necessary.

That didn't stop me smashing three other personal bests this week. Just for my "warm-up" row I beat 4 minutes for 1000m on the rowing machine. Not sure that PT Nick was happy at me thrashing myself in a warm-up, but I recovered fairly fast, and I have to push hard for at least 600m on the machine to get the body temperature up.

Then on Wednesday, and perhaps unwisely, I went for it over 4km on the rowing machine and managed 17 min 37 sec. That was 10 seconds inside my previous personal best, and, when you consider I would have taken 20 minutes for the same distance about three months ago, it was pretty good. But that really exacerbated the strain on the aforementioned latissimus dorsi, and on Thursday I accepted that at my age, if I had really zapped a big muscle pair, it is best to take a day off to recover fully.

So, by today, I felt fine again, and I went for a personal best on the leg press as part of a quadriceps (front thigh muscles) routine. I'd never done more than 151kg on that before, but I got it up to five reps at 160kg and then a single rep at 169kg. Whoof!

So, all in all the training has gone well. And I'm beginning to say to myself "hmm, I don't remember seeing that muscle before" (curiously, this was the neck muscles, which I haven't been isolating at all!). There's a danger here that, if my weight creeps up a bit, I can use as an excuse "oh, it's extra muscle", when the chances are what it really is was that slice of honey on toasat that I had the previous night just before going to bed. Even if I should only be focusing on my waist line (down about 2.5 inches in three months, by the way), I can be fairly sure that there's a fair amount of fat that still needs to be disposed of, and that means less weight. No muscle that I put on at the moment should be counteracting the weight loss from eliminating excess fat, and I shouldn't be tempted to fool myself that it's otherwise.

Tomorrow and Sunday I try to do 8am sessions, and I might be strong enough to do some back muscle stuff again.

_________

Comments

Christ

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Don't, for christ's sake, tear a muscle. Or knacker your knee (I rather like that) or any other joint.

I was bloody awful at pull-ups even when I was rowing for the first Eight, at the age of dum de dum de dum de ok 23. Too much actual weight and a spectacular lack of upper-body strength.

Good lungs, though.

Jesus, two laps round the "black" circuit cost me an arm and a leg. (Luckily, I'd put a short on the CDS ahead of time, so I got both back).

And there's nothing quite like watching a gorgeous blonde bird accelerating past you while you're doing it. The dewy sweat! The tiny little natural blonde hairs just below the neck, where she doesn't really care!

The fact that she's running you into the ground, and she's only a provisional member of the University Second Eight.

Pant pant pant.

Take it easy, young Peter.

One more thing

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Publish that PhD, please.

I'm sick and tired of waiting.

[slowjoe.livejournal.com]

Nice work on the rowing, especially since rowing is easier the taller you are.

"Vertical pushups" are usually known as dips. Is there a machine with a kneeling platform attached to an adjustable counter-weight (aka "gravitron") in the gym?

Be careful with the leg press. You stop at the point where the knee is 90 degrees, which means that the strain on the knee is maximal.

The best way to build leg strength is full depth squats (like powerliifters), but it's hard to learn to do them right. If your knee travels forward, you can hit the tendons in the knees, so the personal training industry in the UK doesn't do them.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Yes, dips. I really ought to look up the names before writing. The two gyms that I use do have (different kinds of) adjustable counter-weights. Indeed I'd actually tried one of them out, just to see what kind of counter-weight I needed. PT Nick, however, prefers the "let down slowly" and "minimal move up" strategy, and I think that I do too. I also did a pyramid set-to-maximum on the lat pulldown, working on the theory that if I can pull down my own weight on that, I can't be far away from pulling myself up. (This theory may be totally false.) Anyhoo, got up to 56kg on that, after a few tought bits else where. The "strip back" to 42kg seemed like nothing, which is definitely progress.

I've been doing the leg-press for many a year -- it's always been one of my favourites. But I don't see why you say that you stop when the knee is at 90 degrees. It's possible to bend the knee deeper than that (and I do). We might be talking about different machines, though.

I've read online the debate about the "full-depth" squats, but I didn't know that the important thing was to stop the knee travelling forward. I think that we have been moving towards "deep squats", albeit at low weights (50kg-60kg, something like that). Not something I'd hacve the courage to try on my own, though, for the reasons that you mention.

Part of the problem is that most of the exercises that I do are quite difficult to keep to correct form (of course, this might be a strategy on the part of the trainer to keep himself in business!) and we do so many different ones that it's hard to keep the form in your head.

PJ

[slowjoe.livejournal.com]

I spent a while "acquiring" pullups in 2007. I did 3 circuits of 10-15 gravitron pullups, 10-15 gravitron dips, 10 squats (holding a broomstick overhead), 10 lunges each side, 10 situps, 10 back extension until I didn't need the gravitron. I started with 40kg of counter-weight on pullups/dips, and reduced the counterweight when I could do 3 sets of 15. 40kg was 6 holes in the machine, and it took me 2-3 months.

With regard to the "negative pullups", they have a reputation for being hard to recover from. Apparently, soreness comes from a loaded "eccentric contraction" (translated to english: muscles lengthening under weight, as opposed to "concentric", when the muscle shortens under load), which is why a rowing machine generally doesn't lead to soreness. Negative pullups are the opposite: a purely eccentric effort at a load the muscles couldn't handle concentricly.. One of the Crossfit mantras is that jumping pullups is the easiest way to seriously injure a newbie.

With regard to the leg press, I've seen gym inductions and PT session where the trainer says not to go beyond 90 degrees. I'm pretty sure it is for insurance rather than anatomical reasons. I started full squatting a couple of years ago (from never having touched a proper barbell before), and I haven't have any of the intermittent knee pain I had had since my teens since.

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Ow Fuck

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

If it's any encouragement: I just helped a mate back home from the pub today. (You don't know what's wrong with him. Suffice to say that his knees buckle and his lungs ain't up to much. Actually, I could bore for Jesus on the latter, given the way the NHS treated it, but whatever. Five days' tablets for suspected pneumonia? Not even fucking funny.)

Anyhoo, I basically had to cart Ade home via a taxi which obligingly drove over the grass. (He was tipped. Possibly not enough.)

And I basically had to give him a fireman's lift for the twenty yards to his front door.

I'd anticipated a bit of back pain. Back pain goes away.

My hips hurt like anything. Ade is a hefty bloke. Jesus, but whatever those friggin muscles around the hips are: they hurt like anything. I could barely even sit down afterwards.

This gym stuff for fifty year olds ... it's beginning to make more and more sense to me.

Mind you, if Dolton is all for it and it's nothing to do with cartoons, I do wonder a bit.

Re: Ow Fuck

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Well, from the way you describe it, it's at least one of the three gluteals (snazzily titled minimus, medius and maximus). It's possible that it was the "carting" beforehand, rather than the fireman's lift, that's causing the pain. I'd expect the fireman's lift to have more impact on your quadriceps at the front and side of the femur.

Re: Ow Fuck

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

I'd thought about that, although my medical ignorance is without bounds. Thinking a little more, it's probably the medius. A day later, it feels like rheumatism of the hips.

Interestingly (it says here) you can deal with this stuff by standard powerlifting exercise, which appears to be part of what you are doing. I think this is a little-advertised section of work-outs for the early-late-middle aged, which generally seem to concentrate on cosmetic rubbish. I may give it a go. Sleeping on hotel beds all year long gives one an incentive for these things.

A further incentive is that my grandfather (the one I never met and would have hated anyway) died of Bright's disease just before the NHS and dialysis kicked in. Consequently, although I am normally the reverse of a hypochondriac, I do go a bit doolally when I get a pain near the kidneys.

I was talking to my brother today (he's 6' 3", but that's OK, I like dwarves), and he gave me some very useful profession advice re cheap hotel rooms. (He is also prone to what I will generically call "back pain," too. It's a wonder, innit?) Here it is:

(1) Bring your own pillow. Not strictly to do with back pain; just comfort in general.
(2) Buy one of those portable mattress tops that you can roll up and stick in a rucksack or whatever. The "muscle memory" ones are the best, at about seventy quid, but even the cheapo ones that simply look like trickery and a decorative quilt pattern are actually a great help.

He hasn't had a twinge for two years now.

Re: Ow Fuck

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Oh, and me legs are fine. Me legs are eighteen years old still. Me knees are the knees of a fifty year old Linebacker, but that's prolonged transatlantic flying for you. Every morning I wake up and play inadvertent percussion on them when I get out of bed. (I have an eery feeling that I've mentioned this before.)

That 5km row was awesome, btw. I'm beginning to worry that you're getting way too enthusiastic, but anyhow it was still awesome. Thought about slowing the rate down and going for a half-marathon? I'd never dream of that on the road -- not even on a bicycle, really -- but I've done it on the river, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Possibly a bit boring on a rowing machine, however.

Re: Ow Fuck

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

I say "boring." I think if you could do it to that bit of Soylent Green where Edward G Robinson drifts off into the hereafter, it might just work.

Mention it to your personal trainer. It's a whole new commercial field. My cut would be reasonable (unlike the Director's, ho ho).

Re: Ow Fuck

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I don't think that 5km on the rowing machine is any comparison to 5km on the river, just as an open-road half-marathon is no comparison to one on the treadmill. I've occasionally pondered 10km, but never 20km. Perhaps one day.

The problem with the long-distance stuff is that, as I've written before, it can interfere with power and muscle development. So you have to time when you do it rather carefully (not within 24 hours subsequent to a tough weight-training session, for example).

PJ