Video tour: Leg Day

The Marmot and I brought our wee little digital video recorder to the gym yesterday, for not-one-rep-max leg-day form-checking. It's helpful to review the video afterward; even though we watch each others' form carefully, some lifts, especially full-body lifts like dead lift and squat, are so complex it's hard to see everything. For instance, I noticed that my knees tend to cave inward just a teeny bit when doing dead lifts. Marmot mostly watches from the side, to be sure my back doesn't curve, so having the recording from different angles is super helpful. You can see that Mr. Marmot is much more agile than I am; I'm still learning to jump quickly, it's so much harder than it would seem!

The videos are none too attractive, especially since the temporary summer gym has no air conditioning and it was a muggy 80 degrees yesterday, but if you're ever curious what we mean when we say "one-handed farmer carry," you've got video examples. More below the jump!

Upper body day: Saturday, May 21

A routine but pleasant upper body day today. We're both making solid, steady progress with our bench presses and standing presses, but I feel like I'm stalling a bit with my pull ups. The summer gym we're attending is delightfully bare-bones, so there is no assisted pull-up machine. I think having some assistance at high reps was helping me build, so I'm trying to figure out how to work up from here.

Through the lifts, we were a tiny bit distracted: there was a meet at our gym this morning! Gigantic dudes in power-lifting suits were walking around everywhere, lifting warm-up weights that were more than I could ever dream of lifting and it was super inspiring...but it made me feel a little silly struggling as hard as I was to just press the bar when practicing my standing press. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Warm ups:
20 arm swings
20 scapular push ups
20 wall arm-raises

Pull ups:
Marmot: 16; 9; 6
Pancho: 5; 4; 3


Dumb bell bench press:
Marmot: 60lbs (per hand) x 15; 65lbs x 15; 65lbs x 8
Pancho: 35lbs (per hand) x 15; 35lbs x 12; 35lbs x 8


Cable row, with 6lb medicine ball Russian twists x 20 during rest:
Marmot: 100lbs x 15; 110lbs x 12; 110lbs x 8
Pancho: 60lbs x 15; 60lbs x 10; 60lbs x 10

Standing Press:
Marmot: 65lbs x 5; 75lbs x 5; 85lbs x 5 
Pancho: 45lbs x 5 (10 sec hold); 45lbs x 5 (10 sec hold); 45lbs x 4 (10 sec hold)

Leg Day Record-Breaking Bonanza!

Holy cow, y'all: something happened yesterday. Maybe we had rested enough; maybe watching this video of this dude's Ridiculously Diverse Athleticism inspired us to greatness; maybe we just happened to both be in upbeat enough moods that anything felt possible. Whatever helped the stars align in our favor, we had a killer leg routine at the gym last night.

Something to keep in mind when reading these numbers is that our 1 rep maxes were, of course, not tested at the end of a vigorous work-out; they were tested as stand-alone single lifts, so we were not at all fatigued. That we both came close to our 1RMs at the end of a challenging lift, and repped the weights, is a big deal. Also, The Marmot and I have been struggling with increasing our dead lifts for lack of grip strength. We both have felt like we can lift more with the strength we have in our hips and legs, but our hands fail--gravity wins, and the bar gets ripped out of our grip. This time, we both broke through our grip limits. I had never lifted 135lbs more than 5 times, and by the 5th I'm usually holding on with my fingertips and pure will power. We completely exploded our previous records when you consider the total number of reps.

I dead lifted more than I have ever lifted in my life. As I said: holy cow, y'all.

For comparison, I'll post our stats from one month ago, April 15, along side in gray, and our previous one-rep maxes in blue. Our lifts from yesterday will be in red.

How to Start

Last month I flew home to visit my mom, which is always a pleasure: she's a smart, thoughtful and funny lady, so our visits inevitably feel too short. We were both expecting a regular visit--some walks, some cooking, some Lady Gaga and/or Spice Girls blissing-out: standard stuff. What ended up happening surprised us both. After an afternoon running errands, she expressed frustration at her level of fatigue carrying bags while I was still springy, and that frustration was tied up in some bigger concerns about her body. I suggested (as I had fruitlessly in the past) that if she were interested I could put together a little home work-out routine for her. She said yes, and has been super enthusiastic ever since. I couldn't be more proud of her dedication! She went from a healthy but not terribly active 52 year old to someone who drops down in a clothing store to show off to her husband that she can hold plank position for a (very impressive) 30 seconds.

I know a lot of people have plans for bodily transformation, either losing weight, or gaining muscle, or improving in their sport. (A lot of folks don't, and are content in their lives and their bodies--right on! This is not aimed to make people feel like they should change, only to help if they already want to change.) I also know that those folks who have plans for bodily transformation struggle with starting. Starting taking care of your body takes hearing the right thing at the right point in your life. I happened to say something that struck a chord with my mom last month. I've tried to recall what I said, so that if someone stumbles upon this blog at that moment where they want to start, maybe my tiny bit of experience can be helpful.

Cooking Casualty & Upper Body Day

Pancho here, badly burned but unfazed! Sunday night the Marmot and I were doing our weekly Mega Food Prep, cooking a big pot of stew, boiling eggs, baking chicken breasts and roasting a nice acorn squash. I was, admittedly, a little frazzled when I opened the oven 3/4 to check on the squash; I pulled the rack out which pushed the oven door down all the way, the top of the super-hot oven door landing flat against my shin. Damn.

The Marmot thinks it looks like a flying eagle. I think it looks like, well, the top of the oven door. It's healing pretty well, but yesterday during our pull-ups the burned part of my shin kept hitting the front of the dip-bar and hurt so bad I cut my pull ups a bit short. Oh well; all's fair in love and lifting.

We lifted yesterday at the Great Equipment But Bad Air gym and oh my goodness I'd forgotten how great it is to be in a place where everyone takes lifting seriously. One large gentleman was dead-lifting 405lbs (that's four 45lb plates on each side)! It was inspiring, and we had a great lift.

Functionally Fit

Marmot here, I've decided to take some time to write about my workout ideals as a chance to more clearly articulate them to myself and to put them down as something to work toward or against as Pancho and I continue lifting.  I've already discussed specific weight lifting goals, but with some time to reflect and new information I thought I would elaborate on my goals a bit more. 

I have three major goals for working out: functional fitness; general physical strength; and bodily transformation.  These goals are obviously not mutually exclusive. Rather, the work involved in attaining them, and the presence of any one of them, implies the others. To be functionally fit necessitates being strong and vice versa.  To accomplish my intended bodily transformation must include working on general physical strength and provides functional fitness.  Lacking any one element makes the others harder to accomplish if not impossible.  Today I’m going to write about just one of these goals and in subsequent days I’ll post on the other two.  

Paleo: Sample Food Day

Daily Breakfast Medley:
This is what I have for breakfast every day. Some days I don't have berries, or I have regular bacon instead of Canadian bacon, or mashed sweet potatoes instead of mashed acorn squash, but this is pretty representative.
 

1 hardboiled egg (boiled en masse a dozen at a time,)
1 nitrate-free/uncured Canadian bacon (cooked en masse the night before, while soup was simmering, put in tupperware for easy morning assembly)
Roasted acorn squash (baked a few nights before) and frozen turnip greens, microwaved
A few blackberries
1 cup coffee
Total time to assemble breakfast: 3 minutes

First Lunch: Leftovers
 Homemade Butter Chicken (murgh makhani), from the night before, microwaved with some frozen turnip greens*, plus an apple

(Curry ingredients: chicken, curry paste, cumin, paprika, chili powder, coconut milk, 1/2 c greek yogurt, butter, vinegar, tomato paste, 4 L tomatoes, cinnamon)

 *I don't particularly love turnip greens, but they're so much cheaper than spinach that my little frugal heart can't say no

Second Lunch: Catch-as-Catch-Can

The day I remembered to photograph 2nd lunch, I had carrots, 1/2 an avocado, and some tuna salad (tuna, celery, mustard, a bit of olive oil). Other days it'll be 1/2 a chicken breast and a spinach salad with nuts, or whatever I can assemble from the fridge.
















Dinner: Chowder

We generally make 2 large Pots Of Something a week to have enough for leftover lunches, and to have something that takes long enough to cook that while it is simmering I can do some multitask cooking (like boiling eggs, frying bacon, baking squash or chicken breasts, etc). The night I remembered to take a photograph of dinner was Big Pot of Something night, and an experimental one at that: salmon chowder. It was a new recipe; not my favorite, but not bad either. (Ingredients: 1.5lbs of wild salmon, cubed; butter, onion, carrots, celery, broth; 28-oz can crushed tomato; thyme; 1/2 c coconut milk.)

Dessert

On Tuesday night this week, Mr. Marmot and I were feeling like a treat (and on only day two of our food test!).  I remembered this recipe for banana "ice cream" that I'd bookmarked earlier in the week, and thought we'd give it a go. We don't have a dish washer so convincing us to use the food processor is a nigh impossible task, and I was really impatient, so I changed the recipe a bit:

1) Cut up 3-4 bananas into a large freezer-safe container.
2) Mush them to hell with a fork.
3) Mix in 1/3 cup (ish) of coconunt milk into the mushy bananas with said mushing-fork until creamy-smooth
4) Freeze for as long as you can stand (we waited 1/2 hour) and eat. 

I cut up 3 bananas, assuming that would be plenty for leftover treats for the future, but it was so great we ate the whole thing. Delightful!

Gym Interruption

Disaster! We strong(ish) folks have found ourselves without a gym. The Marmot and I are members at the university gym where Mr Marmot is a grad student. We had known for months that the university would be closing the gym for the summer for renovations, but we were assured that the equipment would be moved to other spaces on campus for less-than-ideal but still available gym services. Not a day before the gym closed, we were informed that there are no "family plans" available for summer membership, so I wouldn't be able to attend. Just terrible!

The quick search for a replacement gym in our area has been depressing. Living in a large city, we are walking distance to a surprisingly large number of gyms, but none quite meet our needs. 4 gyms are cardio only, maybe with a cable machine or some dumb bells; two actually have a squat rack, but only one in a sea of weight machines (and each time we've walked past, the squat rack is occupied); and the last one was a full-on power gym where we were members for 2 years--4 squat racks! a whole area dedicated to dead lift! bumper plates galore!--but the gym was in a dingy basement with no air conditioning which gets swampy in the summer, and highly questionable air quality (visible mold, a door that opens to a parking garage with exhaust fumes billowing in). We were happy to move on to the university gym's cleanliness, but it looks like we might have to go back to dirty-but-great-equipment gym for the summer. At least I'll have my bumper plates to practice cleans!

One of the most frustrating things about changing gyms is changing equipment. We mostly lift with free weights, but there are a few "prehab" exercises that we do every time that were recommended by Mr Marmot's physical therapist that require a cable machine. Cable machines vary so wildly from machine to machine depending on maintenance--is the cable well oiled? Is the weight pulled up from a plastic-coated wire rope, or a thick inflexible rubber band? At the university gym, Mr Marmot can pull 200lbs in his cable row; yesterday, he could barely do 145lbs. It is frustrating to try to consistently mark progress when equipment can be so radically different.

In spite of the gym frustrations, we've gotten a few little workouts in. Below the jump are the last lower-body and upper-body days, including our first kettle bell lifts.

A quick note on kettle bells, now that we have gotten to use a proper weight (instead of our bocce ball experiment a few weeks ago): they are amazing! It was much more cardiovascularly difficult than I had anticipated, and as I was in my last 10 swings of each set I was definitely ready to be done. That said, once we left the gym I didn't feel noticeably sore or fatigued at all; I guess we're both just used to lifting a lot heavier than 20lbs. Still, it's a great exercise to add to the repertoire.

Food Experiment #3

Today marks Day 1 of our third Food Experiment. This doesn't have anything to do with putting together gross or extreme meals (we leave that to the dudes at Epic Meal Time); rather, the two of us have recently started committing to 3- or 4-week long restricted diets to see what we can learn. A brief history:

Upper body day: May 8

Excellent upper body day yesterday! We tried the (VERY challenging) L-sit for the first time, and I found a new appreciation for the overhead press. We've done overhead press once before, but this was the first time we built it in as a proper part of our routine. I can only press the bar a few times, but on the last set I hold the bar up as long as I can: it's such a visceral, powerful feeling, holding a heavy weight above your head. It was that primal love of holding heavy weights up in dead lifts that originally got me hooked on lifting; I think I've found a new favorite move. I also have a MUCH more grounded respect for the strength it takes to execute a clean and jerk; just holding the 45lb bar above my head yesterday for 10sec after my last set made my whole body shake, holding my abs and back and shoulders in place took every bit of strength I could muster.

I'm hooked.

Stats: Catching up

We've been a little slow marking our lift stats this week. Below the jump: upper body routine from May 1, and a killer lower-body day May 3.

A little quality-of-life note, the Marmot and I have been completely exhausted and ravenous this week. As a representative example, yesterday I was feeling brain-foggy and blank, which led to an accidental late afternoon nap. I woke up starving, so we ate a giant (delicious) meal, Bistec a lo Pobre (steak, eggs, plantains, beans).

We're both hungry all the time, deeply fatigued and utterly delighted with the pace of our strength gains.

Women, Strength and "Bulk"

I've been thinking a lot the past few weeks about women and lifting. As a lady committed to getting stronger by picking up heavy things and putting them down, this is a natural state of affairs. I'm sure this will be a recurring theme as I continue to think through these issues in my own life and in the lives of the women around me, and as I walk daily past the rows of women on treadmills and ellipticals on my way to the squat rack, the only XX-chromosome in the weight room 9 days out of 10.

One Rep Max

Last Friday, April 29, the Marmot and I were feeling bold: time to test our one rep maxes!

Our normal strength training routine calls for 3 sets of multiple reps of an exercise, between 5 and 15 repetitions depending on the regimen. A one rep max is exactly what it sounds like: the maximum amount of weight you can lift one time. We both tested our squat 1RMs, and I tried for a dead lift 1RM. I weigh 140lbs, and the Marmot has recently gained 5lbs, now at 165lbs.

Here is Mr Marmot, squatting a clean 225lbs:



I maxed out at 145lbs (and didn't go quite deep enough):



My dead lift max is 175lbs. My form isn't perfect, I need to keep my upper back and shoulders locked a little tighter which I think would correct the slight upper-back rounding, but 175!!



Neither of us are used to the panic/being-crushed feeling that goes along with such (relative to what we're used to) heavy weights on our backs when squatting, so our form could definitely use some tweaks of improvement. I think we're going to keep using the digital video recorder as a training tool, to check form when vocal cues aren't enough.