Catching up

 
Well, the Marmot and I have long neglected posting our stats and reflections on lifting, and we're going to try to get back in the swing of writing more regularly here. Was the last time really in July? Is it really already October? We have made a lot of changes to our routine, made a lot of mistakes, and learned quite a bit in our long silence.

1. The willy-nilly, different-every-time "routine" we were doing before wasn't doing us any favors. Our philosophy had been to keep trying new things, to keep challenging ourselves, use the equipment that was free (rather than, say, wait for the squat cage) and to push really hard every time. This often resulted in extreme muscular fatigue from over-training, which led to too much down time between lifting days, occasional over-training injuries and inconsistent results.
2. On Monday, August 29 we started the Starting Strength routine, as outlined here. We do Pendlay rows instead of cleans since my clean form is still frustratingly sloppy, and we include the weighted decline sit-ups and weighted back raises that are listed in the routine as "optional." The full routine takes about an hour and a half, Monday Wednesday Friday.
3. Our gains have been massive and consistent. I started with 3 sets of 95lb squat x 5 (which, to be fair, was too conservative a starting point) and am now at 135lbs (that's a full 45lb plate on either side of the bar!); my dead lift started at 115lbs, and now I'm at 175lbs; bench started at 65lbs, now at 80. Marmot has had similarly exponential growth: his squat started at 3 sets of 195lbs x 5, now he's at 250lbs. Dead lift started at 315lbs, now at 340lbs; bench started at 175lbs, now at 200lbs.
4. I failed a squat for the first time with 135lbs. Of all the lifts, squat has always been the most intimidating to fail: the weight is on your shoulders, and what happens if you can't stand back up? It's a pretty primal terror, feeling crushed by weight and unable to move. My failure was more mental than physical. I started thinking instead of moving, thinking about the weight, about how heavy it was, and suddenly on the way up out of a squat I stalled and fell. The safety pins in the squat rack caught the bar, and Marmot helped pull it back off of me, but it wasn't scary at all. I think it happened too fast for me to be anything but startled that I'd failed; it was more loud and embarrassing than scary. 
5. We have to eat a kind of disgusting amount of protein to make these gains. We are still eating paleo-ish (AKA, mostly just meat and vegetables and fruit, with some indulgent M&M and popcorn nights in the mix, and flexible rice and corn rules while eating out with pals). Eating the amount of protein we need (1g for every lb of bodyweight) by just cramming chicken breasts and eggs down our gullets gets old really fast, so we supplement on lift days with a protein powder we lovingly call choco-beef. It is...not as appetizing as whey protein, but Marmot is lactose intolerant and I try to avoid dairy as part of the paelo plan, so powdered beef it must be.
6. Mixing choco-beef into greek yogurt is really, really, really gross.
7. We have both gained weight. Marmot is 10lbs heavier, and I'm up 4. Given our strength gains and where clothes are fitting more tightly (shoulders/thighs rather than belly), I'm going to call that added muscle mass.
8. This new routine is a blast. Making real, consistent strength gains is extremely motivating. I feel a little different in my body; we never were very good at doing lower back lifts during our willy-nilly lift phases, so now with regular squats, deadlifts and rows my posture is MUCH more upright without thinking about it. The kind of tired we get is deep and full-body rather than localized lactic-acid burn, and I feel ready to go lift again after a day off. 
9. We still have had to deal with minor injuries. Marmot dropped a heavy weight on his toe and had to stay off his feet for a few days; I had aches in a knee because my bike seat was too low on my daily commute, and minor repetitive stress injury in my right palm from sewing and drawing for too many hours in a row. Still, these minor pauses are nothing compared with the chronic muscular imbalances we struggled against before.
10. Oh, one last thing: "warm ups." It literally is about getting your muscles warm. I didn't really get that before, until we noticed that lifting in the heat of summer was much easier (more flexible, more mobile) than when it started getting cooler. We do a pretty long warm up routine to get our muscles nice and toasty.

More soon, we promise!