Protein time!

Marmot here, writing again after a long hiatus.

Today I'm going talk a bit more about the changes to our diet and how it has effected our workout, then I'm going to write out our most recent workout.

The picture to the left is what 25 grams of chicken looks like.  To function well, we need about .5 grams of protein for each pound of lean body weight.  Looking at a woman with 18% body fat (roughly the average for women in this country) at 140lbs, that means she needs 57.4g of protein a day, which more than two times the chicken to the left  For people who are completely sedentary they could probably do with less--I've read various places, something like 30g a day if you really don't move.  But, lets say you want to be healthy, or even stronger...that's a different story.  

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!

On the Utility of Form Check Videos

It has been ungodly hot here in the city for the past week, and our gym has no air conditioning! We've been 2 or 3 times since last posting (a busy week kept the Marmot and I from moving much at all) and each time we go, I am convinced that I have never been as sweaty before in my life. Yesterday the heat index was around 112, and I would reckon the gym was in the (relatively cool) high-90s.

We brought our little digital video recorder to check form; I've finally been able to consistently get the bar up to rack position and full lock-out for my clean & jerk form, but I know I'm far from "good form" (even if "not failing every other time" feels like a huge improvement). Videos below the jump:

Stats: Upper body & Clean/Jerk

We're a little behind in marking our stats here. We've had a great maintenance upper body day early in the week, and an off-routine but ultimately exciting leg day on Wednesday. In spite of re-injuring my lower back on my third dead lift set (with perfect form too--I guess I wasn't all the way healed?), I powered through and did 4 sets of clean & jerk. Luckily the particular movement involved in cleans didn't trigger my back pain, so it felt safe. I think I'm getting the hang of it a little more (which you wouldn't know from my bruised collar bone); I can finally feel why something is wrong if something is wrong. My big problem for months has been feeling like I'm doing the same move each time, but with wildly different consequences. Now I can feel "Oh, I think I jumped too early" or "Hm, need to work on getting my elbows out more." So that's a huge improvement!

I also had a minor "non-scale victory" in the weight-loss/body-confidence department. I walked home after the leg day in our sweltering gym without my shirt on, just my (very conservative) sports bra and shorts. I think this is the first time my belly has seen sunlight since I was toddling. High fives all around!

Rolling in the Clean & Jerk

clean & jerk, mid-jump

So we were reminded today of the major reason we left our current temporary-summer-gym the first time: no air conditioning.

Our gym is in a basement and is blessed with neither fresh nor cool air, which is good for feeling limber (Marmot and I were much more flexible at the beginning of our warm-ups than usual) but not so good for doing much of anything else. It's humid and hot outside, a swampy 95, and the gym was maybe in the mid-80s. Yikes. The only sunny side was a new radio station: instead of "angry but melodic suburban dude music," they switched to the "dance dance gaga pop!" station which is a much more motivating sound track for lifting, for us at least.

Heat aside, we had a thrillingly successful leg day. I didn't go in with any minor injuries to throw me off, and I kept my lifts hard but not too-hard to keep from re-injuring my lower back. Everything went better than expected! We started with 5x5 squats, which was much harder than usual in the heat, and dead lifts were solid if not record-breaking. To work on my lower back strength we tried barbell hip thrusts (no weight, just the bar) which I've read is an excellent secondary exercise to strengthen glutes & lower back. I liked it a lot but it irritated Marmot's old hip injury so we might leave it by the side for now and try something different next time.

The best, though, was last. By the time we'd finished our hip thrusts we were both grossly soaked and sweaty, but we were on a roll and wanted to keep rolling. We loaded a bar with 5lb bumper plates and did 4 sets of 5 reps of clean & jerk. I am still trying to get the form down (hence the very light weight) and have to really, really concentrate before each lift. It's a lot to think about: you lift from the ground to mid-thigh like a dead lift, then you explosively jump and pop your hips forward to bounce the bar out and up to your shoulders (without pulling with your arms) while you squat a bit to get under the weight, swinging your elbows forward to create a nice bunchy deltoid for the bar to rest on; then, with the bar racked on your shoulders, you jump again to push the bar above your head. I'm absolutely terrible at learning gross motor movements, and this is a very complex move. My first set was iffy with a lot of false starts (just a dead, just a dead, a dead and an incomplete jump, a dead a jump and the bar is too far from my shoulders, etc) but after that I got my form down a little better. I still can't coordinate my body to pop my hips at the right moment, but I think with more practice I'll get it.

There's nothing quite like lifting. I know I've said it before, and I also know that I'm still very much a novice and haven't experienced many other forms of athleticism, but there's one particular moment of letting go that is unlike anything else I've experienced. Just before the lift I position myself in my form and am all in my head. With squats, I've got my hands in position, I've got my heels firm in the floor and my toes positioned at the angle I know works for my knees, and I feel the bar on my traps and then stand to hold the weight and think about that squat: you've got to hold your back strong, you've got to go deep, goddamn the bar is heavy, I hope I can get back up. With dead lift, I put my feet under the bar, get my hands in position, stretch my back and then tighten my body down into lifting position: you've got to hold your body tight, you've got to pick it up, I hope it's not too heavy, you've got to pick it up, hold the bar with all your life, pull it, just pull already. With cleans, I stand over the weight, get my feet and hands in position, and think about that jump: you've got to jump, jump at the right moment, hold it strong, jump up not forward, don't look up just jump. The thrilling moment for me is in that brief moment of letting go: I stop thinking, I stop worrying, I stop all narrative flow and just move. The moment the narrative stops doesn't seem like is controlled by me, I just suddenly find myself moving, if that makes sense. It is thrilling and sometimes terrifying, that kind of unfiltered embodiment.

With that in mind, I will say I (almost) cried in the gym again: not from frustration or injury, but from triumph. I was on my third clean & jerk set nearing the end when Adele's ubiquitous "Rolling in the Deep" came on the radio. I pulled and jumped and held and jumped and held; I dropped the bar one-two to the floor, and pulled and jumped and held and jumped and held; and then on my last set, I pulled and jumped and held and jumped and held the bar above my head for 30 seconds, quivering and holding and listening to the music build, looking at Marmot smiling at me, holding the weight above my head and listening to the music build to the chorus, and it felt beautiful.


(stats below the jump)

Buff Femmes For The Win

(Forgive the dirty hallway mirror)

Tuesday afternoon I returned home from a busy but celebratory morning of errand-running. A long-term project I recently completed is in someone else's hands now, and while I was waiting for my early afternoon appointment I bought myself a new summer dress. I bought it partly to celebrate this minor accomplishment, partly because it was an already cheap dress on sale, and partly because this is a "poofy"-fitting style of short dress that I never would have felt comfortable wearing before my recent weight loss and body transformation. I came home excited to try it on again and took a picture in my hallway mirror. Since I can't do much of anything without joking in the act, I went full-on Schwarzenegger after the first cutesy pose. BAM: evidence of my hard work!

Marmot & I have had unusually packed and inflexible schedules for the past few days, and haven't been able to fit a trip to the gym between our other obligations. (We bicycle everywhere and do push ups at home, but let's be serious: that's nowhere near enough.) We're getting back on track tonight, so keep your fingers crossed that I don't hurt myself again!

There's no crying in lifting!

On the left: my superego. The right: my id. (And my back.)

I don't think I understood how much lifting means to me until this afternoon's failure. This might seem ridiculously unreflective: I have been lifting for almost 5 years; I read articles and books and watch videos on how to lift better in my down time; I write regularly on a blog about lifting, for goodness sake. But being Strong and Capable and Competent have become much more salient aspects of my identity in the last 6 months, making today's minor failure feel much bigger than I thought it would.

I cried a little.

No, that's a lie. I cried a lot.