Skip to main content

Squats make me dizzy

I hate squats but I love them. Every time I go to gym to do squats, a feeling of resentment and fear takes over me. I resist those feelings and put on a weight with which I can do warm ups (usually about 60% to 70% of my work weight). Once I rip through them I gain some confidence. But as soon as I do my first work set I know why I hated squats in the first place. It is not because every part of my body hurts. But because of the dizzy feeling of the aftermath.

By the 6th or 7th rep I am breathing heavily, panting almost and the very strong urge to stop doing any more reps creeps in. I force my self to do a couple more if I can. Move slowly to rack the barbell and once the weight is off my back I feel my head reel as if I am going to faint. I just have to hold on to the squat rack and stay there without moving lest I blackout. But after the 3 work sets that I normally do, I feel great. Almost proud to have achieved my goal for the day.

Squats are considered to be the best exercise in body building circles and for a good reason too. The sheer number of muscles being used to push a heavy load is proof enough that it is really the best exercise. Doing squats also works out the biggest muscles in the body (almost all leg muscles and then some). Which means more growth hormone will be produced by your body to repair those huge muscles. So you gain muscle more quickly. This is especially good for skinny guys.

When I first started I was only able to do 100 lbs, not even a plate on either side. Now I can do 150 lb. I don't feel dizzy when I am doing deadlifts though. May be I am not at the highest weight yet for deadlifts. We will see.
Labels:

Comments

  1. SS GuyOctober 14, 2009 at 11:53 AM

    Chandan, I was wondering if you could write a little post about the body fat analyzer you use. I could definitely benefit from that since I am looking to buy one soon and if you have a specific recommendation, I wont think twice about buying it. If you have tried the calipers and compared it with the analyzer's results, please write about that as well.
    BTW Thanks for your feedback about my diet. Makes me think a little more about it and hopefully I will arrive at some better numbers that will work! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stats for Oct 2009

So it has been a month since I started bulking up. How am I doing so far? Here are the raw numbers Exercises Squats: 170 lbs, 8 reps Deadlifts: 185 lbs, 10 reps Bench Press: 110 lbs, 4 reps Pull ups: Body weight + 25 lbs, 7 reps Overhead Press: 75 lbs, 6 reps I am doing well in all exercises except bench press. The exercise that is already closest to my goal for end of december is my pull-ups. I can already do 7 reps with 25 lbs hanging off my waist! You can check out my previous post for the goals I have set. Body weight and fat Weight: 120.8 lbs Fat %: 12.2% I am able to add weight as expected. But my body fat % shot up too much. My goal for end of december was to weight 125 lbs at 12% body fat. But I am already over the limit for my body fat %. So I have to lower it and at the same time increase my weight. Very unlikely. I might have to revise my goals, but I will see how it goes and hope to make better predictions for my next bulking phase. It is not at all easy to ke...
12 comments
Read more

The Skinny Guy Diet

A few friends and neighbours have been asking me for advice on diet. Unfortunately I am not in a position to propose a diet that works for everyone. I have experimented with myself with a variety of diets during bulking and cutting phases. Some worked some failed. But in the end I am more knowledgeable than when I started, but I don't think I have the silver bullet. But more importantly I have information about diets that works for me. And may be more generally it may work for other skinny folks. So in today's post I just want to layout my eating habits in the hope that it might help other skinny guys out there. To start off, I have most recently switched away from my 6 meals a day hogging to a more reasonable 3 meals a day with an optional snack. Gone are the days when I tried to stuff myself with food whether I was hungry or not. Those medium size meals every 3-4 hours were just not doing it for me. I always felt full and bloated. Was becoming more lethargic and was gainin...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Big Switch: Strength Training to Muscle Mass Training

I have so far been training for strength without giving any though to the muscle mass. My aim was to do 3x5 benchpress, rows with 1x my body weight, squat with 1.5x and deadlift with 2x. I have reached all my goals except for deadlift goal. So now that I have enough strength I want to switch my training to build muscle mass. Another reason is because I am getting bored with the strength training and my central nervous system seems to be getting taxed heavily for too long. Switching to muscle mass training means nothing more than reducing the weights to 80% instead of 90 to 95% and then doing 8 to 10 reps instead of 3 to 6 reps. I am not going to completely switch to muscle mass training. I plan to do strength training one week and muscle mass training the next week. Here is my plan Week 1: 3 x 8 with 80% 1RM Week 2: 6 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 3: 3 x 9 with 80% 1RM Week 4: 7 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 5: 3 x 10 with 80% 1RM Week 6: 8 x 4 with 90% 1RM At the end of the 6 weeks and ass...
2 comments
Read more