Some Interesting Stats

I was thinking about what all these bulking and leaning phases have done to me. Am I improving physically? I am sure I am getting stronger just by looking at the weights that I have been lifting. But what about size? Did I grow at all? The body weight is not very accurate because it depends a lot on water retention and the muscle and fat numbers vary a bit depending on your state when you took your readings and measurements. So to answer the question about physical size improvements I refer to my body measurement logs.

I take body measurements every month which allows me to look back at my gains. I typically measure chest, waist, hips, right and left biceps and right thigh. I improved in every measurement that I took. They are not huge improvements like they show on TV or internet, but they are good enough to keep me motivated. Here are the raw numbers at the end of last 2 leaning phases:

September 2009

Chest: 32.5 in.
Waist 27.25 in.
Right Bicep: 12.125 in.
Right thigh: 19.0 in.

March 2010

Chest: 34.5 in.
Waist: 26.75 in.
Right Bicep: 12.625 in.
Right thigh: 20.0 in.

Chest has increased by 2 inches, waist decreased by 0.5 inches, although I find it surprising that I lost waist size, because from the photos it looks like I had smaller waist in my first leaning phase. May be that was 26.25 inches and not 27.25 inches. Right bicep grew by 0.5 inches and right thigh grew a whole inch. All these are good on paper but barely noticeable physically. I have become stronger since my last leaning phase yet I see very little change in the measurements. This proves that you have to gain a lot of strength to have any noticeable physical change.

For posterity here are the September 2009 and March 2010 pictures. As you can see there is almost no visible change. But strength? That is altogether a different story.

September 2009 March 2010

Comments

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

Strong Lifts 5x5 log

I started strongs lifts on Februry 23, 2009 and ended it about 3 months later on May 13, 2009. Here are the logs of my workouts by day and weight lifted. All the weights are in lbs. The cells marked with a blue background indicate that I could not do 5x5 and so I had to repeat those weights. As you can see I had some good progress overall. I never did squats and now I know what those are and how much I can squat. Bench press has always been my weakest workout. I could not go over the 100 lb weight (even today). For push-ups I used a weighing scale below my hands and checked how much weight gets exerted on it when I try to do a push-up. The scales showed 70 lb (I weight 120 lb). So I am not lifting my full body weight when I am doing push-ups. I was able to do 3 sets of 5 reps each. Then for my next push-up day I kept a 5 lb plate on my back and did my push-ups. If I was able to do 3x5 then for the next time I added another 5 lb plate and so on. That is how I got those numbers for m

End of an Era

Image via Wikipedia It has been a long time since I gave any updates on my progress. Actually it is almost 3 months! There have been a lot of developments on my personal front which was the main cause of this much delayed update. My progress has slowed down considerably too. I was hoping to be at 140 lbs by the end of this year with 7% body fat. That seems like a dream that will not be fulfilled this year. I will not even be able to meet the 140 lb goal let alone the body fat %. So what happened to me over the last 3 months? I have been in the US for more than 8 years now! I loved every moment that I was here, starting from the early struggling days of my MS to my current stable job state of today. However even before coming to US, I promised to myself that I will be back in India after gaining 5 years of work experience in US. Now that the goal has been realized, it is time to move back to India. So in the last 3 months I have been working towards the goal of moving back to India. M

Skinny to Strong

Search This Blog