Skinny to Strong

In my previous post I set some strength goals. But a few weeks after writing that, I switched to a more balanced muscle mass and strength training. So it is harder to reach those goals. Anyhow here are the numbers. Exercise / Start (March) / Goal (June) / Peak Squat / 175 lbs / 195 lbs / 185 lbs Bench Press / 125 lbs / 145 lbs / 135 lbs Row / 95 lbs / 110 lbs / 100 lbs Shoulder Press / 65 lbs / 80 lbs / 80 lbs Deadlift / 200 lbs / 240 lbs / 215 lbs I 10 lbs away from reaching my goals for Squat, Bench Press and Row. I would not have been able to reach those goals even if I did not do the big switch . Unless I gain some quality weight I cannot expect to lift a lot more. Still need to work on that. I was however able to reach my shoulder press goal. Sweet! Deadlift is lagging behind. My legs and back are probably strong enough to lift 240 lbs, but my fingers are losing grip. Which is the main problem. I am planning more changes to my exercises and diet. I will follow up on ...

In my previous post I wrote about my progress in the last 3 weeks of June. Not very good right. Instead of gaining a pound a week like most other weeks before, I only gained 0.2 lbs per week during those 3 weeks. But there is more bad news to come. Look at these graphs. Weight Chart Body Fat% Chart Lean Mass Chart What happened here? I lost a whole lot of weight, but even worse I lost a lot of muscle and my fat % increased. How did it happen? Well I was out vacationing on the July 4th weekend. In the 4 days I visited Grand Canyon, Tucson, Disney Land and Universal Studios. While I tried to eat as much as I can and as often as I could, I did not eat enough times and most meal was more than I should have eaten. The calories just piled up in sudden bursts and then there was too much gap between meals. Add to it, all the walking I had to do through out the day and then add the stress that is associated with such a tightly packed vacation, the planning, the driving etc. I was burning ...

Ever since I switched from strength training to muscle mass gain, I have had trouble gaining weight. Unfortunately I cannot blame the new program. There are a variety of reasons that are responsible. First let me start off by showing the chart that shows my weight gain progress in the last 3 months. Observe how the curve looks like when I am healthy and gaining weight. This is represented by the slopes from 4/10/2010 to 5/8/2010 and from 5/15/2010 to 6/5/2010. Right around 6/5/2010 I switched to mass gain program. And then I lost weight the first week, then started to gain very little if any after that. Now for the breakdown by week. 6/5 to 6/12 During this week I probably lost weight because I was over-training. When I switched out of strength training I miscalculated that I would not require as many days to recover while on mass gain program. I was probably wrong. I went from 2 workouts per week to 4 workouts. With the new schedule, I saw a dip in my weight while I maintained e...

In my previous post I gave some body weight and fat numbers for the 3 month period starting from April 2010 to Jun 2010. It is now time for some graphs. Here are my weight, fat and lean mass graphs for the same period. Weight Chart Fat% Chart Lean Mass Chart As you can see I pretty much kept my fat% constant. There were a few jumps here and there, but in the end, I am still under 10% body fat and can still see my abs definition slightly as is expected at around 10% BF. Now for some observations. Right before I got sick my weight jumped a lot. That was around May 8th. The gain was probably just water weight. My body was perhaps retaining water as I was about to get sick. Interestingly, my caliper measurements have also gone awry and showed higher fat percentage. Right after I got sick and as I started recovering, I lost a lot of weight. This was around May 15th. There is a sharp drop in the weight and fat % dropped to the normal value. But I did lose some muscle as a result of fa...