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 ...

For the last few months my goals have always been around weight, fat and muscle. But this time I want to try something different. I am finding it really hard to make sense of the varying weight and fat numbers. So this time I want to have strength goals (which always should go up). Again these can vary a bit too, but I want to give it a try and see how I do with strength goals. At the end of March 2010, the numbers for some compound exercises are as follows (able to do 3 x 5): Squats: 175 lbs Bench Press: 125 lbs Rows: 95 lbs Shoulder Press: 65 lbs Deadlift: 200 lbs Looking at the past trend for most of my compound exercises, I see a 5 lbs increase per month in the weight that I can lift. Extrapolating that for 3 months I should be able to lift about 15 lbs more than I lifted at the end of March. Just to make it a bit more challenging I throw in an extra 5 lbs to the goals. So the final goal for each of the compound exercises should be a 20 lbs increase in the lifts. But...

It is already 3 weeks into the new quarter and I did not yet write my goals. I have it in my mind. it is just that I did not put it down on paper yet. So for the next 3 months my goal is to gain 3 lbs of fat while maintaining the same weight. It simply means I will have to convert 3 lbs of fat into muscle! Here are the raw numbers January 1, 2010: Baseline Weight: 125.6 lbs Fat %: 12.5% Fat: 15.7 lbs Lean Mass: 109.9 lbs Note that I am using the caliper measurement for fat. I don't think I can rely on the omron body fat monitor. I will still keep track of the fat numbers from omron fat monitor daily but I probably will not use them in any calculations. Since I cannot take the caliper measurement everyday I will use the fat % number that is closest to a particular date I am refering to. March 31, 2010: Goal Weight: 125.6 lbs Fat %: 10.11% Fat: 12.7 lbs Lean Mass: 112.9 lbs Change in 3 months Weight: 0 Fat %: 2.39 % Fat: -3 lbs Muscle: 3 lbs I will try and not l...

In my previous post I wrote about my body weight, muscle weight and fat % goals. Today I will write about my weight training goals, in particular about my compound exercise goals. If I have to choose the 5 best exercises I would choose the following exercises and in that order Squats Deadlifts Bench Press Pull ups Overhead Press It is very easy to understand why I like them. These are the exercises where I can lift heavy. Heavy like lifting close to or more than your body weight. Lifting so much weight simply means one thing, those exercise require more number of muscles and also mostly bigger muscles. One cannot bicep curl one's body weight. The muscle is way too small and no other big muscles are involved. Also the distance these weights are moved is big. Work done is weight times the displacement. So you do more work moving the weights to a longer distance. Engaging more muscles means more hormone response, more repair and more muscles! Now back to my goals. On October ...

Like most people who are dead serious about body building, I too believe in setting goals and trying to reach them. The goals should not be too easy neither should they be too ambitious. And the goals will always be measurable and be limited by time. So we come to the topic of numbers. I live by the numbers. In this post I will tell you what my goals are how I arrived at those numbers. Baseline and Time Taking my current weight and fat % as my starting point, I set myself a difficult yet reachable goal for a time period of 3 months. My weight on October 1, 2009 was 118 lbs at 10% body fat. Here is the data I have now: Time = 3 months Current Weight = 118 lbs Current Fat % = 10% Current Fat Mass = Current Fat % x Current Weight = 10% x 118 = 11.8 lb Current Muscle Mass = Current Weight - Current Fat Mass = 118 - 11.8 = 106.2 lb Muscle Gain Goal Now since I know the deadline which is in 3 months and taking the somewhat commonly agreed muscle growth number of 1 to 1.5 lbs/mont...