Skinny to Strong

In my previous post I mentioned that I switched from strength training to a more balanced strength and muscle mass training. Why the switch? There are several reasons. First and foremost, it so happened that I have plateaued in most of my exercises. Especially bench, rows and pull-ups. I wanted to have some change in the routine to keep me moving without tiring myself to loss of motivation. I wanted to go back to my 8 reps exercises as I have done before I switched to 3x5 back in February 2010 so I can keep moving. Second, it is a well known fact that low rep (4-6) high weight (90-100% 1RM) exercises are useful in developing strength and high rep (8-10) and low weight (70-80% 1RM) exercises help in developing muscle mass. There are literally thousands (if not millions) of articles on this very subject. I will not elaborate especially because I do not know the mechanics or the biology behind the theory. So it is natural that I decided to go with some muscle mass trying to break the...

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 i...

It has been a few days into the new year and looking back at 2009, I have made some really good progress. The year 2009 has been more of an experimental year where I was experimenting with various routines and nutrition and trying to find the ones that work effectively for me. A lot of things happened in 2009. First and most important achievement is starting this blog! Without the blog I would not have a good record of how I felt each day and what changes I have been making and what their effects were. Maintaining a log of just numbers is boring. Written notes puts the numbers into perspective. Looking back into my body building past, I changed my routines many times over to find the right one for me. First I started off with P90X which was not very useful for my body type. I quickly got tired and was over training. A few months of P90X and I did not make any progress at all. Then it was time for strong-lifts and that went well. I gained a lot of strength. I lifted weights ...

I have made some good progress so far as my strength and weight goals are concerned. Although I did not reach any of my strength goals I am very close to achieving them. Almost a week into December and I already reached my weight goal of 125 lbs. That means I gained a whopping 6 lbs in 3 months (for an ectomorph that is a big deal believe me). However along the road I gained a huge amount of fat too. A full 3.5% to be precise. In the past 2 months and 1 week I have only concentrated on increasing the strength. Always performed the exercises with quick bursts of energy when lifting and quickly bringing the weight down in the negatives. So the time under tension was very low. Perhaps around 2 to 3 seconds per rep. Total time under tension for a set was around 10 to 30 seconds depending on the reps. As a result I could keep adding weights more often and kept going. Now that I have reached a certain point in my strength I want to concentrate more on form and letting my central nervous sy...

Having a home gym is a very convenient. But there are some advantages to going to gyms outside your home. Like the experience I had today. I usually go to gym at my work place along with a few of my colleagues. You can recognize me from the tiny speck walking along with a bunch of huge guys. I say tiny not only because I am this short dude walking with 6' guys but also because they are huge, weighing in at 1.5 times my weight. So when I go with them I always have a spotter. Usually my bench press weight is like their ez-bar bicep curl :). However today every one was busy so I had no choice but to go alone. And the main reason for me to quit home gym and go to gym at work is that I can have a spotter so I can lift much heavier weights without the fear of hurting myself. Today that was not the case. I went anyway hoping to do some light weights. The gym was pretty empty. Today is my shoulders and traps workout day. I wanted to start with shoulder press. There was one guy who was us...