Sorry to disappear on you Focus. I had some personal issues that initially shocked me and ended up taking up a lot of my time. I did continue to lift and run, but temporarily stopped with logging workouts, biking and swimming. I have recently picked back up on biking and am planning on gettin back into swimming this week.
No worries at all, man. Very glad to know all is relatively well. Best wishes on the issues front. <3
While you were gone I disappeared too (tbh I just got kinda bored with my Garmin doing almost all the journaling work for me but also busy with a work project and y'know hours a day of exercise) finally did some swimming (turns out I am pretty good at it still), biked for 2'ish hours a day on average, ran almost every day like I was being chased by a pack of grolms, and then about a week ago I decided it wasn't really doing me much if any good in terms of fat loss (because I'm pretty sure it's physically impossible to do all that as a beginner without eating like you're dying of hunger every meal and feeling miserable - minus taking an epic ****tail of severious drugs that is) and bailed on it all.
Yes, as usual, but this time I had given it a proper half'ish a year and a couple of different nutritional approaches.
I'm already sure I'll have to get back to it later just to make sure I'm not just a wuss but first I gotta use my shiny new magic fat loss formula to get under 10%. (Currently sitting at ~15.2% but justifiably anticipating strong results over the next few months.) Oh, except for once a week on Saturdays, a bike+/run "to zap some glycogen" but really just 'cause I'll miss it too much if I don't. I'm thinking bike+run for today, and probably every Sat thereafter 'cause if last week's anything to go by I'll immediately regret not picking whichever one I didn't do.
The main goal I had when this started was to get to 300 bench / 400 squat / 500 deadlift by March 31. At the end of the year I tested out maxes. I was able to bench 300. I got 520 on the deadlift. I tried 405 on the squat and failed, but was able to get 385. I thought the bench would be the hardest to achieve as my max bench was only 275 going into this in October and never goes up very fast. I was very happy to add 25 lbs to my max bench in only 3 months.
At the end of February I attempted a 400 lbs squat and got it. So I was able to accomplish my goal one month early. I tested the deadlift again and was able to get 550 lbs, but ended up bending my bar in the process. I still have 2 other bars, but I am not sure what any of them are rated at, so I am going to hold off doing any more heavy deadlifts until I get a bar I know is rated for 700 lbs. I was getting 305 lbs on my bench for a single at the top of a pyramid routine, so I thought I would be able to put up 315, but I didn't get it.
During the period of Oct - Feb I was in a bulk. I bulked from about 200 lbs up to 236. Last week I started cutting again to get ready for a marathon in October.
Hope all is well with you Focus.
Drex
Wow. Bendin' bars and ****. Outstanding.
Huge ups for accomplishing all that while having to deal with other stuff, too, Drex.
That's great, on the bench, especially. It is the bane of my gym existence, slow bench progress. Everything else goes up regular even when I'm half-starved but the bench.. Couple months ago I switched to bodyweight stuff for it and I've been making some pretty good progress in terms of exercises and reps, though it's hard to say how it will correspond to bench numbers. I feel like my form is so much better with it, the movement is more natural - it's like leg presses versus squats I think, benching vs (weighted) pushup variants.
Anyway, great to hear from you. I wouldn't worry too much about writing it down if you don't have the time/inclination - I'm sure not - so long as it's getting done, right? And in your case, it sure is.
Also, rock on, g8r.
Man, if I had been half as consistently tough as you over the last couple of years, I'd have gotten a lot more done I think. Hope your frazzliness sorts itself out in a timely fashion.
