Hump Day

I've been using light weights for the first few weeks in this increasingly depressing endeavor to spare myself injury. A tear here a pull there and I won't have time to recover before The Big Event in July. My goal is to get as deep into positive failure as I can with the absolute lightest weight I can stand to use.

I say stand to use because a set of say, 10 reps, to failure means you're only burning bad on maybe the last two or three. A set of 100 implies the last 30 might be agony. That's a lot of agony. The agony per unit workout time is high.

Training Day Whatever: 20 mins of a righteous step routine with some classic techno rave-y music I ... err.. a friend umm... legally recorded from the Internet. I have to use DB's at home and a rigged bench because it's all I got. So I started out with a warm up on unlined wide DB flies with a 7.5 DB's and ended up doing a long, horrible drop set of 100 reps going from 12.5 too 7.5 to 5 DBs hitting failure at every drop. Let's just say I got 'the burn' in fact I can barley type this shit out. Curls 50 reps 10 lb Dbs to positive failure. DB mil press one set of about 30 with 12 lb DB to failure. 30 reps w 25 lb DB overheads triceps extensions. About 50 leg raises.

Bulge Beware

Blogger has (Corrrection: Had, seems to be fixed now) my dates screwed up, today is Tuesday April 29. This article caught my eye from the Chicago Tribune:

In an overwhelmingly overweight nation that worships thinness, many describe prejudice against the obese as one of the last socially acceptable biases. Advocates for the plus-sized, particularly activists in the "fat acceptance" movement, want obesity to become a category legally protected against discrimination, like religion, race, age and sex. But not everyone agrees.One such law, to ban discrimination against weight and height, is pending in Massachusetts.

Well of course fat people are discriminated against. And fit athletic people get the benefit of the doubt. That's pretty much why gyms and diets and eating disorders exist. Duh. Eight years ago I had just finished two back to back Cybergenic cycles (Cybergenics: An exceedingly brutal routine which I'm sure I'll blog about at some point and maybe even try a modified version of in the next few weeks), the second eight week cycle done while in deep ketosis, and I followed up them up with a week of dehydration for a photo shoot.

At the end I was 160 lbs of cut, hard, rippling, vascular honk'n muscle man. And I assure you, people treated me differently than they do now at my current flabby 185 lbs. And I don't just mean potential mates, I mean the 16 year-old kid at the shoestore or the fifty-something plumber making a house call to fix my toilet. Everyone. It was subtle and no doubt unintentional, but it was there then and it's there now.

I doubt anyone means to do this, but it's a fact, it happens. And of course employers gauge an applicant in part by their appearance, and that includes fitness. Beautiful people get treated better. I think the weight thing is much harder on women though. More on this later.

Still sore, did 20 mins step with a SIX inch box thank you very much followed by lunges to failure and a set of seated crunches. Tomorrow it'll be the real deal again. Anyone know if that legal version of transdermal andro-test sold online is worth a shit? I'm thinking of doing a cycle of androstenidione -- yes, the legal precursor not any banned anabolic stuff -- starting in a month, but I don't really want that crap going through my liver. I'd just as soon it soak through my skin.

The Aftermath

I'm sore from head to toe after hitting a real gym yesterday. Especially in the arms and pecs. God, I can't even straighten my arms out all the way without sorta easing into a full extension. And the sad thing is, I used light weights and high reps, plus I only did a couple of sets on most body parts. I am in pitiful shape and feeling everyone of my forty-something years. Today I'll limit it to a nice 20 mins step routine, maybe flush out the stiffness, and finish up up with some ab core work.

Woe to the flabby. 20 mins step aerobics on three inch box to various music, whatever was playing on the brighthouse cable Electronica station # 417. 1 set 40 leg raises. Off to work. Hallelujah!

Sublime Workout

Wow! I got the most sublime work out high at the gym! If a portal had opened up in front of me and whisked me away from Euclidean space via an Einstein-Rosen bridge I wouldn’t have blinked. I almost didn’t want to leave because it felt so good. Now, an hour later at home, I can already feel where I’m going to be sore as hell. Some minor progress: My weight came in this morning at 188. Six pounds in two weeks from eating right and mild work outs every other day or so is a good result. But it’s probably not sustainable without going all out, whole-hog no carbs or something equally aggressive. And I bet a lot of is just carbohydrates coming out of my liver, I sure don’t look any slimmer.

Training Day Five at Island Fitness Gym: 20 mins on elliptical warm up. 2 sets 20 reps hack squat one 45 lb plate each side, mild burn. 2 light sets alternating leg extensions with leg curls 30 reps mild burn. 2 sets in the abdominal double crunch machine to mild failure using 4 bars dropped to 2 bars on weight stack. 2 sets 30 reps on the military press Hammer Strength (HS) machine with a dime on each side. 2 drop sets lat pull downs using 145 dropped to 115, complete failure on last drop set. 2 sets of 25 reps on the HS incline bench 5 bars on each handle to failure. 2 sets cable rows 80 lbs mild burn. 2 sets 25 reps HS decline bench 4 bars each handle. 2 sets 20 reps upright rows on smith machine a dime on each side to complete failure last set. 1 set Cybex dip machine 6 bars to mild burn. 1 drop set Cybex concentration curls 5-3 bars to failure. 1 drop set Cybex tricep extensions 5-3 bars.

Day One

Greetings and welcome to Frame Shift! My name is Drew and I named the blog after a type of mutation well known in the field of genetics. But here it has a double meaning, as in I need to shift my frame, from out of shape to something approaching normalcy. I’m in my mid forties, 5’ 8” and rippling with fat accumulated over five years: as of April 15, 2008, I weighed a staggering 194. My decline into flabby obesity started a few years ago with a serious leg injury, an injury which quickly became a convenient excuse for letting myself go to shit. Now, seemingly overnight, I’m soft as a baby’s bottom and 40 pounds overweight.

In exactly 75 days I need to look better, much better. Not purely for vanity -- although I’m certainly not immune to that. But mostly because I’ll be at an event where I have to give speeches and may even appear on national television. Getting into shape is what this journal is all about.

By making it available to the public with a comment section, I hope to deepen my own commitment. A important fringe benefit will be if I can help anyone do the same, and enjoying any support and tips from my fellow fitness buffs. As far as number of readers, I could care less if it’s five or five thousand. I’m a free lance writer and a contributing editor to a website that gets several million hits a month. Exposure is not my goal on Frame Shift, getting into shape is.

I figure I need to lose 25 pounds minimum, 30 or more hopefully, and in the process I hope to lay on some muscle. I do have a few small advantages over a lot of people in the same boat: I was a (Semi) professional athlete at one time, I’ve been a gym rat most of life, and over the last twenty odd years I’ve gone from a state similar to the pitiful condition I’m in now to buff at least half a dozen times. In short, I know what to do, the only question is if I have enough will power to actually do it. And gentle reader, you get to come along for the ride, be it success or fail. Later today I'll go to a real gym for the first time. But let’s begin with what I did to acclimate myself to a more structured fitness program beginning two weeks ago using a decent selection of weights and other devices I have laying around the house.

Training Day Four 4/24/08: 50 curls with 10 lb dumbbells, good burn, 50 lateral shoulder raises with 5 lb dumbbells (Ok from here on out dumbbell will be abbreviated DB), 100 shrugs with two 30 lb DBs, 50 upright rows with one 15 lb DB almost hit failure on the rows. Pushups on floor till failure, got about 23 and then went to girl-knee pushups and cranked out another 7 before hitting total failure, Roman crunches with two 10 lb dumbell and leg raises with two 2 lb ankle weights, to total failure -- huge burn.

4/22: I’m not getting sore any more, except for my quads from the squats, they’re screaming.

Training Day Day Three 4/21/08: 100 curls with 5 lb dumbbells, 100 lateral shoulder raises with 2 lb ankle weights, 50 incline pushups on a 45 degree board, 50 overhead tricep extensions with 10 lb dumbbell, 100 should shrugs with 25 lb dumbbell in each hand; 50 standing upright rows with 15 lb dumbbell. Adding standing squats with my back sliding against a wall, so it’s kinda like a hack squat. Best I can do without a squat rack or a leg press machine. I went to total failure, it felt like my thighs were being bathed in broiling acid.

Training Day Day Two 4/18/08: 100 curls with 5 lb dumbbells, 100 lateral shoulder raises with 2 lb ankle weights, 50 incline pushups on a 45 degree board, 50 overhead tricep extensions with 10 lb dumbbell, 100 should shrugs with 25 lb dumbbell in each hand; 50 standing upright rows with 15 lb dumbbell. 50 sitting Roman crunches with 10 lb dumbell and 50 leg raises no weight.

4/16/08: Oh my God I’m actually freaking sore from that pitiful routine! Glutes from stepping, hams from stretching, every muscle group I hit is stiff. Depressing. I’ll wait for the soreness to peak and ebb before doing it again.

Training Day One 4/15/08: Preworkout regimen repeated three times a week: 50-100 reps every three or four days with light weight to train my tenders and ligaments for what is about to hit them. Starting with a casual 20 mins on a three inch step at about 90 beats/min followed by: 100 curls with 5 lb dumbbells, 100 lateral shoulder raises with 2 lb ankle weights, 50 incline pushups on a 45 degree board, 50 overhead tricep extensions with 10 lb dumbbell, 100 should shrugs with 25 lb dumbbell in each hand; 50 standing upright rows with 15 lb dumbbell. 50 sitting Roman crunches and 50 leg raises no weight on either.