When he is done, he always comes over and asks me why I don’t try my hand at the hip sled like him.  I often tell him its not really my thing. I really dont want to get into a debate on lifting techniques with him.  I just want to get in, lift, and get out.

Today while I was standing around waiting for the squat rack to open up, I thought of a great analogy of the sled vs the squat rack.

Many people can push a car. It really doesn’t take much to push a car into motion and then continue that motion.  But let’s see that same person try and actually lift that car. If they could, that would be impressive and would really show the strength of that individual.

I personally would rather be able to lift a car than push it. Which person would you rather be?

To make up for the bad eating I continued to do my daily 16 hour fasts. I also tried to make sure that the first meal I ate was very low carb.  Then for dinner, I pretty much ate whatever I wanted to (pizza, hot dogs, etc). The next day I started over with the 16 hour fast and “reset” my body. The first week of doing this saw my body weight go down a few pounds. The second week, I feel like my night time “cheats” increased a bit more and my weight stayed the same.

Now that this week is just about over and we are getting settled into our new home, I will be able to get back to the way things should be. I am going to continue to experiment with carb back loading though. I really like the freedom it has given me with the ability to eat the wonderful things my wife prepares. Going really low carb at lunch allow me some wiggle room with dinner and as long as I don’t go over my allotted carbs for the day, I see nothing wrong with this approach.  If it fits your macros, eat it!

Like I stated earlier, this is an experiment and time will tell how my body reacts. So far so good though. I challenge you to find what works for you and then let me know in the comments!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-91_iXATY8

Another really good week of lifting. It’s sort of funny when I think back to my actual workouts. I didnt start any of my workouts actually “feeling it” but yet I put up new personal bests every time.

Deadlift – 365.0×3 – At the end of January I was deadlifting 325.0×4 so I have increased by about 40lbs.
Bench – Benched 230.0×5 back in January. This week it was 240.0×4. Not a huge increase but I will take it.
Chin-up – 65.0×4 – With my current body weight of roughly 185 this puts my chin-up weight at 250lbs. At the end of January I was at 235lbs
Squat – 275.0×4 – I was doing 235lbs at 3 reps at the end of January.

As you can see my strength continues to go up week after week. I couldn’t be happier.

Scale

I hopped onto the scale yesterday and weighed in at 183.8lbs. This is about a 9lb decrease from my highest weight of 193 which I recorded right after the holidays. It’s always nice to lose weight and gain muscle at the same time.

Workout Changes

My tweak to the Reverse Pyramid routine is going good. As last reported, I increased my reps on shoulder presses to allow for more muscle growth. I have also gone to a 12-10-8-6, 12-15 set on curls to, again, allow for more growth.

Diet

My diet has been consistent this week. 100 grams of carbs on lifting days and less than 50 on rest days. Yesterday I played racquetball with a guy from work so I actually increased my carbs to 100 to account for the large deficit playing caused. Friday’s are always hard for me because they are my cheat day. I always go into them thinking I will go high carb but still try to stay under my calorie maintenance level. Well that never happens. I tend to really binge on Fridays. On the plus side my weight continues to drop so I must be doing something right.

Injuries

Obviously my toe was feeling good enough to play racquetball this week so that was good. I am suffering from some sort of pain in my elbow though. It’s almost like a tendonitis type feeling. Hurt’s to the point where it’s hard for me to lift any amount of significant weight with it. I am hoping its just the effect of playing racquetball yesterday and not being used to the movement of the racquet.

Wrap-Up

That wraps up this week. It’s now been 4 week since my last deload week and I am seriously considering taking next week off from the usual routine. Who knows, I might do some crossfit type stuff. We shall see.

Peace out.