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Every mission with me is a suicide mission - Lifting Log
Quick background... been lurking here at Sherdog for a couple years. I did a google search one fateful day to find good prices on sparring gloves and wandered into the strength and power section.
I'm 26, 6'1", around 205. I don't train for any combat sport or martial art, but the information (and links to studies, books, and articles) has been invaluable here. I graduated high school a flabby 165 after quitting football (my favorite thing in the world) my freshmen year because I thought people were making fun of the way I talk (I stutter) and I didn't know how to stand up for myself at 14. While in college I started playing in some decent flag football leagues (lots of ex-Div 1 guys and a few who rode the bench in the pros for awhile) and became a certified bench monkey. For all my weight room idiocy (and there was plenty) I still managed to do a few things right, and put on 25-30 pounds over 3 years. I even started coaching middle school football, and had one of my first kids call out a teammate for making fun of my stutter by saying "Coach Ricky talks cool!"
I moved to New York a couple years ago to pursue an acting career after studying it in college (like a lot of people on here do, it's another way to use my supposed limitations to push harder in a field) and needed a job. After working with an actor who was also a personal trainer, I began to notice that I knew a lot more about this stuff than they seemed to, and because I am genetically predisposed towards being pretty, and, really, because anybody who ACTUALLY lifts weights or has ever played a sport at any level is more competent than the clones who work at chain gyms, it's worked out well financially. I am COMPLETELY and UTTERLY embarrassed to work in that field whenever I come to Sherdog and see people giving free advice that far exceeds my own understanding of the body... then I walk into a gym and see the stupid crap other trainers do and feel a little bit better. It sucks because acting is my focus, and lifting is a hobby I've learned to use to make money, so I invariably spend more time and energy on acting than training (Is it Dave Tate who gets seriously pissed off when actors in LA become trainers instead of waiters for that very reason?) I hate not being as good as I can at anything I do.
That last sentence is why I created this log. There are so few people at the gyms I go to (I usually work out at the New York Rec Center gyms in Manhattan, or Underground Fitness when I have a client there) that I can get advice from. Adding to the problem, because I'm a big-ish, strong looking, straight guy in theatre, I'm automatically seen as "tough" (I punched a kid once in 3rd grade...no really, it was on a bus) and it's too easy to believe all the hype without doing the work and reminding myself that my lifts still suck. I spent all summer working at a show near the woods of Oswego, NY, without access to a gym, doing plyo, sprints, pull-ups on tree branches, static core work, and I won a t-shirt from the National Guard for doing more push-ups than out of shape people at a street fair. Before I left in June, my lifts were roughly around here:
Squat: 225 X 5
Deadlift: 355 X 5
Bench press: 235 X 5
OHP: 145 X 3
Pull-ups: 10-12 good ones
Dips: BW + 55 X 5
Cleans: 145 X 5
Obviously my squat is an abortion. The weight hasn't been grossly heavy, but I had pain and big problems with lower back rounding at the bottom of the lift, and didn't want to increase weight until I had fixed it. I tried doing all the hip flexor stretching and glute activation work mentioned on stronglifts and other places, but it never seemed to help much. I actually started doing cleans because I couldn't put as much weight no the bar when I was squatting as I wanted, and needed something else to push myself. I spent some time this summer doing bodyweight squats to see if I could figure out what the hell was wrong, and I think I helped my ankle flexibility a lot in the process. If I can find a video camera I'll shoot something up so you guys can take a look. While I really want to get a single pull off the ground at 405, I think I need to focus energy on improving my squat first and foremost.
I'm getting back into the gym for the first time tomorrow, and I'm just going to spend the first week on a basic push/pull/squat routine to see where my numbers are at. I am very likely going to put benching heavy on hold and replace it with heavier sets of BOR's... I get the feeling back strength has been a limiting factor in both squatting and deadlifting, and I'm not sure how much longer I can live with myself for having a bigger bench than squat. I'll probably use this log to record my diet, too.
If anybody does read this, thank you for providing such a fantastic resource. For all the chimes about Sherdog not being what it used to be and sub-human forms clogging the main page, I couldn't be happier with where the knowledge I first found here has led me.
Ricky
"The Iron Hobo"
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