I'm a mother f*cking beast...I wish

“When the sun rises, I wake up and chase my dreams. I won’t regret when the sun sets ‘cause I live my life like I’m a beast”. This is my current mantra. Welcome to the present day. I have been using Stronglifts 5x5 for just over a month now and I feel great. My newbie gains are back, my strenght has gone through the roof and best of all I feel great mentally. I’ve been progressing in most of my lifts and surprisingly I’ve actually been keeping to my schedule. I tend to work out every Wednesdaay, Friday and Sunday morning. Apparently your testosteone levels peak first thing in the morning, and since compound lifts like the squat and deadlift release more testosterone into your system, this seems like the perfect time for me. Let me talk you through my progress on each of the lifts.

The squat. As I’ve previously mentioned I have squatted before but not with the intensitiy I’m doing now. On my last session I squatted 42.5kg which is my current personal record. Now, some of you reading this may think this is no mean feat but to me, a tall, long backed, long legged novice, this is amazing.  I usually do 5 minutes of leg and back stretching followed by 10 or so reps of the empty bar and then I go into my proper 5x5 weight for that session. Loading the bar up, backing off with the full load bearing down on me, taking in a massive deep breathe, puffing my chest out and bracing my core I begin the movement. Keeping my back neautral, I bend my knees, drop below parallell , pause for a few seconds, then rise, again trying to keep my back neutral, until I’m at the starting point. Repeat this for a total of 5 reps, then rest for 90 seconds until it’s time for my second set. I’ve noticed considerable muscle and size gain in my legs, most of all in my calves. My “golf club” legs are soon dissapearing. I tend to wear fairly tight jeans and within the last couple of weeks it’s getting harder and harder to pull these on! Might be time for a tirp to Primark soon.

The bench press. I recently set another personal best for me, I bench pressed a whole 30kg for 5 reps and 5 sets. Before I started this new program, my best bench press was probably 24kg and that was with bad form and using dumbbells. Since using Stronglifts 5x5 and the progressive overload system, the strenght in my chest and triceps has increased dramatically. It’s still early days though and I hope to break my personal record every other workout session as I progress upwards in weight. One thing I have noticed about bench pressing is that it can be quite difficult having long arms like mine. After my thrid or fourth set my arms start to wobble and ache, this is mainly due to lack of strenght in my arms which will hopefully stop as I continue with the program.

The deadlift. All exercises on the 5x5 program are, well, 5 reps for 5 sets, except for the deadlift.  It would be far too strenuous on the body to deadlift a heavy weight for 5x5 after squatting and overhead pressing, therefore the deadlift is just the one set of 5 reps. This doesn’t make it any easier by any means. My previous session I managed to lift 5 reps of 60kg which again is another personal record. The deadlift is probably the lift which I’ve researched the most since I used to get a l ot of back pain after performing this lift. No more! When you take your time with the set up, take the slack out of the bar, brace your core and squeeze your glutes, keeping your back neautral as with the squat, you can avoid the dreaded rounding of the lower back and any issues with injuries. Let’s see how I do tomorrow, 65kg!

The bent over row. Ok, I have to be honest here, I might not be following the rules completely. I have only attempted the barbell bent over row once, since then I have been alternating between T-bar rows, cable rows and  single arm dumbbell rows. It’s a bit hard to track my progress weight wise when I’ve been cheating like this, so next session when it comes to the barbell bent over row I will actually do the barbell bent over row. The most weight I’ve managed to cable row has been 40kg whereas on the single arm rows, I’ve managed 15kg in each arm. If I stick to the correct bent over row with the barbell, I should be able to track my progress properly and make some serious back gains.

The over head press. This has to be the most frustrating lift ever. I started with the empty barbell and could barely make 3 sets of 5, eventually I managed to hit all 5 sets, so I upped the weight to 22.5, hit 3 sets of 5 again, so next session attmepted the same weight, hit 2 sets so had to de-load back to the empty bar. I’ve been going back and forth like this all month, tomorrow I’m due to try 22.5kg again, and with the research I’ve been doing and the help from a recent personal training session I should manage to hit all sets. My shoulders have actually increased in size since starting the program so it had to be down to my bad form. I’ll let you all know how I get on tomorrow!

I’m at a loss now as to how to keep you interested in my new blog. Perhaps this weekend I may take some progress pictures of myself and compare to when I first started weight lifting, or maybe tomorrow I might document my morning workout. Either way, I hope you are enjoying this blog, again, any feedback would very much be appreciated.