li7h's log

[li7h]

6'0 and 138 lbs.
Coupling this with a high cal diet to put on some weight/muscle

D1-L2
16 Rounds

I did not expect it to kick my ass so much the first day.

[li7h]

D2-L2
9:25

140.2 lbs.

Question: My arm muscles started to give out around round 4 of push ups. By round 5 I was close to muscle failure. Should I just break during the round until I can finish the set? I remember reading I'm not supposed to train to failure.

[maddog]

When I feel muscle failure coming on in push-ups, I either briefly rock back into downward dog for a couple seconds or if it's really bad I go into a kneeling position and shake out my arms before resuming. I'm not sure how other simplefit users (simplefitters?) approach this though.

[KTG]

Sometimes I can catch my breath and get a couple more reps out by locking my arms for a second of rest at the top. Other times, like Maddog, I just have to stop on my knees and shake out the arms.

For the day 3 test, I think part of the secret is taking your breaks before you you get all the way to failure. You've got to be sure there's still gas in the tank for the next set. After a while you get a sense of how to break it up. Last week I tried to do the L5D3 pullups in 8-7-6-5 instead of my usual 7-5-4-3-4-3. I thought fewer breaks would improve my time. Instead I was almost a minute slower.

[li7h]

Forgot to post my time on Friday.

D3-L2
16:28

[li7h]

D1-L2
16 Rounds

141.4 lbs.

[li7h]

D2-L2
7:01

Yeah! I feel great!

EDIT: Weight was 143.8 that day.

[KTG]

Nice job! That's a great one week improvement.

[li7h]

Thanks for the encouraging words!

D3-L2
7:26

Almost under par. NEXT WEEK!

[li7h]

Week 3
D1-L2
25 Rounds! (+9 Improvement! Woo!)

I'm psyched and completely confident I can make judgement this week.

[KTG]

That's terrific! A huge improvement. You must have had a pretty good base to reactivate.

[li7h]

Well, I had my first slack off.. but I managed to recover. Wednesday I did my Day 2 exercise and messed up my sets a bit. I didn't reference the website and thought my Level 2 sets were 3 pull-ups/5 push-ups/8 squats. I realized this after set 3 (man I'm killing these things I thought). To compensate I did sets 4 and 5 how they should be: 3 pull-ups/8 push-ups/13 squats. Then after that I did a catch up set of 9 push-ups and 15 squats. My time got thrown off because of this screw up but I think after rounding I decided on 6:00 min was a fair time (I did actually do them fairly quickly compared to last week).

So... D2-L2 is 6:00

On Friday I had plans in the evening after work, which is when I would normally do my workout. Instead of prioritizing this I said I'd do it Saturday. Well Saturday came and went and I just got done doing my judgement Sunday night at 7:30 PM. The good news is I crushed it.

D3-L2
3:52!!

Moving on up.

Question: Since I messed up my schedule, what's the best way to correct it? I want to have a day of rest between now and D1-L3 so I was thinking Tuesday then Thursday for D2, then Saturday for D3. Then start Day 1 on Monday of the following week and be back on schedule. Does this sound like a reasonable plan?

KTG: I've never really been too out of shape. I've almost always been underweight though. I don't really lead an active lifestyle. I play video games, my job is in IT so I sit on my butt almost all day at work, and I don't really do many outdoor activities. For some reason though, I've managed to not pack on extra pounds. Maybe it's high metabolism, I don't really know. But, I've always been able to do at least a half dozen pull-ups so I guess I'm just genetically lucky. Still not where I want to be though.

Here's a photo from today
And one from the side

If I could change one thing about my body it's the size of my pectoral muscles. I think if they were a little larger then I wouldn't feel so unbalanced. Oh well.

[li7h]

Woot! First day on Level 3!

D1-L3
17 Sets

I'm wore out now.

[li7h]

D2-L3
6:26

Rawr.

[li7h]

D3-L3
5:18

So damn close.