My wife and I spent a lot of time with her family this year, which was great. On Christmas day, we were able to make it back to my parent's house in time to catch dessert. Wayyyyy too much cheesecake! Overall though, we had a great time with both her family and mine.
This year I got a whole bunch of cool stuff too. Starting with Skyrim for the 360, some real nice dress shirts (and ties) for work, a few books and a game for the DS. Plus some PJ's so I can lounge around and play some of those video games I got for X-mas ;). Really, that's just the beginning. I got some great stuff.
That being said, my favorite gift has to be the one given to me by my wife. The book, "Beyond Brawn" by Stuart McRobert. I've started going through it, and it's pretty much an encyclopedia of information on how to build muscle and get strong. It's perfect for me. Without getting into TOO much detail, one of his main philosophies is cycling your workouts to hit new PR's. A cycle would last anywhere from 5-10 weeks, and you start by dropping the weight to about 80-85% of what you normally lift (phase I). After you drop the weight, slowly bring yourself back up to where your last max was. Work out at this max for a few workouts (phase II) and then begin to increase the poundage over the course of the next few weeks (phase III). The goal is to stretch out phase III for as long as possible. Once you begin to stall, begin the cycle all over again.
His point is that it's difficult to do this because you have to detrain, and almost lose muscle to gain more later on. According to the author, it takes patience, patience, and more patience, but the gains are well worth it. It makes sense, I've been stalling on some of my lifts, especially the presses... bench and overhead. It might be prudent for me to take a cycling approach to training those 2 specific lifts. Either way, I'm not making any changes until I finish reading the book, and take thorough notes. I want to design a very specific plan that I can follow.
Onto my training over the weekend. As the title suggests, I deadlifted Christmas morning, after opening presents. Hit a new PR of 315lbs and felt great. Here are my sets.
12/25/11
Deadlifts - 3 sets
135x8 (warmup)
225x6 (warmup)
315x4 PR
315x2
295x5
Standing Dumbbell Bicep Curls - 3 sets
35's x 8
40's x 7
40's x 6
An interesting note, and quick story. Ron Darling is a TV announcer for the NY Mets, and he used to pitch for them back in the 80's. You may have heard, but he helped them win the 1986 World Series. Not that it matters, but he's also a fantastic analyst. But whatever. I've heard him say about pitchers, (and I'm paraphrasing here) that if you have a shitty warmup session, that doesn't mean you'll have a shitty game. And vice versa, if you have a great warmup session, that doesn't mean you'll have a great game. It's one of the things that you have to be willing to accept and adapt to if you're a major league pitcher.
That saying applies to my workout on Christmas. My warmups for the deadlifts didn't feel too great. 135 lbs was light, but I felt a tiny little kink in my back. The 225 felt really heavy for some reason, and it crossed my mind to NOT go for the PR. While the warmups didn't feel too good for me, they did what they were intended to do. Warm me up. Get the kinks out. And as you can tell, I went for the 315 and nailed it.
And finally. Anna took a video of me PRing that 315. She missed the 1st rep of the set, so it only shows me doing 3 reps.
Not that many people comment here, but how's my form?
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