No More Excuses!

Been lifting for a little over two years now and while I'm happy with progress I've made, I'm not satisfied with it.  Yesterday I got around to thinking about why my progress has been shit and moving forward, I will no longer be making excuses to work out less than my potential.

Many things come to mind.

1. Procrastination - I got all day to work-out (most of the time) but I always end up doing it around somewhere between 7-9pm because I don't feel like it or I'm tired or haven't eaten yet or whatever.

2. Warm-ups - always extremely lazy when it comes to doing stretches or a bit of cardio before a work-out because it took too much time (always tried to keep work-outs within a certain time frame), all I wanted to do was lift and now I have developed a shoulder issue.

3. Cardio - I hate cardio, especially stationary things like elliptical because you looking at the same scenery for however long you doing or looking at the timer and when you do it, time goes by so slow.  Also since I hate cardio, i always tend to avoid doing it when I know I could get atleast 1-2 sessions in a week.

4. Foam rolling - Again lazy with this because I always told myself I didn't need to, muscles would always be tense and tight and would just say it's part of working out.

5.  Not pushing myself - Not making any progress, no problem see what happens next week. never really push myself anymore to get the extra rep or add the 5lbs or run longer or hold the position for few more seconds or doing some accessory exercises after a work-out.  Working out just seems like a chore, like cleaning the house, just get it done for the sake of getting saying you did it.

6.  Diet - Everybody says diet is like 50% to achieving your goals.  While I knew it played an important part, I hated eating "clean" because the foods are just too boring.  Told myself that I would outwork a bad diet.  Look where it got me.

7.  Smoking - I've cut down significantly, normal day I'll have anywhere between 1-3 but there'll be times where I'll go on streaks for a few weeks and smoking like 10 a day and I can feel the impact it has on my lifting especially without doing any cardio.

and just the little things, like keeping track of stats.  Analysing how progress was going.  Looking up recipes, keeping equipment clean, making sure frig was stocked with things to eat.

Gotta get back to the stronglifts days where I was fiending for progress (and quite possibly where I made the most gains)!  No more making excuses to not do this or not to that.  It's time to get serious again.  Not sure if I'll be keeping this blog but I'll give it a shot.  Been back and forth about deleting it and deleted it a few times yesterday but I'll keep it for now.

Today is legs, so get hype!

No Excuses!

Weekly Update #005

Still haven't worked out but plan to do legs today.  So, this is week 5 and the targeted loss was 5lbs...I've actually reached the goal already plus more.  Total loss 10lbs lol, the magic of getting off your ass from the couch/chair and doing a little hard work.  I was actually quite surprised at the loss myself as I knew I had been losing weight (my test is feeling my face around the cheeks area) but I didn't know I had gone down that much until I weighed myself today.  Biggest worry though is since I haven't been hitting the weights, my strength will be down.  We'll see what happens next week as I plan on working out next week.  I could have worked out this week but alreaady tired as is and it's 2 hours of working out (warm-up, exercise, shower, etc...) or 2 hours of gaming.  Well game is getting boring now, had my fun when neck/back was bugging me but gotta get back on track again.

Weekly Update #004

Decided not to work out this week as neck/back was still iffy.  Kinda a good thing because I been stuck doing manual labour this week and this shit is a work out in itself.  May do legs this weekend if I get a day off but we'll see.  Doing the labour isn't too bad on the upper back a little stiff/sore but it is killing my lower back. 

That being said, I'll probably still be on track for the weight loss.  Just due to the extra activity I gotta do.  So it'll cover last week and this week.

Weekly Update #002 & #003

Going to write this so I don't put it off again.  There's some good & bad news, more bad than good.

Last week, wasn't anything to special.  Still on track 4th week, 4 lbs loss.  Problem was on legs days, I couldn't squat.  Felt like like I loss a lot strength.  Couldn't complete one set at any weight (besides warm-up) I was doing, just lost a lot of reps and the messed up thing is I was still sore the next few days.

Onto this week.  Back & biceps days, all exercises went up 5lbs, chest/tri/shoulder day went up 5lbs.  Fantastic!!  But I hurt myself...I'm sure I felt it but just continuted on anyways.  It was during the second exercise overhead press.  Last week, I had decided to use chalk again after not having used it for 5-6 months.  On ohp, I felt like I could really "feel" the bar and I was able to push harder and squeeze (before using chalk, I had already noticed I should have added 5lbs to the bar already).  So this week, chalked up again.  The first set things go as planned and then the second I felt a pull around my neck/back.  It didn't really hurt or anything and I continued the work-out as planned.  Went to shower, turned my neck and SNAP!  It's been hurting ever since and I'm still feeling it...Couldn't really do legs this week, I tried doing some leg curls and lying leg raises...garbage.  Work-out is planned for tomorrow but I don't think I wanna test myself and just take another week off.

Not doing a weigh-in this week as I've done no cardio, barely worked out and been doing nothing but playing a stupid video game all week.

Haha, Furious Pete has me all figured out...lol

Weekly Update #001

This past week was a deload week.  Still on track for the 10lbs loss, been 3 weeks and lost 3lbs.  Quite surprised this time around because I'm not tracking caloric intake and just going with the flow.  Just a few times where I feel a bit hungry, especially if I don't get meals/snacks within a certain period of time but I think it'll be easy to offset this by shift some calories to earlier in the day and less for dinner.  Potential problem is that I usually get dinner after working out and like to have a bigger meal.

Now for the actual work-out, I'm really a bit conflicted in regards to  squats.  Pretty much since I've started All-Pro's (about 8 months ago), I went from ATG to parallel since the general census is parallel is sufficient to work the legs.  Now I'm not too sure because right now i'm doing sets of 200x10 parallel and since it was a deload week, I dropped the weight down to 135 and went ATG just to get the little bit of extra work in.  This is the issue I have, in the later sets at the lower weight, it was just as tough (if not tougher) as doing the heavier weight at parallel, getting out of the hole was a real bitch and really has to dig deep and push to get out.  At 135ATG, I felt more strain around the knees, in inner sides of the thighs, glutes, and core (my quads were just as sore as any regular work-out).  So conflicted on which way to do it because now I feel like I'm missing out on potential muscle growth in the areas listed above, but at the same time I don't really wanna put a lot of stress on the knees.

Moving forward this week, I'm going to try to add 5lbs to a majority of the exercises.