Personal Fitness Goals 3/26

About three weeks ago ago I began to lift weights as my primary fitness objective. I pictured myself as bodybuilder with a strength emphasis. I've been training in high rep ranges for hypertrophy and muscle gains, but also spending time on powerlifting lifts and lower rep strength exercises. I will continue to post my progress throughout this project.

Strength: One rep max

Deadlift: Goal - 355 by 6/1/15

 3/1/15 295 lbs,

Squat: Goal - 345 by 6/1/15

3/1/15 315 lbs,

Bench Press: Goal - 245 by 6/1/15

3/1/15 200, 3/26/15 215.

Overhead Press: Goal - 165 by 6/1/15

3/1/15 135, 3/26/15 145

Deadlines 3/26

Two weeks ago I created some deadlines. I wanted to finish my research last Friday, and then finish meetings with people by the end of the month...This didn't happen. I was expecting way to much to be done. A lot of work has been done, I'm proud how much work as been done, but the deadlines weren't reasonable. My mentor and I agreed that we would push back all deadlines a week. That leads be to finishing research tomorrow, and I'm on track to do it. Tonight I'm finishing Powerlifting Training, and tomorrow I will cover agility training. Once those two are finished, I will have Covered 7 different, but connected, topics thoroughly. 

Over break I will be meeting with people to get their workouts and deadlines set and straight. After that its straight into the videos! This project has been moving so fast, but I'm enjoying it and it's about to get to the fun part. 

Original Deadlines 3/11

These were the deadlines I created about a week and a half ago. Since then I realized I was expecting too much out of myself. My mentor and I agreed to move all deadlines back one week in order that I can finish the original amount of research that I wanted to. This Friday I will be done with research and moving on to presentations.

Original Deadlines 3/11

Researching

3/13 - Have finished research for 3 subject’s goals.

3/17 - Finished research for 6 subject’s goals.

3/20 - Finished research for 9 subject’s goals.

Presenting

3/25 - Meet with 3 subjects, present info, agree on meeting times/goals

3/27 - Meet with 6 subjects, present info, agree on meeting times/goals

3/31 - Meet with 9 subjects, present info, agree on meeting times/goals

Videos/Continueing project

Through April I hope to produce 4 or more videos that I think would be helpful to my subjects.

Ideas include: - Teaching Hang Clean

• Creatine information
• Meal timing
• Benefit of mixing routines/shocking muscles
• How much protein do you need and what foods to get it from
• Importance of the pump+ tips/tricks to increase pump
• Scheduling training/Frequency training

5/4 - Last meeting with each person, assess results

Project Conclusion + Presentation

To be determined based upon date of presentation

Creatine

Creatine  

What: Creatine is a chemical (C4H9N3O2)found normally in the body. It can be made by the body and obtained from certain foods.

Who takes it: Athletes, bodybuilders, powerlifters, and sprinters who want to gain muscle mass.

Where can you find it: Can be found from many different suppliers. To make sure the supplement is creatine with no additives, it is safest to buy from a company NSF certified.

When: When someone is active, has a very healthy diet, and wants to increase their exercise performance, they can take creatine.

Why: Creatine helps to replenish ATP faster. It brings phosphate to the ADP. With more volume of phosphate available, ATP can be replenished faster.

How: Take 240-350 mg per kg body weight daily for 3-7 days. After this phase is complete, maintenance doses vary, but can be estimated with this chart.

Body Weight	Loading Dosage Range/Day*	Maintenance Dosage Range/Day*
Below 155 lbs.	12-16 grams	4-8 grams
156 to 175 lbs.	13-17 grams	5-9 grams
176 to 199 lbs.	14-18 grams	6-10 grams
200 to 225 lbs.	15-19 grams	7-11 grams
Above 225 lbs.	16-20 grams	8-12 grams

What I’m doing; I weigh about 170 lbs currently. My creatine arrived here 2/20, I will begin today. The loading dosage will be 20g for 5 days, then I will stick to the maintenance dosage of 6 grams.  

Bodybuilding specific training

Bodybuilding specific training

Rep Range/Tempo: It's good to mix it up, but the mean number of reps per set should end up around 10-15. Nobody should only train in a certain rep range, and no rep range is exactly defined for a certain purpose. 5 reps will work on strength, but also to a degree with work on muscle endurance, just as 20 reps to a degree will work on strength. No matter what rep range your training in, that last rep should be hard as hell. Bodybuilders train to failure. The harder you train the more results you will get. Tip: Use spotter’s help to help you get to failure.

Tempo is how fast you complete the exercise’s movement. Try a few sets where you move the weight very slow and controlled. Moving the weight very fast and explosively can also benefit as long as the movement is still controlled and safe. The last thing we want is injury.

Set Range: People tend to gravitate to 3 sets per exercise. Thats not the best way to grow. Some bodybuilders have been known to complete up to 10 sets or more. Its not great to only do huge amounts of sets, but as usual, its good to mix it up.

Type of Exercises: Bodybuilders benefit from Time Under Tension exercises. This means exercises where the tension is maintained on the muscle. Most of these exercises are compound - meaning one movement. Keeping tension on the muscle increases the rate at which it will break down, it also helps with the Pump. The pump is really called hyperaemia and is when blood flow is increased to certain muscles. The blood flow increases to these muscles due to engorgement of the muscle’s blood vessels.

Time between sets: On heavier lifting days, spend more time between sets. Lighter days, spend less time. The less time you spend waiting, the better your pump will be.

So why is: its good to mix it up, a recurring theme? When your muscles are worked to do something hard or something they can’t do, they react, and grow so that they will be able to. If you keep doing similar workouts, your muscles will grow to fit that workout best, but may plateau, but if you switch it up, they will continue to react and grow.

Scheduling your workouts: People tend to assign certain days of the week to certain muscle groups, but are there exactly 7 muscle groups you want to train? Not really. I wouldn’t recommend creating a schedule like this. Instead, I would first through experience learn how long it usually takes each muscle group to recover. My legs recover in about 4 days, so every 4 days I do a leg session. My delts on the other hand will recover in about 3. Scheduling like this will guarantee you more gains, but it has its downsides. For example, because every muscle group is on its own schedule, there is a chance that you could end up working chest, delts, legs, abs, back all in one day. To avoid this we can restart the schedule every month or two. Restarting the schedule also plays into the next topic.

Sculpting/Bodybuilding: By rearranging your schedule, you can increase and decrease the number of times you train a bodypart. Some people are genetically gifted with certain muscles being larger relative to their others. They may want to bring the other muscles closer to proportion with the others. Training that muscle harder, or more frequently, will do so. Bodybuilding can be considered an art, because of this ability to change the proportions of muscles to what looks best. Bringing out the lines and texture through diet is the next step to sculpting an amazing physique.

Tips to throw into training: What other things can you do to break plateaus, get more gains, and enjoy yourself more while training?

- Drop sets: Basically one huge set. Start with a weight you max out on at about 12 reps. Go to failure on that weight, drop the weight by about 20%, and with no rest go again. Keep going  for 3-6 sets. I prefer 4. Each set should be to failure.

-  Supersets: Complete a set of one exercise, and immediately move to complete a different exercise. Rest after your second or final exercise before starting again. Make sure the exercises are related, for example, Incline bench superset with cable flys is one of the best.

- Negatives: Use a weight heavier that you can regularly handle. Slowly, bring the weight through an eccentric motion. To raise the weight back up either use a spotter or do one leg/arm down, both up.

- Try a few sets of very slow motion sets.

-Pyramid sets: example rep range: 12, 10, 8, 10, 12

Explaning the Creatine Experiment

About a month ago I began to take Creatine, which has been determined a safe supplement and approved by the NCAA. Basically all it does is raise your ATP levels. I'm trying to think of ways possible to test its effectiveness. I don't have a large enough sample size to run an experiment that would be recognized as official, of course, but I want to see what I can do partly for practice, and also just because I'm curious. I think my best option is to not use a control, and just ask people how they feel their performance has changed. Without the control, we wont be able to see how they would have progressed without the supplement. It doesn't matter too much for my project though because the goal is to help people move towards their goals, and if it helps one person a lot, then great. But if it doesn't help another person so much, but they think it does, it doesn't really matter as there is no negative or anything we give up by taking creatine.

I'm recommending using Optimum Nutrition's supplement of creatine because they are a very well known and respected brand that is NSF certified. With Optimum Nutrition you know what you are getting, and there will be no "secret ingredients" added.

Meeting Scheduled

I've scheduled a meeting with Coach Parker tomorrow at 7:00. That means that I have to get all the things I need to show him ready tonight. I'm going to have deadlines throughout the rest of the project set because that's what he's helping me with, and what would be the point of meeting with nothing to discuss.

I still want to have 2 people's research done by tomorrow as well. I'm going to start with myself and Htet Pai because we have somewhat similar goals. So far the project is rolling along well, I think I'm going to get a lot done these next weeks!

Review of other two blogs

Gavy's Thoughts

The blog is easy to read, the dear reader entry is clear and allows the reader to understand what he is doing with this blog and his project. Also the schedule is very clearly laid out. I hope that in the future you can include recordings of your music, or even pictures of the instruments your using. It is a bit hard to understand what is happening with your music when we can't hear it progress. 

The American Dream and Immigrant Perspectives of America 

The blog is fun to read. There is a lot of enthusiasm in the writing. If I were to critique anything, I would say that the writing could be more organized. If you were to look back at the journal to try to find an idea or a goal you had you would have to read the whole entry. Maybe that something that just matters to me, but I like the rest and I think it should help you a lot during your project!

Starting personalized research 3/8

Each person I meet with tells me their goals, and each goal I group into a category of my research. For example Htet is focusing on bodybuilding, so I'll do research on bodybuilding nutrition. I think for my bodybuilding research, I'd like to meet with a large bodybuilder, who has been doing it for a long time. I consider myself a bodybuilder, but I've seen much bigger and stronger people at the Gyms in Ithaca.

Ive met with 8 people so far. I know have 8 people's goals and they have agreed to what I've asked of them. Now to find out what I want to ask of them exactly. I started that this weekend. By Wednesday I want to have 2 peoples research done. By Friday, 4 peoples research done. By next Friday, 8 peoples research done. The Wednesday, March 25th,  after next Friday I hope to be finished, and begin getting ready for check ups with each person, and starting my first YouTube video.

Making first steps - 3/4/15

I've just started to ask people to be part of my project. They don't have to agree to much, just that they will do the recommendations I ask of them, but it still takes a bit of time to gather 10 people. An example recommendation is Elliott has tight hamstrings, so I'll give him a stretch, and he has to do it after every lower body weight session he does. For the people who are more intense with their fitness or want more help, I'm including in the few experiments I'm going to try to run. I'm going to try to test variables such as Frequency, Creatine supplement, etc.

First two weeks outline

Goals: - Get 10 people to agree to be subjects for my project
- Meet with them and get gather their own goals/what they want to be able to do
- Keep this all organized
- Gather data/helpful info on each person's goals
- By the end of the week, be ready to meet again with at least 3 and set a schedule with them.

The work starts with me asking people to participate in my project. I think 10 is a good number. It will be a lot to manage, but I'll be able to experience more. Once I have these people (I have a few in mind) and have determined their 3 month goals with them, its time to gather data specific to what they want to do. There is so much to do with strength and conditioning, I would learn a lot about stuff I don't need if I studied before having any specific goals in mind. Now I have been known to be disorganized in the past. With 10 different people, I need to be very organized. I think creating separate folders for each person in Google docs would be best. By the end of the week, I should have gathered enough info to create at least 3 people's programs for the next 3 months.

Asking around will take time, class time , researching, and planning for the 3 will take much time. I'm pretty sure that 8 hrs a week will be covered between all these. Also, my own training is part of this project and will be added to the time spent.

The Intro

Dear Reader, 

We all compete in some form or way. Strength is defined as a good or beneficial quality or attribute of a person or thing. When a person talks of strength, they could be speaking of many different ideas. There is mental strength, emotional strength, physical strength , etc.  All are important, and need to be developed for different ways of competition and living. This blog will focus on developing Physical strength, but will also hopefully strengthen all of our different types of strength as well by helping us to understand our bodies better.

I chose this topic for my project because I'm very interested in Sports, powerlifting, and bodybuilding.  Strength is not the top priority for bodybuilding, but it still fits into this project because it involves weight training. Also, I will be studying to become a Physical Therapist next year, and I think that this project will help me learn more about what I will be studying.

Nutrition is also key to build muscle, so I will cover it as well. There are ways a powerlifter's diet differs from an athlete's diet, and also from a bodybuilder's.

There will be two main sub-projects to the whole thing. The first is creating a guideline book, or a youtube channel dedicated to help the next part. This will include many varying tips and ways on how to build build strength, muscle, etc. I have not decided on which (book or video) I'll be using yet. The second part of the project is to bring people onto strength and conditioning plans, watch and help them reach their set goals making sure that they stick to them, and then to analyze the results. Similar to what a personal trainer does, but I will not be helping them in the gym. I will only be making sure they try exercises best for their goals, recommend the correct diet and times to consume nutrients, and other various tips.

Each subjects results will be measured and posted here.

I will also be going through the same process and will post my results.