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Old 09-09-2007, 03:31 AM
Jeffo Jeffo is offline
Rank: Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Holland
Posts: 99
Default Training Journal

TRAINING JOURNAL


Hi Everyone,

I’m new here and I thought I’d start a training journal. To start off, I’d like to introduce myself and give you a brief overview of my training history.

My name is Jeff and I’m 28 years old. I was born and raised in Canada and have been living in Europe for the better part of the last 5 years working as an English teacher. I moved to Hamburg Germany in June 2002 and have been living in Holland for about a year now.

I first got interested in weight training when I was 16. I was a weak 140 lbs and began in my basement with a bench and some sand filled weights. I soon joined a gym and made it to a still-weak and struggling 165 lbs when I was 18. At this point I ran into HIT and was blown away. My first six months took me to 195 lbs and my strength doubled in that period, which made me a convinced believer. Seven years later, with layoffs, different routines, and a grand finale with the Athlete’s Routine, I was a fat, still relatively weak, and horribly deconditioned 205 lbs. It was tough to accept the fact that I’d wasted my early twenties with a pseudo-scientific contradiction filled pile of HIT-baloney, but I understand my mistakes and am fully recovered now.

To get out of my rut I bought an online muscle course called MuscleNOW. The program gave me just what I needed at the time and it was well worth the 100 bucks. It is a great hypertrophy based program with a very good diet and the experience was well worth it. After 4 months I was a much stronger, more muscular, and better conditioned 225 lbs at 26 years old.

I was then forced to quit training yet again and lost everything I had gained. During my time off I read various things online that helped me get a handle on basic weight training theory. When I began training in January 2006 again, I started with a version of the MuscleNOW program and made it to my all time best shape. Here they were in June 2006:

Arm 17 ½
Chest 44 ¼
Waist 35 ½
Leg 26 ½
Weight 212
Caliper 15 mm

At this point my relative strength was still lousy and I’d never seriously used the classic lifts. To remedy this problem, I picked up some golden books by Rippetoe, Stiff, and Zatsiorsky, and moved on to more strength based training programs. The past 12 months began with Starr’s Intermediate 5x5 and then Rip’s Texas Method, both of which are great. Since beginning strength training I have either been trying to maintain or lose weight, so that has obviously hurt my strength gains. Non-the-less, I’ve still been able to make good headway. At the moment current stats are as follows:

Arm 16 ½
Chest 43 ¾
Waist 34
Leg 25 ½
Weight 198
Caliper 14 mm

And here are my current best lifts, which were set a couple of weeks ago:

Squat 330x1, 290x5
Bench 260x1, 225x5
Row 285x3, 270x5

I should also note that the past year hasn’t all been good for me. I suffered a relatively severe shoulder injury when I began strength training, which kept me from doing any pressing for about 4 months. I rehabilitated it over a couple of months and I’ve been able to work at the Bench and Press for about 6 months now. I also made a careless mistake while Deadlifting back in November 2006 which has plagued my lower back and hip ever since. I’ve seen Osteopaths and Massage Therapists since then, and still visit them on a semi-regular basis, but it still acts up enough to keep me from pulling from the floor.

At the moment I’m still trying to drop body fat and increase my maximal strength. I consider myself an intermediate, and my main goal is to eventually Squat 2x bodyweight and Bench 1.5x bodyweight sometime in the future. I would also like to increase my muscle mass beyond my previous best posted above, and eventually hit a relatively lean 18” arm, but that will come a bit further down the road.

I won’t post each and every workout in this journal, but more than likely I’ll update it periodically and note anything worth noting. I’ll normally outline what my current training regime is like, then update as things change, milestones are hit or problems arise.

So, that’s me in a nut shell. Thanks for reading and I look forward to joining the community here. If you have any comments, questions, concerns, etc., please feel free.

Cheers,
Jeff
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