In my last entry, we discussed what I was doing for the upper body. But what are we doing for those legs? What am I doing to keep those walking sticks uber strong? So that when we get to the Endurance Macro, I’ll have the strength to push the limit and maybe, just maybe, gain on that Last 10 Pounds.
So for that bottom end, here it is;
Drop Set Smith Box Squat with Pull Up (20 to 30 Minutes)
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Muscle Group;
Quad, Glut, Lat
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Exercises Included;
- Smith Machine Box Squat, Drop Sets
- Pull Ups
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Exercise Procedure;
This is a superset on 3 Large Muscle groups; gluts, quads and lats. Complete 4 sets. Start out with a heavy squat set of 8 reps followed immediately with a lighter 12 rep set. Once you’ve finished the 12th rep of the lighter set, complete 8 to 10 neutral grip pull ups. The squats are completed in a smith rack with your feet forward of your torso; your back should be perpendicular to the floor when thighs are parallel. These are also ‘box’ squats; e.g. you have a bench or box under your butt so that when you’re at the bottom of the move (thighs parallel), the box touches your butt. The 1st set (8 reps) should be heavy enough to be struggling on reps 7 and 8. The 2nd set (12 reps) should be light enough to fire off 10 reps fairly rapidly with reps 11 and 12 a bit slower and very, very uncomfortable.
- At the bottom of the squat, your calves and torso should be perpendicular to the floor and your thighs parallel. The box or bench should be poking you on the butt at the bottom of the movement.
- Concentrate the lift at mid-thigh, keeping abs engaged (blocked).
- The 2nd set should be completed in rapid succession and at the top of the movement, do not lock your knees; keep tension on the quads throughout the movement.
- DO NOT hold your breath. Make sure you are blowing air as push the bar up during the squats.
- Pull ups should not be done to failure, always save enough energy for 1 more rep.
- Drop the weight of the heavy sets by 5 to 10 lbs each set. Try to keep the weight of the lighter set the same for all 4 sets.
The rest period between exercises is not timed. It should be long enough for your breathing and heart rate to fall back to normal. Generally, depending on you aerobic condition, this will take between 2 to 4 minutes.
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How You Should Feel After the Exercise;
As you finish up the squats and head over to the pull up bar, your quads should be so pumped they feel like they could explode. You should also have a pretty good lactic acid burn; it should be hard to walk those first few steps. And after the chin ups, you should be breathing quite hard with heart pounding; like you just finished running a sprint.
You will feel tightness in your legs for about 24 hours; they are just letting you know they have been worked. There may be some stiffness but there should be no pain or discomfort. If there is any pain or if discomfort rolls into the 48 hour mark, your lifts were too heavy; you need to lighten up. If you feel tightness in the quad muscle heads near the knees, try bringing your feet closer toward your torso and focus lifting at mid-thigh. Again, keep abs engaged during the lift to keep pressure off of the knees.
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Jan 2015, Smith Squat, 120 kg. Feb 2015 140 kg.
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Besides this Smith Machine Box Squat routine, I’m also completing leg extensions, leg curls, stiff legged dead lifts, some toe and heal raises and some additional wide grip pull ups plus some wood choppers on the cable machine. Between this routine and the upper body routine (detailed in my last blog entry), you can be sure that I have been improving the working density of my resistance routines. I may not be lifting the heaviest but I’m sure as hell moving a lot of weight in a given time frame. And that is for sure, improving.
And you should also note that I have not mentioned ab or core work since I started commenting on this Power Macro. No side bends, no crunches, no back extensions…….…..nothing around the middle except for maybe a few ‘Ring of Fire’ isometrics that I can complete in the shower or just standing in line killing time. You remember the ‘Ring of Fire’ don’t you? If not just back track through this blog series and you’ll bump into it.
So how’s all of this working out? I’m up 7 kg on the scale from last June (just before I broke my foot) and my skin folds are hanging in there showing 16 to 17% BF (11 and 12% measured plus 4% error). In June the skin folds had shown 13 to 15% BF (9 to 11% measured plus 4% error). And in the mirror, there’s this face of a 60 year old man with the body I wish I had when I was 25 or 30. WOW!!! The only thing I’m not happy with are those love handles. Not doing ab or core work has helped some, e.g. keeping the hips and waist slim, but there’s an awful lot of room for improvement.
And based on my last statement, you may have guessed it; I’m going after that ‘Chiseled Athlete’ look that I discussed last year in July. I’m looking to see just how close I can get to Casey Butt’s, ideal potential for a 5’9” subject. And if I can get there (or close to it) at 60, just think what you could do at 30.
Back in the USA……………
We’re back. Yep, my Asian tour is over and the project I am working on has landed me in central Kentucky. Boy what a culture change. The best part; I am back in the land of the 24 hour gym. So when it’s raining or the weather just doesn’t want to cooperate, I can still get some treadmill time, wha – who!!!
On my trip back to the states, I took a week (maybe closer to two) off from work and heavy work outs; cardio only. We stopped in Honolulu just to decompress for a couple of days and stayed at the Marriott on Waikiki. They had a fabulous gym. I spent at two mornings on their treadmills and recumbent bikes. It seems like it had been forever since I had completed 2, 30 minute back to back cardio sessions; it felt great. Then off to Seattle to visit my oldest son; we stayed at the Best Western in Auburn Washington. Now this is where I had broken my foot last June. However, the running gods were with me on this trip and I pulled off another dual 30 minute cardio session. Then on to Kennewick Washington to make sure my house was still standing. I completed a 4 mile run on a route that I hadn’t taken in over 3 years. There is one long uphill grade that I remember being quite though, it was a piece of cake compared to the 7%’ers that I had been running in Korea. WOW!!!
But vacations end and I need to get back to work and get back to the weights. The gym I picked to start out my Kentucky adventure is the Fitness Edge in Harrodsburg Ky. It’s has a group cardio studio, a spinning studio, a pretty good selection of free weights plus a myriad of cable isolation machines. There’s also a few treadmills, elipticals and recumbents. The best part, they have a Squat Rack. I’m not sure how that will go after dealing with smith machines for the last year and a half but we’re goin’ after it. So in this little gym I plan on finishing up my Power Macro over the next 2 months. We’ll see how that goes and report progress in future articles.
Oh God, That First Work Out………….
So on the first week back at it, between moving in and getting started at the new job location, I decided to complete just 2 workouts at the new gym in Kentucky, a lower body split on Tuesday and an upper body split on Thursday. I’m here to tell you they were tough. The bottom end (leg day), as described above, was really the killer; my legs did not feel normal for 4 days. WOW!!!
The big difference is the smith machine. The one in Korea was not counterweighted and had a bar weight of around 30 to 35 lbs plus it had a true vertical rail; no incline. The smith in Kentucky is a Hammer Strength model with a 7 degree incline and a bar weight of about 20 lbs. I also think that the counterweight on these units is dampened; it feels awfully hard to build any speed when pushing the weight up. On the Hammer smith, instead of pushing your feet forward as you would on a smith with true vertical travel, you stand directly under the bar and since the bar is tilted, it keeps your knees from getting ahead of you toes.
I’m not sure why this was such a tough work out; I had dropped the starting weigh. I’ve got a pretty good feeling that the biggest problem was the bar incline on the smith. I’m using parts of my quads further up the leg, closer to the groin area. Just in case, I’ll drop the weight again when I jump into the 3 day per week routines. Or just maybe I’ll migrate over to the squat rack and pick up with simple back squats.
As far as the upper body; lesson learned from the first day back – Go Light!!!!
So now we’re back on track, pushing, pulling, running and whatever it takes to gain control of that Last 10 Pounds.
MMJennings
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