Motivators that Work for Me #2: A New Physique

In this second installment of a series of blog posts on things that motivate me to stay physically active, I discuss the fact that once a person has acheived an improved physique, he or she will want to keep it. 

There are plenty of people I have encountered or read about that used to be overweight and then they lost a lot of pounds through diet modification and exercise. Some people in this situation maintain this improved physique forever, and some revert back to their original size. I can understand how difficult it would be to lose all that weight, and then to gain it all back would be hard to deal with, too. My story is not like this, though. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.

I have always had a thin build. Even my own mother remarks when I come to visit that it looks like I've lost weight. No. I'm the same 6'4" and 175 pound male today that I was back in June 2001. I have records from back then. I have a completely normal weight for my height. However, my impression of myself is that I am a little underdeveloped in the upper body, including arms, shoulders, and chest. Data show that the maximum bench press of an adult male in his 30s should be about 93% his body weight. For me that would be 162 pounds and I don't think I could do that. 

Back in September 2008 I started to do weight lifting to see if I could build my muscles. At the time I was not a swimmer, so I wasn't worried about strength; increasing muscle size was my goal. I'm embarrassed that this was my goal. It's so sophomoric to worry about having big muscles. But guess what? Weight lifting several days per week for 16 months caused my chest circumference to increase 3 inches and my upper arm circumference to increase 1 inch. To be honest, I don't think these minor gains in muscle size were ever noticable in the mirror. But it didn't matter; I knew I had made progress and it made me feel better about myself.

My weight lifting diminished during winter 2010 because of minor shoulder injuries at that time and an increase in my professional responsibilities, and I haven't really done a lot of weight lifting since. Meanwhile, I've been swimming on a regular basis and I think this has maintained my muscle size and strength. It better have, because by swimming regularly, I am walking around in public with no shirt and I have to look good. I can't have a bunch of belly fat. I can't look sickly thin. Thus, one of my motivators for keeping a regular schedule of fitness activties is to hold on to the improvements I made to my physique, and to stay visually pleasing to the eye during my time at the pool. Oh, and ladies, I'm still single!

All kidding aside, I want to stress that what works for me might not be helpful to others. First, I don't know what it is like to struggle with one's weight their whole life. Relative to others, it's easy for me to say "I want to look good at the pool" and be able to work toward that goal. Second, "looking good at the pool" isn't that great of a goal to have anyway. It is a subjective goal. It is an unreachable goal because there is no way for me to know when I've attained it. This goal  emphasizes outer appearance rather than the more important things that count. Lastly, I'm pretty sure that people don't look at my body when I am at the pool as much as I used to think. Maybe they snatch a look or two, but in general, swimmers are there to do their own thing and encourage me as I do mine. There is very little judgment at the pools where I swim--swimmers come in all shapes, ages, and sizes, and we are all far more beautiful than we think we are. You might catch me staring at someone at my pool, but I'm almost certain to be studying their swimming technique than thinking about their body's appearance. Seriously.

In sum, one of the things that motivates me to workout is how good my body looks to me. It doesn't matter that much how I appear to others. I think I look good, and I exercise to keep it that way.

Re-set Day #6

Yesterday I "rested," or at least I didn't do any workouts. I'm on day #6 after deciding to increase the frequency of my workouts following a 36-day "drought" in my weight-lifting sessions and a 39-day drought in my running. Over the last month I have continued to swim and bike, but not much else. So what did I do today? Oops! Mostly just go for a bike ride...

4.8 mile bike ride around the country club near my home. Actually, the country club isn't that big; I rode around the golf course twice for a total of 4.8 miles. My average speed was 14.6 mph and my maximum speed was 34.1 mph, obviously obtained while going down a steep hill. My average heart rate was 151 bpm and my maximum during the 21:01 activity was 167 bpm. I burned 165 calories according to the bike computer, or 303 calories according to the heart rate monitor. I wish the two gadgets would agree. Out of frustration, I go to a website calculator, which gives me a midline estimate of 251 calories.

I did get the chance to do some lifting, but not everything I had planned. I ran out of time. I did two sets of bench presses @ 105 pounds; for the first set I did 13 reps and I did 7 reps for the second set. My left shoulder is still weak; it is recovering from an injury to my infraspinatus experienced on Re-Set Day #1. It's sooooo ironic and typical that I hurt myself on the first day that I committed to doing more weight-lifting!

I did a limited number of rotator cuff exercises tonight, too.

I am looking forward to a lot more workout time this week, as responsibilities at work have lifted considerably. I'll keep you posted.

Re-set Day #2

This was day two of my "re-set," before which I went 36 days without doing a gym workout. During this "drought," I continued to swim and bike, but not at a normal frequency. Things at work and at home have just been two busy. So, I'm trying to start again.

My schedule today was a little different than planned, so I did not have time to swim at midday when my pool is open. I also did not have time to do much gym workout, but I did get in about half of what I planned. I did two sets of bench presses using 105-pound weights. My first set was 13 reps and my second set was 7 reps. I felt a lot stronger today compared to yesterday, so my muscles seem to have recovered well from that 2,050 yard swim on Day #1. I have a lot of delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) in the midline fibers of my pectoralis; I believe these are sore from doing the bench presses yesterday rather than the swimming. So, it seems that my bench press form was not as bad as I thought; I really was working the pectoralis (I feared I was doing the exercise wrong, relying too much on muscles in the back). My infraspinatus muscle is not painful today.

Is it strange to enjoy DOMS? It's a feel-good sort of pain, and I get some pleasure out of massaging myself in the area of soreness. Hey now...get your mind out of the gutter. I'm not talking about that kind of massage!

Today I also did about 40 reps of a rotator cuff exercise, and then my girlfriend arrived and I had to quit.

I now feel like I've been cheated out of the parts of the workout I didn't have time to do today, so I've got a new plan for tomorrow in order to catch up. Tomorrow I will wake up early and take advantage of the pool hours in the morning. Then at the end of the day I'll go for a 20-min run followed by a gym workout consisting of bench press, rotator cuff elastic band exercise, and pull-ups.

Re-set Day #1

Yesterday I posted an entry that discussed how I have skipped the non-cardio portion parts of my workouts for the last 36 days. I set some goals for the first few days in order to get back into a routine. Today is Day #1 of that plan. Here is what I did:

At swim practice this morning I swam 2,050 yards. This exceeded my goal by a considerable degree, but what I do in practice is dictated by my coach, so I was simply guessing at what he'd have me do. He worked me hard today! I started with 500 yards of warm-up (I only did freestyle today). Then 6x50s of a finger-drag drill, which is meant to help me put my hands in the right place as they start their catch. Then the coach taught me a new drill in which I swim 50 yards but interrupt it twice to do a 360-degree somersault. This helped me improve my flip-turn, since my flip turns have gotten really sloppy lately. Coach reminded me to pull my hands all the way into my chest at the start of the flip; this speeds up the flip and helps me initiate it better. I was also told not to breathe right before doing a flip because that lifts my head out of the water, which makes my hips sink. Lastly, on the flip-turn, I should not be afraid to hit the wall when on my back; I can turn over after touching the wall. Otherwise I waste time flipping and then kicking. Most of the rest of swim practice was 3x200s on 4:00 and 4x100s on 1:45, which means the faster I go, the longer I can rest in between. This seemed to work well for the 200s, but I got zero rest between the 100s because it took me 1:45 to do each 100 yard swims. 

But enough about swimming. My goal this week is to increase my weight-lifting activity. So this afternoon I came home from work a few minutes early and did some bench presses. I started at 105 pounds as planned, but I was unable to do 15 reps like I expected.  The [excessive] swimming earlier in the day has killed all the strength in my left shoulder area. In particular, my left infraspinatus muscle is sore. I don't think I've done any great harm, but it is clearly in the midst of repair and I have no strength there. Hmmm, consulting Delavier (2006), I don't see the infraspinatus included in the list of muscles used during a bench press. So maybe some other muscles in my left shoulder were affected by my swim today. Either that or (1) I'm engaging the wrong muscles to do the bench press, or (2) I'm simply weak from lack of lifting exercises during the last 36 days. I don't think it's (2) because my left arm was definitely weaker than my right as I attempted to lift the barbell.

I did some rotator cuff exercises, too. I did most of what I planned, except that I was unable to do 20 reps of two types of elastic band exercise that involves exerternal rotation of the left shoulder. I only did 10 reps of those exercises, as my arm felt weak and I didin't want to do harm. Consulting a few websites confirms that it is the infraspinatus and the teres minor that are responsible for external rotation.

Finally, I did 1.5 pull-ups. My goal was 2, but I was unable to get all the way up on the second one. I know a lot of my "inability" to accomplish my goals is all in my head. I am afraid of hurting myself, and that isn't exactly a bad thing, but it also keeps me from moving forward and getting stronger.

I am exciting for tomorrow's workouts and I'll report back on my results later.

Pyramid sets feel good.

Pyramid sets with the bench press will build the pectoralis fairly quickly. Probably.

Pyramid sets feel good. At least tonight when I did one. Or part of one. I routinely do two bench press sets of 15 reps at 105 pounds. This means I lift 105 pounds 15 times and then I rest for a couple minutes before repeating. I've been doing this over and over, month-in and month-out, and my pectoralis is no longer sore after these workouts (I do other weightlifting exercises, too). This means my pectoralis muscles are not being challenged, and they will not get stronger or bigger unless I work them harder. So, I changed things just a bit. I did my normal first set of 15 repetitions at 105 pounds. Then I went on to do a different exercise (1 set of dumbbell shrugs at 22.5 pounds). When I was done with the dumbbell shrugs I went back to my weight bench and did a set of bench presses using 110 pounds instead of 105 pounds. I am always afraid of hurting myself, so I never change things drastically from one day to the next. If I wanted to challenge myself a bit more, I would have continued to do a third set and then a fourth set of heavier and heavier weights. Each successive set would contain fewer repetitions until I got the point where I couldn't do more than 4 repetitions. I didn't do this tonight but maybe I will later this week. Even doing this one partial pyramid set, I could feel the additional effort being generated by my muscles to lift the extra 5 pounds and I'm pretty sure that tomorrow I'll be a little sore.

Pyramid sets seem to be a good strategy for building muscle mass fairly rapidly. This is because the pyramid sets purposely and progressively fatigue larger and larger motor units (groups of muscle cells that contract together) as a person lifts heavier and heavier weights. The large motor units are predominantly the fast-twitch fibers that can generate a lot of power but fatigue quickly. Fatigue could lead to one of two circumstances that promote muscle hypertrophy (growth in size). First, as one lifts heavier weights, microscopic tears may occur with in the muscle cells. The repair process adds protein myofilaments (actin and myosin) to the muscle, causing individual cells to expand and become stronger. Second, even if no microdamage occurred, the muscles that became fatigued did so because they temporarily ran out of stored glycogen (which can be converted to glucose and ATP to power the muscle contraction). Muscles will grow in size as the body replaces and augments the glycogen stores. 

I apologize for the technical stuff above, but I just gave a lecture on this to college students so it is fresh in my mind. My understanding is based on material found in the Exercise Physiology textbook I use, as well as in another book (at the office!) which I will reference later. I should also give credit to Davey Wavey for the pyramid set technique. Davey's fitness site is full of good material and worth browsing. I should note that Davey is gay and his appreciation for the male body is very apparent; however, even straight men like me will laugh at his sexual humor. And don't we all want better bodies? 

Lateral dumbbell raises

Two nights ago during my weight lifting I decided to bump up the weight employed during my bench presses. I've been pressing 100 pounds for the last month (usually two sets of 15 reps), and I felt it was time to add additional weight. But not too much weight of course, as I am always worried that I'll hurt myself. So, I added 5 pounds and lifted 105 pounds. It is surprising how much heavier that 5 pounds feels! I did 14 presses in the first set and 9 in the second. It won't take too long to get back to the two sets of 15 reps I usually do, and then maybe I'll add some more weight.

My workout included more than bench presses. I also did bicep curls (three sets of 15 @ 22.5 pounds), 2 pull ups, 51 abdominal crunches, and lateral dumbbell raises (two sets of 20 @ 10 pounds). This was a fairly mild workout because I felt tired and unmotivated, but that's another story. At least I did a workout!

Well, yesterday and today I've had a pain in my left posterior deltoid that persists despite a dose of Tylenol. I also had a pain on the front of my shoulder, either in the anterior deltoid or maybe one of the rotator cuff ligaments. I initially attributed the pain to a small injury I must have sustained as the result of increasing the bench press weight by 5 pounds. This would make sense except that the rotatory cuff pain has subsided and the pain in my posterior deltoid remains. The bench press--no matter how poorly executed--would not lead to an injury on the back of the shoulder. So the culprit must be the lateral dumbbell raises.

I use Delavier (2006) as a guide for doing lateral raises. Briefly, the exercise requires one to stand up straight with small dumbbells in both hands. Arms are straight at the sides and then lifted up until horizontal with the ground. Hands grip the dumbbells from the top so that palms are facing down.  Delavier says the exercise "should not be performed with heavy weights, but instead in sets of 10 to 25 reps, while varying the working angle without much recuperation time until you feel a burn." The reasoning behind using small weights is that if larger weights are used, you will recruit additional and larger muscles, and your smaller muscles (such as the supraspinatus) will not be pushed to their limits. He gives several other instructions that I used to follow but have since forgotten until now. For instance, the arms should alternate between positions slightly forward of the body and slightly behind the body so that all the muscle fibers of the deltoid are equally exercised. The deltoid muscle is a multipennate muscle, meaning it has fibers that run in different directions. If I simply lifted my arms at the same angle each time, I would exercise one part of the deltoid but not necessarily the other two segments. I have forgotten to do this with regularity, and perhaps that is why I am now a bit injured in the posterior deltoid.

The other reason might be the way I was holding the weights. You see, I used to lift 8-pound dumbbells. But then I increased it to 10 pounds. I do not actually own 10-pound dumbbells, so I have been lifting 10-pound plates instead. I have some plates that are solid (no hand grips!) and some that have spaces inside that allow me to grip them easily. I was lazy two nights ago, and instead of using the ones with hand grips, I elected to use the ones close by that had no hand-holds. The result was a very awkward feeling and a heavier lift, as I clutched the weights using my fingertips. This meant the weights were being held farther away from my central axis, which requires more work. The moral of my story is two-fold:

1. Remember to maintain proper form when lifting, and review the instructions for each exercise regularly to ensure you haven't forgotten how to do it right.
2. Don't be lazy. Use the proper equipment. 

Delavier's secret

Frederic Devalvier wrote and illustrated a very popular and excellent book entitled "Strength Training Anatomy." I own the second edition (2006). It's a book filled with suggested weight lifting exercises for arms, shoulders, chest, back, legs, buttocks, and abdomen. Each of these body parts is in a different section, and within each section, he's taken each of a dozen or more exercises and illustrated the proper technique as well as described which muscles are used. For example, the bench press is shown on pages 52-53. Pictured is a man lying on a exercise bench with barbell in hand, ready to lift the bar. The illustration is basically a pencil drawing, but it's really well done. The man is wearing shorts but no shirt, and the skin becomes transparent in the chest, shoulder, and arm regions so that you can see the underlying (and very detailed) muscle groups. The muscles that are worked by the bench press exercise are highlighted in red coloration. All are labelled, including pectoralis major, anterior deltoid, triceps brachii (medial head and long head), brachioradialis, latissiums dorsi, and so on. The pectoralis is a large muscle group with multiple attachment sites at the clavicle, sternum, humerus, and abdomen. Not all the muscle fibers in the pectoralis are worked to the same degree during a standard bench press, so Delavier has a separate picture that shows which fibers are mainly used. In this case, it is the midline fibers that originate under the arms and spread out underneath the nipple to the sternum.

I've used his pictures and notes to choose which exercises to do. For example, my anterior deltoid is in fairly good form but I want greater definition in the middle and lower pectoralis. Therefore, I read through his notes on each page and look for the techniques that will work those specific parts of the muscle. Delavier comes through with this statement: "Lowering the bar to the chondrocostal border of the rib cage isolates the lower part of the pectoralis." Therefore, when I do bench presses, I try to bring the bar down to my solar plexus instead of nipples or arm pits (as shown in the photo, reality is a little different from my perception). If done properly, I should eventually build the muscle at the base of the pectoralis, making it stick out more when viewed from the side. I'm a little vain, I guess.



So how did Delavier figure out which muscles are used during each exercise? I think he could have done it by doing an exercise in excess and then waiting a day to determine which muscles were most sore. For instance, two days ago I did a greater number of bench press repetitions than normal (37 reps @ 90 pounds), and I was sore the next day. I was most sore in the pectoralis region just above and to the side of each nipple (sternocostal head, lateral part--away from the sternum). I was also sore just below each clavicle (clavicular head). My soreness indicates that I was indeed doing the bench press with a wide grip, as that position will work the lateral parts of the muscle. However, since I was sore in the clavicular head and not the inferior groove (lower part of pectoralis near where it links to the abdomen), I will need to remember to move the bar at a different angle so that it moves toward the abdomen as it is lowered. Based on my muscle soreness, I'm still lowering the bar to a point above the top of my sternum.

The picture shows exactly where I'm lowering the bar...no where near the solar plexus!

Keeping a Regular Workout Schedule

After 6 months of working out (February 2009), I was really quite proud of myself. I had struggled in the early months to keep to a regular workout schedule, but in Jan and Feb of 2009 I worked out nearly every day. Here's what I was doing on the last day of February:

• Bench Press: 20 @ 85 pounds.
• Rotator Cuff Exercises: 55 reps.
• Dumbbell Flys: 2 @ 15 pounds.
• Biceps Curl: 30 @15 pounds.
• Dumbbell Lateral Raise: 30 @5 pounds.
• Abdominal Crunches: 45 reps.
• Stationary Bicycle: 20 min.

A few things to note. First, I see that I did a very small number of dumbbell flys. I had been doing 30 reps up until February 22 and then I went down to 5 on the 23rd and 7 on the 25th and then 2 each on Feb 28th and March 1. It wasn't until March 13th that I was back to doing 30 reps. Although I didn't make note of this in my exercise log, it is clear that I must have hurt myself. Another example for my post on shoulder instability!

Bench press with a light amount of weight

Second, the weight I was lifting for the bench press was 85 pounds. This had not changed much since I started lifting 80 pounds on November 7, 2008. Instead, I was concentrating on increasing my reps and not the weight. More reps can tend to increase slow-twitch muscle fibers that contain lots of mitochondria and blood vessels. Having this kind of muscle tissue improves systematic cardiovascular health and increases the body's metabolic rate as well as endurance of the particular muscle being trained. Given that I wanted to strengthen my shoulder joints to prevent injury, increasing endurance was a reasonable goal, as the muscles would not fatigue as quickly (muscle fatigue puts the joints at risk).

Keeping a logbook that records all the exercises done each day is a great way to monitor progress and push yourself to improve. A day that goes by without a log entry is a day where no progress has been made, and the longer the gap between workouts, the greater the risk that progress might be lost. So if I went a day without working out I would feel guilty. Again, it is an excellent motivator.

First Month of Weight-Lifting

It was September 2008 and I had just bought my first weight bench. I started with a 35-pound bench press, just to make sure I wouldn't hurt myself. Of course, the barbell itself weights 20 pounds, so I only had 7.5 pounds of iron weights loaded on each end. I added more weight every 2-3 days so that by the end of the month my bench press was 60 pounds times 29 repetitions (reps). About this time I figured out that the fact that I couyld do 29 reps without needing to rest in between (a single set) meant that I should put on more weight and do fewer reps. I was just learning the jargon. I understood "reps" but I didn't know what a "set" was! This is exactly why I bought my own bench and weights. I couldn't go to a gym and ask someone these elementary questions! For the record, a "set" is the number of reps you do without stopping in between. What is the point of breaking an exercise into sets? My answer to this is that a brief rest allows your body to circulate blood through the muscles to remove the waste products generated by muscle contraction. A build-up of lactic acid, for example, will lead to muscle fatigue, and muscle fatigue will limit your ability to continue exercising at peak efficiency. So by breaking exercises into sets with a certain number of reps, you can work the muscles longer. And the more you work your muscles, the stronger and longer they will be able to work the next time you use them.


Besides the bench press, I was also doing the following at the end of Sept 2008:

• Rotator Cuff Exercises with Elastic Band: 30
• Lateral Raises: 28 reps @ 5 pounds
• Bicep Curl: 30 reps @ 8 pounds
• Dumbbell Fly: 30 reps @ 8 pounds
• Abdominal Crunches: 30

My daily average for cardiovascular exercise was a paltry 5 min per day, burning 48 calories per day. This was based on walking once during the month, swimming once, cycling once, and using a stationary bike twice.

My first weight bench

New weight bench from Dick's Sporting Goods

It's September 7, 2008. I have bought and assembled my first weight bench. It's a model from Fitness Gear, which I have come to learn is the generic brand sold by Dick's Sporting Goods stores. It's a good bench (an older version of this--see link). The upper bench tilts up or down, and the seat tilts, too. It is solid and can hold plenty of weight. There is an adjustable foot rest of some kind at the end, and while this looks like something cool, I can't figure out what it is for. I think it is meant to hold your feet while you do situps. But no matter how I adjust it, it won't work for me. I am 6'4" and I think this piece of equipment isn't really made for someone as big as me. The other reason I think this is that the metal bars that support the barbell are placed in exactly the wrong place for me. The most proper way to do bench presses is to place one's hands directly above the shoulders. However, my shoulders are wide and the brackets upon which the barbell rests are in exactly that spot. So, my bench presses must be done with my hands placed close together or relatively far apart. Based on a book called Strength Training Anatomy by Frederic Delavier, these alternate hand positions are fine; in fact, they strengthen different parts of the pectoralis muscle: "hands closer together isolates the central part of the pectoralis; hands wider apart isolates the lateral part of the pectoralis." Through most of 2009 I was using the close-together hand position because I wanted to develop the part of the muscle that connects to the sternum. But in the end I think I was building my triceps a lot more than my chest. Well, that's fine. But in late 2009 I decided to shift my hand position to a wide grip, and this gives me a nice, satisfying burn underneath and to either side of the nipples. One way or another it's still building the pecs.

Let me list my initial workout on this day in Sept 2008:

• Bench Press: 35 pounds x 1 set of 16 reps (I was afraid of injuring myself, so I started really light)
• Lateral Dumbbel Raise: 5 pounds x 1 set of 15 reps
• Bicep Curl: 5 pounds x 1 set of 15 reps
• Rotator Cuff Elastic Rows: 16 reps
• Abdominal Crunches: 15 reps
• Swimming: 20 min @ intensity=7.7 (I'm surprised to see this on my list. I was not a serious swimmer back then)