First week of Barbell course done.

So it’s been two sessions of a barbell course offered by Crossfit Durham. I’m going to go for linear progressions, and then after that switch to 3/5/1. I will post the current program later, I forgot to write the whole thing down. 

The first day was a bit humbling, none of the weight I’m working out with is impressive.  The idea is I do 3 sets of 5 reps, and warm up to that with lighter weight/higher reps.  Ryan, the coach, wanted me to start light, if I slow down to fight through the rep at all it’s too much to start with, so this is what my second day looked like:

Squat (140 x 5) x3
Press (70 x 5) x3
(bwt rows x 8) x 3

On Wednesday I tried my hand at the high bar back squat, being that I like the front squat so much I wanted to be as close to that as possible.  However, it seems that the high bar squat bothered my hip ever the slightest, so on Friday I tried my hand at the low bar back squat.  That seemed to feel much better throughout, so I’m going to stick with that.  I am not going to see Dr. Hauser again until January, so I’m going to play it safe and not do any Oly lifting or front bar squatting.  It’s going to be all power lifting baby. …I’m going to miss Oly lifting

If you notice Ryan has us doing bwt rows (they’re the inverse of a push up, basically). I asked why we’re going for higher reps of bwt rows (the goal is to do 3 sets of 12 reps, then you make it harder on yourself by lowering the bar and make yourself more horizontal) instead of doing lower reps with weighted chins.  He told me one reason was because no one could do chins, let alone weighted chins.  I told him I could do 5 chins with a 45# plate, so he is now going to add that into the mix (yay!).  I’m pretty excited to see where this will take me.

Concerning the intermittent fasting, still going strong and once I left the fried chicken alone all seems to be doing well.  After a week or so of dropping the fried chicken I am starting to see a six pack, but only in certain light.  I cannot wait for the day when I can see my abs in their full glory in any lighting and at this rate anything is possible.  My eating window is 1:30-9:30pm now because I lift weights at 6-7:30 and I want to give myself time to eat a lot after lifting.  I am trying to make breakfast and lunch small so I can just destroy dinner, and so far it seems to be working.  It’s been hard trying to eat 200g of protein a day, and I don’t think I’ve made it yet.  I could easily get away with it if I were doing whey protein, but I’m trying to not use that as a crutch.  Friday I drank Chocolate milk right after lifting, but I think the dairy wasn’t the best idea for me.  I’m going to try a muscle milk and see how that goes.  After that I’m going to have a 12 oz steak, so that’s about 84 grams of protein.  I think if I really do want to build muscle I’m going to have to step up and start eating more after I lift, we’ll see what I can handle.

Am very glad that I’ve found that I can back squat and not have it affect my hip, I have asked Dr. Hauser for his opinion on what’s going on, why my hip still catches at certain point. So far I haven’t heard anything but will report back when I do.