New, Love the book, love the forum - somewhat deconditioned

Hi all,

Just a quick note of introduction, just got started working on a program based off the GB book. I'm currently in physical therapy school and when we did strength testing I wound up in the "weakest" category for almost every muscle group (except the calves, which I outpressed the chart entirely, guess I know my substitution pattern).

So I did a very good conventional lifting program which improved my squat from 100 lbs to 250, my bench from 90 to 130, still can't do a pull up (i'm too fat) but my lat pulldown went from 80 to 120, and my shoulder press/military press went from 30 to 60, all 1 RM.

All over the course of more than a year. I decided to look at gymnastics in part because my niece is an elite gymnast and I know what she does for training, and in part because its more in keeping with my day job as a martial arts instructor. (And the 3rd part I guess is because the body weight stuff will encourage me to lose weight more than the weights have).

Right now I'm mostly working on the 60 second plank, reverse plank, frog stand, hang kind of stuff, and then FBE that supplement those particular exercises.

The biggest difficulty I have when compared to the weight routine is it is harder for me to know that I'm working hard enough. For instance with the plank, I can hold it forever if I use bad form. If I use good form I am lucky to get 35 seconds, but at the end of that time I don't feel exhausted, just shaky and unstable. Does that make sense? I've been doing the workout for a few weeks now and I like it, but I'm not getting the crazy soreness that I'm used to, so I'm not sure if I'm working hard enough...

anyway, great book, great forum, looking forward to participating more!

-Ben

Hi, and welcome!

I know what you mean about the soreness, or lack thereof. I used to be told that I needed to be feeling sore afterwards to know I'd worked properly. Since coming upon this forum, I'm now convinced that this isn't the case. Nowadays, if I'm feeling sore afterwards (like, really sore, for some time after I've finished the actual work), then I've probably worked too hard.

Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that generally the work should feel challenging while you're doing it, but after you finish working out, you should be feeling generally pretty strong, rather than wrecked.

Soreness is not an indicator for a good workout, results are.

Simple solution. Do both.

That is some good progress under the bar. I take it you're a big guy ( I am not, I'm 5'+ though I'm pushing 185 now ).

Blairbob said:

Simple solution. Do both.

That is some good progress under the bar. I take it you're a big guy ( I am not, I'm 5'+ though I'm pushing 185 now ).

I guess I'm medium sized... at my most I weighed 260 lbs, I now weigh 175. I would ideally like to continue to weigh what I weigh but change the fat into muscle...

And yeah, I think the progress went so well because I was totally untrained when I started, and the workout is (I think) exceptionally well put together.

Thanks Blairbob for the advice! it go me thinking that maybe I will keep the gymnastics workout as is and also keep the leg workout from the lifting routine.

-Ben

Hmm, right now for you I would be more concerned with getting strong rather than conditioning. Your lifts showed a lot of progress but you still need to build quite a bit more of upper body strength.

I like to use some of the LowerBody Wods for conditioning or assistance to general strength work.