Having recently turned 35 I guess I can now take my seat at the table in this over 35 forum.
Previously I haven’t set up a blog for my training. I use T-Nation as a resource all the time, gaining new ideas and learning about various training protocols. I can’t say I have a favourite author or program, I take elements of lots of articles and programs and generally put together my own.
Why am I doing this? Firstly as a bit on insurance for myself to make sure that I follow through on things. Secondly I’m sure there are a lot of guys out there interesteted in how easy/hard/impossible it is to gain muscle over 35 when you are working, have a family etc. BTW I have a 5 month old girl at home.
I�??m lucky in that I work at a university and have access to a great gym as well as the time available during the day to sneak off for an hour and get my workout in.
I�??m fairly structured in my approach to training, I like to have a plan or program in advance and then set toward completing that goal or program.
In November I had a fitness assessment at the gym I train at. I can�??t say I was pleased or upset at the results, it pretty much found me where I expected to be.
A brief summary. In November 07 my weight was 97kg, and I had apparently shrunk sometime over the past fifteen years from the 185cm I was when joining the army after school to 184cm. I was impressed the trainer doing the test didn�??t worry about my BMI at all (28.7) noting it was irrelevant given I weight trained.
My skin folds were as follows:
Biceps :5.4
Triceps: 12.2
Subscapular: 16.0
Supraspinale: 13.2
Mid abdominal: 25.4
Calf: 12.0
TOTAL: 84.2mm
Giving me a body fat % of between 12 and 16%.
I managed 40 pushups without a pause, as soon as you paused in the test that was it. Probably could have got to 50 with a little break here and there. They took a variety of circumference measurements that on their own mean little but will be useful when I get retested in June.
My abdominal strength scored okay on a 7 point scale which was disappointing but again not surprising. I had major surgery to remove a kidney and adrenal gland 11 years ago and now sport a 40cm scar right up the middle of my abdomen, I call it my zipper. I often get some fairly localised pain along the scar when doing ab specific workouts and hence probably avoid them to my detriment.
My flexibility was described as excellent and scored a 12 in the scale used, again this is only useful when I compare it in the future.
I got a very good result in terms of my cardio test on the bike, however this may be a bit misleading as I used to race bikes competitively (both road and track) and still ride 20km a day (10km each way) to work and back 5 days a week. I don�??t think I would have scored as well had I done the running test on the treadmill.
What else, well my max lifts in November 2007 were:
Squat 160kg.
Bench 122kg
Deadlift 195kg.
I�??ve lifted more than this for each of these in the past however that was my max then. In reality probably only the Dead is a true max as I�??m erring on the side of safety on both the squat and bench, long time since I�??ve had a fail on either of those lifts. I may be able to get up a little more with a handoff on the bench and if I grew a pair with the squat.
My bench has always sucked a bit, actually they probably all suck a bit. Although they don�??t suck as much as they did in Jan 2005 when my Squat was 80kg Bench was 85kg and my Dead was 110kg. At least I�??ve made some progress.
After that fitness assessment in early November I went on a bit of a bulk till the end of December. I got up to 103kg and was feeling really good. Training hard and eating clean. Unfortunately in the New Year I got sick, later found I had Glandular fever and by mid Jan had lost 9kg and was 94kg. Knocked me around a bit only now feeling like I�??m back to 100%.
Hence I�??m writing today. This morning I�??m 97kg. Back where I was in November. My goal for the next 4-5 months is to try to get to 107kg without getting my body fat much above where it was in November (around 15%). So I�??m trying to put on 7-8kg of muscle. Ambitious? Maybe. But that is the goal for the end of June. In addition I�??d like to get stronger (well who doesn�??t). I�??m hoping to man up and get my squat to 200kg, my bench to 140kg and my dead to 225kg. I�??ll test them at the end of June and see where I�??m at. I�??ll be having another assessment then also so can compare with where I was in November
Longer term I�??d like to be 100kg at sub 10% body fat. So obviously the next 5 months is stage one of that longer term goal, that will be for next summer. (I’m in Australia)
I�??m currently finishing off an arm specific program. On Monday I�??m starting a new 6 week program. Total body, mainly compound lifts. Looking at a fairly high frequency, 6 days per week, medium intensity for something different. Haven�??t trained like that before so will give it a try. The following 6 weeks will be trying a program based around 20 rep squats. That should start to address my squat issues. After that will look at 4-6 weeks of WSFSB style training looking at improving my strength levels with an aim to smashing my existing PB�??s.
I�??ll post my workout for each day with weights and how that felt. I�??ll update weight gain along the way. I�??m happy to have things critiqued along the way and I�??ll listen to what anyone has to offer.
People are going to want to know about diet. Obviously I�??ll be eating to gain. I eat 6-7 times a day. Generally clean. Very few processed carbs. I do have to be careful in that I don�??t go overboard in terms of protein ( I only have one kidney) but I�??ll be having a minimum of 200g protein a day. Also I won�??t be supplementing with creatine due again to the one kidney thing. I have the majority of my carbs prior to 3pm, essentially none after 7pm.
That�??s about it. I�??ll start posting my workout logs on Monday.
Burnesy