Originally posted by: SociallyChallenged
I understand that you've made some good gains and improved your overall life, but lemme ask you some questions to see if we can make it a bit better.
1) Where did you get this program from? It seems a bit sporadic.
I made it myself. It covers most of the major upper body muscles and I did a couple leg lifts. I've posted it several times and no one could come up with anything much to add to it. It is a routine meant to make me look good, since I'm not really into any sports. However, I do enjoy going up in weights, so strength is certainly not something that I want to ignore. My priorities would be to first look good on my upper body, second have endurance to dance all night long, and then third to be strong.
If anyone has suggestions on what to add, I'll be glad to try them. I have dumbbells only.
2) Why are you going for such high reps? You don't have to do a 5 rep program obviously, but 30 reps is almost purely aerobic.
I try to keep most of everything in the 6-12 rep range. I will do a lift at 5 reps, but I feel that I tend to cheat if it is that heavy. Usually once I hit 12 reps, I can go up to the next weight properly and be near 6-8 reps.
For those that I have more than 12 reps there are two possible reasons. First, I haven't purchased higher weights yet. I'm cheap and prices are falling monthly around here so I am waiting. Second, i'm cheap and only have one of each weight. So, for example, when I lift 55#, it comes from a 30# weight in one arm and a 25# weight in the other arm. I do 6-12 of them. I then switch arms to make things balanced and do another se of 6-12. What I've reported is the sum of all sets. But, my goal still is to be in the 6-12 rep range most of the time.
3) Why aren't you increasing the weights a bit more to challenge yourself? I know you can squat more than you bench.
See above, I'm using the maximum weights that I own or I'm in the 6-12 rep range.
4) What does the "strength" variable mean? Going from 1 to 2 is great, but I'm curious as to how you calculated it.
It is a long drawn out calculation, but I'll summarize. I started out with everything being a 1.0. Suppose I did a lift with 50# and 5 reps. Then, I linearly increased the score with reps. If I could go to 10 reps, I'd have a score of 1.0 * (10 reps)/(5 original reps) = 2.0. Note: this doesn't mean that I'm twice as strong since I probably wouldn't be able to go to 100# and 5 reps. But if I could double my reps, I am somehow stronger. I kept increasing this score linearly with reps as long as I kept the same weight.
Then, as I increased weights, I kept the score the same. For example if i had a score of 2.0 with 50# and 10 reps and then I went to 60# and 6 reps, I kept that score at 2.0. I repeated the linear calculation. Going from 60# and 6 reps to 60# and 8 reps would move the score like this: 2.0 * (8 reps) / (original 6 reps) = 2.67.
Eventually I had enough data to go back and compare those scores to the actual weights. I looked at which point I had lifted 1.25x the original weight with the same reps. I did the same at 1.5x, 1.75x, 2.0x, and 2.1x. I fitted this data in Excel and found that I could convert from my score to my strength with this formula: average strength = 0.313*ln(score) +1.0. The fit was nearly perfect. When I had a score that predicted that I lifted twice the weight, then I used the formula it came up with a strength of just about 2.0.
I took that formula and applied it to every lift on every workout and the result is the graphs you see. One note: the formula was for the average of all lifts, and it doesn't apply quite exactly to each individual lift (esecially for the lifts that I changed from the start and thus don't have a good baseline), but it is very close.
5) For my own curiosity, how has the working out helped with the Samba for you?
Sadly, I've dropped that dance for the most part. I just got too busy and I had issues with the dance studio trying to rip me off. I keep dancing but the samba has stagnated. I find mostly that lifting has helped. But, I still don't have enough stamina in my shoulders no matter how much I lift. Holding your arms out for 3 hours always gets to me (especially if my partner is tired and uses my arms to hold herself up).
Facebook
Twitter