Legs

Not the best session ever. I forgot to pack my shorts, so had to race round Victoria trying to get new ones. I was sufficiently late that Andy had disappeared off to Boot Camp by the time I'd arrived, so I worked out alone, and pressed for time. The results aren't great:

Exercise	Warmup	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3
Dumbell Squat†	12×12kg	12×16kg	10×18kg	8×20kg
Cable Standing Calf Raise	12×56kg	12×84kg	10×91kg	8×98kg (+11%)
Barbell Deadlift	12×12kg	12×32kg	10×37kg	8×39.5kg

†: Standing on a Bosu Ball.

I'm particularly concerned about my deadlift technique. My upper back hurts a lot more than it should, which makes me wonder if I'm hunching during the lift without realising it at the time. I also have a pain just below my lowest right rib, which is bizarre. It may be necessary to drop the weights even further 'till I get the technique right.

Also, the Bosu ball dumbbell squat. I was taught this was a great core stability exercise, but Charles Poliquin would appear to disagree:

The BOSU ball is a Swiss ball for morons! Again, when you stand on it you're always bowlegged. Why do you want to get into a position that's not good for your knees and ankles?

Quite happy with Andy's suggestion to use a cable machine for calf raises - it seems to work a treat.

Partnered training

If anyone's in any doubt as to how much difference training with a partner makes, have a lot at these stats from my session last night with Andy - the numbers in brackets after the third set are the percentage improvement over my previous PB:

Exercise	Warmup	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3
Smith Bench Press	12×27kg	12×47kg	10×57kg	8×62kg(+32%)
Dumbbell Arnold Press	12×5kg	12×7kg	10×9kg	8×12kg(+33%)
Decline Skullcrusher	12×15kg	12×25kg	10×30kg	8×35kg (+113%)
Chin-up		5	5	5
Incline Crunch		20	25	30

As you can tell, we really pushed ourselves, and each other. His exercise log shows a similarly impressive improvement.
Tonight, we're going to pummel our legs. Tomorrow I suspect will be a day of rest - I probably won't even be able to climb stairs.

Update: After some discussion, I'm going to count the smith machine bar as 7kg, not 18. Though means my lifts aren't as impressive, it means my gains are more so, so it's all good.

I know Kung Fu

This Saturday finally saw me recommence martial arts training, at the Fitness First on Seven Sisters Road. The bank holiday studio schedule had dropped their usual Saturday Wu Shu Kwan class, so I decided to try Andy's evil biceps workout. Quite punishing, really gets you pumped, recommended. I should be able to myself harder, as I still had energy at the end - so threw some hammer dumbbell curls to finish off. Stats:

Exercise	Warmup	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3
EZ Barbell Curl	12×10kg	12×20kg	10×25kg	5×30kg
Barbell Bent-over Row	12×15kg	12×25kg	10×35kg	8×45kg
Dumbbell Bent-over row	12×15kg	12×25kg	10×27.5kg	8×30kg
Cable Underhand Pulldown	12×21kg	12×28kg	10×35kg	8×42kg
Dumbbell Hammer Curl	12×6kg	12×8kg	10×9kg	8×10kg

As I was walking back to the changing room, I noticed some Wu Shu Kwan guys in the studio and asked if the class was just starting. They said yes, so I fell in and spent the next two hours falling somewhat short of keeping up with a class composed about three quarters of black belts.
Somewhat gratifyingly, after the class the instructor asked me which martial arts I'd done before since it was clear that I'd done something. He reiterated what I knew already - that my body needs to be retrained to be able to do what I remember being able to, and until it catches up, I risk overexerting and injuring myself; so should only train at 70% for the first six weeks or so. Despite knowing this already, I somehow managed to hurt my left index finger (I assume while sparring), and spent Sunday worrying that I'd fractured it. I'll take it easier next week.

I'm also going to avoid doing weights beforehand. Not that I think training biceps interfered with the class - punching uses your triceps - but because it meant I spent three hours in the gym, which makes something of a mockery of the Tom Venuto diet. I was ravenous when I left!

Calculating optimal calorie intake

I was reading 'Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle' last night, and it's made me realise that, like I'd imagine a lot of people, I have no idea how many calories I consume, much less how many I should be consuming.
The average TDEE for men is 2800; but I'm short, and have a desk job, so probably burn a lot less. It's time for some calculations.

On Wednesday I took a new set of measurements; I've gone up to 72kg, but down to 18.8% body fat - which means I've lost 0.3kg fat and gained 0.6kg lean body mass since last Monday. Which is, if not a blip, a sign of excellent progress

Using the Harris-Benedict formula (for men) gives me a BMR of:

66.5 + (13.75 × [weight in kg]) + (5.003 × [height in cm]) - (6.775 × [age])
= 66.5 + 13.75 × 72.0 + 5.003 × 173 - 6.775 × 29
= 1725.544

Using the Katch-McArdle formula gives me a BMR of:

370 + (21.6 × [lean mass in kg])
= 370 + 21.6 × 58.5
= 1633.6

That's quite a difference already.
Converting that into a TDEE using EXRX's calculator (estimated 9 hours rest, 13 hours very light activity, 2 hours light activity - commuting and cleaning my flat) gives 2409 and 2279 calories. Using the flat 1.2 multiplier for a desk job from ''Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle' gives 2071 and 1960 calories.

This gives a total range of 1960 - 2409 calories, i.e. 469 calories. I'm thus going to calculate my ideal calorie intake for weight loss it cautiously, and aim for the lower recommended percentage drop (15%) against an average of the above figures (2180 calories), i.e. 1853 calories.
Should my actual TDEE turn out to be close to the lower end of that scale, it represents a 5.6% / 109 calorie drop; if the higher end of the scale, a 23.1% / 556 calorie drop. So even if the initial estimate is wrong, it shouldn't be damagingly so.

I'm going to start with five meals a day, and decide whether to move to six once I'm into a routine. This means each meal should be approximately 370.6 calories, 436 on 'cheat' days (every fourth day, to reset my metabolism). Ideally, breakfast should be 100 calories more, and dinner 100 less, but again, that can wait.

Injuries

It's been an accident-prone couple of days in the gym. Tuesday night was a yoga class and biceps / back. Which was fine, until just before I left, when I stumbled into an open footlocker door, which ripped into my tensed calf muscle, sideways. It still hurts, though thankfully, last night it proved no handicap to doing calf presses (new PB, 79kg).
Yoga does seem to leave me feeling relaxed, yet interfere with my balance. I guess they must hit stabiliser muscles in a way that I'm not - yet - used to, so after a decent class they're ready to give up.

Last night was triceps / chest. It started badly - I dropped a 18kg dumbbell while warming up for the bench press, and decided to ditch the exercise rather than risk damaging my shoulder. Must space arm workouts farther apart.
I realised I was probably too knackered for a serious workout, so decided it might be a good idea to experiment - with skullcrushers.
There are two versions of this exercise I've seen - one with a barbell; and one where you dangle a dumbbell vertically over your head, cupping the top plate under your hands, with your thumbs and forefingers circling the grip. The latter is more common, presumably because you can tweak the weight in smaller increments than if you're using a bar, and also because you don't have to worry so much about balance.
It does, however, have a certain disadvantage - namely that it's far too easy to misjudge the movement and smack yourself in the face with the lower plate. Won't be doing that again (hopefully).

First Post

Welcome to the official blog of 'Operation: Stop Being a Fat Bastard', one man's mission to leave the land of 'programmer's arse' and reclaim his fitness.

The Operation in earnest started just after my 27th birthday, after seeing this photo (I'm on the right). I got some York weights, a bench, and a chin-up bar, and set about trying to lose my gut. Progress was slow, so I joined a gym, and tried personal training and a variety of fitness classes.
Unfortunately, I have a low attention span, and an aversion to dull forms of cardio, so the longest I've stuck at one discipline was kickboxing (for 10 weeks last summer), or more recently, Bikram Yoga (for 9 weeks between February and April this year). Both were abandoned for pretty much the same reasons; lack of variety in the class, and that heated exercise is deeply unpleasant in warm weather (deliberate in Bikram; the kickboxing gym just had appalling aircon).
As the only form of training I've stuck to consistently is weights; while I'm stronger and fitter now, I'm not really much thinner. The idea is that this blog will track my progress and enable me to train more consistently and effectively.

So, what are my goals? They are fourfold:

1. Stop being a fat bastard! I want to get my body fat percentage down to below 14% at very least, and ideally below 10%. Currently it's 19.7%.
   
2. Get my flexibility and speed up to the point where I can start serious martial arts training. When I was in my teens, I took up Tae Kwon Do (4 classes a week, 2 hours each), and it was the fittest I've ever been in my life. Experience has taught me that I don't find most martial arts varied enough to keep my attention. The only exception so far has been Nam Pai Chuan, though I am also tempted to try Small Circle Jujitsu.
   My goal is to start training twice a week, and yoga once a week - at least until I'm flexible enough to do box splits / high kicks.
3. Continue to improve my strength. My long-term goal is to be able to bench-press my body weight (with dumbells), deadlift 1.5 times my body weight, and curl half my body weight. Currently, I can lift 55%, 66% and 25% respectively.
4. Look as good as possible (anyone who says this isn't a factor is lying). I'll measure this in terms of arm, chest and waist measurements (currently: 11⅜", 39⅛" and 33⅞"; ideally 15", 42" and 31"), as well as taking photos.

The only aspect of my fitness I'm not really interested in training is endurance. Which is a shame, because I'm giving up on our biggest physical evolutionary advantage; but being asthmatic means it's never going to be my forte.

I'm also trying to improve my cooking at the moment, so I'll be using that as an excuse to come up with easy to cook, high protein, low fat dishes (such as the Italian wedding soup I'm eating now), which I may post up here as I perfect. I'll will not, however, be attempting any fad diets.

Likewise, I'm concurrently trying to exert better control over my finances; which means keeping expenses to a minimum. Which means no personal training.
In lieu of a personal trainer - who, expense aside, makes a huge difference - I'll be trying to train with a partner as much as possible, which can be just as good. Fortunately I have a workmate, Andy, who's on his own training mission, and a complete nutter to boot.