T totalling

Some things are easy to gauge — strength and endurance and weight — because we have the tools at our disposal to measure them. Other things are trickier — sleep quality, or various nutritional balances — but still within the realm of doable for someone who is attentive and attuned to how their body works. But for some things, there’s no real substitute for professional diagnostics and evaluation.

And this brings us to today’s subject, which is going to come as something of a surprise to most readers.

Your not so humble scribe has what has somewhat coyly become known as “Low T.”

Squats need work

Gimme some sugar, baby.

I can’t in good conscience make any kind of self-aggrandizing remarks about being the “king” – especially with around. :-) However, at ‘s urging, I did try to do some “King” deadlifts. These are basically a one-legged variant, where the non-working leg kind of waves around behind you as if in an unsupported lunge; my form is, in a word, abysmal, but will hopefully suck less with practice and stretching.

I began with bodyweight, then +45 pounds, and finally +95 pounds. Obviously, my balance needs work and my hip flexibility is lacking, but I think they’re going to be interesting. Video here. (On a side note, I’m both pleased and kind of freaked out that my camera’s audio was good enough to catch the stereo’s music well enough for Youtube to identify and flag it.)

Following that, I moved on to conventional ones, and, for a taste of cinema verite, here’s the unedited entirety (note: this hardly makes for thrilling theater, and is currently being gnawed on processed by YouTube after uploading, if it doesn’t show up just yet) of that portion of my workout (doing heavy triples and doubles up to a 2RM, which was, gratifyingly, within 5% of where I was before I broke my hand in August).

OHP Video

We’ll see how well this works.

Yes, it really is a hundred degrees in my garage.

Unfortunately, the audio (Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Carol of the Bells”) was scrubbed for copyright reasons.

While the Zombie’s away…

Actually, it’s just the boss who’s out of the office today, stuck in an all-day training class, so we’ve been playing “Name That Tune” with some old metal between calls.

This is going to be one of my favorite workout songs until I go deaf.

Walking (unlike an Egyptian)

Yeah, I thought the Bangles were cute. Then again, I was thirteen, and was only just barely beginning to think that girls might be fun to look at. The song, however, remains catchy.

Walking for more than a mile and a quarter with the pair of 36# kettlebells in 90+ F heat, however, continues to be deeply unpleasant.

Now, with extra

At some point, I’m going to wise up to the fact that I can’t lift for shit when all I’ve had is two cups of coffee and a protein shake. Today was not that day, obviously, but that didn’t stop me from trying it anyway.

Of course, nothing good or impressive came of it, but it beat not doing anything, or spending an extra hour getting my ass summarily handed to me during the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 free multi-player demo Steam is offering this weekend (12GB? Seriously? Yes, it’s pretty in that “Yep, I’m crossing Fallujah off my to-visit list” kind of way, but jesus fuck).

The opener, a dozen turkish get-ups, were done on a dare/bet. I was hoping to make 20, but there was no goddamned way that was going to happen this morning. There’s video of those below the cut.

15/9/3+ – Bench Press, with interstitial deadlifts (since being sore all week from squats wasn’t sufficient disincentive last time around)

Warmup:

Turkish Get-Ups (54# KB): 1×12 (4 R, 3L, 3R, 2L)

Bench Press: 1×15 @ 45 / 1×10 @ 95 / 1×5 @ 135

Work Sets:

Bench Press: 3×5 @ 165 / 3×5 @ 185

Deadlift: 1×10 @ 135 / 1×10 @ 185 / 7×5 @ 225

Pullups: 1×10

Howto, How Not To, and Some PR

I had completely spaced on the fact that I had a work conference to go today, which means that I had to stiff the folks who were expecting me to chaperone this evening’s run after work. Considering that everyone but BB blew off Monday’s… I’m not going to sweat it much, and we can always do it next week anyway.

Instead, I made good on a remark I made to Code Monkey, to provide a how-to video for power cleans and front squats, since his form needs a little correction, and it’s a lot easier to show than tell.

15/9/3+ Squat Day (Carl Sagan Edition)

Woke up feeling fantastic, and put that to good use under the squat bar, along with some cleans.

When it got to the heaviest work sets, rather than crank up the usual techno/industrial/crunchy stuff, I put this on repeat instead:

Anyone inclined to give me shit for getting choked up over that is cordially invited to kiss my ass.

Ikea for Metalheads

Other than the frowny face, I was the guy in the upper left corner when I brought it in from where the UPS dude dropped it off. Weighing in at 110#, I probably wasn't his favorite customer.

After a couple of weeks of anticipation, my new toy arrived yesterday. Knowing that was coming, and that I had a personal day that had to be used before the end of the month, today was the perfect opportunity to take the day off to put that sucker together. After, of course, cleaning some of the cruft out of the garage to make space and all.

90 minutes later, it was ready for action. Not bad, considering the assembly guide contains no written instructions whatsoever, and the salient portion consists of exactly two diagrams. It’s not rocket science, admittedly, but the PowerTec folks have a very well-engineered piece of equipment here. All you need is a couple of crescent wrenches.

So, how does it work in practice?