It’s been some time since I’ve written about working out. Actually weightlifting and bodybuilding have been a big part of my life for over 5 years now, every since I saw how fat and out of shape I was at age 36 and decided to do something about it.

My trainer, Ryan Branson, left Lifetime Fitness a little less than two years ago and after a year or so of being part of an independent co-op sort of gym just opened his own studio in Eagan, MN. It’s a smallish space right now but there are plans to expand when another tenant next to him vacates their part of the building in a year or so. Ryan is a great trainer, who has kept me focused on my goals and kept me from injuring myself by working around my various ailments and past injuries. No mean feat as I have bad knees, a partially torn rotator cuff and I.T. band, barbed bone spurs in my AC shoulder joints and tendinitis in my wrists and biceps tendons. Despite all that, we maintain a 4 days a week rotating periodization program that changes frequently to keep the body guessing and continues to make progress.

Here are some pics of Ryan’s new studio, Renegade Personal Training and Fitness:

The equipment is necessarily a little limited right now due to space, but it’s got all the important stuff. We have to be creative in order to do some things, but that can lead to new gains as you use angles and movements that your body has not gotten used to or even attempted before. I did front squats for the first time last week, and I’ve got the bruises on my front shoulders to prove it.

Right now we are at the end of a mass building phase, one of three or four I undergo every year to bulk up and build new muscle. That usually involves heavy weights and lots of big, compound movements, as well as a lot of calories. It must be working, as I am currently weighing in at 242 lbs… my all time heaviest. I wish I could say it was all muscle, but there is always a certain amount of fat gain as well when you bulk up. I’ve got a little more muffin-top than 6 pack right now, not that I ever get cut enough to have a 6 pack anyway. I hate dieting. We will probably follow up with a short transition program of two weeks or so before doing an endurance phase where I will drop a lot of bodyfat and some muscle as well, but the net gain will be a certain amount of permanent muscle (at least as long as I continue to work out) and hopefully less bodyfat overall.

Here’s an example of a workout from my current routine that I did yesterday. This was a chest/back/triceps “push-pull” workout where we superset (doing one exercise immediately after another with almost no break) a “push” movement for chest with a “pull” movement for back. I’ve got pictures of some of the movements.

Superset:
- Bench Press: 4 sets x 8 reps
- Pull Ups: 4 sets x 8-12 reps

Flat bench press

Pull up at the top of the movement

Superset:
- Dumbbell Incline Press: 4 sets x 8 reps
- Lat Pulldowns: 4 sets x 8 reps

Incline Dumbbells using a decline ab bench!

Nice face, Popeye!

Lat Pulldown- top of movement

… at the bottom. Looks like I am leaning too far back.

Superset:
- Dumbell Flys on Ball: 4 sets x 8 reps
- Bent Over Dumbbell Rows with twist: 4 sets x 8 reps

Dumbbell Flys on the ball… good core movement as well as for chest

Bent Over Dumbbell Rows- Bottom of movement. The “twist” is when I pull
the dumbbells up to my chest. I start with my knuckles toward the mirror,
then I twist my hands so I end up with my knuckles facing out to each side.

Superset:
- Tricep Rope Extensions- 4 sets x 8 rep
- Overhead Tricep Dumbbell Presses- 4 sets x 8 reps
- Dumbbell Shrugs- 4 sets x 8 reps

I usually do deadlifts as well on back day and do some abs at the end but I had to cut out after an hour today to get some work done for a deadline. I try to never skip a workout but I do sometimes have to compromise them to limit my time spent in the gym if I am up against the Dreaded Deadline Demon.

Weightlifting is a passion and a way of life. You have to be committed to put up with the pain and soreness that is inevitable if you want to make gains. I find it both rewarding and a great stress reliever.

It’s been a while since I posted about my workout routines. Briefly, about 5 years ago I got motivated by some shocking pictures of a fat, middle aged guy with my face and got back into the gym for the first time in many years. I’ve been working out ever since with a personal trainer, currently Ryan Branson who operates out of a studio gym in Burnsville, MN. I do a constantly changing periodization program that switches from endurance to hypertrophy (mass building) to strength and power.

This summer I spent mostly in a high endurance/cardio program designed to give me a break from building size while at the same time dropping bodyfat and building my endurance and ‘wind’. It was a grueling program and I lost a fair amount of size and strength doing it. Not my favorite thing to do but you have to switch tracks like that to keep your body guessing and resetting for another round of the heavy stuff.

For about the last month I’m back to a mass building program. Currently we are doing a decending rep/increasing weight routine. We started out at 3 sets of 12 reps per movement for two weeks, then 3 sets of 10 reps with heavier weight the next, followed by this week of 4 sets of 10 reps of each movement. In the next few weeks we’ll be dropping to 8 reps, then 6, then 4 as the weights really start going up. I work out 4 days a week doing back, chest/biceps, legs and shoulders/triceps on separate days. We are concentrating on the big compound movements like presses, deadlifts and squats.

One of the interesting things about bodybuilding is that your body has a ‘memory’ when it comes to strength and size. Once you build up to a certain level of strength and mass, your muscles will remember that level and after taking some time off to do a different routine they will get back to that remembered level a lot faster than it originally took to reach it. Right now after only four weeks I am close to my peak size. I don’t do measurements but just eyeball it and use the scale to keep track of mass. I’m just a few pounds off my heaviest weight with minimal gains in body fat (some is unavoidable).

Here are some pictures of some of the movements in my chest/biceps routine:

Incline chest press, mid-movement. This builds the upper chest.

Dumbbell flys, mid-movement. This builds the outer chest.

Decline cable crossovers, top of movement…

… at the bottom. This builds the inner and lower chest.

Dumbbell twist curls, bottom of movement…

…near the top. The “twist” is a rotation of the wrist from bottom to top. At the very top my knuckles will be pointing at the floor with my palms up. This develops the bicep “peak”.

Seated dumbell curls, also with a twist.

Taking a breather….

This routine also includes flat bench presses, dumbbell mid presses, kettlebell power swings, upward cable crossovers and wide grip barbell curls.

Gaining mass is hard work, and not just in the gym. Your diet needs to be strong or you will just be spinning your wheels. I have to make sure I get some good quality protein and low-glycemic carbs in every three hours all day long after a heavy workout. If I miss a few meals my body goes from muscle-building mode to starvation-prevention mode, and will not only store fat from the smallest amount of ingested calories, but will cannibalize the muscle tissue itself as fuel. That is a waste of all that effort. That’s also a lot of food to eat all day.

At 41 I can tell it’s a lot harder to recover from workouts than it used to be, so I don’t know how long I can keep it up. Right now I still enjoy it and it’s nice to be in good shape this late in life, especially considering I sit on my ass for a living. Also I do not get messed with in bars and my daughters boyfriends are scared to death of me, which are nice bonuses.