Ben Wills: A Fitness Log

I tore my ACL in February. Since then, I haven’t climbed and have lifted sporadically. I had my ACL surgery in March, so it’s been about 6 months since I climbed. I’ve lost noticeable muscle mass and gained fat mass. I now hover between 180 and 185 lbs. For perspective, 14 months ago, I was a relatively fit 165 lbs with more muscle mass.

Today, I climbed for the first time since about late January or early February. I climbed for 45 minutes. I only climbed that long because I took 2-5 minute breaks between bouldering attempts. I was surprised by my ability to still pull on smaller holds and that some of my technique was still there. Downsides were a left-footed toepull that stressed my knee, a lack of endurance (to be expected) and a lack of upper body technique (to be expected with the extra weight and lack of climbing).

Afterwards, I lifted for an hour and 15 minutes. I kept a slow pace…slower reps and longer breaks between sets. I find that this I’m able to lift more and heavier weights than when I drink a lot of caffeine (or no-xplode) beforehand and try and power through stuff.

• Squats: 20x45x1 (all my knee could handle)
• Bench Press: 20x45, 12x95, 8x135, 3x185
• Deadlift (hex bar): 20x45x1 (all my knee could handle)
• Ez-Bar Skull Crushers -> Press: 20x22.5, 12x42.5, 4x72.5 (this is probably slightly inaccurate.)
• Hamstring Curls: Attempted, but knee weakness and equipment not suited for it led to it not quite working out.
• “21s”: 22.5x10, 32.5x8, 52.5x6, 72.5x3
• Military Press (Behind-neck): 45x20, 65x12, 95x6
• Shrugs (hex bar): 45x20, 65x12, 135x8, 205x4

Two weeks ago, I weighed 173.5. That was the most I’ve ever weighed in my life. A week ago, I weighed 179.0 lbs. That’s a gain of 5.5 lbs in 7 days. Each new day, I weighed more than I ever had in my life.

This past week, I hurt my back on my Monday session. I took the week off since I’m not into damaging my back for the sake of…well…anything, other than to save someone else’s life. The week off gave me some clarity.

This post is for me to document some of my thinking before I jump back into this tomorrow. Maybe you’ll find something interesting or useful for yourself as well.

Lifting Injury

During my regularly-scheduled Monday workout, my body didn’t feel strong enough for what I was about to put it through. (nothing special, just the usual workout) For me, that means “hike up your skirt and get over it, Nancy.” So I jumped into the workout.

Leg extensions and hamstring curls were fine and I did them surprisingly well, considering I had added 10+ lbs from the workout only a few days earlier.

Then I got to the squats. Since I’d done 22 reps at the weight I used the previous week, I threw on 22 lbs (most of my weights are metric). I could immediately tell that this wasn’t going to be good. I knew after needing a rest after rep number four that I wasn’t going to make it. My back tightened up and, perhaps stupidly, I kept going. I got ten pretty shitty reps in, set the bar on the rack and immediately downed 1000mg of Ibuprofen and laid on the floor to stretch out my back.

The workout was over.

It’s Sunday, six days later, and I feel like I might be able to lift tomorrow. After talking with a friend, I’m going to add a warmup set for heavy lifts like squat, bench, deadlift, etc. I also need to drink more water. I have a sense that I might have been dehydrated and that’s not good. I’ve also put a mirror out to make sure my form is good; I’ve had my squat form reviewed by a hardcore trainer and she said it was an A+. Still, I need to doublecheck. Bad form often equals injuries.

Food

I took this week off from sticking with the food regimen since it didn’t make sense to pump almost 4,000 calories into my body if I’m not exercising. It was also a good physical and psychological break.

Physically, the best I feel all day is when I wake up. After that, it’s just pumping calories into my stomach which constantly requires more blood in my stomach to digest, it requires my physical energy as well. Add on top of this that I am essentially pushing my physical body into extreme pain and stress so that it overcompensates enough to gain mass. While that first moment of every day is the best I feel, I’m still incredibly sore.

There’s something that happens, psychologically, when every meal and calorie becomes regimented AND you’re constantly filling yourself to physical fullness throughout the entire day. My brain slows down, my body slows down. My productivity and focus are affected. When I’m less productive, I get harder on myself to continue to perform well with my work, etc. It all stacks on and becomes another thing to manage.

Sleep

When I lift and eat like this, I *must* get 8 hours of sleep. I had always read this and, given my fascination with sleep and its various methods, always wondered if I could cheat those 8 hours. I can’t. I just can’t. Often, I’ll need 9-10 hours and even then I don’t feel fully rested. Being a pretty hardcore night owl, it doesn’t make getting up before 11am very easy.

I also find that, regardless of how much sleep I get, I don’t feel physically or mentally rested. It’s almost as though my body is requiring so much energy to physically repair itself that there’s not much left for my mental acuity. I may not be a very smart guy to begin with, and this just makes it worse.

Agility

I generally find myself to be more physically balanced, flexible, limber and agile than the average person. I’m far from the best, but believe I’m slightly above average.

Gaining weight like this has completely screwed that up. I weight almost 15 lbs more than I did a couple months ago, which is when I did a 2-week test of heavy lifting + gallon of milk a day. Lugging around an extra 15 lbs doesn’t make you any more coordinated.

The most noticeable change is that I’m far less agile. I was rearranging some things in my apartment the other day and jumped over a box to miss falling on it. Not only was I unbalanced to the point to where I had to get out of the way of a box - a stationary object - but as I jumped and landed, it was the most miserable landing of my life. I stayed on my feet, but I felt incredibly clumsy and uncoordinated.

Then, things happen like yesterday when I slipped and fell walking *up* the stairs at the beach. Another graceful moment. And no one even laughed. According to Greg Giraldo, that means I’m getting old, too.

Other

There are other things that factor into this that relate to various bodily functions. I’m leaving this out, but noting it here in the event that you are interested in drinking a gallon of milk a day and want to know more. Don’t hesitate to ask me for the left-out-details if you want to know what you’re getting into.

Whoops. I apparently put 1.14 as the date when I first wrote this. I am not a fortune teller.

I’m still tweaking the workouts a bit. I feel like by the time I figure it out, I’ll be done with this mass gaining cycle. Which is fine, I expect I’ll be doing this again next year. And who knows, maybe it helps you, too.

What I’m noticing is that lifting like this - with little rest between sets and lifting heavy weight - is flat exhausting. Usually, after about 20-25 minutes, about 1/2-2/3 through, I’m wiped. Today after deadlifts (the last five, I couldn’t even keep my eyes open for them), I was panting like a dog for a solid five minutes. The good thing is that it’s forcing me to draw on reserves of energy that I’ve never pulled from before. I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I would imagine that pushing through exhaustion is one of the things that will help most with the mass gain….

Because this is starting to make sense on some level. These workouts kick the shit out of me. I’m completely zonked and can barely think straight for at least an hour after, sometimes more. I basically make myself eat a bunch of food and zone out to mindless things on the internet. Then, the food ends up being so much that I’m pretty worthless for most of the rest of the day. It’s a cycle of: Beat the hell out of yourself until it requires large amounts of nutrition to repair itself, then overeat as much food as you can.

One thing that I think is helping is splitting the two workouts into upper-body and lower-body. Both days are whole-body workouts, but my Monday workout absolutely should have resulted in more reps on bench than it did. But it didn’t because I was wiped form the squats. So, I’m having Mondays with squats as the focus and Thursdays as bench. On those days, I’ll be trying to push new records for those lifts.

Morning Mass: 175.0 lbs

Workout Start Time: 7:10 pm

Workout Length: 40m

*Note: I tried bench lifts after the 10 reps at 135 of 212 and 201. 212 would have been a new record, 201 would have tied my all time 1RM. I feel like I should be able to at least match my record next week. And, on that note, I’m curious about the phenomenon of “seeing stars” and how that even works. That kicked in on both of those attempts. After those attempts, I was surprised to get 11 reps up of 157.

Morning Mass: 173.5 lbs

Workout Start Time: 5:23 pm

Workout Length: 36m

Weight Lifting: Mass Gaining: 2011.01.06

Today, my hex shrug/deadlift bar came in. I guess I should have expected the textured handles, but for some reason, I didn’t. It was a nice surprise.

I switched around some things from my Monday workout to incorporate shrugs and deadlifts. I also swapped the order of the bench press and dips. I do dips on rock rings that hang from chains on my power rack’s chin-up bar. Having the dips be from a non-stable position seems to be pretty awesome. I don’t know how many less I can do that way, but I would imagine it’s less than if I had stable dip bars.

I also picked up some stuff for grip work once a week. I went through and selected some climbing-centric exercises from The Grip Master’s Manual. In the end, I’ve got two 2x4x48s, a broomstick with a clamp on one end and adjustable weights on the other, chinese medicine balls, and a 4’x1/2” steel rod. I’ll explain more next week.

This is my last “warm up” week before going full on next week. Full on means counting calories (one free day a week) and macronutrients, supplements, drinking a gallon of milk a day, and working out a few days a week.

Some Notes:

• I just threw weight onto the deadlift bar for deadlifts. I haven’t done them in almost two years (when I had a 1rm of 300+ after a couple weeks). I only got 16 out of my desired 20 reps, but part of that was shoulder, forearm, and finger stress. I’m hoping that my grip training helps here.
• I was surprised to get the 20 reps in on squats. After that set, I collapsed onto the floor for a couple of minutes. I don’t know that I’ve ever pushed myself as hard as I did in that set. Doing those squats in the middle of the set after already doing the other leg work I did was pretty intense. Considering alternating squats and deadlifts throughout the week, instead of both.
• The workout was 40 minutes. This fast-paced and heavy workout style whips my ass. By the end, I could barely do a pullup and only got three reps on bench. I think I’m going to trim this for next week.
• I quit bench at 3 reps, knowing I could do more, because of a tendon/ligament-like stress in my right shoulder. This felt very similar to something I’ve dealt with in my left shoulder for 3 years. I don’t mess around with that kind of stuff, so I stopped. I think this is another reason to trim up the workouts and have days that focus on deadlifts OR squats and bench OR dips. This way, each of those is only being done once a week and gives it time to heal properly…still thinking on this.
• I didn’t do any good mornings because my back hurt from going straight into hard deadlifts after not doing them for almost two years. Us Wills-folks have a hereditary back thing. If you really want to know, ask. Otherwise, it’s just something I have to look out for until my back gets a lot stronger.

Morning Mass: 173.5 lbs

Workout Start Time: 5:23 pm

Workout End Time: 6:03 pm

I lifted a little bit last week, but only to get my body moving again after being relatively sedentary (including nine days in a car and two in a plane) during the six weeks prior. I was initially going to continue with the “Novice” routine in Practical Programming for Strength Training, but decided to combine a few mass-gaining routines into one customized for me and my equipment.

After gaining about 7 lbs in two weeks last fall by drinking a gallon of whole milk a day and combining it with heavy, compound lifting, I feel like I have a much better grasp of how my body gains mass. The goal is to spend the next 4-6 weeks gaining mass, rest a week, then focus on strength for the following eight weeks. That should all wrap up around the beginning of April, where I will begin more focused training for climbing and mountaineering.

This routine is a bit different than lifting regimens I’ve done in the past. Namely, there’s almost no rest in-between different exercises (unless noted), and I rested about 30 seconds between sets of the same exercise. When I have lifted in the past, I have rested between sets until my heart rate comes way down. At the end of today, my heart was cranking and my entire body was extremely exhausted. (I can definitely do more dips and chin ups than is listed below, for example.) The idea here is that my body will over-compensate to the extreme stress by gaining mass. This idea is covered in both Super Squats and the Colorado Experiment, most-closely documented in the Four-Hour Body.

Morning Mass: 172.5 lbs (Definitely have fat mass from the holidays.)

Workout Start Time: 5:15 pm

Workout End Time: 5:50 pm

Title says it. It will include daily recaps on each day that I lift weights, do outdoor sports stuff like a freakin (Texan) champ, climb, train, etc.

Just a heads up.

Sport: Snowshoeing

Location: Mt. Rainier, starting at Paradise station

Wake: 7:00 am

On the road: 7:45 am

Began snowshoeing: 10:45 am

Ended snowshoeing: 2:45 am

Total distance: ~6 mi

Notes:

• My first time snowshoeing.
• I will be buying snowshoes.
• I’m looking forward to hiking to higher elevations, then skiing/snowboarding down.
• That means I will also be buying skis and a snowboard.
• Cash money.
• Hiking on the beach here at Alki with a weighted pack should exercise similar snowshoeing muscles (calves, shins, knees, thighs, hip flexors). The beach is almost exactly a half mile, so that should be good for consistently measuring progress as difficulty is increased.
• The end of the hike included a steady incline (4%?) of almost a mile and a half. I stopped a few times to rest, but each time I stopped (except for once, described in the next bullet), I took three deep breaths in through my nose, deep into my diaphram, and exhaled through my mouth. I was probably stopped for 10-15 seconds and it was enough for my body to recover quickly and immediately keep hiking. Another aspect of this was re-distributing energy throughout my entire body.
• On that same stretch, during one break I took, a muscle 45 degrees left of center when looking down just above my left knee really tightened up. Thankfully, I was able to stretch it (with squats) before it completely tightened. I added a healthy dose of ibuprofen and kept moving. No pain since, but I guess that’s something to keep an eye on.
• I hiked with Andrew Davidoff. His hands and fingers got cold often, especially after falling into the snow and getting snow on them. He also wore two layers of heavy wool and a double-layered jacket most of the time. When his hands were cold, he wore wool gloves. I noticed that I didn’t get cold often and wore a long-sleeve wool shirt with a short-sleeve wool shirt over it. Both shirts of mine were very lightweight baselayers. Despite falling into the snow many more times than Andy, I noticed that I seemed to keep warm very easily in comparison. I’m interested in seeing how my body heat compares to others out here. I also wore a wool beanie from Arc’teryx.
• To practice leaving no trace, I drank the water from the two cans of tuna I brought. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, either. I’ll be doing it from now on.
• On that note, lunch was two 5oz cans of tuna with a handful of walnuts. I also had 100g of high-gi carbs in a drink mix that I drank throughout the day. Breakfast was half a chicken breast and lentils. Also had a large iced americano from Starbucks on the 2.5 hour drive out.
• The first 20-30 minutes of the hike were definitely the hardest for me. Despite being new to snowshoeing, I think it had more to do with my legs not being warmed up. Despite the elevation and generally average lung capacity, my lungs felt fine. This reminded me of the 20-30 minute mark I’ve felt on other hikes and bike rides. I think this is something I need to learn to work through in a way that doesn’t require me to stop for 5-10 minutes. Or maybe not. Maybe the initial hard-push followed by a break is just what I need to warm up. Test more here.

Love is a state of your consciousness when you are joyous, when there is a dance in your being. Something starts vibrating, radiating, from your center; something starts pulsating around you. It starts reaching people: it can reach women, it can reach men, it can reach rocks and trees and stars.

When I am talking about love, I am talking about this love: a love that is not a relationship but a state of being….

…

One should be capable of being alone, utterly alone, and yet tremendously blissful. Then you can love. Then your love is no longer a need but a sharing, no longer a necessity. You will not become dependent on the people you love. You will share - and sharing is beautiful.

…

… Relating is a flow, a movement, a process. You meet a person, you are loving because you have so much love to give - and the more you give, the more you have. Once you have understood this strange arithmetic of love - that the more you give, the more you have . . This is just against the economic laws that operate in the outside world. Once you have known that, if you want to have more love and more joy, you give and share, then you simply share. And whosoever allows you to share your joy with him or with her, you feel grateful to him or her. But it is not a relationship, it is a riverlike flow.

The river passes by the side of a tree, saying hello, nourishing the tree, giving water to the tree . . and it moves on, dances on. It does not cling to the tree. And the tree does not say, “Where are you going? We are married! And before you can leave me you will need a divorce - at least a separation! Where are you going? And if you were going to leave me, why did you dance so beautifully around me? Why did you nourish me in the first place?” No, the tree showers its flowers onto the river in deep gratefulness, and the river moves on. The wind comes and dances around the tree and moves on. And the tree gives its fragrance to the wind.

 - Osho, Intimacy

Repetition facilitates learning. It overlays old neural patterns with new ones through the process of experience. Your brain takes on a new shape and, therefore, develops a new capacity for interacting in the world.

So, when you find a new concept, a new way of doing things, a new emotional response or a new outlook or belief that you wish to adopt: Repeat it. And Repeat it consciously. And Repeat it deliberately. And Repeat it carefully.

Find the experts that do it well, and repeatedly and openly receive their input. Read that chapter over and over. Watch that presentation over and over. Do it in the morning, in the middle of the day and at night.

And that’s called Practice.