Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Flying Submissions!

Last night my buddy Andrew and I got together to train a bit of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.  I wanted to try out the HD camera that I got, so we showing off some flying submissions.  I got home that night, put the clips together using windows movie maker, put some music on it, and uploaded on youtube.  Holy man, because it was HD the file was huge! It took an hour and a half to upload.  I even added a clip at the end of one of my matches where I choked an opponent unconscious via guillotine choke, to show the big difference between the video quality.  It was lots of fun and we're probably going to try and record some more crazy stuff that never works in a real match and make sweet video out of it.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Lifting program

Heres what I've been doing the past few months.
Mondays: Legs
3x8 cleans
6x8 back squats
3x3 "box jump" up stairs
3x3 stairs
3x10 leg curls
3x15 calf raises with weight
3x10 leg extensions

Tuesday: Chest
6x6/8 flat bench
3x10 tricep rope pulley extensions
3x8 incline bench
3x10 pec fly
3x8 narrow grip bench (tris)
3x15 dips

Wednesday: Back
6x6 deadlifts
6x8 pullups
3x10 rows
3x8 reverse pec fly with pulleys
3x10 barbell finger raises?(for grip)

Thursday: Shoulders/Abs
4x8 barbell shoulder press
3x8 windshield wipers
3x8 Dumbell lateral raise
3x8 dumbbell front raise
3x15 baseball swing? (I don't know what
This is called by you stick a barbell
In a corner, put weight on the side you're
Holding, and swing it side to side like
A bat. It's for obliques.
3x10 shoulder pushes using setup above
3x10 rotator cuff pulls using pulley
3x10 standing barbell raises. (where you
Narrow grip it while standing, and pull
It up to your chin.)
Finish off with few sets of abs on mat

Friday: Legs
Same as Monday

That's it. Sorry I didn't know the names of
Some of them I'll try to find out what
They're called and update it.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Current Diet

This is what I usually eat on a daily basis.  It doesn't change much, except sometimes I'll have a snack in the evening which might be a milkshake or noodles.  It's nothing special, and I know it's probably not the best so any advice is appreciated.  My knowledge of nutrition is very limited.
Breakfast

Lunch
Lunch
  For lunch normally I have pasta or rice of some sorts.  Usually it'll have some sort of meat in it, but not a lot.  I have some kind of fruit, and sometimes some yogurt.  Ok, so I couldn't post this without showing my bowl of Pho.  I eat this stuff so much, it's my favorite food.  I have it maybe once a week? Usually less than that, but whatever, I love it.
 
Post Workout

I take two scoops of MyoFusion protein after every workout, which means two scoops Monday-Friday.  My workout times are either at 11:00 AM before lunch or after lunch around 1:00-2:00PM
Dinner
Dinner
My dinner usually consists of rice, with vegetables and chicken or pork in the portions like the pictures.  Like I said, sometimes I'll have a snack at night around 10-11PM and sometimes it's a milkshake, or sometimes I'll make some wontons and throw them in with noodles and an egg or two.

I know this is probably not the best diet for putting on mass but it's difficult since I'm in still in school and have classes at different times each day.  I graduate in a month so soon I'll be able to control what I eat a lot better.


Advice appreciated!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Nikon coolpix S8100 camera review

Warning: This post has nothing to do with Spartans, training, or Spartan training.     Sorry


Uh oh.  Things are getting serious, I just bought new digital camera because I'm sick of taking pictures with my camera phone.  This blogging thing is pretty fun and my page isn't going to look very good with camera phone pictures and videos.  I even spent all morning creating my new banner on the top of my page.  I really don't like the default title banner, and I tried a website where you can create your own banner but I didn't like that either so I ended up making it from scratch.  I used an open-source vector graphics editor, "Inkscape", but I'm pretty new at it so if you have any ideas I'm all ears. 
(If you don't know, there's two kinds of graphics: Raster graphics and Vector graphics.  Raster graphics, or bitmap graphics are basically images that are pixelated.  So most photographs are raster images.  On the other hand, vector images are resolution independent and are not based off of pixels.  For this reason they're great for designs, logos, etc.) 

You can download Inkscape for free here:
 
 
Back to the camera:
I bought it from Best Buy for $260.  Basically I was looking for a decent camera 
that wasn't too bulky and looked nice.  All the Sony cameras look really nice and 
I was considering one of those at first.  The first one I saw was the Sony DSC H70.
SONY DSC H70

Nikon Coolpix S8100
 I had narrowed it down to those two cameras.  For $250, the Sony DSC H70
looked really nice and seemed like it had more features, including the Panorama
picture option.  The Nikon has full 1080HD though, while the Sony only has 720
and plus, Nikon's have a reputation for making great cameras.  I probably 
wouldn't have noticed much of a difference between the two in terms of picture
quality, so it came down to whether or not I wanted the full HD.  1080HD seems
to be the new standard now, so ultimately, the Nikon wins.
My latest toy
 The software that it comes with has a Panorama picture program, so you can
actually take continuous pictures of a wide view and put them together using
this program.  Who needs the Sony panorama feature!  The body of the camera
feels solid, and a nice feature is the pop out flash.  It gives it a SLR type feel.
Response time is fairly quick, thanks to the high-speed backside-illuminated 
(BSI) CMOS sensor.  (The previous model, the S8000 lacked this sensor).  Also,
it's nice that there's the option to connect your camera directly to a HDTV, but
the HDMI cord isn't provided.  They just give you the standard audio/video cables.
If you're looking for a decent compact megazoom camera and you aren't doing
anything fancy (in my case I'm just using it for everyday use and blogging) then
I'd choose this camera over any of the Sonys.  As much as I love Sonys, they're
over priced and when it comes to cameras they're not my number one choice. 



Thursday, March 24, 2011

More baseline pictures

I took these after a shoulders workout:





I'm going to post what I eat soon.. my eating habits just haven't been normal the past couple days so I'm waiting to get an accurate representation of what I eat each day

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Progress Pictures

So from these pictures, you can see that I've been pretty much stuck at the same spot for a while now... haha.

Around 2007

2011
Around 2007
2011

A little about me

I started lifting weights 4 years ago.  It was my first year in university and being pretty skinny, I figured I should start working out.  I worked moderately hard, and in return I got moderate gains.  I improved quite a bit off the bat but eventually I hit my plateau.  I worked out maybe 2-4 times a week for the next couple years, sometimes trying out the whole diet thing, and rest/recovery.  About a year ago I had an injury which sidelined me for a number of months.  When I got better I decided to rededicate myself to working out. 

I came across Hanh's videos on youtube one day and I really got inspired.   You can check out his blog here:
http://hanhchampion.blogspot.com/
In my mind I always thought I was pretty close to what I could achieve and at times have been lazy.  When I saw Hanh's videos I knew that if I refocused and did all the things right, I could make more gains. 
I know I'm missing a few things in my training:
-Not enough meals and not sure if I'm eating the right things
-Never really used supplements (I've used protein and creatine, but never for any substantial period of time to notice any gains)
 -Focusing on full body lifts (Deadlifts,Bench, Squats, and Cleans)

Anyways, here's why I made this blog:
-To keep myself motivated
-To get help from others and also share my experiences with people starting out
-To track my progress to see the effects of supplements (protein, creatine and nitric oxide) and also dieting program.  I put up a graph from about a year ago.  I weighed myself everyday in the morning and recorded how much sleep I got, resting heart rate, weight, hours of training, and body fat percentage.  The numbers you see there are my weight.  The blue data was when I wasn't on creatine and the red data was when I was on creatine.  As you can see from the trends, it doesn't look like the creatine was helping put on muscle weight, however, I didn't start with a loading phase, and it was expired creatine =P.  The point is, I'm going to try and do this again, but this time do it right.  Everyone says creatine is really good but I want to prove it! 




Here's my stats right now:

Age: 22
Weight:133lbs
Deadlift: 335# 1-3 reps
Bench: 205# 4 reps
Squat: 275# 4-6 reps
Cleans: 135#

I will be moving to a new city for a job in July, so I figured that's when I will start the dieting and supplementing experiment.  I will be finally moving out of my parent's house (I know) so it will be the best time for me to take control of my diet, training schedule, and everything else. 
Until then, I'll continue to workout the way I'm doing now and get really consistent so that I have a good baseline for July.I'll put up another post in a bit explaining my training schedule

Thanks for reading =)