Training templates

For the last several months my training program revolves around squats. Mostly Shaf's ladders, or sets of four on easy days. On other days training is not structured at all at this stage. Sometimes I will do dips, sometimes chiuns, presses and so on. My main problem is lack of time. Australian health care works on the basis of 10 hour days, and when traveling is included, I spend up to 12 hours or more away from home every working day. At the end there is very little time to take away from my family, as well as not much enthusiasm for training. Hence such an abbreviated program.

What's interesting though,. this lack of time and training volume doesn't seem to be a big problem. I am progressing with my squatting quite well and should reach my goal of 105 kg by the middle of December (hopefully). I am also in fairly decent shape and feel reasonably fit.

When a conversation deviates to fitness, it seems most people believe that in order to stay fit you have to train often and long hours. More is probably better until some point. On the other hand, less is better than nothing, and you don't need twenty exercises to cover all the muscle groups. Sure, doing only squat will lead to some imbalances. On the other hand, not much is required to compensate for the lack of variety, and minimalist program I am doing seems to work quite well.

In hospital tea rooms some of my colleagues react with interest to the adverts of fitness contraptions (they usually promise more training effect than the previous one, usually advertised fifteen minutes ago on the same channel). When I ask then how many pushups they can do, they usually come up with objections that pushups "don't work the traps, the calves..." and so on. The end result of this attitude is that these guys end up doing nothing at all.

Never mind others. I have always been convinced - and my latest training experience confirms it - that squat is the king of exercise. (Deadlift is probably too, but I just prefer the squat). For now, squatting couple of times per week and supplementing it with random stuff has been working well for me.

The state of affairs

I am still not justifying the name of this blog. I am mostly focused on squat, so dabbling in other lifts, such as standing press, dips, chinups etc., is not particularly consistent or goal oriented. I am thinking though of making better effort at them. I also want to add deadlifting to my training. That is when I completely sort out my back.

Which is, I must confess, is not one hundred percent. During the last session I again managed to tweak my SI. Nothing too serious, but uncomfortable. Learning to listen to my body still eludes me. Even though I am very careful and attentive, the damage becomes obvious only after the fact. The same this time: On the second rung of the last ladder I felt sharpish pain in the back, and it was clear that this is it. Never mind, I still finished the last tripple, so not to violate the completeness of the workout. It's not bad now, but not good enough to get under the bar again.

Back pain or not, I am still fopcused on my goal of squatting 1.5 times my bodyweight by the middle of December. The only thing is, I added a few kilos, so the goalpost moved from 105 to 107 kg! Well, I will follow the line similar to "intention to treat" in research and will be happy with the initialy set number.

It feels good to gain strength. I feel solid and mechanically more stable. I easily move patients on the operating table when needed. The knowledge of being able to lift positively affects the mind too.

I gained some size in my thighs, as well as unsightly belly. Nothing too large, but larger than I have ever had. I am not worried about it now, all of it will be dealt with later, when I reach my goal.

Tomorrow morning I am seeing a chiropractor, and goddammit, it is Terra from the Irongarm! The world is very small.