February 9, 2007

• I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but a while back I had a squad leader in my platoon who weighed 165 lbs, but benched 370 lbs.  The guy wasn’t a power lifter, either.  He definitely fell into the “body builder” category.  However, I did glean some information from him that I was able to use.

  In the past couple of months, I have been stuck behind a desk with long hours, and in a job that left me psychologically defeated enough at the end of the day that I neglected my exercise program.  Granted, I’m not out of shape, but I’m not the insane individual that I liked to be.  In the past few weeks, I decided to restart my program, and when I was originally not supposed to come to Germany, I kicked off the program.

  Unfortunately, the trip up here has not only prevented me from keeping it going in its initial phase, but has probably forced me to slip backwards more (although I have ben given ample time to read).  However, in the meantime, I have been able to rethink and revisit a concept that was playing in the back of my mind: relative strength.

  Without boring you with too many details and a number of examples, relative strength is the ratio of your force production to your body weight.  A good example would be a guy that weighs 250 lbs and benches 400 lbs, versus a guy that weighs 165 and benches 370.  The first has a 1.6 ratio while the other has a 2.42 ratio.  Assuming that neither guy is “fat”, the second guy is simply using his muscle more efficiently.  The fact that he pushes more but weighs less means that instead of working out to increase the number of muscle fibers that he has available for recruitment in moving weight, he has increased the load that each muscle fiber can push, allowing him to do more with less.

  Currently, I am trying to create a workout plan to increase my relative strength, without exceeding a body weight of 178 lbs.  There are actually a couple of stages to it, and the most annoying part of it will be returning to Excel in order to document all progress, something I stopped once I left my beginner phase of working out.  In any case, here’s the plan.

  • Phase 1, part 1 – 6-9 weeks.  Increase my relative strength, while maintaining or lowering my current body weight (172-178 lbs.).
  • Phase 1, part 2 – 2-3 months.  Create a running program that requires running 3 times a week.  Attempt to obtain a 6 minute mile over 2 and 3 mile courses.
  • Phase 2, part 1 – ongoing.  Continue to relative strength training, but add bodybuilding-type workouts either every other week, or every third week.  Weight limit to be defined later, but probably want to remain under 190 lbs.  Definitely don’t want to break 200 lbs unless I see some benefit by doing so.
  • Phase 2, part 2 – ongoing.  Adapt running program for increased distances, probably building to half marathon distances.  Probably won’t want to do marathons since the idea of running for 3 hours with nothing but my mind to keep me company would probably drive me deeper into the inner sanctums of my own insanity.  May use Ipod to delay eventual self destruction.

  Just in case you have all forgotten, V-Day has NOT passed yet, so it would not be a good idea to drop your guard just yet.
   

  Black 6, out.

  • 12:53 pm
  • 3 Comments