TimM's Starting Strength Log (Rippetoe)

[TimM]

Tuesday April 10:
Weight: 226.4 lbs.
Body Fat: 32.5%

Started today. My gym has four squat racks and four flat bench presses, none were in use at the time but it was not very busy this afternoon. For some reason in the last week they got rid of their one power rack, so I just did the bench presses with no spotter on the regular benches. Should be fine for now while I'm at low weights - and they are pretty low, at least I have room to move. My BF% is very high, I need to get this down. I used this Estimated Calorie Requirements calculator and got a much lower number, some 500 calories less, when I used body fat instead of height.

Workout A:

5 minutes warm-up on recumbent bike.

Squat:
45 x 2 x 5
65 x 1 x 5
85 x 1 x 5
95 x 3 x 5

I need to work on form here, particularly balance and staying on heels. I thought I was having failure on some early reps of the work sets until I got back on the heels and it was fine. Knees were OK, some clicking and popping though since I'm old. Also need to get some flexibility in my arms and upper back as it was pretty painful to hold even the empty bar in position.

Bench Press:
45 x 2 x 5
65 x 1 x 5
95 x 3 x 5

Was OK except I should have done an 85 x 3 x 1 in there somewhere. I was going to do that with the 95 but it was hard enough so I made it the work set instead.

Deadlift:
45 x 2 x 5
95 x 1 x 5
135 x 1 x 3
165 x 1 x 5

I used the squat rack with and removed the pins for this, so that the unweighted bar would be off the floor. I'll probably just start at 95 next time and later 135, it's easy enough.

7 minutes HIIT (30 seconds "jog", 30 seconds "sprint") on recumbent bike. One minute to be added per week.

Now that I have some idea what my target weights will be, I will try to add and taper off my warm-up sets as recommended. I was in and out of the gym in less than one hour today. I won't bore you guys with updates every single workout, after Thursday when I do Workout B for the first time. My main concern is to get that BF% down and that's going to take time.