MS P1 W1 LB2

MAXIMUM STRENGTH by Eric Cressey

Phase 1: Foundation
Week 1
Lower Body Two

Beginning Thoughts:

Hi everyone

While browsing some forums the other day, I came across several Maximum Strength journals where people were posting the entire detailed workouts. I contacted one of these members and asked him if he thought he was respecting Eric Cressey by posting the entire workouts. I also added that even though he may not respect Coach Cressey, he should atleast respect the money he spent on the book and not post his entire workout. He replied back to me shortly. He was very respectful. He said that he was planning on doing an internship with Coach Cressey and he said he agreed with my logic. However, he said that if someone was to actually go through his journal from workout to workout and make note of 64 workouts in the next 16 weeks, then that person could easily rip the book off warez or bittorrent, etc. I understood his point.

Well, since Coach Cressey has helped me with a few technicalities of the program, I emailed him and asked his thoughts on my current approach. From his reply I gather than he does not want to get into this whole copywrite war. He's smart and realizes that there's no purpose in squabbling over this and this is the nature of the beast. He left it up to me to decide whether to post exact workouts or not.

Well, I have decided that I will not be posting exact workouts. I will, however, be more free with information I post here because I do not want this journal to become a gigantic blog filled with small entries and large links to Cressey's book. So, I am going to provide a little more information from now on but I will not be posting exact workouts. I respect Coach Cressey immensely and although he completely left it up to me to do what I choose, this is my final decision.

On another note, I was talking to my mentor Eric3237 I realized (thanks to him) that I have recently developed this negative attitude towards all my upper body days. I seem very lethargic and all I want to do is lower body day in and day out. Well, this is ofcourse a very bad habit to develop and it got me thinking during the warm-up period of my workout - why exactly do I do this? I think I know why I have developed this nasty habit: I have never really enjoyed training my upper body from day one, however, this overt displeasure of doing any pushing exercises (I'm ok with all back work) is because of a fear of mine: I'm afraid to progress on Military Presses because its become so hard I fear that the stronger I get the harder it will become so I might as well stay weaker. I know this may seem silly, but when push comes to shove, and when I am lifting and my body has to choose between "fight and flight", whenever I am doing any pushing exercises, I always choose "flight". Well, I am going to try to put an end to this silly paranoia. I looked over Thursday's Upper Body Workout Two and it looks very interested full of supersets and pull-ups and push presses I'm excited.

Well, its time I make a note about today's workout:

Workout:

So today was Lower Body Two. I started off with Front Squats for sets of 6 reps. I used 155 lbs and it absolutely burnt the shit out of my shoulders! However, since the set-rep scheme is going to remain the same next week, I will be adding some plates to this. I am going to aim for 165-170 next time round.

Front Squats were followed by Rack Deadlifts from knee height. Here too I had to do multiple sets of 6 reps. I used 245 thinking it would be sufficiently heavy. Well, I was mistaken..it was pretty light. But, I did each set fluidly and without loosening my grip in the least. Although this may not have been an utter "balls to the wall" type of mini-session, I do hope I've improved my grip strength. I used an over-over grip the entire time.

After these two primary movers I did some Bulgarian Squats. I have been trying to do these for a long time but thanks for the warming-up techniques and exercises outlined in the book, I have finally developed the flexibility to do good Bulgarian Split Squats. Before, I was doing an exaggerated lunge. Now, I am able to bend my leg at the knee (back supporting knee) and bring it down till it almost touches the floor. These Bulgarians were then followed up with Pull Throughs and some Ab Work. This stuff was tiring as hell.

Overall Impression:

On the diet front I've been winning some skirmishes and losing others I have been 90% on track with my diet but I have developed these cravings for pizza and ice cream. Is this common for dieting folks??? In either case, Thursday is cheat day....so atleast I have something to look forward too!

I hope everyone is having a good week