Topic: Dick's training log

[Dick Stapleton]

Intro:
So I've been training on and off for a few years now, but for the vast majority of that time I was painfully uneducated about exercise in general. I don't really consider much of what I've done in the past as training as I lacked everything from technique to goals to progress. For a while now I've been reading, researching, and learning. I took a break for about 2 months because I was feeling depressed and didn't really care to train anymore. I was working out maybe once every 2 weeks, and went to an open gym a few times but aside from that was back to being sedentary. I gained about 30 pounds over that time, but that doesn't bother me much. I'm finally motivated to start training again and I couldn't be happier.
I'm creating this log in the hope that it will push me to stay dedicated to my training and also to make sure that I actually progress. I plan to include my workouts and general training for my own reflection, and I welcome any support, thoughts, or criticism.

Current stats:
Age-18
Height-5'10-5'11
Weight-190 pounds

Goals:

Long term goals. These are things I hope to accomplish by the end of 2013. I don't know if I'll be able to reach all of them, but it's good to have something to reach for.

Broad jump 10 feet
Deadlift 2x my bodyweight (around 190 right now)
10 consecutive muscle ups
Weighted pull up with 100 pounds x3
10 one handed pushups on both sides with good form
Full front lever 5 seconds
Full planche 5 seconds
Free standing handstand 30 seconds

Short term goals. These are things I hope to achieve within a few months, and will change as time goes by.

Deadlift 300 pounds (maxed at 235 on Monday)
Start squatting-I'm worried about hurting myself with these. I want to find someone who can teach me or at least spot my form before getting into weighted squats.
Full squat (third world squat).
5 straight muscle ups. Completed! New goal is 5 straight muscle ups on rings.
5 one handed pushups-at about one or two on each hand depending on the day. Form isn't very good.
10 second free standing handstand
3 free standing handstand pushups
30 second tuck planche
30 second tuck front lever
Add one foot to broad jump. I'm at roughly 7 feet right now.
Weighted pull ups with 70 pounds x3 (can do 35x5 right now, trying 45 next Monday).

General-I don't have any quantifiable parkour goals, but some other things I'd like to work on are:
My attitude. One of the biggest hindrances to my training is my tendency to become frustrated very quickly. I need to work on my patience and focus.
Posture. The more I read the more I found out about how sitting around all day is terrible for your lower body. I can't cut sitting out of my life, but I can at least keep my back straight and my chest up.
Flexibility. This is one of my weakest areas by a long shot and something I really want to improve for my overall well being.
Cardio. I have very poor cardio, but I don't have a plan to work on it yet. I don't want to kill myself with extensive strength training and cardio on top of it. I plan to start jogging on my rest days to keep blood flowing and I'll see where I get from there.

Also, I won't be including my diet in here because it's not something I plan on improving. I have a mediocre diet but luckily I'm much less concerned with how I look than how I perform. I'm a guy who enjoys his food ;p

[Dick Stapleton]

Friday, Feb 15

General training-

Got out of class early so I decided to practice a little in my back yard. I have some cinder blocks and a fence post that I previously used to start deadlifting that I now set up as a makeshift rail. I spent about 15 minutes practicing precisions and did alright. I landed most of them but it was a little slippery and I landed on the middle of my foot more than the ball. When my legs got tired I switched to handstand practice. My best hold today was only about 5 seconds, I lost a lot of progress on those. I then spent the better part of an hour practicing my max broad jumps, more hand stands, some climb ups on my shed, and wall runs on a tree. At the end of the hour I added about 6 inches to my broad jump by fixing up my technique a bit, and I stuck some precisions that felt pretty good.

My sister wanted to have a movie day, so I had to get in an upper body workout in about 20 minutes. I made it quick and only did bodyweight isometrics.
Tuck front level:3x15s (roughly)
Tuck planche:3x8-10s (I struggle with these)
Did a few tuck lever pullups as well.

I'm hoping to go to an open gym around 9 tonight, but it doesn't look like I have a ride. I haven't made it there in about a month but the guy who runs it lets us set up the gym however we want. We usually practice vaults and set up an especially challenging (at least for us) double kong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z00LuTpH7SY wonder if I can still pull that off. Gotta try one outside sometime, but much smaller.

[Dick Stapleton]

Still day one

I ended up making it to the open gym and had a great time. I did a few front flips but wasn't really feeling them. I spent a lot of the time working on precisions between balance beams and this upward lache that I find really challenging. I used to need to dive into it, but I'm able to get it starting from a dead hang now. Also worked on more handstands, some lazy vaults, palm spins, and I tried for like a minute to learn an italian job but I didn't pull it off. I'll get that next time.

There were a lot of younger guys there, and 2 of them were also training precisions and I was able to help them fix their technique up a little and they found it much easier. Also got to help some guys work on their kongs and got to do some double kongs =D. I love those. Needless to say, I'm not gonna be able to walk tomorrow after all this jumping.

Edit: I completely forgot to mention that I actually managed 5 straight muscle ups at the open gym. They were on the sort of flexible bars, though, which makes it much easier. I'll count it when I get it on a stable bar.

[Ryan A. Vetter]

Posting to follow, I think more traceurs need to work on cardiovascular exercises.

[Dick Stapleton]

It's definitely a weakness of mine, but my work capacity isn't currently high enough to handle the 500 strength goals I have as well as cardio. That's not to say I'm purposely leaving out cardio, I just won't be focusing on it until I achieve some of my other short term goals. I'll be jogging on my rest days not to mention hitting my punching bag (which is sadly far too light) and probably do some jump roping because it's fun. As I get back into the swing of things I'll start some actual running, but for now cardio will be more of a side project.

For today, though, I'm way too sore to do anything.

Here's a dull, unedited video of the first 2 minutes of precision training yesterday. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FsNJfIFYKU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FsNJfIFYKU</a>
This helped me see some things I need to improve. Most notably, I was landing on the middle of my foot instead of the ball and I wasn't engaging my calves in a lot of the landings. That as well as the damp dirt are why I slipped several times. All in all, not bad for my first time trying those precisions in months, but definitely a lot of work to be done.

[Dick Stapleton]

Monday, Feb 18

So I spent the weekend massaging and stretching my terribly sore quads, and today my legs finally worked again and my shoulders were no longer sore. I only got 6 hours of sleep and felt pretty tired. After a healthy meal of chinese food and a donut (My dietary choices are spectacular, I know) I went to the school gym with some friends.

I've officially achieved my first goal! I managed 6 straight muscle ups on a stable bar ! It was a great feeling, and I counted that as my warm up. It woke me up a little and gave me some confidence. My workout today was:

Weighted pullups 4x3 with 45 pounds in my lap 
Handstand pushups with a friend holding my feet 3x3
Tuck front lever hold-3x10s (I got my back pretty flat today so I had much more trouble holding it)
Tuck planche hold 3x8s. These were bad I was struggling to even get off the ground =\
Tuck front lever pullups 3x5
Archer pushups 3x5 on both sides
Deadlift 3x4 205 pounds (after a warm up set with about 135). Less weight than I've previously lifted, but my legs weren't 100% better and my form was significantly better than usual
Finished it off with another 3 then 2 muscle ups.

Overall I feel great about my workout. When my legs are back to 100% I think I'll start squatting because only 1 leg exercise compared to 6 upper body is pretty imbalanced.

[Dick Stapleton]

Wednesday, feb 20th

Did some early home conditioning today

Tuck planche 4x10s (used makeshift paralletes to take some strain off my hands which were hurting yesterday)
Tuck front lever 4x10s (working on getting my back flat. It's funny how a slight extension drastically reduces my hold time)
Handstand pushups (against wall) 3x2..I'm ashamed to say I can barely do these anymore.
Climb ups-3 sets of 2, 3, then 5. Also did one muscle up to finish it off
Deadlift 2x5 with 4 cinderblocks. I didn't have a spotter so I kept the volume low in fear of my form degrading without me noticing. Don't want to cripple myself.
Tiny bit of jumping

Being able to hold the tuck planche with better form made it significantly more challenging and tired me out a lot. I also tweaked my left forearm which is why I cut the upper body work down to 2 push and 2 pull (although climb ups are partially push as well). I hope it's nothing serious.

[Dick Stapleton]

Thursday Feb 21st

So as it turns out my forearm is fine from yesterday. I probably just aggravated it slightly because I feel fine today 

Did some precision/balance training today. I used the same setup as the above video and focused on landing more on the balls of my feet and had moderate success. To try to work on overall balance, I was staying on the "rail" as long as I could after each precision. Sometimes I'd fall right off, but usually I got at least 3 seconds, and sometimes up to 15 or so. I've got a minor cold (and shit endurance) so I got tired really quickly and called it quits since it's technically an off day. Did a few muscle ups on a sketchy bar in my back yard (one of these days it's gonna snap and I'm gonna land on my ass) just because I love those. Finished with some stretching.

[Dick Stapleton]

Friday Feb 22

Went to the open gym again with a bunch of friends. To my disappointment I could only do one muscle up on rings, and barely any on bars. Spent the night doing a mix of things. Mostly laches and precisions with some flipping thrown in there. I surprised myself by trying a few side flips which have always scared me, but I didn't land any because I was too scared to actually jump. I was proud of myself for doing a precision I had been previously too scared to try, but overall I was in a crappy place mentally last night so not much else went very well.

Precisions yay. I'm bad at them going down, my knees come too far forward. I'll work on improving that next time
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqd57wtNVcs" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqd57wtNVcs</a>

[Dick Stapleton]

Not a good day at all. I felt mostly better from being sick so I decided to go to the gym as I usually do on Mondays. I felt a little shaky beforehand but figured I was just nervous for working out, so I did 5 muscle ups with good form then did the following

Weighted pullups (45#) 4x3, only got 2 on my 4th set so I stopped
Tuck planche 3 or 4x10s. I think 3 sets.
Tuck front lever 3xrandom times

At this point I was feeling terrible so I decided to pretty much call it quits. Did about a total of 10 more muscle ups and some light (135#) deadlifts just for practice while my friends finished working out then we headed out. Gonna have to take a few days off, hopefully I didn't make myself more sick today.

[Dick Stapleton]

I spent all week resting and trying to recover from being sick, but I still have a cold that I can't seem to get rid of.

Friday, March 1st

Went to open gym and just messed around with front flips, precisions, laches, rope climbing, etc. I spent most of the time goofing off because I really needed some fun after what has been a really shitty week. I was landing front flips better than usual, and I felt good about my precisions. Hopefully next week will be better.

[Dick Stapleton]

Monday, March 4th

Workout:

6 muscle ups
Weighted pull ups 3x3 with 45 pounds
Handstand pushups (feet held by a friend) 5x4
Deadlift-3x4 with 185 pounds-Something was very wrong with my form but I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong so I stopped.
Tuck front level 3x5s
Tuck planche 3x10s
Some leg lifts

I didn't sleep nearly enough all of last week and still have a minor cold, so my workout was fairly crappy. I need to get back to sleeping properly so I can start making actual improvements.

[Dick Stapleton]

Wednesday, March 6th

Finally feeling better. My cold is pretty much gone and I got a good amount of sleep last night.

Workout:

5 muscle ups
Tuck front lever 3x5 seconds-getting my back almost 100% flat =D
Tuck planche 3x10s-my hands are slowly adapting so I'm able to actually elevate my hips a little now.
Weighted pull ups-3x3 45 pounds. I can't seem to make progress on these, I almost failed on my last rep so I didn't do a 4th set.
Handstand pushups (feet held by a friend) 5x4
Tuck front lever pullups 3x4
Archer pushups 2x5 each hand. These felt bad and everybody was waiting on me so I skipped a few sets.
Deadlift-warmed up with 135x5, 185x5, then 3x5 with 205 pounds. My core was completely spent so I couldn't do a 4th set with good form, but I tried.
2 sets of 3 more muscle ups
Some random jump roping for fun, the first cardio work I've done since starting this journal =p

Although I'm a little frustrated that I'm not improving my weighted pull ups (probably my favorite exercise right now) at all I'm getting stronger at most everything else. Pretty soon I need to start running, squatting, and training.

[Dick Stapleton]

Friday, March 8th

One of the toughest days of training I've had so far

Workout:

A few muscle ups
Weighted pullups 3x3 with 50 pounds  Failed on 4th set
Handstand pushups 4x5 followed by handstand practice
Tuck front lever 3 sets didn't time
Tuck planche 3x10s
Deadlift 3x5 205 pounds
Several minutes of jump rope

Later that night I went to the open gym with several friends
Worked on laches to muscle ups and a few downward laches.
Some front flips, kongs, precisions, and italian jobs
Tried my first side flips but they came out more as front flips oddly.
Also tore a callous pretty badly =\

[Dick Stapleton]

Monday, March 11th

Crappy day. Didn't work out until late, felt awful, didn't get much done.

4 muscle ups
Weighted pullups 3x3 with 50 pounds-only got my eyes over the bar so that's pretty shitty range of motion. Should probably go back down on weight.
Handstand pushups-4x4
Tuck front level 5x5s (roughly). I need to take a video, I think I'm getting somewhere near the advanced tuck.
Tuck planche 2x10s. Hand hurt too much to continue and I was discouraged anyway
More muscle ups to boost my confidence
Deadlift 3x5 205 pounds. My form felt good this time. I'm trying to fix that before increasing weight.
Some jump roping

A callous completely tore off today so now I have a rocket ship shaped patch of skin missing from my left hand.

[Dick Stapleton]

Wednesday, March 13th

Practiced some handstands against a wall
5 muscle ups
Tuck front lever 5x5s
L sit 3x10s (doesn't hurt my hand so I'm gonna substitute that for planche for now)
Weighted pullups 3 with 50 pounds, 2 with 45, another 3 with 50. I could barely do these =\
Handstand pushups with friend holding feet 4x4, practiced a few awful freestanding handstands
Deadlift 3x5 with 225 pounds. Finally increased weight a little bit, but that's still nothing
Some leg lifts, dips, and jump roping
Tried a precision to front flip (my first flip attempt outside) and my foot slipped because it was wet which killed my jump, and I landed ass first in muddy woodchips.
Also played some dodgeball but my elbow was killing me from throwing so I stopped pretty early

[Dick Stapleton]

Monday, March 18th

So after last week I was feeling a little beat up and I realized that the work I was doing (especially with weighted pullups) was too intense with too little volume for me to benefit as much as I should. When I did sets of 3 weighted pullups the 3rd was usually very poor range of motion. I decided to take this week off the gym and focus exclusively on bodyweight training (my favorite) and work on some skills as well as strength. When I get back to the gym next Monday I'm going to deload a little bit and focus more on quality reps than preset numbers.

Today's workout:

Handstands against a wall. I did 3, didn't time them. I focused mostly on form and controlling my legs which usually flop a bit when I try freestanding.
Climb ups 3x2. The wall of my shed is wood and it was wet. I used to not be able to even almost get one climb up on days like this, but I managed to get increasingly better climb ups each time. I'll take that as evidence of strength gained.
L sit 4x13s. My legs are still slightly bent at the knee. That's a flexibility issue, though.
Front lever 3x10s. These didn't feel right, I think I was tired from the L sits.
Did a one handed pushup on each side with moderate form, better than it has been.
5 towel pull ups for fun
Tested my max broad jump. I'm very consistent with my max at roughly 7'6. That's 6 inches more than when I started this log!
Spent a few minutes practicing broad jumps. What used to be my max 2 months ago now seems too easy. I'm aiming for 8 feet soon =)
Practiced a few more handstands, got one that was at least close to 10 seconds. Practicing controlling my legs on a wall made a huge difference just today.

Going back to all bodyweight for a day made me really happy. I wasn't having enough fun with my training the last 2 weeks, so today was a blast. 

[Dick Stapleton]

Wednesday, March 20th

Indoor rock climbing for about 3 hours. Didn't do an actual workout but had a great time climbing around on the bouldering walls. I managed a few v2s but mostly only completed v1s. I need to really work on my grip strength.

[Dick Stapleton]

Friday, March 22nd

Some outdoor fun. I landed my first front flip outside plus found an interesting spot to do a probably 5 foot bar to bar lache. Did some precisions on the bottom of a slide, few muscle ups, and other random fun. Failed pretty hard on an italian job =p.

Open gym . Warmed up with the basic vaults and did a decent kong to front. I felt great about my front flips today. I landed several completely upright when I used to land in a deep squat all the time. Practiced handstands and got one over 10 seconds but it was sloppy. Tried side flips but I still do the rotation entirely wrong. Also did some sloppy precisions, random broad jump practice, and practiced generating swing on a bar. I'm getting somewhat decent at that, but I left with a bloody mess of a left hand. Most open gym sessions I climb the roughly 18 foot rope up to the ceiling and do 3-5 pullups depending on how I feel at the top. Today my friend went up and did 9 so my rarely seen competitive side kicked in and I went up the rope for the 2nd time tonight and banged out 10 pullups on the ceiling. I felt accomplished but my arms hate me. Overall it was a great day.

[Dick Stapleton]

Monday, March 25th.

Workout:

3x4 muscle ups
4x5s tuck front lever
3x15s L sit
5 L sit pullups
3x2 one handed pushups each side
Leg lifts
Tested max broad jump against a friend. Only beat him by a few inches
One sprint on a circular track..only did one because the track curved so much that I was practically running sideways. I'm surprised I didn't blow out my knees
Some weak handstand practice