Today I Deadlifted A Biggest Loser Contestant & A Tiny Horse... Five Times.

If this guy was carrying this horse, I could deadlift it five times. If I could figure out where to hold on.

Jared has me on the 5-3-1 program, so every three weeks I work through progressively higher weights for progressively fewer reps.

This is the third week of the cycle, which means that the last set of each compound movement exercise (bench, squat, deadlift, overhead press) is one rep at the very top end of what I'm able to lift.

Actually, it's one-plus. In other words, you've got to get at least one, but after that you should try to do as many as you can. Getting 2 is good, 3 is great.

Today was deadlift, which has historically been the lift I've been scared of. I'd never done it before I started with Jared, and I was worried about wrecking my back if I did it wrong (Jared assured me there's nothing to worry about, and deadlifts will actually make your back a lot stronger and less prone to injury).

Over the last 7 weeks, Jared took me from someone who had never deadlifted ANYTHING to someone who deadlifted 300 pounds after just 3 weeks. But today it was time to bump that up. We worked through the lighter work sets, and ended up with my last set. 315 pounds.

Since I struggled to get 300 pounds 1 time (4 weeks ago), I figured I would be able to get this once, maybe twice if I was lucky, since my form has improved and I've gotten stronger.

Jared thought otherwise. As I'm getting ready to do my last set, he says "I bet you can do this for 5 reps, no problem. Do at least 3, then breathe if you need to before busting out the last two."

Before he said that, I wouldn't have even tried five reps. But guess what? I tried it and hit it.

Five times.

I'm not gonna lie. It felt good.

The Halfway Mark

Well folks, it's time for another set of progress pics.

It's hard to believe that it's been six weeks already... But it's even harder to believe how much I've changed in that time. Check it out & leave your comments below! (Click the pictures to enlarge)

From left to right: Day 1, Week 1, Week 3, Week 6

From left to right: Day 1, Week 1, Week 3, Week 6

From left to right: Day 1, Week 1, Week 3, Week 6

Why I'm Not Making Resolutions (and Neither Should You)

I know it's outdated.. but it's true.

Well, it's the first week of the year, and bloggers across the internet are making their obligatory New Years resolution posts. It's an unspoken part of the blogger code, apparently: if you publish content online, you had darn well better prophesy all of the great and wonderful things that you're going to do this year, and encourage your followers to post their resolutions too.

But you know what? I'm not doing it.

Not only am I not POSTING resolutions... I'm not MAKING resolutions.

Here's why: the first week of the year, EVERYONE is making resolutions. Everyone. And if you listen to them, it's pretty impressive! If all goes according to plan, the end of 2011 will see everyone skinnier, stronger, richer, with better church attendance, a better prayer life, a better marriage, and complete and total fulfillment in all areas of life!

The problem is, making resolutions is EASY when everyone else is doing it. So easy, in fact, that it can quickly become a social activity. You're not making goals because you have things that want, that you're deliberately working towards... you're making goals because it's the time of year when you're supposed to make goals. And if everyone else is doing it, you might as well give it a shot, eh?

Don't get me wrong... follow-the-leader can be a powerful motivator. If everyone around you is stepping up their game, you're going to want to step up yours, too (shameless plug: this is one of the many benefits of working out with the guys at STRONG.).

But follow-the-leader can be even more powerful when it's used as an excuse. If everyone else is slacking off, you don't feel so bad if you take it a little easy. And that's what happens with New Years Resolutions: in about a month, everyone will start realizing that the stuff they set out to do is WAY harder than they anticipated, and the vast majority will simply return to their old way of life. The gyms will get less crowded, church attendance will go back down, and guess who will be left? The people who set goals because they WANTED something, not because it was the thing to do at the time.

And when everyone starts giving up on their resolutions, when everyone starts throwing in the towel, it makes it a lot easier for you to do the same thing. Nobody's going to fault you, right?

Maybe... but you're no better off than you were when you started, and all you've done is rack up another failure... which will make it that much harder to believe you can make progress next time. It's a vicious cycle.

So here's my challenge to you: don't set any new years resolutions. None. At all. Not for fitness, not for finance, not for faith.

Instead, wait a month. Wait six weeks. Wait until the adrenaline rush of the new year has worn off and you start to see people going back to business as usual. And THEN, when NOBODY ELSE out there is making resolutions, make yours. Take some time, evaluate where you want to be in 3 months, 6 months, a year, 5 years, whatever. Make a plan to get there, and then stick to the plan. It's that simple.

Show me a guy who sets goals in mid-February, and I'll show you a guy who has a WAY better chance of hitting those goals than your average New-Years-Joe.

Mental Motivation

Motivation is an interesting thing. When you've got it, you feel like you can do ANYTHING. And when you don't, it's hard to even try.

A little over a week ago, I posted some progress pictures from my first three weeks of training with Jared. The response was crazy. We had over 200 people check out that post, overall blog traffic spiked, and while we didn't get many comments on the actual blog (why won't you people COMMENT?!), I did have several people come up and congratulate me when I ran into them over the holidays.

I was on top of the world.

But then the next week came and went, and Saturday morning I got up to take my progress pictures for the week. And when I compared them to the week before, I wasn't impressed. I hardly noticed anything different.

In retrospect, it shouldn't have been that big of a deal. It was one week, right? I mean, overall, I was still WAY ahead of where I started. I'm still getting compliments from friends, family, and coworkers. But for some reason, seeing those pictures took the wind out of my sails. My motivation was gone.

In times like that, a decision has to be made. I had to decide between three choices. First, I could quit the training altogether. This would be a little drastic, and I would lose my hundred bucks. Plus Jared would probably hunt me down and kill me, so that was out.

Second, I could keep going in my demotivated state, which makes progress next to impossible.

Or third, I could find a way to get motivated again.

I chose number three. I went back through and looked at my pictures and notes from the first month. Granted, the pictures from week 4 weren't much different from week 3... but they were DRASTICALLY different from week 1. And the progress I've made in terms of numbers has been pretty incredible, too. Before I started training, I don't think I had ever deadlifted in my life. Last week, Jared had me deadlift 300 lbs. And I did it. I've never lifted 300 lbs in my life. In any way.

And two days later, he had me squat 300.

None of this is impressive if you look at the other guys at STRONG, who can all curl about 1000 lbs with each arm. But for a guy like me, it's big time progress.

I gave myself a mental pep talk that day...Not the good kind, either...I gave myself the kind where the coach slaps you in the face and tells you to quit whining and get your head in the game. And the funny thing is, it worked. The next day I took a new set of pictures just because, and they looked a lot better.

Or maybe I was just bloated.

Three Weeks In

Well folks, it's time for an update.

Friday night I finished my third week of personal training with Jared, and the results have been pretty incredible.

When I started working out with Jared, I knew I was going to get results, but I don't think either of us expected that we'd see such a transformation so fast. When I showed Jared these progress pics, even HE said it was crazy.

Check it out. I took some pictures of myself the day before my first workout with Jared. I took another set of pictures after 2 weeks, and a third set this past Saturday morning. Here's how they stack up next to each other:

Front

Back

Profile

When my father-in-law saw these, he said "Wow. How did you find two other guys with the same tattoo as you?"

That's how I feel. Like a different person than I was three weeks ago. I'm stronger, I'm more confident, and I have to keep reminding myself that we've barely even started. If this is how far I've come in 3 weeks, where will I be at the end of 12?