ExRx.net

Here is a plot of most of my lifting career. The weeks before I joined exrx forums are dropped off the front, as they are nonsensical, and the most recent few days is not on there.

Each plot line tracks the predicted 1RM according to the formula Max = Weight * (1 + reps/33). So the trend lines track the theoretical 1RM I was lifting at for the top set that day.

Just providing this in case it stimulates any conversation.

That's pretty cool.

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--
Peter V. Dell'Orto
http://strength-basics.blogspot.com

I liked it better when it was this thread
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9028

but seriously, cool stuff.
And you're a nerd

Bench is jumpy

How often did you have to break thru a psycological barrier because you were lifting/pushing/pulling something that seemed beyond your wildest capabilities?
(I'm trying to build my excuse case after seeing your solid progres here)

Wow. Really cool. It makes me want a plot for myself. Would you mind coming over and copying the data from my logs into a spread sheet that could be graphed?

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

The huge dip in bench is what an injury plots to. Otherwise it was this:



All three lifts required breaking through a barrier. In each case it was not what I thought I could do, since I tend to think I ought to be totalling 2000+, it was more the shock and fear of being under a very heavy weight that would cause me to fold up.

For deadlift, the answer it was volume trap bar deads. Finishing the last reps when I just wanted to quit is when I realized I could pull a lot more if, quite literally, I just tried harder. That mental magic made all three big jumps on deadlift on the graph.

On squat it was terrible. I had not done this plot yet, but I looked at the numbers are realized I just wasn't getting anywhere. My trainer said something that was worth all of the money I paid him, "Ken, it's always going to feel heavy." I realized I was afraid. At about 280 the bar just plain feels very heavy, no matter how strong I feel that day. I had to get past the fear.

Bench was the worst though, because I realized finally not only was I afraid of the heavy weight in my hands, but I was afraid of getting injured again. For that it was just about doing the reps and learning to "live with the fear" (cue Taledega Nights music).

Final note: I'm now at the point where there is no more comfortable progress. Every good set, even at 5-8 reps, gets not just tiring at the end but downright scary. This seems to be permanent now.

Sorry, I can't come over today, I have homework.

However, if you put them into an Excel spreadsheet I'll load 'em up and plot them for you. Do it like this:

Date,exercise,weight,reps,comment

It's got to be said Ken, that is one super sexy graph. I might have to have a word with my girlfriend as she knows her way round Excel, although she will laugh in my face when i tell her what i'm doing.

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What if the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about?

nice graph! very good idea. the 3 months with the big deadlift increase are awesome.

i will also make a graph, when i got a long enough period with data.

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"his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see" - muhammad ali

Is there a way you could remove the ones that clearly seem to be deloads, like did your 1RM for DL really drop 80 lbsin June of 2012 ?
I guess this makes sense only to the extent you are lifting all out on your top set each tmie you chart it.

Some sort of smoothing might be in order too

The plot tracks the top set each day, and not every day was an all-out effort on the main lift. My trainer began each cycle with sub-maximal efforts on the main lift as part of the whole "run up the hill" stuff.

Sometimes these light days counted as the deload, sometimes they came right after an even lighter deload.



Actually I did the opposite of smoothing. If I do a top set on bench on day X, the value carries each day until the next top effort. This makes the time-scale uniform and allows for better visualization of changes through time. For example it shows that 5/3/1 did absolutely nothing for me for something like five months (cough cough) on dead and squat.