Week 15 has begun!

We got started on Week 15 last night of Starting Strength. Here's how it went down.

The usual 10 minutes of warmup hitting the bag and stretching happened, and then we got into squats. I did 3x5 at 200. Again, these felt really heavy, but I got a lot lower. I think I'm going to stick with 200 for the week since next week I'm not working out much.

After that I tried out the Romanian Deadlifts. These are the ones that use the lower back to lift instead of the legs. I was hesitant to do them since they are so rough on the lower back, but doing them will also strengthen the lower back, so I decided to give them a go. I did 3x5 at 35 lbs. Not a lot of weight, but I definitely felt them. I decided to see how I was feeling today to see if I will keep them, and today I feel pretty good, so expect to hear updates about Monday's Romanian's from now on.

Bench was next and I did 2x5 and 1x3 at 175. For some reason this weight is really killing me, but I made a little progress. Hopefully I can finish this up on Friday, but we'll see!

Chinups were the last thing. I did 1x8, 1x7 and 1x6. Those numbers are lower than normal, but I read an interesting article on kipping yesterday. Kipping is where you use your body and momentum to get yourself up above the bar. This is bad. Aside from the fact that you don't work the right muscles (remember the problem I had with shoulder press a few weeks ago?) there's potential for hurting the shoulders with the whipping motion. So yesterday I focused on no kips, using only my arms to pull myself up. So even though the numbers were lower, the actual reps were really good and my arms felt great at the end.

We finished with 50 situps, 2 sets of leg lifts and 30 mason twists. It was a good workout.

Tonight there's no time for cardio; the girlfriend has family in town and that's important to her, so I guess I'll just get into cardio after the trip next week. Someday I'll make time for me again, I'm just not sure when.

So two quick updates.

First off, the problems I'm running into with the squats being stuck at 200 and the bench being stuck at 175 I think will be completely cured by switching to 5x5 in two weeks. I'll obviously have to lower the weight on a lot of these (probably all in fact, except deadlift, which is staying at 1x5), but if I can build muscle in 3 sets instead of 1 (remember, the first 2 don't count) then I should be good to build more strength and get over hurdles faster!

Second, I have some downtime coming up with the layoff. I'm not sure how long I'll be unemployed (hopefully not long, but next week's trip has made looking for a new gig pretty difficult), but while I'm on it I think I'm going to do Insanity again. Last time I did Insanity I felt great but the diet was garbage. Right now my diet is great (losing weight!!!) but I'm not doing enough cardio. So the plan right now is on Nov. 6th I will start Insanity all over again and close out 2011 right! I'll keep you posted on that.

Also, budget wise I don't think I'll be able to join Tapout. $100/month just isn't in the budget. However, I am looking at the Tapout Fitness Club at Gold's Gym, which has limited MMA classes and it's only $50/month. Again, I'm not sure if that's in the budget, but if it is I may be able to start learning jiu jitsu, just not at the place I wanted.

So that's where I'm at. I need to get cardio back into my life and I can't lose sight of my goals. Wish me luck!

Bring it!