In the Course of Recent Events...

You may be wondering why I've decided to create a separate blog for training purposes. The short answer is "because I can." The longer one has something to do with my having a strange obsession with separating different ideas, and not wanting to bore people interested me as a lifter (yes, all two of you) with details of the rest of my life (or vice versa - again, yes, all [presumably other] two of you). It's possible that one or other of these will pick up traffic at some point, and again, I'd rather stay topical if that happens.

Since I didn't update the other blog since first touring Princeton, I'm going to assume that anyone reading the entire thing neither knows nor wants to know anything about who I am or what I've done in the last four years. This is a helpful assumption, because:
A) Nobody is going to read this
and
B) I don't want to explain any of that

I will give a few mild points, though, the first being that I'm an engineering student, and as such am used to making a lot of helpful assumptions, "momentum is conserved" chief among them. That won't be relevant here, though.

The main one for this blog is that I lift weights, and enjoy doing so. The background for everything I'm likely to say for the next six months is boring, but I'll keep it short:

I've been at this for about five years now. I've used various programs and had some success, but burned out about five months ago after a fairly productive run of a Linear Progression program (essentially the currently-in-vogue Starting Strength, but with more deadlifts and consequently more balls) followed by a murderous run of the Texas Method (essentially the one advertised in all related Rippetoe materials, but with fewer deadlifts, no benching, and consequently only half as many balls). I hit a 405x2 squat at a pretty fat 205lbs, then took about two months off  to focus on school. Then I tried 5/3/1, which started out well but didn't agree with my abnormal-labrum-afflicted-but-in-therapy right shoulder and did relatively little to build up my squat and deadlift. As a result, when I lifted in competition last week I was only able to post a 1,003lb total in the 198s (375 Squat, 225 Bench, 400 Deadlift).

Since my shoulder is recovering, I'm losing weight, my squat needs some technical work, and my deadlift sucks, I figured that continuing with 5/3/1 was probably not the best plan. Linear Progression worked last time, benefits from ridiculously low starting weights, and (done at a volume not worth spitting at) should aid in my shoulder rehab, so I figured it was a good bet. The program's pretty simple, so I won't explain it here - if you're actually reading this and don't already know what it looks like, you'll figure it out pretty quickly. If you're reading this a week from when I post it and need a hint: sled dragging and sets of 100 reps of Kettlebell Swings are called "conditioning."

Going back to the "losing weight" thing, I've been underweight for most of my life and finally got up to something respectable around the end of last summer, walking around at 5'8" and 205lbs. Thing was, I was fat. That was fun, and I look forward to being big again (not as fat, but big), but to do that, I figure I should probably get lean. Originally I was just shooting for about 180lbs, but since linear progression will take some time to ramp up, I need some other physical pursuit to follow, so I'm now shooting for 165lbs or ripped as all shit - probably the latter - and maintaining once I've hit that.