Hey ladies,
TL;DR: my 3 years of progress video (SFW)
Bodyweight changes -- I think they are quite evident from the video, but if you'd like to see a small album of some less SFW pictures you are welcome to PM me.
Preamble
I've been following the sub for a while and thought I would show what I've been able to accomplish the last 3 years training primarily towards improving the big three: squat, bench, deadlift. My lifts in 2011 were sloppy, and I did almost everything wrong formwise, proof that sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.
Details:
I'm 5'4", 26 years old. My bodyweight in 2011 was around 130 lbs, and now it is at least 150 lbs. I gained slowly throughout the last 3 years, with a small cut here and there to break it up. Weight is great, you guys. No coach until the last few months, where I travel to the Barbell Compound (outstanding gym, go there) in Chicago every month or so to keep things in check. And no -- no drugs or weird supps, just protein powder, BCAAs, and creatine. For the last 1.5 years I've been very active in Illini Powerlifting, my school's club/team. For the first year I ate/lived vegan, and now vegetarian (because of this the creatine affects me very strongly, it almost feels like I'm cheating haha).
I started lifting to look better, and began with P90X early in 2011. I didn't like it much except that moving weight felt fun to me, so I started going to the gym instead and following some of the P90X routines. Somewhere along the way I got turned on to squatting, which lead into the other two main lifts. No program at first, and I flirted with 5/3/1 and GZCL, but I made the best progress on the cube method, which I've been running fairly consistently for over a year now. A good portion of my volume comes from assistance work: SLDL, barbell rows, lift variations, etc.
For some intermediate steps, after about a year of "powerlifting", I managed a 245 lb squat. Progress slows down considerably!! My deadlift lagged behind my squat numbers almost consistently until this past year; I struggled to get this lift right, and after toying with conventional for a while and continually re-aggravating my sacroilliac joint (though I didn't know that was the issue at the time), I switched to sumo. My 1 RMs now are a 300 lb squat, 143 lb bench, 308 lb deadlift. I have a lot of videos on my YT channel if you want to see more steps along the way.
I still have a long way to go to get to where I want to be. If nothing else I learned that getting strong is one hell of a marathon, not a sprint -- with ups and downs from injury to stress to things out of our control. Thanks for the support and information over the years, ladies. This and /r/weightroom are two subs where I learned so much that I am certain it factored into my progress.
TL;DR: my 3 years of progress video (SFW)
Bodyweight changes -- I think they are quite evident from the video, but if you'd like to see a small album of some less SFW pictures you are welcome to PM me.
Preamble
I've been following the sub for a while and thought I would show what I've been able to accomplish the last 3 years training primarily towards improving the big three: squat, bench, deadlift. My lifts in 2011 were sloppy, and I did almost everything wrong formwise, proof that sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.
Details:
I'm 5'4", 26 years old. My bodyweight in 2011 was around 130 lbs, and now it is at least 150 lbs. I gained slowly throughout the last 3 years, with a small cut here and there to break it up. Weight is great, you guys. No coach until the last few months, where I travel to the Barbell Compound (outstanding gym, go there) in Chicago every month or so to keep things in check. And no -- no drugs or weird supps, just protein powder, BCAAs, and creatine. For the last 1.5 years I've been very active in Illini Powerlifting, my school's club/team. For the first year I ate/lived vegan, and now vegetarian (because of this the creatine affects me very strongly, it almost feels like I'm cheating haha).
I started lifting to look better, and began with P90X early in 2011. I didn't like it much except that moving weight felt fun to me, so I started going to the gym instead and following some of the P90X routines. Somewhere along the way I got turned on to squatting, which lead into the other two main lifts. No program at first, and I flirted with 5/3/1 and GZCL, but I made the best progress on the cube method, which I've been running fairly consistently for over a year now. A good portion of my volume comes from assistance work: SLDL, barbell rows, lift variations, etc.
For some intermediate steps, after about a year of "powerlifting", I managed a 245 lb squat. Progress slows down considerably!! My deadlift lagged behind my squat numbers almost consistently until this past year; I struggled to get this lift right, and after toying with conventional for a while and continually re-aggravating my sacroilliac joint (though I didn't know that was the issue at the time), I switched to sumo. My 1 RMs now are a 300 lb squat, 143 lb bench, 308 lb deadlift. I have a lot of videos on my YT channel if you want to see more steps along the way.
I still have a long way to go to get to where I want to be. If nothing else I learned that getting strong is one hell of a marathon, not a sprint -- with ups and downs from injury to stress to things out of our control. Thanks for the support and information over the years, ladies. This and /r/weightroom are two subs where I learned so much that I am certain it factored into my progress.
