5:30 PM
Home Gym Workout – Vodka and Pickles #6
Cycle B Workout 1
Warmup
10 Swings – 32 kg
5 Goblet Squats – 32kg
Repeated 3x
Workout A
Deadlifts – see below
One-Arm Kettlebell Press – 8 x 3 – 20 kg
Double Kettlebell Front Squat – 5 x 5 – 24 kg
Chins – superset 3 reps with each set of DKFS for total of 15
Turkish Getup – 5L & 5R – 24 kg
Deadlift cycle – 360 Max
Workout B1: 245# x 1/15 (reps/sets)
:30 rest between sets
44:40 total time
I admit, I used to willingly eat Frankenfoods rather than eating real food, opting for low-fat or non-fat mayo or ice cream, margarine or spread, skim milk, turkey bacon, non-dairy creamer, and many more that I really don’t care to remember. 
People smarter than me – or so I thought – with letters behind their names said to eat these foods in order to be healthy.
Around this time in 2007, I was finishing a run of a play in which the cast partied hard every weekend during the run and even sometimes went onstage the next day still drunk, or at least severely hung over. In order to clean up my act I hopped on the Anabolic Diet and could eat pretty much as much protein and fat as I could handle during the week and then carb up on the weekends.
Today’s workout:
4:40 PM
Home Gym Workout – Vodka and Pickles #5
Warmup
10 Swings – 32 kg
5 Goblet Squats – 32kg
Repeated 3x
Workout A
Deadlifts – see below
Bench – 165 x 5, 3, 2
Swings – 2Hand – 10 x 10 – 32kg (:15 on / 1:15 rest)
Pullups – one after each set of swings for a total of 10
Turkish Getup – 5L & 5R – 24 kg
Deadlift cycle – 360 Max
Workout 3: 85% x 1/6 (reps/sets)
305#
:30 rest between sets
45:00 total time
I wasn’t feeling the workout again today but just told myself I could stop after swings. Of course, by the time I got to the swings I was feeling pretty good so I just did the pullups and finished off with the TGUs.
Six years ago today, I got laid off, becoming just another stat in the initial wave of layoffs during the Great Crash of 2008. I’d actually found out right before I was leaving for the night the day before but my bosses wanted me to come in one more day to clean out my desk. Having been there over four years – and being quite the pack rat – I’d accumulated a lot of junk along the way.
That morning I got up early so I could get into the office before anyone else and start the process of purging my work life. I’d just got up, showered, dressed and caught the bus and L to my office in the Loop, arriving just before 7:00 A.M. No one was there yet so I wandered around and took pictures to remember the place since I had enjoyed working there.
Warmup
10 Swings – 32 kg
5 Goblet Squats – 32kg
Repeated 3x
Workout B
Deadlifts – see below
One-Arm Kettlebell Press – 8 x 3 – 16 kg
Double Kettlebell Front Squat – 5 x 5 – 24 kg
Chins – superset 3 reps with each set of DKFS for total of 15
Deadlift cycle – 360 Max
Workout 4: 80% x 1/8 (reps/sets)
290#
:30 rest between sets
Tired today after a long day of phone interviews and had a ton more work to finish up after my workout. With that, skipped the TGU today. Doubled up on sweet potatoes for dinner, too.
Rogue S-3 Squat Rack
Being 6’4″ I really wanted a squat rack I could attach a pullup bar to at the top and not have to bend my knees while doing dead-hang pullups off the Skinny/Fat Bar. As we live in the city, we rent so I needed something that would be stable without being bolted to the ground, so that nixed any kind of power rack. Plus, with super high ceilings in our basement utility room I could afford the 110″ of height needed for the S-3 squat rack.
I also have the following attachments:
Rogue Flat Utility Bench
Rogue Matador dip attachment
Safety spotter arms
Fitness Gear Weight Plates
2 – 45#
2 – 35#
2 – 25#
2 – 10#
4 – 5#
2 – 2.5#
If it’s Monday, it must be National Bench Press Day!
Go to any commercial gym in the U.S. (or heck, probably even the world, for that matter) and Monday is typically bench press day. Why that is has always been a mystery to me even though I have a few theories. For one, most gyms are populated by bodybuilders doing insane body part splits like:
-upper/lower
-push/pull
-4-day split
-one bodypart per day
-6-day split
-double split
-triple split
And naturally a bench press is the first part of any of those since the majority of gym goers never do the overhead press anymore. “Whaddya bench?” is a typical ice breaker if you so choose to converse with anyone at the gym. Me, not so much. I always preferred to do my own thing and get in and get out as quickly as possible.
3:00 PM
Home Gym Workout – Vodka and Pickles #2
Warmup
10 Swings – 32 kg
5 Goblet Squats – 32kg
Repeated 3x
Workout B
Deadlifts – see below
One-Arm Kettlebell Press – 8 x 3 – 16 kg
Double Kettlebell Front Squat – 5 x 5 – 24 kg
Turkish Getup – 5L & 5R – 24 kg
Deadlift cycle – 360 Max
Workout 2: 70% x 1/15 (reps/sets)
255#
:30 rest between sets
You hear it all the time at commercial gyms, especially in the bench press area. Buddies egging their buddies on to do one more rep under severe stress and strain, to just keep the bar moving and not be a pussy. In most cases the spotter also gets a good curl workout in “assisting” the bar the rest of the way up.
I wrote in an earlier post that when you build your own home gym you have to self-motivate most of the time. But still the mantras of “no pain, no gain” and “one more rep” are tough to shake. It’s actually best to ignore those voices and leave a rep in the tank as some of the best and brightest (and successful) coaches advise their clients. There’s always another set or another day when you work out in your own home gym.
With Chris LaLanne (Jack’s grandnephew) at LaLanne Fitness CrossFit in San Francisco, October 2008
The category of how to build a home gym is so broad in scope that I’m going to focus more on old-school fitness and weight training. Think along the lines of picking things up off the ground and putting them overhead rather than contorting your body on machines.
Granted, I used machines when I first starting training in 1998 because, like most people, I didn’t know any better. On my first day, I had a free training session with a guy whose calves Rep. Steve King would envy. He took me through the machine area of the gym and showed me how to use the lat pulldown machine, the leg curl machine, and the leg extension machine, etc. Of course, he used free weights to look as impressive as he did but that was a small area of the gym where I, as a lanky newbie, I feared to tread. I spent the next eight years wasting time with various Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Journal workouts as well as consulting a champion natural bodybuilder trainer. He got me not skinny-fat using machines and then bulked me back up using free weights.