Crashing through barriers

There's a quote common to the Iron Radio podcast that I like, "crashing through barriers". One of the show's regulars frequently greets skinny-weak new clients with instructions to gain 20lb immediately, by any means necessary, and maintain that weight while they get strong until further notice. It's radical, but it has worked again and again. Losing weight is just eating less and walking more. Anybody can lose weight, but building lean body mass is expensive and time-consuming and limited by things like age, genetics, and endocrinology.

My weight crept up and down for almost 3 weeks while I (only) slightly overate and my lifts went nowhere. I even spent the week of Thanksgiving with a family member in the hospital, running around, carrying stress, eating cafeteria food. It wasn't until after Thanksgiving that I finally broke the inertia.

March, 2013 - 151lb; 185lb back squats, low bar, 1 set 5 reps
Nov 10, 2013 - 154lb
Nov 17, 2013 - 159lb
Nov 28, 2013 - 157lb
Dec 02, 2013 - 161lb; 185lb back squat, high bar, 5 sets of 7
Dec 05, 2013 - 164lb; 185lb back squat, high bar, last set, 15 reps

Before various readers question why I'm doing full squats instead of half squats for KB jerk (because squats), why I'm outside my weight class (temporarily), why I'm not running (torn calf), or why I'm not following the Lupatin and Rudnev paper (blogged about it) on mass and max strength, just don't. You know who you are. Don't.

I couldn't launch the green bells overhead when my legs got tired. I couldn't straighten my spine and breath in the rack. I was 147lb, against my will, for 5 years. My L5/S1 disc was loose. Today, this session, this bodyweight, all that is drifting further behind me.