May 26, 2018 – Week 3, Day 3

5 Minutes 35lbs Sled Walk (on turf)

Leaning Calf Raises
BWx30

16” Box Squats
BWx25

Shoestring Romanian Deadlifts
45x20

Band Rows
MMBx20

Push-ups
BWx15

Bodyweight Plank
20 Seconds

Biceps Stretches
20 Seconds
20 Seconds

Front to Back Hip Swings
BWx10/10

Side to Side Hip Swings
BWx10/10

Keg Clean and Push Presses
27x2
80x2
100x1
120x1
Power Keg
146x1
171x1
195x1
221x1
243x1
269x0
269x0
269x0

Keg Load Over Bar
298x1 to 64”
298x1 to 64”
354x1 to 64”
354x0 to 66”
354x1 to 66” PR+4lbs & 1“
354x0 to 68”

Prowler 2 Drags/Pushes (turf, 60 seconds rest)
105x93’/93’
105x93’/93’
105x93’/93’
105x93’/93’
105x93’/93’

Stretching

Comments: Body is achy. Mentally a little bit better of a place now. Friday was scheduled to be busy but ended up being fairly calm for work. No walking as I wanted to get dinner over with so that I could try and get at least 9hrs a sleep. I set my alarm for normal get up for work time as I had a family thing in the afternoon that I needed to do. But I still slept in about 30 minutes after that. It was a hot one today. It was about 85 when I started but it was 91 by the time I finished up. The gym is open air so I was still inside for training. I didn’t want to use the exercise bike. So I found a light sled and looped some tow straps around my waist and walked with it on the turf for five minutes. Joints ached and muscles were sore. Calf raise stuff is easy. Nice and springy. Regular box squats after that. Knees ached. Most they’ve done on this day in the week that I can think of. RDLs with a barbell. Felt ok. Trying to get the hamstrings going good. Knees not so achy here. Band rows were great as were push-ups. Easy plank hold followed by the biceps stretches. A little tricky finding a space to do the hip swings. Eventually went outside to find a space. Not fun being out in the heat even for that little amount of time. Weight time. This workout was essentially replaced due to how much things sucked on Day 1. It was going to be yoke and block carry but now it was back to essentially a repeat of the first workout of the cycle on Day 3. So keg press to a top single again. Idea being to stay conservative. I’m really not good with that term it seems as I see single and I think go heavy. I was going to be trying to adjust my form on these so that it wasn’t like trying to do a big log press. I stink at one motions. Not sure but maybe my levers are too long for the keg that way? I have a hard time picturing it in my head rolling it up and the hand position. The plan was to try and get the keg to rest on my shoulder and side of my head. I had my “load style” and then there was another one I had seen. Prop the keg upright on the opposing knee and cross-body clean it to the shoulder. I had heard that someone at the gym does it this way (never seen it) but I had seen a women’s competitor on Instagram do it. It looked ridiculous but I figured I’d try anything that might make this more manageable. We’ll call is “ejector seat style”. So empty keg I did a rep with each style. Slow and steady for load and really fast for ejector seat. It took me a second to figure it out. Pulled out the lightest normal keg with weight and gave that a shot. Ejector seat still working ok. I did a second rep with the load to see. Ejector seat was weird but effective. So I figured I’d keep going up with this funky style and have my load setup as a backup. After 120lbs, I switched to the power keg. Couldn’t get 25lbs jumps to be exact as weight takes up space and have to remove spacers. I tried adding in fractional and smaller plates to try and keep the jumps more even. The big thing I noticed was that the bottom of the power keg is deeper so there is less surface area when I rest it on my leg for the ejector seat. Got a bruise on my knee from it. May need to wear a knee sleeve or something with padding next time. 221lbs went up really fast. Next jump ended up being 243lbs. Not bad. A little less stable but it went up way better than 240lbs did two weeks ago with the old style. I probably should’ve stopped here but I was curious. Granted looking at past video, my 250lbs from months ago leading up to Iron Goliath looked about as solid and that was a tough lift. 243lbs didn’t feel tough, just a little unstable on the press. So I loaded up the next weight and it came out to 269lbs. 6lbs under contest weight. Clean was a bit harder to get but got it up there. However, I never got stable with it and the thing was just rolling around up there. Never really got set and went to press it and it just wasn’t there. Pinky, ring and middle finger were aching after that missed attempt. Not sure what was different in placement in my hand from the previous attempts. Maybe time under tension? I reset things and figured I’d try the load style to see if that went any better. It did not. It is too slow on the transition and it results in a much harder finish to get it to the shoulder and side of my head. I shut it down when I got to that point as it was going to be a struggle to get it into pressing position, let alone pressing it. I then gave it another shot with the ejector seat but it wasn’t there this time and I stopped when it became apparent I was going to have to fight this one on to my shoulder too. Well at least 275lbs doesn’t seem so far out of reach that I was attempting a 19lbs PR. Up next was keg for height training. Plan was to go 2” higher than last time and try to bump up the height from there. Idea was to try and “push press” the keg up over the bar. Took a bit to setup things for this. Grip shirt and spandex again. Trying to cut down on friction on the pick and have the best surface to roll up the keg. I was to go right at contest weight from the start but I figured I should do 300lbs for a single to make sure I was good since I had been doing the ejector seat cleans for the keg most of the session. I also wanted to give the power keg some respect. It’s a loadable keg but it always feels harder to me. Like 300lbs keg feels easier than 300lbs on the power keg. It was a good thing I did do a single with about 300lbs (2lbs shy) as I just sucked. I had thought that laying the power keg on it’s side would make the pick less taxing. I was wrong. Made me have a wider stance and more lower back. My “push press” was nonexistent. I was pretty much pushing myself away as opposed to the keg going up. So I did another with the tilt pick style and that was much better. Volume not as high but more heavy weights lifted. 354lbs was the closest I could get it to 350lbs with the spacers I had. I didn’t want to be going under contest weight. 354lbs was heavy off the floor. Really working on keeping my right arm straight so not to stress the biceps too much. The bottom lip of the keg was digging into my left inner calf each time. I got it up and over 64”. A little discouraging how hard this felt when last time it felt easy and I was pretty much just walking the keg over. Never really had to work at height on loads. Yoke goes up by 2” so the next height was 66”. First attempt no go. I was about 2” shy. I added 200lbs to the yoke to make it more stable a base in case I ran into it. Didn’t want another knock to the noggin. It felt like an exercise in futility to try again but I did. Just told myself that I needed to get it higher up on chest. This seemed to work and I got it over this time. I had gone blind to what was around me (can’t see anything when I have it up that high and a man and his young daughter were walking down the hallway. I apologized (quietly) for dropping the keg in front of them but they weren’t moving and keg was still going. I’m shy and my warning to “look out” was also quiet and went unheeded. I had figured they didn’t realize how heavy the object slowly rolling to them was. Didn’t want anyone hurting themselves. Bumped up the height another 2”. I may not get it but it would still be doing a full extension. Hit about the same spot as missed attempted with 66” the first time. That was it for the day for me. Last thing was light conditioning. Sled drag into prowler push. Five sets with 60 seconds rest. Idea was to get blood flowing and good sweat going. So just 30lbs added to the prowler and that was enough. Length of the gym down and back. I was definitely moving slower than I would’ve liked but I was tired. Knees were aching by the end. Home to stretch and get ready for the rest of the day.