December 13, 2018 – Week 14, Day 2

5 Minutes Precor RBK 835 Recumbent Bike

Leaning Calf Raises
BWx30

16” Goblet Box Squats
20x25

Shoestring Romanian Deadlifts
45x20

Band Rows
MMBx20

Modified Angled 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

16” Cambered Squat Bar Box Squats
45x10
135x5
225x3
275x3
325x3
375x3

Deadlifts

138x1

228x1

318x1

408x1

EMOM (Added Straps)

498x1

498x1

498x1

498x1

498x1

Decline Situps

BWx20

BWx20

Stretching

Comments: Shoulder aches on the right side and my  neck on that side keeps getting tight, causing the shoulder to get tight too. Constantly have to adjust my arm to relieve tension. Hopefully the scheduled massage for Monday will help. Mad at myself for this stupid mistake. I just want to be stronger so bad. Enough of that. Sleep has been up and down. Just feel tired. Gambled with sleeping in so I had to come back home to get things for the gym after work. Ended up getting there late. It appears only the older models of the recumbent bike will fit me to allow for my legs to go through a full rom. Felt ok. Heart rate only got up to 129bpm. Calves felt ok. Better than they felt Tuesday. Tight but still easy. Knees were fine on the goblet squats and RDLs. I was a little surprised by that as usually this is the roughest day of the week for them. Band rows felt good. Modified push-ups were ok. Hard to tell if my shoulder is just feeling warm from the massage work and adjustments or if it is slightly inflamed. No pain on anything. Just got that ache. Plank was easy. Then the biceps stretches. Pretty tight. Hip swings went well. Got some good adjustment in the hips. Not so much lower back. Cambered box squats for the weights. No bands this time, just working up to in triples, taking 50lbs jumps to 25lbs more than my top set with bands last week. I didn’t get to this right away as someone was using the rack for deadlifts and overhead press. I wasn’t thrilled about that but I made that happen by being late to the gym in the first place. I’m not sure what was going on with me today but I felt like everything was foreign to me on the squats. Where do I put my hands? How far back do I set the box? I hit the rack catches that first rep with the bar and I got thrown off and forgot I was to do these controlled descents with a breath at the top until I was halfway through the set. Maybe the bands gave me some grounding that had me focused on one thing. I took plate jumps to get to the first work set. I figured this wouldn’t be too bad as I’ve been doing these with bands for several weeks in excess of this weight. Even without the bands, I felt slow and just halting to the full lockout. Top set I had no issues with any of that. Breathing felt better this time with the hard belt. Done without the accentuated negatives and pauses, I’d say I could do a set of 10 with this weight. It is darn exhausting doing it this tempo. Making good time with that so on to the deadlift. Plan here again to be five singles for the EMOM of five singles. 85% of my contest lift from America’s Strongest Viking of 585lbs. I don’t know, I look at these weights and think back to what I’ve done in the past and think like that one Toby Keith song that “I ain’t as good as I once was”. I know in the past that this weight I was going to do the working sets on is weight I’ve done for 10x3 in the past. I had accidentally added 1lbs to the lifts but it didn’t matter. I felt better than I did when I last did these in Virginia after Thanksgiving. Having non hex plates probably helped. Warm-ups felt pretty good. First two like nothing. Maybe not doing the bands made this feel easier. Last working up weight felt like I had something but it seemed to move well. Just under 500lbs for the heavy singles. Woof. Definitely harder than the jack stand pulls. Best two lifts were the first single and the third single. Last two were really slow feeling lifts to get started. I had to work for these today. I’m just not happy with deadlift. I did adjust my stance a little. Widened it a little as it seemed like it felt better. Really daunting looking at over 200lbs more than this on an axle for the Arnold. But I’m at least starting to feel my hamstrings working again on deadlifts and the elevated pulls. My least favorite abdominal exercise was the finisher for the workout. It doesn’t feel like much until after I hit 10 reps. Going for the other 10 is the hard part. Remembered to make sure I was relaxing at the bottom to get that extra little crunch. My abs didn’t cramp up on these so that’s good I guess. Home to stretch, recover and eat a lot of food.