February 17, 2019 – Week 23, Day 3

5 Minutes Elliptical

Leaning Calf Raises
BWx30

Sumo Box Touches (10” Box)
BWx25

Regular Box Touches (10” Box)
BWx25

Bird Dogs (1 second holds)

BWx10/10

Superset: Band Rows/ Modified Angle Push-ups
MMBx20/BWx15
MMBx20/BWx15

Biceps Stretches

20 Seconds

20 Seconds

Log Clean and Push Presses
(Miscellaneous Log 12”)

85x1
105x1
125x1
145x1
165x1
(Beast Metals Log 13”)

186.5x1
206.5x1
226.5x1
246.5x1
266.5x1
286.5x1
301.5x1

18” I-Beam Farmer’s Walk (on turf)

117x60’ in 6.46 seconds

167x60’ in 7.23 seconds

217x60’ in 8.22 seconds

267x60’ in 9.63 seconds

317x60’ in 12.43 seconds

Mouser Block Carry/Standing Arm-Over-Arm Pulls (on turf)

191.5x60’/185x60’ in 29.87 seconds

239x60’/235x60’ in 32.98 seconds

368x60’/365x60’ in 56.79 seconds

Stretching

Comments: The week didn’t end well. Something at work set me off and put me in a foul mood and it was enough that all the fatigue I was feeling just broke through the gate. I had been getting maybe 6hrs of sleep a night and I’m still dealing with leftovers from the cold and sinus infection. I just felt so tired. I didn’t do any walking and I slept for close to 14hrs. I was in a depressed funk almost all of Saturday. I had to force myself to eat and go outside for a walk. Left shoulder was tight and aching and it was just frustrating. Injury to my back and having to restart made it feel like I had wasted these past 23 weeks for the biggest competition I’ve done. I wasn’t going to be able to train today with how I was feeling so it was good that there was competition at the gym in Lancaster which meant I’d have to train Sunday. I felt a little better after going for a walk and eating tacos. I went to bed early so that I could wake up early and go train. Shoulder still ached but the drive out there wasn’t bad. A lot of the stuff was moved around for the contest so I had to do some exercise before I could exercise. Elliptical felt good. No knee issues, felt nice and easy. Calf work was good. These are usually feeling the best on this day. Box touches both styles felt ok. I just used a strongman log like I have been doing. Birddogs were good. Probably the best they have felt. But there is still a noticeable fatigue that builds on my injured side compared to my healthy side. It’s minimal but noticeable. Band rows and modified push-ups after that. Felt good. Biceps stretching was good. Log to start up the day. Same as last week with it being singles in competition style and 20lbs jumps with a goal of hitting at least 5lbs more than last week. Seeing as how I only did a little over 255lbs, that shouldn’t be problem even if I was in a depressive funk. For this workout, I figured I’d dress for competition. So I had contest t-shirt on from the last Nats I was at, grip shirt under it and wore my Under Armour warm-up short thingies. Can’t wear grip shirt unless it is Strongman Corp logo ones so contest t-shirt goes over mine. Still works decent like this. The shorts are skin tight so nothing for the implements to get caught on (log, block, farmer’s walk handles, etc;). Not something I feel I need but I wanted to have that little extra and feel like I’m competing in less than 2 weeks. Things were actually feeling good today. My knees weren’t aching and I seemed to be following a good bar path. That first rep with the big log always feels a little off getting used to the way it rolls up the body. I wasn’t feeling too confident but the weights were moving up with no slowing down. I didn’t feel fast but I didn’t feel week. Goal was no grinders or helicoptering weights. I had set things up so I could just use the empty hollow log and just add 20lbs so I’d have to hit 10lbs over last time at minimum. It didn’t feel too bad so I went up another 20lbs. That felt tough to lockout so I figured that was the place to stop unfortunately. Still over 40lbs under contest weight. Not even 300lbs. Damn it. Then I looked at the video and noticed I didn’t have my hard belt on. I reached down to my waist instinctively and felt no hard belt. Oops. So that brought a little fire back and I put on more weight. I was going to add 20lbs but I didn’t want to get cocky. I had to have this weight. I’ve been stuck at 300lbs on push press in training since I came back from 2016 injury. Just embrace the suck. Clean wasn’t as smooth, it was a little low on my body when I started it but I got under it and let it go. It went up. I was incredulous. It felt so comfortable above my head. Like it belonged there. I did a little feet stamping while I had it up there and shouted before bringing it back down. I was so happy. All this uncertainty and pain gone for the moment. There was more there. Under 30lbs away from the contest weight. Still a herculean task but it doesn’t feel like I’m wasting everyone’s time now. Next was farmer’s walk again. All from the standardish height (really, this event can vary but usually 18”). Goal here was between 80-90% of contest weight but I was allowed to do contest weight if I felt that would only be a 90% effort for me. It wasn’t as my pick-up is detrained from injury so I’m saving that effort for the show. But I had done 10lbs under 80% last week from the floor for my last run so I aimed for the 90% to give myself a good idea of where I was at. I was supposed to do 3-4 runs but doing that would mess up the jumps I wanted to take (50lbs) and it wouldn’t allow me to warm-up with the empty implements to start. I modified the warm-up a little. Sometimes I do an empty sprint and sometimes I do picks of the implement. This time, I did one empty sprint and then I did a pick, slow lowering and then once I set the handles down, took off in an empty sprint. I may need to do this on farmer’s in the future. I don’t think it will work as well on the yoke as the pick is adjustable on that. Speed felt good on the work up sets. I was feeling like I was tapping into the extra gear again. That has been tough to do on the turf. Second to last set was 5lbs heavier per hand than last week and I managed it in the exact same time. Last set was about 11lbs heavier than 90%. I felt this was important weight for me to do from regular height. Loaded up with bumper plates to the brim to not only protect the turf in the event of a mishap but to make them really top heavy. Meant I had to stay focused. The pick was hard and they wobbled a lot. Just what I wanted. I kept shouting as I went with the weight as I knew I had it done before I finished. Assuming I peak right, I think this will be comparable to what I can do with the contest weight. We’ll just have to wait and see. Block carry and arm-over-arm medley again. This thing is such a damn time vampire. Three runs again. Light, medium and stupid heavy. For the first two sets, I added 20lbs to each implement from what I did last time. Doesn’t equal exactly 20lbs with spacers and actual weight of the weights with the block. I was moving good. Managed to be faster by almost a second on the first set and a little over a half a second on the second set. I felt on the first set that my arms were fatiguing a bit more than expected but the second set I felt everything was perfect. Everything right with that second set didn’t happen on the last set. I bumped the weight up considerably over last time. I wanted this set to be as close to contest difficulty as possible. Contest is 390lbs on the block and 550lbs on the sled. I have my doubts the block will be 390lbs as unless they have specialty plates or put chains and tiny dumbbells inside, it is impossible to get the block much over 370lbs. At Nats, it was supposed to be 370lbs but ended up 30lbs less. The arm-over-arm is going to be on a slick convention floor so I’ve already discussed this, with the hope that it at most would feel like 400lbs on turf. I wanted to get the block loaded up with 25’s that would fit (I put in one of the “taller” pair so that it didn’t have space left for spacers) and that came out to 368lbs. For the sled, I was going to go for 345lbs but I figured it made more sense to push it and have that be over 360lbs too so that it was over 90% of what I expected the worst case scenario to be. I needed to see how I would hold up when technique could break down and I had to just brute it out. This was stupid. Not “I’m going to do chain yoke in hurricane conditions” stupid but close. This was going to be the heaviest thing I’ve picked up from out in front of me by 56lbs since this latest relapse. I had no idea if I could even pick it up with the style I was using. But this was going to be my only chance to find out. The good news is I can pick it up. But that was about it haha. First, I was rocking so much to get ready to pick it up that my glasses slid down my face. Then, the block rolled on me. In the past, it wasn’t a timed event, I just had to pick it up and then walk for max distance. The speed aspect didn’t consider how “alive” the weight was so it rolled into me from the pick up in the lap and hit me in the gut. Got a little bruising from that. I was panicking a little but I figured that I’d lose time and momentum if I stopped to reset myself and just went with. Embrace the suck. Lord did this suck. My grip was barely holding on by the end. Then I had that stupid rope to do next. This was hard. Had to use my bodyweight (something I couldn’t really do on the lighter weights) to heave it. Kind of an evolution of the short cycle I was doing last week with the set with 305lbs. This was slow going. But I got it down in under a minute. So worst case scenario has been experienced and it is still under contest time. Just got to not have the block do that at the show. Put everything away, shot the shit and stretched before driving home. Put on the TENS Unit and drove home. Deload week and then I guess I’m going to the Arnold.