Sunday, August 18, 2019

August 17, 2019 – Week 11, Day 3

5 Minutes NordicTrack Elliptical

Mobility Prep

McMTS Viking Presses
Empty(80)x2
+50(106)x2
+100(132)x2
+150(158)x2
+200(184)x2
+250(210)x2
+300(236)x2
+340(257)x12

Vehicle Push (uphill)
carx154’4”’
carx157’8”’
carx161’7”’

Stretching

Comments: Another early Saturday. Well the plan was to do that but I didn’t. I stayed up too late for reasons and that meant I’d need to sleep in a little bit to make sure I was rested. My stomach was bothering me when I got up so I waited until that settled. Sleeping in 2hrs didn’t help as I was out of it. I almost put my ice packs for my knees in the dishwasher instead of the freezer. I got to thinking about my competition history as I got a “this happened 2 years ago” and was the contest I did right after I came back from the injury. I didn’t think it had been such a short time to be honest. It feels longer. So I got to be mindful of that. So I got a little nostalgic. But I needed to go train. This day was going to be much shorter than usual with the finger issues so it was ok to be late today. Well construction the road had other plans. Meant I had to take a 20 minute detour (albeit interesting one, I’ve worked in the city for close to 10 years and I haven’t seen most of it) and have my drive out take considerably longer. It was nice and sunny out when I started and then torrential downpour. Ugh, I had literally two things to do today and outside was kind of needed for the one. Knees aching like crazy the past few days. I actually used my car buffer on my knees, quads and calves before I left for the gym. Fair number of people training, which was good. I was worried I’d miss everyone. Caught up on stuff and moved on eventually. Knees seemed ok for most of the warm-ups stuff. Did the switch strides every 75 seconds again. Knees were achy on some of the movement prep stuff. My hope was that after I got warmed up, it wouldn’t be so bad. My left forearm muscles were still not that pleased with me so I ended up putting the copper elbow sleeve on that arm and the knee sleeves on my knees as well. First thing for the session was viking press. I did some overhead stuff with dumbbells as that seemed good last time. Got a bit better on the movement. So plan for today was doubles up to a weight I could do for 8-12 reps. I was hoping I was feeling good so that I could do 50lbs jumps and end up with 300lbs on the implement to end out the session.  I was feeling good on this today. Maybe I hit a breakthrough from getting that PR triple on log press. I was just thinking as I was doing them that this felt easy and it had been difficult last time. When I did +250lbs like nothing, I started to think that the next jump was going to be too light but I didn’t want to get cocky. I checked to make sure the rep range (I wanted to see if I was given a 2 rep or 4 rep range). When I say that I could go as low as 8 reps, I decided that if +300lbs felt like nothing, I’d go up more, just maybe not another +50lbs. It didn’t feel that tough, like I could get 12 with little effort. Now I had set the bar high. +80lbs from last time’s rep set. I could do well or suck. I’m really not sure what happened on these from last time to this time but I was like a machine. I used the apparatus to my advantage this time and got 8. Did I dare go for more? So close to a dozen, I have to try. Boom, got it. I was really pumped from that. I really hope that this is actually improvement in my press as I feel like even if this event isn’t contested, this may be a good assistance exercise. Last thing for the day was vehicle push. Finger issues (I feel I can still do it but I’m not to be trusted) means no grip stuff or sandbags. So like last week, meant three sets of this instead of the usual one. I wasn’t expecting much out of me. My legs were tight and stiff. The work around was kind of genius for if it was still raining. The back-up plan had been to do pushes on the treadmill while it was off and just use that resistance. I liked that idea so much I tried it out to warm-up a little. I wanted to see if it felt the same it did. The sun had come out and dried up all the rain so it was darn blazing hot out by this point but it meant I could push the truck. Mike had been kind enough to stick around so I could push his truck again. It’s my favorite for pushing with the weight and the handholds. Don’t have my face sucking in exhaust the whole time. I didn’t want to take super long rests either, treat it similar to how I did the vehicle drags last week. That was less taxing. Good leg work and really putting my body into these. As with the drags, I got further each time, despite more and more fatigue. I figured that the set has three phases; the start, the build-up and the grind. The start takes short, choppy movements to get it going then I can get into taking longer strides. About half way in is when I generally hit the grind phase, where I keep pushing and use the momentum built to just keep putting one foot in front of the other until time expires. Good bit of leg work today. Stretched and helped out a bit before putting my weights away and driving home to get ready for family dinner. Getting close to competition time. Just one hard week left really.


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