December 5, 2019 – Week 1, Day 2

5 Minutes Precor AMT

Mobility Prep

Hatfield Squats to box (18”)

60x10

150x5

240x5

270x5

300x5

330x5

360x5

390x5

420x5

450x5

Romanian Deadlifts (top start)

45x10

95x11

135x10

185x10

Pulldown Abs (pulldown station)

40x3

80x3

100x10

120x10

135x10

Stretching

Comments: I thought things would be good with how I felt after training last session. Only slight aches from rows. Almost feeling myself. But feeling like I might be getting a cold and my SI joint was aching a lot come Thursday. Maybe just getting to me now. Maybe extracurriculars had something to do with it. Maybe being lax in rehab and recovery stuff the past few days didn’t help. But I wasn’t happy with how it felt Thursday. I want to be better. I want to be training. Trying to not get to rely on ibuprofen and using natural stuff. Haven’t used any since finished with the Prednisone. See how things go and if necessary, shut them down. Warming up as per usual but not worrying about the heartrate stuff. Just do my five minutes and then move on. Felt fine. Movement stuff was also fine. First exercise was hatfield squats. A way to still squat heavy while dealing with this crap. Plan here was warm-up and then do sets of five taking 30lbs jumps up to a moderate top set. Not quite box squats. Motion was to brace, slow eccentric and lightly touch the box and then squat up with authority. It wasn’t so long since I did a set so I had expectations of what to hit. Really hitting the legs and I’m able to stay upright with neutral spine. Definitely some pressure on the left side. Smallish jumps and slow eccentrics made fatigue go up quick on these. Glutes (especially the left side) were cramping by the time I got over 300lbs. I knew these were going to make me sore in the legs. Adding layers for the midsection as I went. I want to work on bracing better but also with belted work. I wanted to keep going after the last set but I figured this was the first workout and I had already not been feeling great to begin with and the idea was a moderate set. Treat things like the previous session and stop here. Posterior chain was quivering by the end from these. Next was Romanian deadlifts. I feel that these might be a missing piece to my deadlift woes as I had been doing variations of these a lot in the past when my deadlift was 645lbs without a suit. But this was to test things. Starting from the top of the rack with the bar and doing sets of 10 reps. Working that time under tension by taking a breath at the top and bracing and doing a slow eccentric. Easier to work the bracing from the top. Sets taking like a minute so a lot of work for the hamstrings, glutes and grip (doing these double overhand). I elected no belt considering how light these were so that I could practice bracing without a tactile guide. I miscounted on the second set. Oh well. Still feeling about the same so on to 135lbs. Still good. 50lbs more for a final set. That jump was noticeably tougher than the previous sets. Even though my grip was feeling it by the end, I didn’t rush things. Last item for the day was pulldown abs. Plan being 3 sets of 10. I elected to use the pulldown station tower weight stack instead of the cable tower as the weight “feels” heavier. For comparison, I did 200lbs for like 35 reps or so on the cable tower setup. I also can’t stand up fully with it and have to use a towel to keep from having things be painful on my rear. Idea here is to get abs working like in squat and deadlift, more bracing and some traction from the weight pulling up on the spine. Ended up using less than I expected here. It was more the grip on the rope attachment than anything as far as the abdominals. Figuring that it was again to be “moderate” that I not push that. I’ve done these with slight breaks due to grip on the slick handles (chalk doesn’t really help) but I felt that would be against the spirit of the session and weight guidelines. Home to stretch and eat. And try to get some sleep to help with recovery. Definitely going to get in recovery and rehab stuff tomorrow. Going to need a relaxing weekend to recover I think. I really hope I don’t lose ground here on this setback.