Friday, January 1, 2021

December 31, 2020 – Week 20, Day 2

2 Minute Treadmill Backwards Pushes
 
Mobility Prep
 
18” Box Squats
bwx25

18” Safety Squat Bar Box Squats w/ bands
65x10
Added Bands (+25lbs bottom/+44lbs top)
65x5
115x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
295x3
335x5
 
Wide Grip Deadlifts (straps)
135x5
185x3
225x1
275x1
315x1
365x1
405x1
455x1

Planks
bw+45x60 Seconds

Side Planks
bw+15x60/60 Seconds

Stretching
 
Comments: What a difference in feeling two weeks has me haha. I was a miserable cuss with how my body was two weeks ago after the drastic weather change and the snow. I was worried that some of the residual would continue into this week after that bought of depression flaring up last week. My thoughts were that with first training session of this week being a good one, that this one would hopefully follow suit. Though it does seem the lower body stuff takes a little more to recover sometimes. Moving a lot more weight than I am for upper body. Last workout of the year. Some finality to this dumpster fire of a year. I don’t usually put things as end of one year and start of a new year. Similar to how for me my birthday is just another day. But I do with this one. Say that that this past year has ended and start fresh with a new year. Got out early for work so I had the opportunity to train around lunch time. Warming up stuff felt good. I had forgotten that this workout tends to need a bit of setup. More so to keep the down time while lifting to a minimum. So that was part of my warm-up I think haha as I had to move about 600lbs from the garage to the patio (for lifting and for anchoring). So the workout plan here was the SSB squats to box with bands. I was not sure what to really expect, had to see how I was feeling. So past weeks the idea had been doing doubles with the emphasis on leaving plenty in the tank and trying to stay within WSB speed work for the top set. I had been doing well the first two workouts but the last workout with everything going on I did not. I got sloppy, knees were hurting and I was not doing the exercise in a way that was beneficial to my goals. Yes, it is squatting but the idea is to work on control, bracing and loading the hamstrings, hips and lower back in a way to help with my deadlifting. Outside of the UK and WSM, squatting just not that much of a thing in this sport. So the protocol was changed a bit for these with this new block. It would seem the plan of approach is to work up to a weight and aim for 3-5 reps, leaving reps in the tank ideally. The 5 shouldn’t be a maximum effort to complete. So start with the warming up stuff. Consciously trying to not just crash onto the box. Bigger jumps of the 40-50lbs range made things move a bit quicker. Now in the event that I still felt like I did last week, the other option had been just working up to 200lbs or so and doing 5x2 for speed work. It would depend how I felt as I put weight on the bar. Wouldn’t be so bad honestly. Everything was feeling good. Nothing was aching so on as planned. So the top weight was to be the top weight I was aiming for in the speed doubles but not meant to be. Mr. Westerling had told me after the last session that I should put on my hard belt for the last two sets. So I did. I had it one notch looser on the second to last set just to get a little breaking in period. I told myself I wasn’t going to mess this up. That I wasn’t going to ego lift. I’d insure I took a deep breath at the top of each lift and control the descent to the box. Last one I got pitched a little forward. I could feel immediate soreness in my glutes on these today. I definitely had more reps but not sure if 2 more or 5 more really. I had to think on these a little as I realized that I haven’t done a real squat with weight on my back since end of September 2019. Since then it has been stuff like goblet squats, hatfield squats and zercher squats. They are certainly squats but they do different things. These box squats definitely are lighting up stuff that has been dormant. But it took this long to get back to this point to be able to do these safely again. The other thing I realized is that I will need to be moving bigger weights if I want to be hitting the stuff I want to hit. I went through these pretty quick, just under 15 minutes for squat once I got to the bands being added. So inside for the rest of this workout. Wide grip deadlifts. These were rough last time. I didn’t realize how much knee pain could affect these, even after I’ve warmed up and gotten them to shut up. I didn’t have that today. This is the one that even though the squats went well, I wasn’t sure if I should do these as planned and jump to the second variation. Original plan was working up in singles after a few reps to 455lbs with the 40-50lbs jumps. The other option being same but doing reps and only going up to 315lbs for 5. I think I was curious. One to see how I was feeling after some decent (for right now) squats. This variation of deadlift I’ve rarely been “allowed” to go over 405lbs. There have only been three times since 2016 that I’ve done so. My current PR is 495lbs from the one time I was approved to test it. I think I got more there eventually. I felt that way even on the day but not worth it at the time to push higher after how much stress these put on the everything haha. Another thing was trying out deadlift cue discussed with Mr. Westerling about having the bar over midfoot. Maybe that is the way. I’m not sure just yet as this stance and grip is a bit different from my usual deadlift. I scraped my right shin on one of the lifts (not sure which) and that bleed good bit. I didn’t notice until I took my socks off after training. Warming up was good. These always get a little tricky when I put on a hard belt because the position isn’t great for my wider and thicker belts and the skinny belt doesn’t do too much when it comes to bracing. I felt like the last two singles were a little tougher than I would’ve liked. Granted, 405lbs went up better than any of the singles from two weeks ago did. 455lbs definitely had some struggle and slow down. I mean, I think I could beat my PR of 495lbs right now but it would be ugly. And not in the spirit of things as this workout is supposed to be the “easier” of the two lower body workouts in the rotation as it stands for these blocks of training. So didn’t die, again. I took a break to get plenty of fluids in after all that squatting and pulling. Put away all the weights before doing the planks. Almost relaxing doing these planks after the other stuff. Had a weight gain shake after training and stretched before getting other stuff ready for the evening. To another year.


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