Mobility Prep
Sandbag Tosses (15’)
30x1
40x1
40x2
40x2
40x2
40x2
Sandbag Tosses (15’)
30x1
40x1
40x2
40x2
40x2
40x2
Paused Safety Squat Bar Squats (3 seconds)
65x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
295x3
295x3
295x3
295x3
295x3
65x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
295x3
295x3
295x3
295x3
295x3
Duck Walks
275x25’
275x25’
275x25’
275x25’
350x50’ in 13.04 seconds
425x50’ in 16.53 seconds
325x100’ in 25.15 seconds (turn at 50’)
275x25’
275x25’
275x25’
275x25’
350x50’ in 13.04 seconds
425x50’ in 16.53 seconds
325x100’ in 25.15 seconds (turn at 50’)
Atlas Stone To Platform (55”, tacky)
240x1
290x1
330x2
330x2
330x2
330x8 (missed 1st try at 7th)
240x1
290x1
330x2
330x2
330x2
330x8 (missed 1st try at 7th)
Glute Ham Raises
bwx8
bwx7
bwx6
bwx8
bwx7
bwx6
Backward Sled Drags
135x50’ (turf)
235x50’ (concrete)
335x150’ in 40.18 seconds (concrete/turf, uphill)
135x50’ (turf)
235x50’ (concrete)
335x150’ in 40.18 seconds (concrete/turf, uphill)
Stretching
Comments: I had started thinking about how much time I actually had before this contest. This was after my Tuesday session that and thinking about it in on Wednesday. Contest is in 8 weeks. So practically 2 months. Now that should be plenty of time but some things are too tough to be training every week so about half of those will be weeks of training for those particular events. And assuming that the week prior will be a deload and then pretty much off the week of, things like suited deadlift and stones may just have 3 sessions each left. It should be enough. I’ve been feeling good and feeling like myself again. So back to the program. Day before training I didn’t really get the opportunity to do all of the usual soft tissue work I try to do on the days off (I got my back, lower and upper, and hamstrings but not really anything else). My presence was required as my nephews were visiting which resulted in a water gun battle and then watching Dinosaur Train: Adventure Island. That almost knocked me out and I don’t think the fact I missed five seasons worth of material would’ve made it any more enjoyable. I ended up meal prepping my breakfasts for the next week in the morning as it was getting too late. Supposed to get up to over 90 degrees today. But it didn’t just got to 89. Just get it over with already. There was a bit of a breeze at least. I got there and setup for sandbag toss again. I was maybe 30 minutes behind my usual schedule so people cleared out shortly after I arrived. Movement prep remains about the same. Discomfort on the right knee for the stepdowns, discomfort on the left knee for the Cossack squats and lower back pump from the other two haha. The discomfort part does seem to lessen the second go through but the back pump remains. I know what to expect and I know that it resolves itself. So this was the first week where I wasn’t increasing the weight or the height of the tosses. I was told to just warm-up in singles and then do 4x2 with the 40lbs bag. Since the 35lbs bag is now 45lbs and I didn’t feel like making it lighter, I did a toss with the 30lbs and then then 40lbs. I also did the half toss with 30/40/50 and then 2-3 swings with the 32kgs kettlebell. I did these quasi-EMOM style. Essentially I setup my timer to do two intervals. 30 seconds to get two tosses in and then a minute after that between those sets. I initially thought that I had a bad toss with the first one of the second set but it was more that my arc was too narrow compared to what I seem to usually do but if I had been closer and did that, it would’ve been a perfect arc for max height without losing power for distance. In either case, these felt comfortable and I feel like the 40lbs is now how the 30lbs felt back when I first started doing them in 2019. Tore down the stuff to get on with the workout. SSB work next but a changeup. I was advised that this was to be a deload of sorts for the rack squats. Plan was to do RPE6 or 60% of max squat and do 5x3 free squats with the SSB and pause them for 2-3 seconds each rep. This was a little tricky for me to figure out what would be good to do. See, I haven’t done a real squat outside of some front squats for a few weeks since like 2016. It has been box squats or really no squats. So I figured I’d go off of what my rack squat was and about what I was doing in squats with an SSB from like 2014-2015. I had decided I’d do triples (I was given option of doubles or triples to warm-up) and doing the three seconds pauses each rep. No hard belt. That first set felt a bit harder than I would’ve liked. But seemed to feel better as I went. Still looks pretty fast and easy on video. Those pauses really made the concentric portion difficult. So maybe harder than RPE6. Oh well. To be honest, I was a little worried about full squats as it has been so long and I think one of the few times I did them my lower back started acting up on me the following day. The deep squats did seem to get my hips, ankles and knees ready for whatever else I had for today. So next thing was duck walk. This also was being adjusted from previous sessions. It has been just 50’ runs for the work sets but this was introducing a 100’ (drop and turn at 50’) for more work. Duck walks get tiring and it isn’t trained as much as normal style of moving events so it makes sense to do this to get used to fatigue since it is part of a medley for these next two shows. For warm-ups, I did a little heavier than I had been doing but more volume with the short distances. I also folded over about 2” of the knee sleeves so right under my knee on the inner leg would have more protection. I thought this was a good warm-up but not so sure. I felt slower and it appears I was. Granted, I can’t really compare the heavy set of 425lbs as that was the most so far with this setup and it is expected to slow down with more weight. Also hard to figure if this is an issue or not with the decrease in speed considering how much timing of the movement has to do with the pace. I’m not terribly concerned as still far out and don’t exactly know the weight for the upcoming show either. The light run for distance was what I was curious about. Get a better idea on fatigue and answer for me how to approach the duck walk handle when running to it. Starting with it is one thing but been thinking and visualizing in my head one the approach as in both medleys, I will be doing them as the second leg and will have to run back to get them. Rotating the implement like I might do with a keg or attacking from the side like a sandbag didn’t seem to be efficient with getting started and moving. So it would be one where I’d have to get behind the implement. Doesn’t seem like a crisp transition is really going to be possible so I’ll have to be aware of that. This extra 50’ was exhausting. Time for stones. I was a little uncertain about today. Not because I didn’t feel good but more that I had to make changes to the plan. I’m trying to be better about that but I know that something that changes a plan can frustrate me. What I mean is that there was no one at the gym that knew really at the time that I felt comfortable with asking for assistance with stones for doing stone over bar. If it had been just singles or training today that wasn’t time sensitive, I’d have been fine with doing over bar. But today it was EMOM doubles and then AMRAP in 75 seconds. With that change, I was tempted to go off script (I think my thinking was if plans deviate a little, why not a lot? What does it matter?) but I kept myself to the carefully crafted plan here. So that meant I’d go to platform. That offers some different challenges compared to over bar. For general stuff, not a big deal but does change things enough for the competition plan. 1” higher load height is that bad. With going over a bar, I am aiming up and over and then trying to guide the stone down to make it easier for the person on the other side to get it back to me. I don’t have to deload the stone each rep and I don’t have to worry about controlling the bounce on the rubber. So both of those things made the rhythm and pace a bit different. I managed to keep my body temperature under control and the tacky was perfect today. I did end up getting off balance on the lapping of the first rep of the first double so I was kind of feeling like I was behind on the clock with the timer on my rest haha. With how that felt, I really wasn’t sure that I’d do so well on the AMRAP. A fellow competitor (also signed up for the same show) had been in the gym for a bit and I asked them to keep track of time for the AMRAP. The idea for this was to do more than the contest time limit so that I’d have the opportunity to get at least one more rep. I had asked for specific times to be called so I could judge my pacing and time orientation but that was perhaps too much to ask. I had a good pace going with 6 and then I misjudged how fatigued I was going for the seventh and got the load about an 1” too low. I regrouped with very little hesitation and got the 7th and then I knew I had about one more left in me to get within the time limit (and not need extended rest) so that one I slowed down to insure that I’d get it lapped and then give it hell to extend. Got it with a few seconds to spare. With how I was feeling beforehand, I was thinking like 6 reps but to almost get 9 is great news. Especially since this is 5” above contest height. Had to clean up before finishing off the session. Glute ham raise raises again. I was given a cue to think of pushing with the heels and that seemed to really help. I was told to do 3 sets of bodyweight and got to near failure. I took that as being when it felt like I wasn’t doing it right and that my lower back wanted to take over and I was leading back with my head as opposed with the heels. So that got me a few more reps compared to last week. Happy about that. I know how much these will help me get my hamstrings ready for deadlifting and being not as fatigued on stones. Last item was a long sled drag. I was told to do two work up sets of 50’ and then do the weight I did two weeks ago for 150’. Now this wasn’t quite like I’ve done as there is really only 93’ of turf (I make up the difference with rubber matting) so this meant I’d be starting outside on the concrete that is uneven and then go over some rubber flooring and then the turf. I did 100lbs jumps and took those as more of a casual pace to get ready. The plan was for this to be a long suck but never underestimate how much I can withstand suck. The only real problems with this were that it was really bright outside and I was wearing white so literally couldn’t see me until like the last 50’ of it and the other was that the sled got stuck on the rubber matting and I literally had to just yank it through it. This was actually not too bad. In fact, I was breathing harder after the 100’ duck walk and my AMRAP of stones. Put stuff away and stretched before driving home with the AC blasting. When I got home, I apparently needed to sit in front of a fan in my cool house as the sun was bearing down on me the whole drive home despite the AC. Just have to consider that with it getting hotter.
Comments: I had started thinking about how much time I actually had before this contest. This was after my Tuesday session that and thinking about it in on Wednesday. Contest is in 8 weeks. So practically 2 months. Now that should be plenty of time but some things are too tough to be training every week so about half of those will be weeks of training for those particular events. And assuming that the week prior will be a deload and then pretty much off the week of, things like suited deadlift and stones may just have 3 sessions each left. It should be enough. I’ve been feeling good and feeling like myself again. So back to the program. Day before training I didn’t really get the opportunity to do all of the usual soft tissue work I try to do on the days off (I got my back, lower and upper, and hamstrings but not really anything else). My presence was required as my nephews were visiting which resulted in a water gun battle and then watching Dinosaur Train: Adventure Island. That almost knocked me out and I don’t think the fact I missed five seasons worth of material would’ve made it any more enjoyable. I ended up meal prepping my breakfasts for the next week in the morning as it was getting too late. Supposed to get up to over 90 degrees today. But it didn’t just got to 89. Just get it over with already. There was a bit of a breeze at least. I got there and setup for sandbag toss again. I was maybe 30 minutes behind my usual schedule so people cleared out shortly after I arrived. Movement prep remains about the same. Discomfort on the right knee for the stepdowns, discomfort on the left knee for the Cossack squats and lower back pump from the other two haha. The discomfort part does seem to lessen the second go through but the back pump remains. I know what to expect and I know that it resolves itself. So this was the first week where I wasn’t increasing the weight or the height of the tosses. I was told to just warm-up in singles and then do 4x2 with the 40lbs bag. Since the 35lbs bag is now 45lbs and I didn’t feel like making it lighter, I did a toss with the 30lbs and then then 40lbs. I also did the half toss with 30/40/50 and then 2-3 swings with the 32kgs kettlebell. I did these quasi-EMOM style. Essentially I setup my timer to do two intervals. 30 seconds to get two tosses in and then a minute after that between those sets. I initially thought that I had a bad toss with the first one of the second set but it was more that my arc was too narrow compared to what I seem to usually do but if I had been closer and did that, it would’ve been a perfect arc for max height without losing power for distance. In either case, these felt comfortable and I feel like the 40lbs is now how the 30lbs felt back when I first started doing them in 2019. Tore down the stuff to get on with the workout. SSB work next but a changeup. I was advised that this was to be a deload of sorts for the rack squats. Plan was to do RPE6 or 60% of max squat and do 5x3 free squats with the SSB and pause them for 2-3 seconds each rep. This was a little tricky for me to figure out what would be good to do. See, I haven’t done a real squat outside of some front squats for a few weeks since like 2016. It has been box squats or really no squats. So I figured I’d go off of what my rack squat was and about what I was doing in squats with an SSB from like 2014-2015. I had decided I’d do triples (I was given option of doubles or triples to warm-up) and doing the three seconds pauses each rep. No hard belt. That first set felt a bit harder than I would’ve liked. But seemed to feel better as I went. Still looks pretty fast and easy on video. Those pauses really made the concentric portion difficult. So maybe harder than RPE6. Oh well. To be honest, I was a little worried about full squats as it has been so long and I think one of the few times I did them my lower back started acting up on me the following day. The deep squats did seem to get my hips, ankles and knees ready for whatever else I had for today. So next thing was duck walk. This also was being adjusted from previous sessions. It has been just 50’ runs for the work sets but this was introducing a 100’ (drop and turn at 50’) for more work. Duck walks get tiring and it isn’t trained as much as normal style of moving events so it makes sense to do this to get used to fatigue since it is part of a medley for these next two shows. For warm-ups, I did a little heavier than I had been doing but more volume with the short distances. I also folded over about 2” of the knee sleeves so right under my knee on the inner leg would have more protection. I thought this was a good warm-up but not so sure. I felt slower and it appears I was. Granted, I can’t really compare the heavy set of 425lbs as that was the most so far with this setup and it is expected to slow down with more weight. Also hard to figure if this is an issue or not with the decrease in speed considering how much timing of the movement has to do with the pace. I’m not terribly concerned as still far out and don’t exactly know the weight for the upcoming show either. The light run for distance was what I was curious about. Get a better idea on fatigue and answer for me how to approach the duck walk handle when running to it. Starting with it is one thing but been thinking and visualizing in my head one the approach as in both medleys, I will be doing them as the second leg and will have to run back to get them. Rotating the implement like I might do with a keg or attacking from the side like a sandbag didn’t seem to be efficient with getting started and moving. So it would be one where I’d have to get behind the implement. Doesn’t seem like a crisp transition is really going to be possible so I’ll have to be aware of that. This extra 50’ was exhausting. Time for stones. I was a little uncertain about today. Not because I didn’t feel good but more that I had to make changes to the plan. I’m trying to be better about that but I know that something that changes a plan can frustrate me. What I mean is that there was no one at the gym that knew really at the time that I felt comfortable with asking for assistance with stones for doing stone over bar. If it had been just singles or training today that wasn’t time sensitive, I’d have been fine with doing over bar. But today it was EMOM doubles and then AMRAP in 75 seconds. With that change, I was tempted to go off script (I think my thinking was if plans deviate a little, why not a lot? What does it matter?) but I kept myself to the carefully crafted plan here. So that meant I’d go to platform. That offers some different challenges compared to over bar. For general stuff, not a big deal but does change things enough for the competition plan. 1” higher load height is that bad. With going over a bar, I am aiming up and over and then trying to guide the stone down to make it easier for the person on the other side to get it back to me. I don’t have to deload the stone each rep and I don’t have to worry about controlling the bounce on the rubber. So both of those things made the rhythm and pace a bit different. I managed to keep my body temperature under control and the tacky was perfect today. I did end up getting off balance on the lapping of the first rep of the first double so I was kind of feeling like I was behind on the clock with the timer on my rest haha. With how that felt, I really wasn’t sure that I’d do so well on the AMRAP. A fellow competitor (also signed up for the same show) had been in the gym for a bit and I asked them to keep track of time for the AMRAP. The idea for this was to do more than the contest time limit so that I’d have the opportunity to get at least one more rep. I had asked for specific times to be called so I could judge my pacing and time orientation but that was perhaps too much to ask. I had a good pace going with 6 and then I misjudged how fatigued I was going for the seventh and got the load about an 1” too low. I regrouped with very little hesitation and got the 7th and then I knew I had about one more left in me to get within the time limit (and not need extended rest) so that one I slowed down to insure that I’d get it lapped and then give it hell to extend. Got it with a few seconds to spare. With how I was feeling beforehand, I was thinking like 6 reps but to almost get 9 is great news. Especially since this is 5” above contest height. Had to clean up before finishing off the session. Glute ham raise raises again. I was given a cue to think of pushing with the heels and that seemed to really help. I was told to do 3 sets of bodyweight and got to near failure. I took that as being when it felt like I wasn’t doing it right and that my lower back wanted to take over and I was leading back with my head as opposed with the heels. So that got me a few more reps compared to last week. Happy about that. I know how much these will help me get my hamstrings ready for deadlifting and being not as fatigued on stones. Last item was a long sled drag. I was told to do two work up sets of 50’ and then do the weight I did two weeks ago for 150’. Now this wasn’t quite like I’ve done as there is really only 93’ of turf (I make up the difference with rubber matting) so this meant I’d be starting outside on the concrete that is uneven and then go over some rubber flooring and then the turf. I did 100lbs jumps and took those as more of a casual pace to get ready. The plan was for this to be a long suck but never underestimate how much I can withstand suck. The only real problems with this were that it was really bright outside and I was wearing white so literally couldn’t see me until like the last 50’ of it and the other was that the sled got stuck on the rubber matting and I literally had to just yank it through it. This was actually not too bad. In fact, I was breathing harder after the 100’ duck walk and my AMRAP of stones. Put stuff away and stretched before driving home with the AC blasting. When I got home, I apparently needed to sit in front of a fan in my cool house as the sun was bearing down on me the whole drive home despite the AC. Just have to consider that with it getting hotter.
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