Mobility Prep
Sandbag Clean Pull Tosses (10’8”)
30x1
40x1
50x1
50x2
50x2
50x2
50x2
50x2
50x2
Sandbag Clean Pull Tosses (10’8”)
30x1
40x1
50x1
50x2
50x2
50x2
50x2
50x2
50x2
Safety Squat Bar Squats
65x10
115x5
155x5
205x3
245x2
295x1
340x5
340x5
340x5
65x10
115x5
155x5
205x3
245x2
295x1
340x5
340x5
340x5
Wide Grip Pendlay Rows (3” platform)
75x3
105x3
135x3
165x3
195x3
225x8
235x8
245x8
75x3
105x3
135x3
165x3
195x3
225x8
235x8
245x8
Sandbag Carries
175x25’
175x25’
175x25’
175x25’
225x10’
225x10’
275x15’
275x50’ in 8.79 seconds
275x50’ in 8.18 seconds
275x50’ in 9.23 seconds
275x50’ in 8.76 seconds
175x25’
175x25’
175x25’
175x25’
225x10’
225x10’
275x15’
275x50’ in 8.79 seconds
275x50’ in 8.18 seconds
275x50’ in 9.23 seconds
275x50’ in 8.76 seconds
Glute Ham Raises
bwx11
bwx10
bwx8
bwx11
bwx10
bwx8
Yoke Pushes (turf)
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
250x50’
Stretching
Comments: Friday was a strange day. I think mostly due to everyone that I enjoy working with having taken off Friday so by myself really and my thoughts. Tried Thai food for dinner which might have been a mistake. It was delicious just that I probably shouldn’t eat something unfamiliar the day before I’m going to need to get up to train because who knows how my stomach will react to that. It was going to be light rain off and on all day so driving wasn’t the fastest. More so due to an accident before I could get to the highway highway (the one that goes through the rural parts and not through the city). With it being below 50 degrees and rain, the gym storm doors were shut so hopefully I wasn’t so late to arrive that I’d be locked out. I wasn’t. So not that the rain mattered that much to my plans, I did the sandbag toss setup inside (I’ll get to that later). Movement prep remains about the same. Same momentary discomforts that seem to abate as I go through it. That remains unchanged for now. George was there and haven’t seen him in a while. We talked about strongman stuff for a good bit. He mentioned I had Conan the Barbarian hair which I’ll take over the generic “Jesus hair” people been saying haha. Someone also brought their dog to the gym today and that was a nice distraction. So then on to sandbag tosses. But not really. I’m always looking to improve on things and sandbag toss is one that needs work and each weight and bag seems to be its own thing, similar to stones. The video tips from a Graeme Shepherdson (strongman and highlands games competitor based out of Canada) had been very helpful in me getting my sandbag tosses up from where they were in 2019. As luck would have it, he put up a new series of clips showing drills to work on tosses and I shared them with Drew so now plan is to work those in to get the sandbag toss more complete. I feel that if strongman would really put the effort in from using what can be used from other sports that specialize, that we could see some spectacular performances. So for my lacking area on sandbag tosses, I really have no triple extension. I do mostly what is deemed “alligator arms” with my tosses. So this drill was to work on that triple extension. Plan being to take 70% of the goal height (15’) and do an explosive clean pull to clear the height. No swinging, pretty much cheat style upright row and letting go. So I had no idea how this would go. Ideally, I wanted to be doing the 50lbs bag so that I got familiar with it. 70% of the goal height would be 10’6” but I got paranoid that I’d be going too low and it came out to 10’8”. So since this was a little bit different from how I do tosses, my warm-up was a little different. I did some explosive pulls with an 8kgs kettlebell to make sure the movement didn’t bother or irritate anything. Then I did about 70% power with the 30lbs sandbag to see how the trajectory would be. Then finally I went for the actual movement. 30lbs literally ricocheted off the ceiling and went over. Too light. 40lbs was also close to hitting the ceiling so I figured that the 50lbs would be perfect. I did a single to make sure that it would not rip my shoulders out and it didn’t so now it was time. Idea was to do 6 doubles. I wasn’t given a time frame or anything but I did what I did last week with doing quasi-EMOM with that 30 seconds to get 2 tosses in and then a minute between those. I didn’t carry the bag back to the front like I was last week since this was more a drill then the full event. But I wanted to keep some elements the same. I have power but my trajectory isn’t consistent with these and I’ll need to iron that out. I had each one getting plenty of height but some would go straight up and down and others would be perfect. 4th double the bag came down on the band caused the setup to fall apart. I rushed to get it back in place for the next one and that rush of urgency actually made that set my best I think. If I can get things to be more consistent, I feel that 55lbs and 60lbs would be no problem with this drill. I’m excited to see what will happen if I can get it all to come together. This was certainly easier to put away since shorter setup and I was already inside. Next was squats with the ssb. No pauses this time. I guess me mentioning that I haven’t done real squats with a bar on my back in over half a decade was cause to have them be present now. I think part of it before was controlling the angles and ROM for my lower back and maintaining that core tightness. I’m not against doing squats. They don’t pop up much in strongman at the current level I’m at. Local shows are starting to do them more now but really it is like WSM that has them. It’s not something that will be at Nationals. I’ve never seen a pro qualifier show in the US in my strongman career have a squat event other than the LA Fit Expo the year Martins Licis got his pro card and that was a front squat with an axle. The strength and ROM are there (I was always an ATG person haha) but they don’t feel super stable at the moment because there is about half of my movement that hasn’t been trained in a long time in this way. The unilateral work has definitely helped me reclaim this. So the plan here was 70% for 3x5. At this time, I’m using 485lbs as my assumed 1rm on these. Could be more, could be less. Not doing pauses is also tricky to get used to as well. I had a bit of an allergy episode getting warmed up for squats. I may need to get new nasal spray (and no, I don't think it was the dog as I was petting her before and after and it only happened during my squat warm-ups). These felt tough but the video says these were a joke. After that was again wide grip pendlay rows. Change from last time though was having me stand on a platform so that greater ROM and lower starting point. I was also told to try and minimize movement in the rest of the body. Higher reps to also hopefully keep the weight lighter. This appears to be designed to help with that pick and lap on stones so kind of an “ah ha” moment of clarify with the explicit intent stated. Platform was to be 1-3” so being the extra I am, I did 3”. I did 30lbs jumps for triples here and figured that 225lbs was where I’d be for the day. But it was too easy so I added 10lbs each set. 245lbs finally felt about where I needed to with the fatigue as my reps were slowing down by the end. So next up was sandbag carries. Four sets of 50’ with 250-300lbs sandbag. Seeing as how my last foray with the sandbag I felt like I was moving super slow and was going to drop it at any time I figured I’d go with in between since I did 250lbs on the keg pretty well two weeks ago. Plus the 300lbs sandbag here is actually 306lbs and is really dense because it has 25lbs of lead shot mixed in it. I tried to do a similar warm-up to what I did with the keg last time to get used to moving. My error came with the actual sandbag I was to use. I had decided after talking with George to set my grip rather than start like I had to be hands off the sandbag. I haven’t attempted the 275lbs here at the gym before for a carry and it is a dense, smaller packed bag. I didn’t respect the weight and it showed as I dropped it 15’ into the first run. Kind of embarrassed that I did that. This bag’s got hands. I got my act together for the remainder of the runs but this was a tough bag to grip. I could feel my grip wanting to slip on the last two runs. Had me thinking that maybe I’m past my prime, that is how bad this bag felt to run with. I had red marks on my arms from I’m guessing canvas burn. Like, I’ve had less stuff on my forearms from the stones the week before and some of my tape had ripped. I’m just going to have to remember that the 275lbs and 306lbs at the gym are going to be difficult sandbags for their weight. Glute ham raise raises again. These didn’t start out well. I’m still trying to figure out if these feel better on the even weeks or the odd weeks at this point. I’d think I’d be more worn out by duck walk and stones then rows and front carries but it seems like that isn’t the case. Plan here was again 3 sets of getting to near failure each time. Which is probably for the best with my newborn horse legs I got here. They need to work. Consistency here isn’t great week to week. I may have to differentiate between high pad and low pad position. I initially was high pad and had the footpad at 3.75 holes showing. I struggled to get four reps and had to think on what to do next. I then adjusted the footpad so it was at 4 holes showing and did two more reps before trying to get my knees lower. I’m not certain if this is the same position I had for last week but this at least made these tolerable and I was able to get reps in. Last set I went for nine but couldn’t get back up fully so I did reach failure that set. That is probably ok but I’ve been trying to stop when I get to the point where I do a bad rep or I know the next rep will be bad so as not to ingrain the bad stuff. Hamstrings felt like they did work at least. Last item for the day was the yoke pushes. Same as it has been with another set added to the EMOM. This time, every set was under 15 seconds to complete. Didn’t feel like my ankles or calves were feeling off this week either. I couldn’t hear the timer go off on the second run so that time I didn’t get much rest for the following set. I moved the time to my shirt collar after that mishap so that I could hear it. Didn’t take much time to put stuff away and I stretched out before driving home to just relax the rest of the day.
Comments: Friday was a strange day. I think mostly due to everyone that I enjoy working with having taken off Friday so by myself really and my thoughts. Tried Thai food for dinner which might have been a mistake. It was delicious just that I probably shouldn’t eat something unfamiliar the day before I’m going to need to get up to train because who knows how my stomach will react to that. It was going to be light rain off and on all day so driving wasn’t the fastest. More so due to an accident before I could get to the highway highway (the one that goes through the rural parts and not through the city). With it being below 50 degrees and rain, the gym storm doors were shut so hopefully I wasn’t so late to arrive that I’d be locked out. I wasn’t. So not that the rain mattered that much to my plans, I did the sandbag toss setup inside (I’ll get to that later). Movement prep remains about the same. Same momentary discomforts that seem to abate as I go through it. That remains unchanged for now. George was there and haven’t seen him in a while. We talked about strongman stuff for a good bit. He mentioned I had Conan the Barbarian hair which I’ll take over the generic “Jesus hair” people been saying haha. Someone also brought their dog to the gym today and that was a nice distraction. So then on to sandbag tosses. But not really. I’m always looking to improve on things and sandbag toss is one that needs work and each weight and bag seems to be its own thing, similar to stones. The video tips from a Graeme Shepherdson (strongman and highlands games competitor based out of Canada) had been very helpful in me getting my sandbag tosses up from where they were in 2019. As luck would have it, he put up a new series of clips showing drills to work on tosses and I shared them with Drew so now plan is to work those in to get the sandbag toss more complete. I feel that if strongman would really put the effort in from using what can be used from other sports that specialize, that we could see some spectacular performances. So for my lacking area on sandbag tosses, I really have no triple extension. I do mostly what is deemed “alligator arms” with my tosses. So this drill was to work on that triple extension. Plan being to take 70% of the goal height (15’) and do an explosive clean pull to clear the height. No swinging, pretty much cheat style upright row and letting go. So I had no idea how this would go. Ideally, I wanted to be doing the 50lbs bag so that I got familiar with it. 70% of the goal height would be 10’6” but I got paranoid that I’d be going too low and it came out to 10’8”. So since this was a little bit different from how I do tosses, my warm-up was a little different. I did some explosive pulls with an 8kgs kettlebell to make sure the movement didn’t bother or irritate anything. Then I did about 70% power with the 30lbs sandbag to see how the trajectory would be. Then finally I went for the actual movement. 30lbs literally ricocheted off the ceiling and went over. Too light. 40lbs was also close to hitting the ceiling so I figured that the 50lbs would be perfect. I did a single to make sure that it would not rip my shoulders out and it didn’t so now it was time. Idea was to do 6 doubles. I wasn’t given a time frame or anything but I did what I did last week with doing quasi-EMOM with that 30 seconds to get 2 tosses in and then a minute between those. I didn’t carry the bag back to the front like I was last week since this was more a drill then the full event. But I wanted to keep some elements the same. I have power but my trajectory isn’t consistent with these and I’ll need to iron that out. I had each one getting plenty of height but some would go straight up and down and others would be perfect. 4th double the bag came down on the band caused the setup to fall apart. I rushed to get it back in place for the next one and that rush of urgency actually made that set my best I think. If I can get things to be more consistent, I feel that 55lbs and 60lbs would be no problem with this drill. I’m excited to see what will happen if I can get it all to come together. This was certainly easier to put away since shorter setup and I was already inside. Next was squats with the ssb. No pauses this time. I guess me mentioning that I haven’t done real squats with a bar on my back in over half a decade was cause to have them be present now. I think part of it before was controlling the angles and ROM for my lower back and maintaining that core tightness. I’m not against doing squats. They don’t pop up much in strongman at the current level I’m at. Local shows are starting to do them more now but really it is like WSM that has them. It’s not something that will be at Nationals. I’ve never seen a pro qualifier show in the US in my strongman career have a squat event other than the LA Fit Expo the year Martins Licis got his pro card and that was a front squat with an axle. The strength and ROM are there (I was always an ATG person haha) but they don’t feel super stable at the moment because there is about half of my movement that hasn’t been trained in a long time in this way. The unilateral work has definitely helped me reclaim this. So the plan here was 70% for 3x5. At this time, I’m using 485lbs as my assumed 1rm on these. Could be more, could be less. Not doing pauses is also tricky to get used to as well. I had a bit of an allergy episode getting warmed up for squats. I may need to get new nasal spray (and no, I don't think it was the dog as I was petting her before and after and it only happened during my squat warm-ups). These felt tough but the video says these were a joke. After that was again wide grip pendlay rows. Change from last time though was having me stand on a platform so that greater ROM and lower starting point. I was also told to try and minimize movement in the rest of the body. Higher reps to also hopefully keep the weight lighter. This appears to be designed to help with that pick and lap on stones so kind of an “ah ha” moment of clarify with the explicit intent stated. Platform was to be 1-3” so being the extra I am, I did 3”. I did 30lbs jumps for triples here and figured that 225lbs was where I’d be for the day. But it was too easy so I added 10lbs each set. 245lbs finally felt about where I needed to with the fatigue as my reps were slowing down by the end. So next up was sandbag carries. Four sets of 50’ with 250-300lbs sandbag. Seeing as how my last foray with the sandbag I felt like I was moving super slow and was going to drop it at any time I figured I’d go with in between since I did 250lbs on the keg pretty well two weeks ago. Plus the 300lbs sandbag here is actually 306lbs and is really dense because it has 25lbs of lead shot mixed in it. I tried to do a similar warm-up to what I did with the keg last time to get used to moving. My error came with the actual sandbag I was to use. I had decided after talking with George to set my grip rather than start like I had to be hands off the sandbag. I haven’t attempted the 275lbs here at the gym before for a carry and it is a dense, smaller packed bag. I didn’t respect the weight and it showed as I dropped it 15’ into the first run. Kind of embarrassed that I did that. This bag’s got hands. I got my act together for the remainder of the runs but this was a tough bag to grip. I could feel my grip wanting to slip on the last two runs. Had me thinking that maybe I’m past my prime, that is how bad this bag felt to run with. I had red marks on my arms from I’m guessing canvas burn. Like, I’ve had less stuff on my forearms from the stones the week before and some of my tape had ripped. I’m just going to have to remember that the 275lbs and 306lbs at the gym are going to be difficult sandbags for their weight. Glute ham raise raises again. These didn’t start out well. I’m still trying to figure out if these feel better on the even weeks or the odd weeks at this point. I’d think I’d be more worn out by duck walk and stones then rows and front carries but it seems like that isn’t the case. Plan here was again 3 sets of getting to near failure each time. Which is probably for the best with my newborn horse legs I got here. They need to work. Consistency here isn’t great week to week. I may have to differentiate between high pad and low pad position. I initially was high pad and had the footpad at 3.75 holes showing. I struggled to get four reps and had to think on what to do next. I then adjusted the footpad so it was at 4 holes showing and did two more reps before trying to get my knees lower. I’m not certain if this is the same position I had for last week but this at least made these tolerable and I was able to get reps in. Last set I went for nine but couldn’t get back up fully so I did reach failure that set. That is probably ok but I’ve been trying to stop when I get to the point where I do a bad rep or I know the next rep will be bad so as not to ingrain the bad stuff. Hamstrings felt like they did work at least. Last item for the day was the yoke pushes. Same as it has been with another set added to the EMOM. This time, every set was under 15 seconds to complete. Didn’t feel like my ankles or calves were feeling off this week either. I couldn’t hear the timer go off on the second run so that time I didn’t get much rest for the following set. I moved the time to my shirt collar after that mishap so that I could hear it. Didn’t take much time to put stuff away and I stretched out before driving home to just relax the rest of the day.
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