Mobility Prep
Inverse Leg Curls
+125(ast)x10
+125(ast)x10
Inverse Leg Curls
+125(ast)x10
+125(ast)x10
Safety Squat Bar Box Squats (20” box)
65x10
170x2
260x2
330x2
400x2
450x2
505x3
405x3
405x3
405x3
65x10
170x2
260x2
330x2
400x2
450x2
505x3
405x3
405x3
405x3
Lying Leg Curls
45x6
90x6
135x3
180x12
180x12
180x12
45x6
90x6
135x3
180x12
180x12
180x12
Reverse Band Hack Squats (5 second negatives, LB’s)
emptyx5
+90x5
+180x5
+270x12
+240x15
emptyx5
+90x5
+180x5
+270x12
+240x15
Sandbag Rows + Laps
150x2(5+1)
200x2(4+1)
275x2(4+1)
275x2(4+1)
150x2(5+1)
200x2(4+1)
275x2(4+1)
275x2(4+1)
Standing Arm-Over-Arm Pulls (Exer-Genie)
1x60’
3x60’
6x60’ in 18.68 seconds
8x60’ in 27.05 seconds
1x60’
3x60’
6x60’ in 18.68 seconds
8x60’ in 27.05 seconds
Copenhagen Lifts
bwx12/12
bwx12/12
bwx12/12
bwx12/12
Paused Front Foot Elevated Split Squats (3 second pauses)
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
Seated Calf Raises (0-3-0-3 tempo)/Band Tibialis Anterior Raises
70x10/(2)lb’sx15
60x12/(2)lb’sx15
50x15/(2)lb’sx15
70x10/(2)lb’sx15
60x12/(2)lb’sx15
50x15/(2)lb’sx15
Stretching
Comments: Another year older. I try to not really think about that. As I’ve gotten older, my birthday just doesn’t seem to mean much and I don’t see it as any different from any other day. Or I try to. I’m aware others will treat theirs differently or want to celebrate mine. My two coworkers that I consider friends visited me briefly and that was nice. But not interested in making it a regular thing haha. Getting older and I think that part of things makes it feel like I’m running out of time to do the things I want to accomplish in strongman. Like Pink Floyd said “and then one day you find ten years have got behind you”. I’m four years away from being in the master class. I won’t be where I want to be this year and I can only defer for so long. I ended up not being able to fall asleep until after 12:30AM (not fun when you’re brain decides to ask what happens when you die and that existential terror of nothingness paralyzes you in a cold sweat) so I slept through my alarm about 30 minutes. I wanted to give myself some chance with heavy squats planned for training. Not ideal to sleep in as I had some responsibility today. I was to bring in the stone of steel for the gym so some of the women prepping for a show in November could train for it. I didn’t do it last week since I was just cleared to use both arms. It was easy though. Also wanted to fix up some of the sandbags but only had parts of stuff (waiting on deliveries) to fix one so figured I’d wait until next weekend or when I would actually need to use them. Allergies were hitting me hard this morning but seemed to be ok other than feeling thirsty. Drive out was good. I was expecting some traffic with it being a holiday weekend. Made good time but three bad drivers on the road made things a little tense at times. Got to the gym and unloaded the stone of steel before getting ready to train. Got set for warm-ups. I was keeping an eye on the knees. Inverse curls to start things off. Same amount of assistance as last week but 2x10 instead of 3x8. These do seem to help with getting hamstrings awake and my knees seem less fussy on squats. First set my knees were achy with how they were pressing into the padding. Second set felt much better. Getting better with using a fuller ROM on these. The extra two reps per set were noticed. High box squats with ssb again. Wishful thinking these would get a break. Keep riding this train I guess. Plan was a triple with 1RIR and then do 3x3 with 20% less. After last week, I knew I could rep 500lbs on these if I was feeling good. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling good. Not so much a posterior chain thing, more would my knees be ok (specifically my right one). Planned the jumps and just reminded myself that three weeks prior my right knee was acting up and felt better in a week. I wasn’t so concerned with the first few jumps, it would be doing 400lbs or more. When 400lbs felt like nothing, I knew I was good. Or so I thought. I think I took too much time to cool off and 450lbs felt a bit tough but not enough to dissuade me from going for 505lbs on that top triple. I wanted to do +500lbs for reps and I felt I had that. My allergies were acting up big time. Asked for side spots on this. I knew I had this after the first rep. Third rep was a little tougher but I could tell I had another there. So success there. I was expecting the down sets to feel easier with 100lbs taken off but I think I calmed down a good bit so that first one felt heavy and both knees decided to say something. Video says all the sets looked about the same but last one felt like how I expected it to feel. Allergies were making me thirsty so I had to break out my 3l of water early to supplement with my 3l of bcaas so that I could stomach more fluids. Then it was time for machines. For a little bit at least. Lying leg curls. Regular style, 3x12 with 1-2RIR. I wanted to try for 4 plates added to the machine. Might be an ask as 160lbs had felt challenging two weeks ago and I was struggling a bit more than I’d have liked on the 2 up, 1 down with negatives. But I wanted to try it. 180lbs ended up being a success. Pleased with continued improvements in my hamstrings. They have been improving for some time but the results this particular training cycle for this show have been very pronounced. After this was hack squats with band assistance. I was really not sure how these would go with the ROM and knees as these can be very tough on them. Plan was still 3-5 second eccentrics and work up in 5’s to a top set of 8-12 (1-2RIR) and then a set of 12-15 with 10-15% off of that. Had to see how these felt. Going for the longer negatives. Right knee was the one I was watching. I was conflicted with how to proceed on these as maybe more sets working up would get me feeling warmer but maybe big jumps would let me save energy for more weight working set. Also wasn’t sure if the pads for the shoulders were a problem after last week or not and wasn’t sure if issue would be more time under tension with them. It took a bit to feel comfortable and I did end up doing the 90lbs jumps. I figured I’d see how things went with 270lbs added and if 5 reps felt too easy, I’d go up some more. It didn’t and I did somehow manage to get 12 reps though. Eventually my knee stopped feeling like it was going to grind and the tear drop part of the quad started to feel like it was working. My quads were feeling wrecked and I was breathing a bit hard. Not quite the kind of wobbling I’d get doing 40 reps on leg press but getting into that range. That 15 rep set was torture. I was feeling gassed at 10 reps. Then around that point, my left side of my neck and near the base of the skull on that side started to tense up. Not sure what happened. Again, I don’t know if it is the pads or what. This was the only set it did that and I don’t have this issue with the safety squat bar. It took a bit for it to calm down so I could continue with the workout. This next section was indicated as “rowing” and it was to be testing for me. I tend to like structure. This was more open. Test things out with my arms. 4 working sets of some kind of event based rowing between sandbags and arm-over-arm. Do all in one if one was bothering me. Lot of possibilities. I figured I should be good since I was able to do 180lbs on dumbbell rows without straps and discomfort and being able to load and unload the stone of steel into the truck of my car. That isn’t to say that my left arm wasn’t sore. Scar tissue is present and the band hammer curls definitely still making my brachialis sore haha. But I wanted to do both sandbags and arm-over-arm. See where I am with essentially a month out from contest. Start with sandbag stuff. So what I was thinking was that contest has two sandbags for short distance. Depending on class, either 200lbs or 250lbs. Effort range on these was to be RPE 6-8 so I had room to work here and see how I felt. I wanted to work rows but also a little bit of actually picking up and standing without taxing too much for possible stuff this coming week. So I decided to do a few rows and then go into a pick and lap with stand up (low on body) and then drop and repeat to simulate doing two sandbags and fatigue from one to the other. Felt easy on the lighter bags. I took a jump on the last warm up to work set. Rather do 250lbs, I went with 275lbs, despite being 25lbs over contest for the heaviest sandbag. Reasoning for this was that I could tell 200lbs wouldn’t be a problem for contest and 250lbs that sandbag is long and packed tight. If I end up doing the pro class, that will be that weight but it will be the Cerberus sandbags and the 275lbs sandbag is that brand. It feels different and I had some redemption to do on this bag. So that was why. Did exactly what I wanted as the fatigue going into that second lap and lift was exactly as taxing as I wanted it to be. Second set I feel I did better. Definitely something that needs work. Then on to arm-over-arm. Purpose for working these portion of the boat/truck pull. Exer-genie was going to be easier to setup, reset and tear down. I’ve done standing with bent over style before in prep for the Arnold in 2019. I only did the Exer-genie for I think one or two workouts before switching to a sled with the inconsistency and needing a good bit of weight to anchor things down where I was training. I just remember I did “5lbs” on it. I figured I had a better understanding of how to get this fickle thing to work. Less issues with having to anchor myself for this like a seated one or dealing with the rope getting in the way. Like the sandbag, I did two warm-up sets. To get ready and to get the kinks out of the setup. “6lbs” was really easy so I decided to go up. I wasn’t going to do an extra set though as I felt this was within the lower range. “8lbs” was noticeably tougher and felt like appropriate resistance for a truck pull. Almost 9 seconds slower. Felt good and motion seemed good. So then on to the corrective exercises. The smaller muscles. Inner thigh work again. No machine for these so I was told to do Copenhagen planks and go to near failure. After realizing these were inner thigh, I had researched them a bit more. I decided to try doing movement within the plank. Not just “cycling” the lower leg like the one progression had but going up and down. These were challenging. Definitely a big contrast in sides as right side was lagging behind the left side. A somewhat new exercise after this. Front foot elevated split squats with pauses. Corrective exercise for the knees and to see discrepancies between sides. The normal platform that I’ve used for things like stepdowns in warm-up appear to be gone so I used a 100lbs plate. I wanted to make sure I got front and side angle videos of these. I was anxious with my knees and had to get over that. I’ve done these with no elevator or pauses as warm-ups in the past and was always commenting about how my knees ached on the stretched out leg. I don’t think I ever videoed these. But definitely see that my right leg has an inflexibility in the calf as I can’t seem to get my knee over my toes nearly as much as I can on my left leg. Left lower leg appears to be more flexible and I’m not sure if that is due to the nerve damage sustained from my disc bulge in 2016 or if this just something else. I’ve tried working this on the right side in the past but seemed to overdo it and stressed the tendons/ligaments out. Could also be part of the knee pain in that leg. Last bit of the session was super set of calves and ant tib. Change was for the seated calf raises as I was to do the holds at lockout and in the stretch. So inverted tempo like I’d been doing before for most of the calf work. Advised to drop weight each set to keep within a certain rep range. Used bands for the anterior tib stuff again. I like how they feel and I get a little bit of a traction in my ankles, knees, hip and back. Feel the muscles working too. Calves was a learning experience. 70lbs had me get just 10 reps and then I did 10lbs drops after that. Resulting in 12 and then 15 reps. Last set, the weight drop might have been too much as I felt I could do more reps. I was really trying to help the stretch bearing down on my knees with my bodyweight. First drop was good though. So if doing these again like this, maybe 10lbs first drop and 5lbs second drop. Stretched out before driving home to clean up and make dinner.
Comments: Another year older. I try to not really think about that. As I’ve gotten older, my birthday just doesn’t seem to mean much and I don’t see it as any different from any other day. Or I try to. I’m aware others will treat theirs differently or want to celebrate mine. My two coworkers that I consider friends visited me briefly and that was nice. But not interested in making it a regular thing haha. Getting older and I think that part of things makes it feel like I’m running out of time to do the things I want to accomplish in strongman. Like Pink Floyd said “and then one day you find ten years have got behind you”. I’m four years away from being in the master class. I won’t be where I want to be this year and I can only defer for so long. I ended up not being able to fall asleep until after 12:30AM (not fun when you’re brain decides to ask what happens when you die and that existential terror of nothingness paralyzes you in a cold sweat) so I slept through my alarm about 30 minutes. I wanted to give myself some chance with heavy squats planned for training. Not ideal to sleep in as I had some responsibility today. I was to bring in the stone of steel for the gym so some of the women prepping for a show in November could train for it. I didn’t do it last week since I was just cleared to use both arms. It was easy though. Also wanted to fix up some of the sandbags but only had parts of stuff (waiting on deliveries) to fix one so figured I’d wait until next weekend or when I would actually need to use them. Allergies were hitting me hard this morning but seemed to be ok other than feeling thirsty. Drive out was good. I was expecting some traffic with it being a holiday weekend. Made good time but three bad drivers on the road made things a little tense at times. Got to the gym and unloaded the stone of steel before getting ready to train. Got set for warm-ups. I was keeping an eye on the knees. Inverse curls to start things off. Same amount of assistance as last week but 2x10 instead of 3x8. These do seem to help with getting hamstrings awake and my knees seem less fussy on squats. First set my knees were achy with how they were pressing into the padding. Second set felt much better. Getting better with using a fuller ROM on these. The extra two reps per set were noticed. High box squats with ssb again. Wishful thinking these would get a break. Keep riding this train I guess. Plan was a triple with 1RIR and then do 3x3 with 20% less. After last week, I knew I could rep 500lbs on these if I was feeling good. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling good. Not so much a posterior chain thing, more would my knees be ok (specifically my right one). Planned the jumps and just reminded myself that three weeks prior my right knee was acting up and felt better in a week. I wasn’t so concerned with the first few jumps, it would be doing 400lbs or more. When 400lbs felt like nothing, I knew I was good. Or so I thought. I think I took too much time to cool off and 450lbs felt a bit tough but not enough to dissuade me from going for 505lbs on that top triple. I wanted to do +500lbs for reps and I felt I had that. My allergies were acting up big time. Asked for side spots on this. I knew I had this after the first rep. Third rep was a little tougher but I could tell I had another there. So success there. I was expecting the down sets to feel easier with 100lbs taken off but I think I calmed down a good bit so that first one felt heavy and both knees decided to say something. Video says all the sets looked about the same but last one felt like how I expected it to feel. Allergies were making me thirsty so I had to break out my 3l of water early to supplement with my 3l of bcaas so that I could stomach more fluids. Then it was time for machines. For a little bit at least. Lying leg curls. Regular style, 3x12 with 1-2RIR. I wanted to try for 4 plates added to the machine. Might be an ask as 160lbs had felt challenging two weeks ago and I was struggling a bit more than I’d have liked on the 2 up, 1 down with negatives. But I wanted to try it. 180lbs ended up being a success. Pleased with continued improvements in my hamstrings. They have been improving for some time but the results this particular training cycle for this show have been very pronounced. After this was hack squats with band assistance. I was really not sure how these would go with the ROM and knees as these can be very tough on them. Plan was still 3-5 second eccentrics and work up in 5’s to a top set of 8-12 (1-2RIR) and then a set of 12-15 with 10-15% off of that. Had to see how these felt. Going for the longer negatives. Right knee was the one I was watching. I was conflicted with how to proceed on these as maybe more sets working up would get me feeling warmer but maybe big jumps would let me save energy for more weight working set. Also wasn’t sure if the pads for the shoulders were a problem after last week or not and wasn’t sure if issue would be more time under tension with them. It took a bit to feel comfortable and I did end up doing the 90lbs jumps. I figured I’d see how things went with 270lbs added and if 5 reps felt too easy, I’d go up some more. It didn’t and I did somehow manage to get 12 reps though. Eventually my knee stopped feeling like it was going to grind and the tear drop part of the quad started to feel like it was working. My quads were feeling wrecked and I was breathing a bit hard. Not quite the kind of wobbling I’d get doing 40 reps on leg press but getting into that range. That 15 rep set was torture. I was feeling gassed at 10 reps. Then around that point, my left side of my neck and near the base of the skull on that side started to tense up. Not sure what happened. Again, I don’t know if it is the pads or what. This was the only set it did that and I don’t have this issue with the safety squat bar. It took a bit for it to calm down so I could continue with the workout. This next section was indicated as “rowing” and it was to be testing for me. I tend to like structure. This was more open. Test things out with my arms. 4 working sets of some kind of event based rowing between sandbags and arm-over-arm. Do all in one if one was bothering me. Lot of possibilities. I figured I should be good since I was able to do 180lbs on dumbbell rows without straps and discomfort and being able to load and unload the stone of steel into the truck of my car. That isn’t to say that my left arm wasn’t sore. Scar tissue is present and the band hammer curls definitely still making my brachialis sore haha. But I wanted to do both sandbags and arm-over-arm. See where I am with essentially a month out from contest. Start with sandbag stuff. So what I was thinking was that contest has two sandbags for short distance. Depending on class, either 200lbs or 250lbs. Effort range on these was to be RPE 6-8 so I had room to work here and see how I felt. I wanted to work rows but also a little bit of actually picking up and standing without taxing too much for possible stuff this coming week. So I decided to do a few rows and then go into a pick and lap with stand up (low on body) and then drop and repeat to simulate doing two sandbags and fatigue from one to the other. Felt easy on the lighter bags. I took a jump on the last warm up to work set. Rather do 250lbs, I went with 275lbs, despite being 25lbs over contest for the heaviest sandbag. Reasoning for this was that I could tell 200lbs wouldn’t be a problem for contest and 250lbs that sandbag is long and packed tight. If I end up doing the pro class, that will be that weight but it will be the Cerberus sandbags and the 275lbs sandbag is that brand. It feels different and I had some redemption to do on this bag. So that was why. Did exactly what I wanted as the fatigue going into that second lap and lift was exactly as taxing as I wanted it to be. Second set I feel I did better. Definitely something that needs work. Then on to arm-over-arm. Purpose for working these portion of the boat/truck pull. Exer-genie was going to be easier to setup, reset and tear down. I’ve done standing with bent over style before in prep for the Arnold in 2019. I only did the Exer-genie for I think one or two workouts before switching to a sled with the inconsistency and needing a good bit of weight to anchor things down where I was training. I just remember I did “5lbs” on it. I figured I had a better understanding of how to get this fickle thing to work. Less issues with having to anchor myself for this like a seated one or dealing with the rope getting in the way. Like the sandbag, I did two warm-up sets. To get ready and to get the kinks out of the setup. “6lbs” was really easy so I decided to go up. I wasn’t going to do an extra set though as I felt this was within the lower range. “8lbs” was noticeably tougher and felt like appropriate resistance for a truck pull. Almost 9 seconds slower. Felt good and motion seemed good. So then on to the corrective exercises. The smaller muscles. Inner thigh work again. No machine for these so I was told to do Copenhagen planks and go to near failure. After realizing these were inner thigh, I had researched them a bit more. I decided to try doing movement within the plank. Not just “cycling” the lower leg like the one progression had but going up and down. These were challenging. Definitely a big contrast in sides as right side was lagging behind the left side. A somewhat new exercise after this. Front foot elevated split squats with pauses. Corrective exercise for the knees and to see discrepancies between sides. The normal platform that I’ve used for things like stepdowns in warm-up appear to be gone so I used a 100lbs plate. I wanted to make sure I got front and side angle videos of these. I was anxious with my knees and had to get over that. I’ve done these with no elevator or pauses as warm-ups in the past and was always commenting about how my knees ached on the stretched out leg. I don’t think I ever videoed these. But definitely see that my right leg has an inflexibility in the calf as I can’t seem to get my knee over my toes nearly as much as I can on my left leg. Left lower leg appears to be more flexible and I’m not sure if that is due to the nerve damage sustained from my disc bulge in 2016 or if this just something else. I’ve tried working this on the right side in the past but seemed to overdo it and stressed the tendons/ligaments out. Could also be part of the knee pain in that leg. Last bit of the session was super set of calves and ant tib. Change was for the seated calf raises as I was to do the holds at lockout and in the stretch. So inverted tempo like I’d been doing before for most of the calf work. Advised to drop weight each set to keep within a certain rep range. Used bands for the anterior tib stuff again. I like how they feel and I get a little bit of a traction in my ankles, knees, hip and back. Feel the muscles working too. Calves was a learning experience. 70lbs had me get just 10 reps and then I did 10lbs drops after that. Resulting in 12 and then 15 reps. Last set, the weight drop might have been too much as I felt I could do more reps. I was really trying to help the stretch bearing down on my knees with my bodyweight. First drop was good though. So if doing these again like this, maybe 10lbs first drop and 5lbs second drop. Stretched out before driving home to clean up and make dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment