Mobility Prep
Seated Leg Curls
20x10
40x10
60x10
100x5
140x15
150x15
160x15
Seated Leg Curls
20x10
40x10
60x10
100x5
140x15
150x15
160x15
Paused Band TKEs (1 second)
sbx15/15
sbx15/15
sbx15/15
sbx15/15
Lateral Step Downs
bwx5/5 (12”)
bwx5/5 (16”)
bwx5/5(20”)
bwx10/10(24”)
bwx10/10 (24”)
bwx5/5 (12”)
bwx5/5 (16”)
bwx5/5(20”)
bwx10/10(24”)
bwx10/10 (24”)
Paused Safety Squat Bar Squats (3 seconds)
65x3
115x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
275x5
275x5
275x5
275x5
65x3
115x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
275x5
275x5
275x5
275x5
Reverse Band Hack Squats (LB’s)
emptyx5
+50x5
+90x5
+140x5
+180x5
+230x5
+270x5
+320x12
+270x12
+270x12
emptyx5
+50x5
+90x5
+140x5
+180x5
+230x5
+270x5
+320x12
+270x12
+270x12
Sandbag Roll-ups
150x3
170x3
200x3
225x3
250x3
275x8
275x8
275x8
150x3
170x3
200x3
225x3
250x3
275x8
275x8
275x8
Backwards Hip Belt Sled Drags
335x100’
435x100’
535x100’
335x100’
435x100’
535x100’
Quad Fallbacks
bwx12
bwx12
bwx12
bwx12
Stretching
Comments: Stress at work and just general bs in the amateur side of the sport made for an interesting week. Just a lot of uncertainty. Work stuff not nearly as bad as last week. The extra wrinkle of frustration was that my video editing stuff is giving me a ton of problems as of late and after trying for almost three days to get Thursday’s session processed, I just gave up on it. Computer is on its last legs as it had been lucky this one even worked after my other one (equally as old) had up and died. So hopefully the new computer arrives soon and I can get back to normally schedule programming. I’ll go back and try and upload for the sessions that end up getting missed. Still going to try to edit stuff in the meantime. I didn’t sleep in nearly as late today. I wanted to give the video editing thing another shot before I went. No go. I hadn’t done anything the day before as it was raining off and on pretty hard so no walking and I didn’t really have focus to do soft tissue work. So showing up at the gym at a somewhat reasonable hour meant I got to see a lot of my friends that train there. Balance still needs work. Workout altered a bit to try and let the leg thing heal. So rather than inverse curls, it was seated curls. Plan being to do 3x15 with increasing weight. Trying to be controlled so as not to aggravate things. Been a while since I’ve done seated leg curls (years) and I’ve never used the one at the gym before so I had to do a bit of testing. Which meant low weight and high reps to see how the movement felt. I started too light with the high reps I feel and was making small jumps at the start with it. I didn’t want to do a million reps to get ready so I took a bigger jump to see what I thought I’d be good with. I thought at first that I had picked too heavy a starting weight but by the end of it, I felt I was too light but that is ok with the irritation and being a new exercise. What I found that seemed to feel better with these (speed of movement didn’t seem to change how things felt, more weight related) was leaning forward on the contraction and back on the eccentric. Made it rhythmic for me. Next was TKE’s. Since not the step up version, I could do these with the strong band. 2x15 each side and I figured I’d do them back to back. Hold time not specified so I just did 1 second (I’ve done 3 seconds in the past) as it said to focus on a hard contraction. One of the things I had thought about with that regard was lifting my toes up so that my heel is the point of contact to increase the contraction. That seemed to do well. Though it wasn’t without issues haha. There were two little girls playing nearby in the crash pads and had made a bit tower out of them. One them then said “help me, I’m trapped” or something and I looked over out of concern and almost lost balance. Kids and their games. Easy fix is just do these at another spot with turf so that I have better traction (this was the rubber matting). Next was the return of a unilateral exercise from PA’s Strongest prep; lateral stepdowns. Only guidelines for this was to make them challenging enough that I felt my hips and ankles working to stabilize. 2x10 with bodyweight. I wasn’t expecting to do as well as I did on these. Maybe the knee sleeves help get that feeling of the knees being crap or giving leave my head. I started low height and did more reps than I usually would to warm-up. Knees were creaky on the lower heights at first. I figured 20” was going to be my limits really after not doing them for a while and with how the knees have been temperamental since last cycle but I felt a good rhythm. Usually I’d do a single for the working height as that seemed to get the jitters out but I felt like it would be wasted energy and I was ready so I went for it with my PR height and did it quite easily. Then it was ssb squats. I had been advised here that plan is trying to alternate which of the two squats (ssb and hack) are to be pushed each week right now and hacks were the ones to be pushed this time. Not to say not making ssb stuff challenging. No tempo but still pauses. 2-3 for 4x5. I went with 3 seconds. Not sure if the addition of the stepdowns made a difference but I felt like my hips made deeper squats more comfortable. I had noticed that depth on pauses last week seemed to be higher than I thought they were. I have the mobility but my worry is that I’ll go down too far where I’m not keeping tension and relaxing on my calves. But squats are a training exercise for strongman in most cases and I’m getting all the points covered in one way or the other. Obviously if an event requires a squat, that will be to perfection. Next up was hack squats. This week same setup and work up in 5’s to a top set of 10-12 with the even tempo I’ve been doing. Then drop the weight down 15-20% for 2 sets, matching the reps of the top set. I took quarter-plate jumps as my plan was to do 320lbs added to the machine and this would hopefully give me an idea of how things were going. I feel that I probably had more in me for today. Probably not another 40lbs jump to stick to the parameters (maybe the lower rep end but cutting it close). It is good to see this progressing. Down sets were pretty easy, mostly just waiting until I had my lungs back. I’ll admit that some rest breaks went quite a bit longer than others today as I’d end up chatting with friends about stuff (strongman drama and technique help). I’ve apparently been good as I got to do some event specificity after that. Roll-ups for 3x8 with warming up how I felt I needed in triples. It said sandbag but indicated I could use a keg as well. With my planned contest being sandbag to shoulder medley, I elected to do the sandbag. Also less likely to get bruising on my arms compared to picking and lapping a keg. I wasn’t too sure how these would go. Left leg gets tight and picking up a sandbag is a lot of hamstring. I also wasn’t too sure how things would feel with the extensions. I was to control them back to the lap and explode up, leaving 3RIR. The picks being the tough part. Balance is a little tricky to keep this as a constant movement. But the rolling up was pretty easy. I had thought 250lbs would be where I was but it was way too light once I did my first extension with it (it’s a nice grippy and packed bag) so I went up to the tougher 275lbs bag. I was tempted to go up to the 306lbs bag (imagine the confidence of doing multiple sets with the heaviest bag in the series) but thought better of it as I needed to leave reps in the tank, this was the first time doing this exercise, and I know both the 275lbs and 306lbs bag are deceptively tough. I feel like the first and last set were the best of the sets. Maybe the last set getting the edge. Second set not as good. Up next was sled work. Departure from the 5 minutes stuff and back to heavy for a short distance. 3x100’ with increasing weight each set. Outside to get enough distance (plus the slight uphill/downhill on turf would make things tough). This was also not the competition style with hold it in the hands. Advised to make this lower body and use a belt squat belt harness. The patch of concrete is uneven so it is tricky to gauge stuff but I figured I could get it to work. So started with what I figured would be nice weight. Unlike when I have my hands, the start isn’t as smooth as far as using a chain through the body to break the inertia. I think I forget that sometimes as the weight isn’t that heavy to be able to do it for 5 minute straight like I’ve been doing. So I initially thought I overestimated what I could do but once I figured out it wasn’t a fast start, it felt like I went too light. So I went up 100lbs for the next set. Felt decent, some spots where I slowed down with the uneven pavement. I felt I could do it with another 100lbs. No more room for plates so I put a 100lbs keg on top of the sled. Fit right in the rim of the 100lbs plate at the top so it was secure. This was tougher than I expected. Just hitting those rough patches would bring me to a halt but not like enough of one that I had restart or stop from exhaustion. Just made it a tough set. But I got it done. Last item for the workout was the quad fallbacks. 2 sets of 6-12 leaving reps in the tank. Now that I’ve got these figured out finally, I felt that the top range wasn’t a problem. The left leg doesn’t care to be in the position to start initially so I did a practice rep (partial) before I really committed to it. Stretch felt good. No knee pain on these. Second set Teegan the dog came up beside me so I of course I gave her pets while I was doing the set. I can multitask. After putting everything away, I decided I should drive home and stretch there so that I could be home and not have to worry about traffic delaying me. Stretched out and cleaned up before having dinner with my parents. Got soft tissue work done and iced my knees before bed.
Comments: Stress at work and just general bs in the amateur side of the sport made for an interesting week. Just a lot of uncertainty. Work stuff not nearly as bad as last week. The extra wrinkle of frustration was that my video editing stuff is giving me a ton of problems as of late and after trying for almost three days to get Thursday’s session processed, I just gave up on it. Computer is on its last legs as it had been lucky this one even worked after my other one (equally as old) had up and died. So hopefully the new computer arrives soon and I can get back to normally schedule programming. I’ll go back and try and upload for the sessions that end up getting missed. Still going to try to edit stuff in the meantime. I didn’t sleep in nearly as late today. I wanted to give the video editing thing another shot before I went. No go. I hadn’t done anything the day before as it was raining off and on pretty hard so no walking and I didn’t really have focus to do soft tissue work. So showing up at the gym at a somewhat reasonable hour meant I got to see a lot of my friends that train there. Balance still needs work. Workout altered a bit to try and let the leg thing heal. So rather than inverse curls, it was seated curls. Plan being to do 3x15 with increasing weight. Trying to be controlled so as not to aggravate things. Been a while since I’ve done seated leg curls (years) and I’ve never used the one at the gym before so I had to do a bit of testing. Which meant low weight and high reps to see how the movement felt. I started too light with the high reps I feel and was making small jumps at the start with it. I didn’t want to do a million reps to get ready so I took a bigger jump to see what I thought I’d be good with. I thought at first that I had picked too heavy a starting weight but by the end of it, I felt I was too light but that is ok with the irritation and being a new exercise. What I found that seemed to feel better with these (speed of movement didn’t seem to change how things felt, more weight related) was leaning forward on the contraction and back on the eccentric. Made it rhythmic for me. Next was TKE’s. Since not the step up version, I could do these with the strong band. 2x15 each side and I figured I’d do them back to back. Hold time not specified so I just did 1 second (I’ve done 3 seconds in the past) as it said to focus on a hard contraction. One of the things I had thought about with that regard was lifting my toes up so that my heel is the point of contact to increase the contraction. That seemed to do well. Though it wasn’t without issues haha. There were two little girls playing nearby in the crash pads and had made a bit tower out of them. One them then said “help me, I’m trapped” or something and I looked over out of concern and almost lost balance. Kids and their games. Easy fix is just do these at another spot with turf so that I have better traction (this was the rubber matting). Next was the return of a unilateral exercise from PA’s Strongest prep; lateral stepdowns. Only guidelines for this was to make them challenging enough that I felt my hips and ankles working to stabilize. 2x10 with bodyweight. I wasn’t expecting to do as well as I did on these. Maybe the knee sleeves help get that feeling of the knees being crap or giving leave my head. I started low height and did more reps than I usually would to warm-up. Knees were creaky on the lower heights at first. I figured 20” was going to be my limits really after not doing them for a while and with how the knees have been temperamental since last cycle but I felt a good rhythm. Usually I’d do a single for the working height as that seemed to get the jitters out but I felt like it would be wasted energy and I was ready so I went for it with my PR height and did it quite easily. Then it was ssb squats. I had been advised here that plan is trying to alternate which of the two squats (ssb and hack) are to be pushed each week right now and hacks were the ones to be pushed this time. Not to say not making ssb stuff challenging. No tempo but still pauses. 2-3 for 4x5. I went with 3 seconds. Not sure if the addition of the stepdowns made a difference but I felt like my hips made deeper squats more comfortable. I had noticed that depth on pauses last week seemed to be higher than I thought they were. I have the mobility but my worry is that I’ll go down too far where I’m not keeping tension and relaxing on my calves. But squats are a training exercise for strongman in most cases and I’m getting all the points covered in one way or the other. Obviously if an event requires a squat, that will be to perfection. Next up was hack squats. This week same setup and work up in 5’s to a top set of 10-12 with the even tempo I’ve been doing. Then drop the weight down 15-20% for 2 sets, matching the reps of the top set. I took quarter-plate jumps as my plan was to do 320lbs added to the machine and this would hopefully give me an idea of how things were going. I feel that I probably had more in me for today. Probably not another 40lbs jump to stick to the parameters (maybe the lower rep end but cutting it close). It is good to see this progressing. Down sets were pretty easy, mostly just waiting until I had my lungs back. I’ll admit that some rest breaks went quite a bit longer than others today as I’d end up chatting with friends about stuff (strongman drama and technique help). I’ve apparently been good as I got to do some event specificity after that. Roll-ups for 3x8 with warming up how I felt I needed in triples. It said sandbag but indicated I could use a keg as well. With my planned contest being sandbag to shoulder medley, I elected to do the sandbag. Also less likely to get bruising on my arms compared to picking and lapping a keg. I wasn’t too sure how these would go. Left leg gets tight and picking up a sandbag is a lot of hamstring. I also wasn’t too sure how things would feel with the extensions. I was to control them back to the lap and explode up, leaving 3RIR. The picks being the tough part. Balance is a little tricky to keep this as a constant movement. But the rolling up was pretty easy. I had thought 250lbs would be where I was but it was way too light once I did my first extension with it (it’s a nice grippy and packed bag) so I went up to the tougher 275lbs bag. I was tempted to go up to the 306lbs bag (imagine the confidence of doing multiple sets with the heaviest bag in the series) but thought better of it as I needed to leave reps in the tank, this was the first time doing this exercise, and I know both the 275lbs and 306lbs bag are deceptively tough. I feel like the first and last set were the best of the sets. Maybe the last set getting the edge. Second set not as good. Up next was sled work. Departure from the 5 minutes stuff and back to heavy for a short distance. 3x100’ with increasing weight each set. Outside to get enough distance (plus the slight uphill/downhill on turf would make things tough). This was also not the competition style with hold it in the hands. Advised to make this lower body and use a belt squat belt harness. The patch of concrete is uneven so it is tricky to gauge stuff but I figured I could get it to work. So started with what I figured would be nice weight. Unlike when I have my hands, the start isn’t as smooth as far as using a chain through the body to break the inertia. I think I forget that sometimes as the weight isn’t that heavy to be able to do it for 5 minute straight like I’ve been doing. So I initially thought I overestimated what I could do but once I figured out it wasn’t a fast start, it felt like I went too light. So I went up 100lbs for the next set. Felt decent, some spots where I slowed down with the uneven pavement. I felt I could do it with another 100lbs. No more room for plates so I put a 100lbs keg on top of the sled. Fit right in the rim of the 100lbs plate at the top so it was secure. This was tougher than I expected. Just hitting those rough patches would bring me to a halt but not like enough of one that I had restart or stop from exhaustion. Just made it a tough set. But I got it done. Last item for the workout was the quad fallbacks. 2 sets of 6-12 leaving reps in the tank. Now that I’ve got these figured out finally, I felt that the top range wasn’t a problem. The left leg doesn’t care to be in the position to start initially so I did a practice rep (partial) before I really committed to it. Stretch felt good. No knee pain on these. Second set Teegan the dog came up beside me so I of course I gave her pets while I was doing the set. I can multitask. After putting everything away, I decided I should drive home and stretch there so that I could be home and not have to worry about traffic delaying me. Stretched out and cleaned up before having dinner with my parents. Got soft tissue work done and iced my knees before bed.
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