Sunday, November 14, 2021

November 13, 2021 – Week 5, Day 4

Mobility Prep
 
Seated Leg Curls (2-0-2-0 tempo)
50x10
100x10
150x15
150x15
150x15

Paused Band TKEs (2 seconds)
sbx25/25

Lateral Step Downs 
bwx5/5 (14”)
bwx5/5 (14”)
bwx5/5 (20”)
bwx5/5 (20”)
bwx10/10 (26”)
bwx10/10 (28”) PR+2"

Safety Squat Bar Squats (beltless)
65x3
115x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
275x8
300x8
325x8

Yoke (beltless)
Casual Pace
200x50’
200x50’
Normal
300x25’
300x25’
400x50’
450x50’
450x50’
450x50’
450x50’
450x50’

Reverse Band Hack Squats (LB’s)
emptyx5
+50x5
+100x5
+150x5
+200x5
+240x5
+280x15
+280x15

Lying Leg Curls
45x10
90x6
125x3
140x15
140x15

Quad Fallbacks
bwx12
bwx12

Stretching
  
Comments: I essentially got up about when I would normally for work today. I felt rested enough after having a day off for the holiday. I also went to bed at a reasonable hour the night before as I was exhausted from working my ass off all day to make up for having one less day in the week for work. Got most but not everything I needed to get done. But it will be there on Monday and I’m the best damn worker there. Funny I have confidence in that having worked there since 2012 but I don’t for the sport I’ve been doing since 2008. Oh well. With this offseason stuff, I’m thinking that I need to make this a more regular thing for myself after competitions. It can take a bit of time for me to recover it seems and this break does seem to help. Just like when I first came back to training at the beginning of this year, It was around the 5 week period I felt I could compete at a decent level again and it is about that time. However, I think it will depend on the season and how abrupt the turn arounds end up being for things. Which is why it will be nice when USS and SC figure out what it is that they are doing for 2022 and beyond with the changes (that may or may not happen). Depending on things with the time allows, I think a 4-5 week stint after a show for this kind of work is good before going into a contest prep but that isn’t always an option depending on the period of time between the shows I want/need to do. I wasn’t expecting many people today even though going early as three people were competing at OSG in Florida and I knew another was going to watch. There were some people but not a lot. I had made sure I did some soft tissue work the day before. I wore compression cuff on my right arm as that has still been tense this week. Balance was the best it has ever been for the mobility stuff. Leg curls to start things off. I believe since I was getting close to the full stack for easy reps, tempo was added. I was kind of surprised it only knocked me down like 30lbs from the top set last week. Much like the band leg curls I’ve done with tempo, these get fatiguing pretty quick over the sets but still have the power. I know how important the hamstrings being ready and warm helps with knee stuff. Next thing being the TKEs. Same as last week but I keep adding to the pauses on them as this is the heaviest band tension I have for them and it just wasn’t enough to really warm up the knees/quads last week. 2 seconds did a better job. 3 seconds may be the ticket to really wake them up if programmed again. I however forgot to film these but not a big deal. Next thing being the lateral step downs. I know these are more a thing to get my hips and such warmed up and active for the other stuff but I’m enjoying the challenge of pushing things here. It is funny to me thinking that I started with 12” at the very beginning on these and now going over twice that height. Now as I get higher, the platform increments aren’t as neat as I had been able to do. So it was a little challenging to get things good as I wanted. My knees were a little achy and that could be from not doing icing after intense lower body sessions this week. Could be the weather and it could just be cumulative stuff from doing more and more each week as they have been feeling better (like moving events again). So initially I was going to only aim to do 26” for both sets but I felt compelled to try 28” on the second set for another 2” PR. I’ve noticed this last week and I think it is when I get to that point that I’m refreshed and ready to start going for competition as I’m starting to have trouble restraining myself because I’m having fun. This set I think felt better than the first. Next jump though is 32” so I may need to stick to here for a bit if required. From there it was on to ssb squats. No pauses, no tempo. But also no belt. Advised to warm-up in triples and then do 3x8 working up to 2-3RIR on the last set. A little tricky to gauge as most of my higher rep squatting hasn’t been actual back squats as of late. Been hack squats and zerchers. No belt also reminds me of how hard 340ish was for 3x5 with pauses and no belt months ago. So I figured I’d see how I was feeling. I felt that 335lbs was the max to test and 295lbs the low end. The squat rack I prefer (has even floor) was in use so I was using the less than ideal one. I mean, it is even if you use a really narrow stance. It’s not a lot but it does slightly concern me since this was the rack where I was squatting and my left knee started to give all those months ago. Not that that contributed to it. So I was a little hesitant but I was feeling pretty good. My squat form has improved a ton. I’m not bouncing off my calves like I was. 245lbs didn’t feel super confident on so I decided to do just 30lbs more for the first working set. Was going to do 20lbs jumps but convinced myself to do 25lbs. There were dogs at the gym and on both of the following sets they started fighting while I was lifting and their owners had to pull them apart. Really distracting. I just completely ignored it on the last set as I was aware it had startled me the first time it happened. Dog barks are just one of those sounds that I don’t do well with if I’m not prepared for it. On the last set, I felt like I maybe left 10lbs in the tank to still be within parameters. So good to know. From there it was on to yoke. Yoke isn’t coming up in any planned show I believe but it is an easy one to setup and work on the support muscles for other carry events. So the plan here was work up to 40-50% and do 5x50’ beltless with 60-90 seconds rest. I did ask for clarification on what working max I should be using here and was advised to use between 400-450lbs for the session. I checked the lanes before I went this time after that oopsie I had back when I did 600lbs and hit an ab wheel. The one lane was encroached upon by kegs and sandbags that people were too lazy to really put back in line/order. I wasn’t going to spend effort to move over a ton of awkward weights so I stuck to the other lane after I did my casual empty yoke walks. Knees were a little achy trying to pick up speed on 300lbs so I figured I’d do 400lbs for the work sets. I set my timer to go off every 90 seconds so kind of EMOM. 90 seconds between sets but time to recover being whatever was left after the yoke run. 400lbs felt pretty good. It was then that I realized that I had not put my camera on. So I made the split decision to do 450lbs instead. I had seen a competitor use dumbbells on a yoke like this for quick load and unload (one of those heavy holds/picks and then yoke run) so that seemed the quickest way to do it. It works haha. These felt pretty good. Hack squats after that. Same as it has been as far as setup and warming up. I did manage to secure the hand towels for padding a bit better so as to minimize the handles digging into my upper back. Plan was to do 2x15 with 3-4RIR. These get exhausting doing the slow and steady reps here so hard to gauge. Had to talk myself down from trying 300lbs here (you just did 300’ of yoke runs, this is usually before event work and you aren’t going for broke). This was the right call as these were quite tough by the end of the second set. From there it was more leg curls. Lying style. I was told to do 2x15 with 3-4RIR. I went for the lighter side of things as I knew that this style puts more stress on the tendons that I irritated back at the beginning of this training cycle. The good news is that these didn’t bother me very much warming up which wasn’t the case last time I did these. So this is getting better but progress is slow. Working weight was pretty easy but it was irritating the left leg so I didn’t push any heavier. Last item of the session was quad fallbacks. Same as it has been the past few weeks. I feel like these felt better compared to last week as I didn’t inadvertently take a long break after my last exercise. Stretched before driving home.


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