Mobility Prep
Single Leg Squats to Box (15”)
bwx2/2 (assisted)
bwx2/2 (assisted)
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
Single Leg Squats to Box (15”)
bwx2/2 (assisted)
bwx2/2 (assisted)
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
bwx8/8
Safety Squat Bar Box Squats (20” box) w/ bands (+60lbs bottom/+86lbs top)
65x3
115x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
295x3
335x3
335x3
335x3
335x3
335x3
65x3
115x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
295x3
335x3
335x3
335x3
335x3
335x3
Sandbag Shoulderings (Left)
205x1
205x1
225xpick
225x1
250x1
275x1
205x1/225x1/250x1 in 16.53 seconds
205x1/225x1/250x1 in 15.67 seconds
205x1/225x1/250x1 in 15.36 seconds
205x1/225x1/250x1 in 16.90 seconds
205x1
205x1
225xpick
225x1
250x1
275x1
205x1/225x1/250x1 in 16.53 seconds
205x1/225x1/250x1 in 15.67 seconds
205x1/225x1/250x1 in 15.36 seconds
205x1/225x1/250x1 in 16.90 seconds
Seated Arm-Over-Arm Exer-genie Pulls (2” rope, tire)
8x60’
16x60’ in 40.24 seconds
16x60’ in 34.50 seconds
10x120’ (2 runs of 60’) in 34.53 & 47.10 seconds
8x60’
16x60’ in 40.24 seconds
16x60’ in 34.50 seconds
10x120’ (2 runs of 60’) in 34.53 & 47.10 seconds
Paused Hyperextensions (3 seconds)
108x6
108x6
108x6
108x6
108x6
108x6
Paused Side Plank Lifts (3 seconds)
55x10/10
55x10/10
55x10/10
55x10/10
55x10/10
55x10/10
Stretching
Comments: Got a little bit of snow Friday. I guess outside of the range of the bomb cyclone as next state over appears to have been buried in the white stuff. I did go for a walk after work but I don’t think I was able to really relax as much as I like on it as I had to be cautious about where I stepped with the snow having melted and then freezing. I think also seeing the workload for the next workout made me lazy. Didn’t make dinner on time and decided to order 8 chicken tacos from a place that uses naan instead of tortillas. I’ll need to remember to get 10 next time to make sure I’m truly full. Lesson learned haha. I did set the alarm for work wake up but I did sleep in another half hour. Quite cold out. There was some snow on the back patio (just a dusting) and I figured I’d need to clean that up if it hadn’t melted in the sun by the time I got back from the gym. A little slow moving in the morning getting ready but made good time getting out there. I got to the gym and there were some of the more novice level people there. One of them had their music playing. I feel like I tolerate/appreciate all music but this certainly tested me. It made me anxious. Felt like a loading screen for a video game. And some of the songs were really long. Like, I got through all my mobility stuff and the first exercise and the same song was still going and it had been playing since I arrived at the gym and was still playing after I finished the single leg squats. Anyways, mobility stuff was good and on to the single leg squats. Back to doing 3x8 this week. The assisted lifts really do seem to be the ticket for me getting ready. Left leg has the most hesitancy that first rep and seems mostly good the rest of the sets whereas the right leg is fine with things but is the one that aches the most. From there it was on to the ssb box squats with bands. Or it was supposed to be. While I was doing the single leg squats, some more people came in and I knew that one of them was most likely going to use the ssb. I took too long getting out here to train. If I had been here 5 minutes earlier, I’d have been on to box squats. This wasn’t something where I could work in. Drastically different heights for the bar as well as doing different exercises and using drastically different weights. Plus, mine were to be EMOM so… I had to wait over 30 minutes to get to do these after the last exercise. And the music playing was not helping matters haha. Left side lower back was feeling a bit stiff. I hoarded the good mini bands so that I’d have them when it was go time. While I was waiting, another gym patron asked me to film sets for him and he was doing 4 sets with 3 minutes rest between. I did that and still was waiting after that point. Finally, I was able to do them. I think that if it wasn’t just lighter stuff with short rests, I wouldn’t have been so wound up. It appears I’m doing speed cycle waves until contest to use these to prime things and have energy leftover for the event work and focus on the pulls being heavy in the week. Plan here was 330x5x3 EMOM. However, I went with 335lbs instead as it was easier plate math (3 45’s on each side of ssb so I could do 40-50lbs jumps easy). Shouldering sandbags was next. A swap of event order to put some more emphasis on these. The plan was to warm-up and do 4 runs of shouldering medley using the three sandbags I’ve been using so far (205lbs, 225lbs, 250lbs). Goal being to take time with rest and to work on increasing speed each time. So the plan for warming up I was told to work up doing rows and singles. My right arm was feeling a bit sore/stiff in the biceps so I was a little leery about these today. I didn’t do rows as I felt that while it is similar, it isn’t quite how I have been doing the picks really this exercise so I figured that just doing singles would be a better thing to do. 205lbs felt terrible first try so I did another single before moving on. That was slightly better. 225lbs my hand position got off when I popped it to my lap the first attempt and rather than fight with it, I just put it back down. Felt ok that second attempt. 250lbs next. Ok enough. So now I’d probably move on to the medleys. But I didn’t. It said to warm up with singles. I figured that I should see how the 275lbs bag would feel. It is almost spherical as the sand is packed in a small bag. My thinking was that it would give me an idea of what to expect and since it was heavier than the top weight for the planned medleys, it would be like those were down sets after the fact. I treated it like it was a heavy sandbag pick to lap rather than rush things. Then I had it in my lap and I felt like, “oh, this is it?” and popped it up to my shoulders pretty easy. I think that if I hadn’t done 250lbs previous weeks and gotten used to it not going up in an easy single motion this would’ve stumped me. So happy to that the shape wasn’t an issue and it might be easier to shoulder than the 250lbs (but not as easy to pick). So setup things for the medley. Spaced out the bags a bit and got set. Felt comfortable that first set. Second set I got a bit faster. On the last sandbag that set, I let it go over my shoulder at the end as opposed to having it go in front. I’ve been used to the front because I’ve been having to do singles and doubles with short rests so it lets me set things up for the next bag. But I realized that having it go over my shoulder at the end would be the quickest way to dismount and move on to the next bag. Use the momentum to get it out of the way. So I figured that for the next set I’d try that out on all the bags. I was able to bring my time down even further to where I was over a second faster from my first set. I feel that I was going even faster on the last set but I had pulled the 250lbs up to high on the pick to lap and my hand position on the left side changed and took me out of an advantageous purchase. I figured that I’d just go with it as stopping and taking time to regrip would probably eat up more time in contest conditions. This made that 250lbs sandbag a fight to shoulder. Even so, still managed to keep it under 17 seconds. Good to know that I can fight through a shoulder event and think quick in the moment. Would’ve been nice to have things go perfect but that is why we practice and drill things in. Arm-over-arm next. Now last time I had done this with actual weight for course distance. Weight is unknown for the contest at this point and setup other than it being seated in a tire with a rope on turf is also not confirmed. Don’t know how it will be anchored and if it will be with the thick or thin rope. The plan for today with that in mind had been to do 2x50’ with 25lbs more than last time and then take 100lbs off that and do that for 2x50’ with only rest being how long it took to reset the course for conditioning effect. I was trying to think on how to do that and have it not be a super pain in the ass. What I had been doing last time was using a prowler with 200lbs of weights and a 250lbs sandbag on top. I pushed the sandbag off and then dragged the sled backwards and then used the hand truck to wheel the sandbag down and put it back on the prowler. So for that particular thing, I’d do a 50’ arm-over-arm, then 50’ sled drag, run back to get a 175lbs sandbag or keg and then run back again to do the next 50’ arm-over-arm. Seeing as how I already had a good half hour of the day go waiting to use a piece of equipment and the spots were open to setup the Exer-genie, I did that instead. I have no idea how things are going to be for the contest beyond it being a seated pull in a tire and the Exer-genie is good for making me work and easy to reset. With that I realized that if I did the setup I did last time where I connected a sled, it would be difficult to reset for the conditioning run so I went back to just having it be the rope. Did a warm up set with “half” the planned tension. Someone at the gym that means well but seems to not get some things came over and started helping with the rope on that set without asking. He wasn’t around so I couldn’t really ask him then on the sets that it would matter. The rope bunching up kind of adds some resistance and difficulty. He was around for the second set but I didn’t want to have that assistance potentially alter how things felt from set to set. Things went better that set. If I had known it was going to go that well (just over 40 first set and then under 35 this set), I’d have tried heavier resistance for this workout. The “conditioning” set was a gasser. I lowered the tension down a little over 62% less than the working sets. The guy wanted to try it out and I let him since I was eager for the rest before doing this. I don’t think he realized how hard this was but he didn’t quick on it and did a full run with it. I don’t think he understood the concept with how the Exer-genie worked. I was asking him to only take the rope so that it didn’t bunch up in my lap so that I could then get out of the tire quickly to go and reset the lead line and get back in to go again. With not resetting it like I usually do where the lead line is on the rubber and not tangled vs having it be on the turf, the second run of 60’ was going to be super difficult. First run started off fine and then hit a snag. Not sure what it was while I was doing it but just kept pulling. Made last bit really tough. Hopped out of the tire to switch the lead line and I see that it got stuck on a plate post by the bench. Switched things up and turned around to get back. Now I had been explicit with what I wanted with help on this. Come to see that he has gone and put a ton of slack in the rope and has stopped my camera. You know that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the lord of Swamp Castle is explaining to the guards about not letting the prince leave his room? It was that. Frustrating but couldn’t worry about that as I had probably the toughest arm-over-arm pull of my life to go. It was tough, it was slow and I was fatigued but I got it done in under 50 seconds. I was spent. That feeling when you feel like you’re tasting blood when breathing. Had that. It has been a long, long time since I’ve felt that. Thankfully all the really trying stuff was done. Hyperextensions with pauses. 3x6 with 3 second for PRE7-8. Suggested weight was 95lbs. Doing that, I worried that I’d need to use bigger diameter plates and that would cut the ROM a good bit as I’m using the smallest plates and going collar to collar with my grip placement. But the gym has Mike Jenkin’s old solid axle that is 40kgs/88lbs. So I used that instead to keep things how they were as far as height. These are definitely something haha. Last set the pressure in the lower legs where my heels were in the pads was a lot, even with the knee sleeves down to pad things. These do seem to be a worthwhile exercise. Last thing was side plank lifts with pauses (2-3ct). Advised to do 3x10 with 55lbs this week. Luckily we have a throwing bag that heavy to use. Soft stuff on the hips. I took less rest compared to last time as it was already getting close to 4hrs of being at the gym at this point. Got finished with these and decided it was best to go home to worry about stretching. I needed to get dinner started so I wasn’t waiting until midnight to eat. Cleaned up the back patio of the little snow before stretching out.
Comments: Got a little bit of snow Friday. I guess outside of the range of the bomb cyclone as next state over appears to have been buried in the white stuff. I did go for a walk after work but I don’t think I was able to really relax as much as I like on it as I had to be cautious about where I stepped with the snow having melted and then freezing. I think also seeing the workload for the next workout made me lazy. Didn’t make dinner on time and decided to order 8 chicken tacos from a place that uses naan instead of tortillas. I’ll need to remember to get 10 next time to make sure I’m truly full. Lesson learned haha. I did set the alarm for work wake up but I did sleep in another half hour. Quite cold out. There was some snow on the back patio (just a dusting) and I figured I’d need to clean that up if it hadn’t melted in the sun by the time I got back from the gym. A little slow moving in the morning getting ready but made good time getting out there. I got to the gym and there were some of the more novice level people there. One of them had their music playing. I feel like I tolerate/appreciate all music but this certainly tested me. It made me anxious. Felt like a loading screen for a video game. And some of the songs were really long. Like, I got through all my mobility stuff and the first exercise and the same song was still going and it had been playing since I arrived at the gym and was still playing after I finished the single leg squats. Anyways, mobility stuff was good and on to the single leg squats. Back to doing 3x8 this week. The assisted lifts really do seem to be the ticket for me getting ready. Left leg has the most hesitancy that first rep and seems mostly good the rest of the sets whereas the right leg is fine with things but is the one that aches the most. From there it was on to the ssb box squats with bands. Or it was supposed to be. While I was doing the single leg squats, some more people came in and I knew that one of them was most likely going to use the ssb. I took too long getting out here to train. If I had been here 5 minutes earlier, I’d have been on to box squats. This wasn’t something where I could work in. Drastically different heights for the bar as well as doing different exercises and using drastically different weights. Plus, mine were to be EMOM so… I had to wait over 30 minutes to get to do these after the last exercise. And the music playing was not helping matters haha. Left side lower back was feeling a bit stiff. I hoarded the good mini bands so that I’d have them when it was go time. While I was waiting, another gym patron asked me to film sets for him and he was doing 4 sets with 3 minutes rest between. I did that and still was waiting after that point. Finally, I was able to do them. I think that if it wasn’t just lighter stuff with short rests, I wouldn’t have been so wound up. It appears I’m doing speed cycle waves until contest to use these to prime things and have energy leftover for the event work and focus on the pulls being heavy in the week. Plan here was 330x5x3 EMOM. However, I went with 335lbs instead as it was easier plate math (3 45’s on each side of ssb so I could do 40-50lbs jumps easy). Shouldering sandbags was next. A swap of event order to put some more emphasis on these. The plan was to warm-up and do 4 runs of shouldering medley using the three sandbags I’ve been using so far (205lbs, 225lbs, 250lbs). Goal being to take time with rest and to work on increasing speed each time. So the plan for warming up I was told to work up doing rows and singles. My right arm was feeling a bit sore/stiff in the biceps so I was a little leery about these today. I didn’t do rows as I felt that while it is similar, it isn’t quite how I have been doing the picks really this exercise so I figured that just doing singles would be a better thing to do. 205lbs felt terrible first try so I did another single before moving on. That was slightly better. 225lbs my hand position got off when I popped it to my lap the first attempt and rather than fight with it, I just put it back down. Felt ok that second attempt. 250lbs next. Ok enough. So now I’d probably move on to the medleys. But I didn’t. It said to warm up with singles. I figured that I should see how the 275lbs bag would feel. It is almost spherical as the sand is packed in a small bag. My thinking was that it would give me an idea of what to expect and since it was heavier than the top weight for the planned medleys, it would be like those were down sets after the fact. I treated it like it was a heavy sandbag pick to lap rather than rush things. Then I had it in my lap and I felt like, “oh, this is it?” and popped it up to my shoulders pretty easy. I think that if I hadn’t done 250lbs previous weeks and gotten used to it not going up in an easy single motion this would’ve stumped me. So happy to that the shape wasn’t an issue and it might be easier to shoulder than the 250lbs (but not as easy to pick). So setup things for the medley. Spaced out the bags a bit and got set. Felt comfortable that first set. Second set I got a bit faster. On the last sandbag that set, I let it go over my shoulder at the end as opposed to having it go in front. I’ve been used to the front because I’ve been having to do singles and doubles with short rests so it lets me set things up for the next bag. But I realized that having it go over my shoulder at the end would be the quickest way to dismount and move on to the next bag. Use the momentum to get it out of the way. So I figured that for the next set I’d try that out on all the bags. I was able to bring my time down even further to where I was over a second faster from my first set. I feel that I was going even faster on the last set but I had pulled the 250lbs up to high on the pick to lap and my hand position on the left side changed and took me out of an advantageous purchase. I figured that I’d just go with it as stopping and taking time to regrip would probably eat up more time in contest conditions. This made that 250lbs sandbag a fight to shoulder. Even so, still managed to keep it under 17 seconds. Good to know that I can fight through a shoulder event and think quick in the moment. Would’ve been nice to have things go perfect but that is why we practice and drill things in. Arm-over-arm next. Now last time I had done this with actual weight for course distance. Weight is unknown for the contest at this point and setup other than it being seated in a tire with a rope on turf is also not confirmed. Don’t know how it will be anchored and if it will be with the thick or thin rope. The plan for today with that in mind had been to do 2x50’ with 25lbs more than last time and then take 100lbs off that and do that for 2x50’ with only rest being how long it took to reset the course for conditioning effect. I was trying to think on how to do that and have it not be a super pain in the ass. What I had been doing last time was using a prowler with 200lbs of weights and a 250lbs sandbag on top. I pushed the sandbag off and then dragged the sled backwards and then used the hand truck to wheel the sandbag down and put it back on the prowler. So for that particular thing, I’d do a 50’ arm-over-arm, then 50’ sled drag, run back to get a 175lbs sandbag or keg and then run back again to do the next 50’ arm-over-arm. Seeing as how I already had a good half hour of the day go waiting to use a piece of equipment and the spots were open to setup the Exer-genie, I did that instead. I have no idea how things are going to be for the contest beyond it being a seated pull in a tire and the Exer-genie is good for making me work and easy to reset. With that I realized that if I did the setup I did last time where I connected a sled, it would be difficult to reset for the conditioning run so I went back to just having it be the rope. Did a warm up set with “half” the planned tension. Someone at the gym that means well but seems to not get some things came over and started helping with the rope on that set without asking. He wasn’t around so I couldn’t really ask him then on the sets that it would matter. The rope bunching up kind of adds some resistance and difficulty. He was around for the second set but I didn’t want to have that assistance potentially alter how things felt from set to set. Things went better that set. If I had known it was going to go that well (just over 40 first set and then under 35 this set), I’d have tried heavier resistance for this workout. The “conditioning” set was a gasser. I lowered the tension down a little over 62% less than the working sets. The guy wanted to try it out and I let him since I was eager for the rest before doing this. I don’t think he realized how hard this was but he didn’t quick on it and did a full run with it. I don’t think he understood the concept with how the Exer-genie worked. I was asking him to only take the rope so that it didn’t bunch up in my lap so that I could then get out of the tire quickly to go and reset the lead line and get back in to go again. With not resetting it like I usually do where the lead line is on the rubber and not tangled vs having it be on the turf, the second run of 60’ was going to be super difficult. First run started off fine and then hit a snag. Not sure what it was while I was doing it but just kept pulling. Made last bit really tough. Hopped out of the tire to switch the lead line and I see that it got stuck on a plate post by the bench. Switched things up and turned around to get back. Now I had been explicit with what I wanted with help on this. Come to see that he has gone and put a ton of slack in the rope and has stopped my camera. You know that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the lord of Swamp Castle is explaining to the guards about not letting the prince leave his room? It was that. Frustrating but couldn’t worry about that as I had probably the toughest arm-over-arm pull of my life to go. It was tough, it was slow and I was fatigued but I got it done in under 50 seconds. I was spent. That feeling when you feel like you’re tasting blood when breathing. Had that. It has been a long, long time since I’ve felt that. Thankfully all the really trying stuff was done. Hyperextensions with pauses. 3x6 with 3 second for PRE7-8. Suggested weight was 95lbs. Doing that, I worried that I’d need to use bigger diameter plates and that would cut the ROM a good bit as I’m using the smallest plates and going collar to collar with my grip placement. But the gym has Mike Jenkin’s old solid axle that is 40kgs/88lbs. So I used that instead to keep things how they were as far as height. These are definitely something haha. Last set the pressure in the lower legs where my heels were in the pads was a lot, even with the knee sleeves down to pad things. These do seem to be a worthwhile exercise. Last thing was side plank lifts with pauses (2-3ct). Advised to do 3x10 with 55lbs this week. Luckily we have a throwing bag that heavy to use. Soft stuff on the hips. I took less rest compared to last time as it was already getting close to 4hrs of being at the gym at this point. Got finished with these and decided it was best to go home to worry about stretching. I needed to get dinner started so I wasn’t waiting until midnight to eat. Cleaned up the back patio of the little snow before stretching out.
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