April 30, 2022 – Week 7, Day 4

ATG Split Squats (12” box, mb ankle distraction)
bwx15/15
bwx15/15
bwx15/15

Safety Squat Bar Squats to 19” Box w/ bands (+60lbs bottom/+86lbs top)
65x3
115x3
165x3
215x3
265x3
315x3
315x3
315x3
315x3
315x3

Yoke
Casual Pace
200x50’
200x50’
Normal
290x50’
380x25’
470x25’
560xpick
560x50’ in 6.83 seconds
650x50’ in 7.90 seconds
660x50’ in 7.80 seconds
670x50’ in 7.45 seconds

Hercules Holds
140 for 10 seconds
190 for 10 seconds
230 for 10 seconds
280 for 47.63 seconds
200 for 85.13 seconds

2” Deficit Stiff-legged Deadlifts (straps)
165x5
215x5
265x5
319.5x15
319.5x10

Band Assisted Teardrop Squats (sb assist)
bwx25
bwx25
bwx25

Axle Wrist Curls (5-0-0-3 tempo)
75x10
75x10
75x10

Stretching

Comments: Feeling a bit better about axle but still nowhere near satisfied. With this being a regional show and at this time 19 competitors in my weight class including me, top 5 qualify for Nationals in mid-October. I don’t doubt myself putting in my best effort more that will it be enough as I expect everyone to be as prepared or more so than myself every time I compete. I did make sure I did soft tissue work Friday as I was having intense DOMS in my upper quads from the tempo split squats. I had actually been worried that it would affect me on Thursday’s axle clean and presses but it didn’t. Biceps and upper back/neck were also tight and sore. I didn’t get to sleep as early as I had wanted to but with how this week kind of required assistance with things, it behooved me to get out there at a somewhat reasonable hour to insure I had bodies. Again, a lot of people doing the group setting training. They were doing axle squats to platforms like WSM but in the lanes as the racks were in use. Thankfully that cleared up and they had moved on to atlas stones by the time I was in need of them. Change up in the first exercise (which has been a unilateral lower body exercise). ATG split squats but to a high box for the front leg and to add band resistance to “distract” at the ankle. Idea here was to get my ankles and knees feeling good. I’ve not done any serious work with bands used to “distract” and I’ve done ATG split squats but to the ground in the past as mobility warm ups. My knees usually took a bit to warm up for those and not necessarily the one doing the work. Usually the one in the leg supporting being straight. Plan here was 3x8-15 and mess around with doing pauses, holds or rhythmic reps. Whatever felt best. I did doubles without bands from descending box heights until I got to 12” and then added bands. I was kind of testing things to see if I could do these without knee sleeves as I try to do what I can without but some exercises need them at this point. These were easy enough recovery wise that I just did them back to back with the rest between sides just being how long it took to get my foot out of the band and put it on the other foot. I went with higher reps and slight pauses as that seemed to be the best thing with getting blood flow going to the joints and to lessen the DOMS in the quads. Squats with the ssb to box again after that. Well I guess not right away. I spent a moment trying to figure out some things. One was if there were enough “good” mini bands as one of them had been snapped and “tied” together. If there weren’t I’d have to test out band setups to get what I needed. The other was trying determine if the two squat racks were open. One looked to be kind of reserved but not explicitly (they were doing deadlifts on the platform in front and had a water bottle placed in front of the squat rack) and the other was being used by a guy in a polo shirt doing curls in it with just the barbell. So I went to the one that was empty and nobody stopped me so that was that. So I was kind of right with this being a new wave. The 3 week waves seem to have been a good thing when it comes to squat work. But change in variation. No accentuated eccentrics but still the same style of squatting to the box with a slight pause/deload. 5x3 with bands and somewhat short rest. Now what I was to do here was to either squat to the same height as I have been doing with foam so that it went down a bit as I sat into it so I was going lower or to use a 1” lower box height. I did want to do the foam option but the foam at the gym was too firm to do that so I used the hard foam and 1” lower box. These seemed to go pretty well. Yoke next and no delay with getting this up and going like last time. However, that also meant a lot less people were here now and only like one person that was strongman related and she was dog sitting the fluffiest dog in the world (I think his name is Teddy but she calls him Professor Fluffenstein). Thankfully Brian showed up so I had someone that would be able to do commands and timing for me. The plan here was work up to 550lbs for 50’s and then do 650lbs for 3 sets of 50’. Rests of 2-3 minutes. I knew it would be kind of tricky to get timing and such with those rest periods (really short works to keep someone the entire time and no set allows for flexibility). Still not practicing the run up at this time. Working on getting set. I made some changes to the plan. One was that the starting weight would be 560lbs for the work sets. This way, I could just do 90lbs jumps all the way up and it would be easier to load for the 650lbs sets and not have my rest go be outside of the parameters. Another was that with people getting settled and needing to make sure I had assistance, I had to wait a little after my last warm up run so I did a pick with the lighter working run weight just go get a feel for it and not be so cold when it was go time. I then had an idea to take advantage of something I noticed last time in that I went slightly faster each run. Unlike with frame where the pick is the most taxing thing and can affect my times despite being more warmed up for moving, yoke isn’t like that. So I figured if I felt good, I’d do 10lbs more each run to see if I could get a little more training in. I wasn’t too sure with the times if they were good compared to what I’ve done in the past or if they were good compared to last week (spoiler: they were fantastic!). So with the 10lbs added, I did indeed go faster each run with the 650lbs and over weight. Like some of these times were faster than my slower sets with 600lbs from two weeks prior. Last set I tried to up a gear in speed near the end and tripped up on myself and lost balance and ended on what would probably be a questionable slide penalty (I was over the line before I dropped and slid). My right knee didn’t appreciate that and was starting to feel tender. Outside of the right knee rather than the inside which is usually what is aggravated. But it didn’t seem to affect me moving around or doing anything other then it just feeling tender so I elected to leave my knee sleeves on for extra support and compression until I needed them off for an exercise. Hercules hold was the next thing. Plan was a top set of 30 seconds and then rest and do a set of over 60 seconds. I had thought I knew what to go for this time after how last time went. I figured I’d take less sets to work up to the top weight too considering that I wasn’t sure I could get people to really help this time. Since I was going for set times rather than ranges, I needed to side spots and someone to get time. The promoter had finally released the video for this and it is similar to setups I’ve done before in contest that are simple but probably have more stability issues with the skimping on the pivot joint support. There is no back and forth wobble on the this set up at the gym. Also no hook grip, which is fine. Researching things a bit more, it would appear that 320lbs is probably the weight used for weight in hand for Giant’s Live. Promoter says he wants this heavy but that could still mean 30 seconds for me. So my plan here was to try 280lbs for the 30 seconds and then take off 90lbs to do the longer hold. Basing this off of how I seemed to not do so well after 15 seconds on these. And warming up wasn’t feeling too great so I was wondering if I was just not going to do well here. I was wrong. I actually ended up beating the time I had done with 230lbs per hand last time. I guess I went too light here going over 45 seconds. So I may need 300lbs or more for heavier work now. Rest was to be about 5 minutes after that for the longer hold but that didn’t quite work out so I needed three people and they were all doing their own thing so it was probably more of 10 minutes to get everyone caroled. With how that set had went, I decided to go a little heavier then my planned 190lbs. 200lbs per hand had been what was used for the weight when this was used in contest in 2020. I wanted to beat all those times and I couldn’t really recall what the winning time was but I thought it was close to 75 seconds. Another going too hard one here haha as I was close to 90 seconds here and it looks like the winning time had been 64 seconds. I really wasn’t expecting these kinds of numbers after last week and with how things went with the rolling bar hangs. Who knew working on the stuff not as good at on grip would help the stuff I’m good at on grip? Deficit stiff legged deadlift were next. This time a little different in that I was to do a set of 15 reps with 2-3RIR and then rest as needed and do that same weight then for a set of 10 reps. I was initially thinking of using the same weight as last week I did for 3x10 but I relented and figured that I need to make my reps better quality so I did slightly less. I had been lax with the ”whisper touch” and had been calling depth too early on most of the reps as I was worried about bouncing. The solution was of course to just be slower on the eccentric to control things, which had been the point. Just have to relearn the lessons rather than just trying to add more weight and make it easier. Use what you use that produces the best training effect. My right knee was a little tender on these with setup. Still using the 55lbs squat bar and the kilo plates. A new exercise was added for after that for the ankles and knees. Band assisted tear drop squats. I wasn’t sure how these would go as they looked an awful lot like sissy squats and those had wrecked up my right knee for weeks afterwards. Using a lot of band help and do 3 sets of 15-25 reps at RPE 6-7. I wanted to test things here and see as no clue if my knee being tender would be an issue for this exercise so I was very hesitant and cautious that first rep. And it was good. It felt good. Got a good stretch in the top of the quads at the bottom that was still stiff from the Bulgarian split squats with tempo. These really surprised me with how good they felt. I actually showed them to Brian and had him try them out since he is also a lifter with a lot of mileage on his joints and knees. He seemed to like them. Last thing was for grip. Wrists and grip combined. I know that wrist strength is lacking, probably more so than crush grip. Like, I think wrist strength lacking may in fact be why crush grip lacks in that my wrists will sometimes ache from crush grip. Similar to how figuring out that my upper back wasn’t strong enough to support my grip when I first started and then once I started doing banded rack pulls weekly with straps, my farmer’s walk went up 50lbs a hand the next time I did it. This exercise was deceptively challenging. Axle wrist curls with tempo. 3x10 with aim to be RPE 7. 3ct hold at contraction and 3-5ct lowering and allowing the hands to open up and let the bar hang in the finger tips. I had planned to use the 88lbs solid axle but while doable, dismounting with it wasn’t a viable option really. Getting the weight into place was tricky so I went with the hollow painted axle so I could use bumper plates. As I’m starting to notice with more focused grip work that I’m good for one or two performances and then I struggle to keep going once the forearms say they’ve had enough. Case in point, the first two sets were within parameters but the last set I just couldn’t get all the reps in one go and had to take a few seconds breather to get the last two reps so not RPE 7. I may need to keep at these as I noticed that I was feeling any tennis or golfer elbow symptoms after these. But these are hard on the wrist joints. I didn’t stick around to stretch out as I needed to get home to do chores I had put off. Got those started and stretched and iced my knees.