June 11, 2022 – Week 1, Day 3

Patrick Stepdowns (5 second eccentrics)
bwx10/10 (7”)
bwx10/10 (8”)
bwx10/10 (9”)

Side Planks with Banded Clamshell (Dynamic, 3 second holds) 
mbx10/10
mbx10/10

Front Squats (5 second eccentrics)
45x3
95x3
135x3
165x2
195x2
225x5
230x5
235x5

Paused Deadlifts (beltless, 2 second midshin, straps)
184x3
234x3
294x3
294x3
294x3
294x3
294x3

Paused Snatch Grip Back Extensions (2 seconds, straps)
85x10
85x10
85x10

Seated Leg Curls
80x3
120x3
160x3
200x15
200x15
200x15

Single Leg Wall Sits
bwx20/20 seconds
bwx20/20 seconds
bwx20/20 seconds

Banded Hanging Knee Raise Holds
mbx20 seconds
mbx20 seconds
mbx20 seconds

Rolling D-Handle Hangs
bw+37.5 for 30 seconds
bw+46 for 30 seconds

Stretching

Comments: Allergies were pretty bad waking up. Work had seemed to calm down a little but is bound to be stressful again with just the general way things go when a big change happens. And that taking more than a day to get any kind of response to important questions/concerns. Whatever. Going out to train in Lancaster. I had been a little worried with how the lower back was feeling at the start of the week that sitting down to drive for that long would be a problem from just observation of sitting down while working for long periods of time. But thankfully, each day it calmed down more and more almost nonexistent this morning. It’s a good thing I check my workouts right before I do them as there were changes made to this workout after I confirmed I was going to do the contest in 9 weeks rather than do just offseason. I am kind of curious what those other exercises would’ve been like. A new experience having to fill up my car with gas over $5/gallon. Still less than $50 to fill up still. I only really drive out to Lancaster to train once a week so it doesn’t really affect me but I’d be feeling the squeeze if I was having to commute daily. Some traffic driving out at the start but fairly smooth after that. Some familiar faces at the gym and some newer. Not really any of that newbie group but I was a little later than usual. I ended up talking with Guy a good bit before I started training. He indicated taking a year off from serious competing to get his situation balanced (work, lifting, family). Understandable. The Hercules hold was taken down on the assumption no one else was going to need it. I hadn’t planned on it after this past show but here we are. I’m still a bit miffed by how it feels like the owners overlook me. Anything I damage or break, I replace out of my own pocket and notify. I have to makeshift my own things there but if a “pro” has that same event coming up, then it gets made. The gym also does “shoutout” posts for gym members competing and twice I’ve been overlooked when I’ve had shows that I put up on the board as competing at. I kind of feel like maybe it had to do with me taking stuff home with me with the world went to crazy in March of 2020. I wasn’t even told they were open until I asked friends that were posting stuff from there. But I don’t know. I treat this now as a place I train at and I pay a membership and go from there. Only family and friends as my support system. No sponsors, just stubbornness of hard work. Anyways, enough of airing that out. So start of workout had me doing some stuff that would be constituted more as warming up then lifting. Stuff that would definitely be for an off-season approach. Mobility related stepdowns. I keep getting Peterson and Patrick confused but I get the right one done haha. So for these, I was to do 5 second eccentrics and potentially increase the ROM as I went. These I’ve had a history of having my knees feel terrible at the start and often my hips needing to adjust to that initial movement and then feeling somewhat better as I went. I was prepared for that and it didn’t happen. These felt fine. I wasn’t really expecting them to and had to kind of rush around to figure out increasing height. I settled on 1” and these were fine. The 2” increase was noticeably more difficult but still fine. I’m not sure if I did this next one right. It was to be a side plank with doing lying clam shell with bands. I thought simple enough but I do a side plank with my legs straight and push off my ankles. I can’t really do that with my knees bent. So I kind of posted up on my forearm as best I could here. So hopefully it was right. I think the clam shell motion was probably the most important part. These got pretty exhausting for the hips and glutes. From there it was on to more typical gym lifting. Front squats. Second time doing them with Drew. First time had been that first week after the first show when I had the box jump incident. They had felt good then but I guess ended up not being the way to go with things. So I was interested in seeing how these would go. I was also cognizant that more anterior load might stress lower back in an odd way but that was minimal. Plan here was work up on triples and/or doubles to 3x5 at RPE 7. 5 second eccentrics with a slight pause (no bouncing) was the parameters. Front squats feel good when I can treat my legs like a trampoline or when I can just sit in the bottom for the pause. Controlled eccentrics was going to be tough. Not too rough on the knees. I tried to think how the last time I did these had felt as far as difficult and decided that to be on the safe side, I should do about 225lbs here. So I did a few more sets to work up because I felt that my usual 40-50lbs jumps wouldn’t adequately prepare me. It can be tricky predicting how many RIR with these tempo based reps but I felt that I could get away with small increases so I went up 5lbs per set rather than stick to straight weight sets. That seemed to work out fine. Next was deadlifting. Beltless paused pulls. I wasn’t sure how these would feel on the lower back but I felt these would be fine by the day before with how my back was feeling. And with no issues on the front squats, I should be fine. As I’ve been trying to do when training deadlift at the gym, make things tougher within reason. Usually deadlift bar at shows when regular deadlift so try to eliminate bar flex so that the start (the hardest part for me) is harder. So bringing out the kilo plates and the squat bar. Had to do a bit of math to figure things out here as plan was 5x3 with 50% (using 585lbs). This got close enough to that. First set felt heavy but other sets felt fine. I think I’m finally getting deadlift to click for me again with trying to take advantage of my stifflegged deadlift approach. Besides that initial feeling of heaviness of that first set (felt heavy but moved fine), these felt quite easy. So pleased with that. Next was more lower back related stuff. I had liked how the back extensions had been feeling at the end of last training cycle. They had also been briefly present at the end of the previous training cycle. This seemed to be a combo of those two exercises. The back extensions on the GHD suffer from a short ROM when I’m not holding something close to my chest like a dumbbell, plate, or kettlebell so limited loading. With my long arms, the ROM holding a bar even in a super wide snatch grip is still pretty small and then the benefit is just in the hold rather than the motion. So using a 45 degree bench might be the solution to that. I had to makeshift that. It worked but this weight felt really light. There was fatigue being felt set to set but it was more I think just from the motion itself as blood just seems to go to my head. I guess have to wait and see here if this needs to be adjusted. Next was leg curls in the machine. Seated. This machine had been out of order for a few weeks waiting for the cushions to be reupholstered. So lucky it was in working order today. Been a good bit since I did these. I aimed light but found that it wasn’t doing anything. The plan here was 3x12-15 with 3-5RIR. After the next warming up set, I knew I’d need the whole stack. My hamstrings and tendons were initially surprised with the load but adapted quickly and made short work of this. I knew my hamstrings would be tight, twitchy and crampy after these (in a good way). I will need to either stick to this weight, do these one legged or add tempo as I can’t add more weight here lol. The new thing that my coach wants to torture me with is wall sits. I say this as it appears this is going to be a twice a week thing. Work the legs, less stress on the knees and an isometric. He indicated sets of 20-30 and to keep them without pain with the plan to do single leg. Knowing that intent, I figured that I should be able to do single leg right now. Challenging so I kept these to just 20 seconds since I’ve never done a single leg wall sit before. I knew I had to do them single leg as just being in the regular wall sit position was like active rest which is what I did when switching sides. I feel like I got better as I went on these. Next was some abdominal work. Hanging ab work. Idea being to do a knee raise and hold the position at contraction for the duration. Add weight either by putting weight on my lap or around my ankles or use a band. I had seen Drew do these with a band so I went that route. Also with seeing that I had grip work after this, I used those hanging arm rest thingies that people use for doing hanging ab work. My grip would be fine but I wanted to try and push things there too on direct work rather than indirect work. Assuming that was intent. Like the wall sits, I stuck to 20 seconds as these were new to me. Also, I’m still getting occasionally twinges in the lower abdominals on the right side from that week I was attempting split jerks so I didn’t want to overdo it there as this area seems to take a while to recover from past experiences. I can definitely do more here but it was a little tricky getting things setup and timing it right. Last thing was grip work. Next show has Hercules hold in it so keeping that going. I feel that this show will have a longer hold required just based on the average times last time they did it with a substantial weight being over a minute (winner did over two minutes but outlier, so without him still over a minute). So it was listed to do rolling bar hangs for a total for 45-60 seconds over several sets of 20-30 seconds. It was suggested that if I could figure out a way to have it be the rolling d-handles like a Hercules hold, that it would be more specific and probably more challenging. Little did Drew know that the gym has gymnastic rings and other things hanging from the ceiling so I had my pick of 5 different d-handles. I also decided to test out liquid chalk for the first time. My reasoning was not so much to replace chalk but to see if things worked. I wasn’t planning on doing a show in the summer and it will be hot and I’ll be sweating like crazy. The liquid chalk will dry out my hands and then I can put chalk on top of that. The liquid chalk would keep me from sweating under the chalk. It seemed to work. I’m not sure if the grip combo or what but these hangs felt easy. This was the most I’ve ever done for a weighted hang on that first set so I went up even more. That felt a bit more challenging but I’d still hold probably another 10 seconds or more even. So not sure if I’m getting a stronger grip or this is easier than the rolling bar at the top of the rack or if the liquid chalk/chalk combo is that good. Put stuff away and stretched before leaving. I ended up talking with George a good bit before heading out. Essentially, I have no interest in competing as a Master’s athlete accept maybe for OSG. I want to keep competing at the highest level I can as long as I can.