July 16, 2022 – Week 6, Day 4

Patrick Stepdowns (5 second eccentrics)
No Eccentrics
bwx5/5 at 4”
bwx5/5 at 7.5”
Added Eccentrics
bwx10/10 at 11”
bwx10/10 at 11”

Drinky Birds
mb+15x10/10
mb+15x10/10

Front Squats
45x10
95x5
135x5
185x3
225x3
275x1
315x5
275x5
275x5

Power Keg Carries (turns at 50’, high carry)
143x50’ (downhill)
194.5x50’ (downhill)
243.5x50’ (uphill)
292x50’ (downhill)
325x50’ (uphill)
276x206’9” (both)

Dimel Deadlifts w/bands (straps, +18lbs bottom/+63lbs top)
45x5
95x5
147x5
187x10
187x10
187x10

Single Leg Squat to Box Eccentrics (5 seconds)
bwx3/3 to 21”
bwx3/3 to 21”
bwx3/3 to 18”
bw+20x10/10 to 18”
bw+30x10/10 to 18”

Rolling Bar Hanging Leg Raise Holds
bwx53 seconds
bwx45 seconds

Stretching

Comments: So I was supposed to be at the beach now. I made a vacation trip around same time last year that coincided with a competition so that I could just relax and now worry about training until I got back. It had mostly worked out. I was dealing with a good bit of lower back discomfort (but swimming in ocean felt nice) and it wasn’t until I got home was able to have a dip stand delivered that I was able to get my back to “pop” where it needed to. So I had planned to do that again this year (not the back discomfort) and that had been based on the assumption that I would be able to just take it easy during the summer months having qualified for Nationals earlier in the year. But that didn’t work out despite being so close both times. I really hadn’t planned on doing any more shows this year really after that but with a local show and just enough time left to give me a shot at Nats and with Nats being in my adoptive home state (born in California but barely there a year), I went for it. Which complicated things for me. Even though I knew it would be stressful and out of my routine, I thought with enough heads up and prep that I’d be good. But not the case. I think if everything else was going swimmingly, that this would’ve worked out for me. It didn’t. Aches and pains and doubts. Neck issue the last few weeks. Increased work stress (I’ve lost a co-worker every 6 weeks this year and my workload increases by 15% or so each time). I want to do all the things but it seems it is too much for me. End up chasing too many rabbits. I knew I was kind of on fumes the week before when I got a bit of a cold and I’ve not been in contact with people. Stress leading to weakened immune system and still trying to push through. Taking cold medicine and antiflammatories to try and keep going, to allow me to rest my fevered brain as my father would say. I felt I had a handle on things Thursday evening. Woke up Friday feeling terrible. Not the worst I’ve ever felt but I had cold again and coupled with this little thing on top of the teetering tower of plates, it all came crashing down. I worried this would ruin training plans and that if this was worse than stress exacerbated cold it could get family sick. I also wouldn’t recover while on vacation. I don’t really relax, it’s stressful for me. And then the weirdest thing was that I was having a hard time keeping focus or following conversations. I got through my morning intake appointments but I had to bail. I ended up taking off at lunch and cancelling my leave for the trip. I felt terrible doing that (taking sick leave and cancelling holiday). I took Dayquil and tried to sleep. Ended up kind of sleeping for like 5hrs. I ate about half my normal food intake for the day and forced myself to stay up for about 5hrs (I did soft tissue work, Epsom salt, antiflammatories) and tried to calm myself down and relax. The day was lost. I was feeling depressed and self-loathing. That resulted in me only getting out of bed in the morning to eat something. I had stayed in bed for 12hrs on top of the 5hrs nap. I hadn’t wanted to get out of bed. I couldn’t fast this feeling away. I had to do stuff. If I didn’t get things back on track, then I was not going to have a good time come Monday (since I took out my vacation). I got up and made breakfast and had to think on what I was going to do today. Training would probably be subpar considering that I had only had about half of what I normally eat the day before (and most of it wasn’t whole food stuffs) and only having breakfast and doing it all myself. It was either do it today and try to avoid the thunderstorms or do nothing today and be alone with my thoughts and train tomorrow and hope to avoid the thunderstorms. I went with the first option. So to sum things up; feeling stressed, depressed and low energy and some joints aching by myself with potential thunderstorm coming and having to improvise some setups. Just my kind of odds. So starting things off with the Patrick stepdowns. 2 sets this time again. Understanding was this was lower volume day to adjust for the fatigue and to work for the vacation I was going to be on. Knees touchy and last week working up without the eccentrics to the working height seemed to be a good idea so did that again. Don’t have the mats here so had to get a little creative with what I used as my platform. I didn’t want to use lower height so ended up going up just a skootch. Seemed to be surprisingly well considering the circumstances. Knees felt less cranky the second set. Again, able to do these with minimal rest between sides and sets. Went inside for “drinky birds”. Glutes on the right side were feeling kind of sore and stiff. I went with a kettlebell this time. Felt like it would be easier to drop if needed. These are awkward and are harder than they look. Almost miss the clamshells. Almost. Front squats after that. No pauses or tempo. Just control. I decided with the possible thunderstorm that it was smarter to keep stuff in the garage as much as I could even if the setup outside with the power rack would be more stable. I’m not sure what I was feeling with these. Unlike with say incline bench press, I get a lot of things like squat when the pauses and tempo work are taken out of the equation. However, front squats have a unique aspect of being at the mercy of breathing and pressure on those pathways. So kind of unknown here. Head cold and stress and low energy could be bad. I managed fine last week with the lower rep stuff and long pauses so I figured I should in theory be fine. Looking over past information, I’ve not done over 305lbs for five reps before (I’ve done 5x5 with 305lbs though) so I guess this would technically be a PR. Since this was enough weight, I decided to do 40-50lbs jumps. Enough to get warm and acclimate and not fatigue. Weight was feeling a tad heavy but I knew from experience that it can be like that on front squats and overhead presses but move fine. Other than just feeling a little lightheaded on the top weight set near the end and the first set with 275lbs after that top set, these moved well. Which was good. They actually look faster than they feel on camera. Speaking of which, the new camera stand arrived the day before (one of the reasons I got up from the “nap”) and it is much sturdier and has more options. So the next thing was keg carries. Not looking forward to that. One, it was about to rain and two, I got three kegs and only the power keg can be adjusted to the weight I needed and three, my street isn’t even so there were going to be uphill and downhill sets. So plan here was warm up as needed with ideally doing two sets over the max distance weight (275lbs) for 50’ runs. I decided to do more warming up than usual to get used to things as it has been a while since I’ve done these at home (over a year) and last time I did my right knee decided to rebel on me and I ended up taking a break for a week from training and trying to figure out how I was going to keep doing this stuff. So get used to moving, see if certain things work better than others, etc. So that meant I was doing mostly 50lbs jumps or so. Not exact with spacers and not calibrated weights. Working the high carry and trying to get better at that. I felt more confident in it this time around to go for the max distance. Rain was minimal and I was able to keep it dry with a towel. Getting the little knee kip to help here. Only did a 33lbs jump for the last run. This felt a bit tough but could be because I just tossed in chains for the added weight and this was uphill. I didn’t bother with any chalk for these and saved that for the max distance walk. It felt light and I was booking it so to speak. I felt like I had 250’ in me no problem. Until I just ran out of steam. It was like someone unplugged my legs when I was about 15’ from getting to 200’. The uphill part of this finally caught up to me. But I wasn’t going to stop short. And I made it a point to turn around as well. Attempted to readjust but posterior chain was done. Maybe I couldn’t done a lower carry but it was risky and I just got what I could. Just about a foot further than last time and in about half the time too. Not sure if this was just from it being uphill efforts mixed in or just not a lot of carbs from low calorie intake the day before. It was just so sudden I felt the drain happen. Oh well. Gripping this powder coated keg is rough on the grip as some skin was torn (no bleeding, just dead skin). Rolled the keg into the garage and it was getting to the end of this. Back into the garage and it was really good timing as thunderstorm came through shortly afterwards. Dimel deadlifts against bands. Lighter tension than what has been used and light weight. Again, deloaded efforts. It took me a bit to figure out how I had stuff setup from when I last did these. Also checked the band tensions to make sure and not assume same as it was last year. Did these with no belt since it was really easy weight. Figured that I needed to work on bracing and my glutes were sore from keg work and from whatever I did earlier in the week too. Kind of twist on and old exercise here for the next part. Single leg squats to box but only the negatives. Lower with one leg and stand up with both. This actually seemed to be a good idea. Usually, the knee discomfort for the right has been on the concentric with these in the past. The left on the eccentric. These were a lot better compared to how things had felt for my knees with the leg extensions. I started higher box to just get the feel and see if knee sleeves were warranted. They were. 5 second eccentrics and using the kettlebells in the rack position. I wasn’t planning on going above 20lbs total but things felt fine enough so I did. Last thing then was abdominal/grip work. Hanging l-sit I guess and I could make the grip aspect challenging as long as my abdominal work wasn’t affected. No thick bar setup so I did rolling bag hang. Hip flexor/abdominal/upper quad fatigue was quicker than my grip. Kind of neat that my grip was holding up just fine on these. Left shoulder was stiff that first set and wasn’t a fan but calmed down during that set and was ready for the second. Put stuff away and had an early dinner rather than delay things and eat late. Stretched and iced knees. Hopefully I can continue to destress and get back to feeling me and being the best I can.