Patrick Stepdowns (3 second eccentrics)
bwx20/20 at 6”
bwx20/20 at 6”
One Legged Dumbbell Romanian Deadlifts (opposite side)
40x5/5
80x10/10
90x10/10
40x5/5
80x10/10
90x10/10
Safety Squat Bar Squats
70x10
120x8
170x6
220x4
270x2
320x2
370x6
370x6
370x6
70x10
120x8
170x6
220x4
270x2
320x2
370x6
370x6
370x6
I-Beam Farmer’s Deadlifts (16” pick)
122x1
152x1
182x1
212x1
242x3
242x3
242x3
242x3
242x3
122x1
152x1
182x1
212x1
242x3
242x3
242x3
242x3
242x3
Titan Fitness Farmer’s Shrugs (16” pick, heels on slant board)
160x40
160x40
Sandbag Over Shoulders (left)
175x1
205x1
225x1
250x1/306x1
250x1/306x1
250x1/306x1
250x1/306x3
175x1
205x1
225x1
250x1/306x1
250x1/306x1
250x1/306x1
250x1/306x3
Sandbag Carries (turns at 50’)
306x100’
306x100’
306x100’
306x100’
Glute Ham Raises (4 pins showing)
bwx25
bwx15/8/2 (rest pause 15 sec/10 sec)
bwx25
bwx15/8/2 (rest pause 15 sec/10 sec)
Stretching
Comments: I seem to be mostly over whatever had me stress crash. I say mostly as occasionally I will have some “fluttering” around the one eye that likes to twitch when stressed out and dreams that seem to be a mishmash of current things and things that in the past are stressful. Perhaps it because my birthday is coming up and it just is another day realizing I’m getting older, a reminder of mortality and that I’ve still not done the things I wanted to do over 10yrs ago despite my best efforts. So could be that but who knows. Just focus on the now as best I can despite there being distractions at every turn. So at least some good is that the strain situation from week one has gone down considerable where I hardly notice it. The not so good is that the right knee is acting up again and that isn’t fun. Been trying to do soft tissue work around and on the affected area and trying to help blood flow as well as keep inflammation down without anti-inflammatories for the time being. I knew training would be tough on it so plan would be icing and topical stuff when I got home. I was expecting the drive to be like last weekend with the lane closures but it. Didn’t come to find out they announced Thursday it was postponed so it won’t be for another 4 weeks before it is like that again. I had woken up to my alarm but knew I was feeling tired and turned it off and woke up an hour later. So I wasn’t really expecting people to be there really as I knew there were two local-ish shows going on and at least one person was competing at one of those. But there did seem to be some people there but mostly powerlifting. It apparently was 94 degrees when I got there but I didn’t really notice it. I was more focused on my right knee not being difficult today. So starting things off with the Patrick stepdowns. Controlled eccentrics to a low step on hard foam for a set of 20 reps each side. These felt good and thankfully no real aches either knee. Just seemed to get things feeling warm. From there it was the offset rdls with the dumbbell for 2x10. These had felt surprisingly strong last time and I was prepared for that feeling again if warranted. Plan was to do just 80lbs for both working sets. Warming up felt really easy but had to see how things felt. Felt good and went with 90lbs for the second set. Getting a bit more challenging. I think I was just pleased that my knees weren’t really barking at me. I’ll have to peruse the dumbbell selection next time if these continue and see if I need to stick with this weight as the dumbbells above this could be a bit odd in handle shape/thickness. Squats with the ssb again. I guess I made things look too easy last week as notes at the beginning of this training cycle had indicated probably not going to push these. Going up to 75% of projected max on these for 3x6. So going up 25lbs from week one. 15lbs under my best set of 6 at this point. And with the knee not being so pleased with me. My breathing didn’t feel hampered that week so that was a plus. But I was leery about the knee in that holding up to this weight for reps. It’s not like you know at the start, you got to do that first rep to see and it could a sudden oh no scenario. So takes a bit of intestinal fortitude to do it in that state and then repeat the effort several times. So there was certainly hesitation but knee aches seemed to not be that bad. Working up I knew I was kind of distracting/delaying with talking with people. But whatever to get comfortable. I feel I was a bit more forward today with the weight and that might be from aches trying to sit back more and keep the bar up. Even with that, it didn’t feel like the two-part lift from the first week. Or at least didn’t seem to be as noticeable or jarring. I felt I had 2RIR on each set. Plan had been 3 minutes rests and after reviewing things, I guess I overcompensated from past two weeks as rest turned into 4 minutes. I just can’t seem to get these right but I go until I feel ready unless really short rests and usually I get them right. But my 3 minutes just never seems to be 3 minutes and I don’t want a timer to rush me on the longer rests haha. I’ll go when I’m good and ready. From there it was on to the farmer’s deadlifts. Same as last time these popped up with it being 5x3 with 60-75 seconds rest. As written, the plan was to keep it no straps and go up 10-15lbs per hand from last time and keep these speedy. I know this is still the beginning phase and that need to build slow. Know I can do the things even if not right this second and that I can pour it all out when it matters. However, I felt I needed to change some things up here. Last week I had used the Titan Fitness handles and I felt they were uncomfortable in how they reacted when they were dropped and attempting to do reps. They bounced way too much for me. I had been fine I guess with this when I was training for the frame deadlift for Regionals as it was the only frame I really had access to at home and at home would be where I was pushing it. I don’t know how these handles at the show will be really but I imagine from watching them in use they aren’t going to bounce. So with the emphasis being reps at this point and for speed (I know things will switch up toward different days and stuff being “heavy”) that I try different handles. So I went with the I-beam handles. I did singles working up and did 30lbs jumps. So ending up with 17lbs more than last time. This could be great or a mistake. Really no in-between here. I mean other than getting bruises on the calves (had these last week from all the farmer’s picks as well as all the farmer’s deadlifts the week before), this was much more tolerable. I the bouncing wasn’t chaotic. I was able to keep to 60 seconds rests here and actually seemed to pull these quicker overall. Still feels decently heavy. From there it was to the farmer’s shrugs. I was kind of surprised these stuck on with how easy they were but the weight was increased a decent bit. Plan was a set of 40 reps with same setup. I swapped back in the Titan Fitness handles as to keep things feeling the same to gauge and because these feel the worst of the farmer’s handles that I have to use as far as the grip on them. The increase in weight was noticed but even with that, I still feel I could probably double the reps I did. Picking them up (while feet on slant board) and locking out might be a little more challenging than doing like 20 reps with these. So it was on to the sandbag over shoulder stuff. It took a bit of reading comprehension to ascertain what the plan was. Sometimes I’m given a range for stuff when coming back to it but it seems I was to do sets of medley with 250lbs and 275lbs and then do extra reps with the 275lbs on the last set. I was kind of dreading the 275lbs as it just feels so heavy (and there is a reason for that). So plan was do singles to warm up and not really try and go competition speed between the implements as I knew that second sandbag would be a bear. I did locate a 225lbs sandbag (apparently they made one of the 250lbs Ironmind bags 225lbs). so that made warming up in singles worthwhile. I got set for these medley runs. Plan was 4 runs with 90 seconds rest between (plus the extra reps at the end of the last one). 250lbs up like nothing and mentally gird myself for the “275lbs”. Hell this feels heavy. So with getting that first one done, I figured that I’d pop 250lbs up quick and easy and then take my time for the “275lbs”. 250lbs was easy each time but the other bag was noticeable feeling tougher each time. The plan for that last set was to do 1-3 reps on top of what I did at the end for the heavier bag assuming they were powerful and not outside of 60 seconds. My thoughts on this was more to do the planned 1-2 and then take a short rest and then do the “extra” reps within a 60 seconds time frame. I knew that I needed to try for at least one rep. The first extra rep went up like one of the better reps really so I kind of took a moment to collect my thoughts and decided I’d try one more. That one was the toughest of the day. After that was done. I knew I had to weigh that sandbag. It felt way too heavy to be 275lbs. Turns out I was right. See, this bag had been 306lbs and at the time of the contest in March, it was labelled as 275lbs and I had assumed they took weight out of it. That was an incorrect assumption as it is still 306lbs. So a 31lbs misload. Also means any 275lbs sandbags I’ve done since middle of March to now has been 306lbs. I think I’ve found the true 275lbs but I don’t trust it to hold up to roughhousing so I’ll probably bring in my own for next time if needed. Then it was on to carries. So as you can kind of guess, this meant that when I did that 150’ run with drops every 50’, it had been 31lbs heavier than I had thought. Today I was to do 275lbs for 2x100’ with turns at 50’ and only rest 30-60 seconds between the two runs. Seeing as how I did that with 306lbs, I was going to stick with that. That I was using contest weight (3rd bag in the shouldering medley and 1st bag in the carry medley) for stuff for multiple reps/sets had me feeling a bit better. I’d just picked this damn bag up and over my shoulder 6 times already today so picking this up two more times to my lap wasn’t sounding that bad. The three picks for 150’ was way worse. My plan was do to these with the 30 seconds rest to work that conditioning aspect and I was able to do that. So from there last thing was glute ham raises. A little different this week. First set was to be done for max reps (1RIR) with good form and control and then I was to rest 2 minutes and do a second set to match that rep total but use rest pausing to get there so that no set was to true failure. Right knee was a bit sore and some swelling (to be expected considering) but was fine once I got into position. I’ve done 2x20 before but not with a more controlled eccentric. Got 25 reps and maybe I could go more but I was feeling like I’d start to ingrain bad habits beyond that. Endurance on these does seem to drop off over sets. Did about 15 seconds for the first rest pause and 10 seconds for the last one. Put stuff away and stayed to stretch out (to hopefully have right knee not so temperamental on the drive home) before heading home.
Comments: I seem to be mostly over whatever had me stress crash. I say mostly as occasionally I will have some “fluttering” around the one eye that likes to twitch when stressed out and dreams that seem to be a mishmash of current things and things that in the past are stressful. Perhaps it because my birthday is coming up and it just is another day realizing I’m getting older, a reminder of mortality and that I’ve still not done the things I wanted to do over 10yrs ago despite my best efforts. So could be that but who knows. Just focus on the now as best I can despite there being distractions at every turn. So at least some good is that the strain situation from week one has gone down considerable where I hardly notice it. The not so good is that the right knee is acting up again and that isn’t fun. Been trying to do soft tissue work around and on the affected area and trying to help blood flow as well as keep inflammation down without anti-inflammatories for the time being. I knew training would be tough on it so plan would be icing and topical stuff when I got home. I was expecting the drive to be like last weekend with the lane closures but it. Didn’t come to find out they announced Thursday it was postponed so it won’t be for another 4 weeks before it is like that again. I had woken up to my alarm but knew I was feeling tired and turned it off and woke up an hour later. So I wasn’t really expecting people to be there really as I knew there were two local-ish shows going on and at least one person was competing at one of those. But there did seem to be some people there but mostly powerlifting. It apparently was 94 degrees when I got there but I didn’t really notice it. I was more focused on my right knee not being difficult today. So starting things off with the Patrick stepdowns. Controlled eccentrics to a low step on hard foam for a set of 20 reps each side. These felt good and thankfully no real aches either knee. Just seemed to get things feeling warm. From there it was the offset rdls with the dumbbell for 2x10. These had felt surprisingly strong last time and I was prepared for that feeling again if warranted. Plan was to do just 80lbs for both working sets. Warming up felt really easy but had to see how things felt. Felt good and went with 90lbs for the second set. Getting a bit more challenging. I think I was just pleased that my knees weren’t really barking at me. I’ll have to peruse the dumbbell selection next time if these continue and see if I need to stick with this weight as the dumbbells above this could be a bit odd in handle shape/thickness. Squats with the ssb again. I guess I made things look too easy last week as notes at the beginning of this training cycle had indicated probably not going to push these. Going up to 75% of projected max on these for 3x6. So going up 25lbs from week one. 15lbs under my best set of 6 at this point. And with the knee not being so pleased with me. My breathing didn’t feel hampered that week so that was a plus. But I was leery about the knee in that holding up to this weight for reps. It’s not like you know at the start, you got to do that first rep to see and it could a sudden oh no scenario. So takes a bit of intestinal fortitude to do it in that state and then repeat the effort several times. So there was certainly hesitation but knee aches seemed to not be that bad. Working up I knew I was kind of distracting/delaying with talking with people. But whatever to get comfortable. I feel I was a bit more forward today with the weight and that might be from aches trying to sit back more and keep the bar up. Even with that, it didn’t feel like the two-part lift from the first week. Or at least didn’t seem to be as noticeable or jarring. I felt I had 2RIR on each set. Plan had been 3 minutes rests and after reviewing things, I guess I overcompensated from past two weeks as rest turned into 4 minutes. I just can’t seem to get these right but I go until I feel ready unless really short rests and usually I get them right. But my 3 minutes just never seems to be 3 minutes and I don’t want a timer to rush me on the longer rests haha. I’ll go when I’m good and ready. From there it was on to the farmer’s deadlifts. Same as last time these popped up with it being 5x3 with 60-75 seconds rest. As written, the plan was to keep it no straps and go up 10-15lbs per hand from last time and keep these speedy. I know this is still the beginning phase and that need to build slow. Know I can do the things even if not right this second and that I can pour it all out when it matters. However, I felt I needed to change some things up here. Last week I had used the Titan Fitness handles and I felt they were uncomfortable in how they reacted when they were dropped and attempting to do reps. They bounced way too much for me. I had been fine I guess with this when I was training for the frame deadlift for Regionals as it was the only frame I really had access to at home and at home would be where I was pushing it. I don’t know how these handles at the show will be really but I imagine from watching them in use they aren’t going to bounce. So with the emphasis being reps at this point and for speed (I know things will switch up toward different days and stuff being “heavy”) that I try different handles. So I went with the I-beam handles. I did singles working up and did 30lbs jumps. So ending up with 17lbs more than last time. This could be great or a mistake. Really no in-between here. I mean other than getting bruises on the calves (had these last week from all the farmer’s picks as well as all the farmer’s deadlifts the week before), this was much more tolerable. I the bouncing wasn’t chaotic. I was able to keep to 60 seconds rests here and actually seemed to pull these quicker overall. Still feels decently heavy. From there it was to the farmer’s shrugs. I was kind of surprised these stuck on with how easy they were but the weight was increased a decent bit. Plan was a set of 40 reps with same setup. I swapped back in the Titan Fitness handles as to keep things feeling the same to gauge and because these feel the worst of the farmer’s handles that I have to use as far as the grip on them. The increase in weight was noticed but even with that, I still feel I could probably double the reps I did. Picking them up (while feet on slant board) and locking out might be a little more challenging than doing like 20 reps with these. So it was on to the sandbag over shoulder stuff. It took a bit of reading comprehension to ascertain what the plan was. Sometimes I’m given a range for stuff when coming back to it but it seems I was to do sets of medley with 250lbs and 275lbs and then do extra reps with the 275lbs on the last set. I was kind of dreading the 275lbs as it just feels so heavy (and there is a reason for that). So plan was do singles to warm up and not really try and go competition speed between the implements as I knew that second sandbag would be a bear. I did locate a 225lbs sandbag (apparently they made one of the 250lbs Ironmind bags 225lbs). so that made warming up in singles worthwhile. I got set for these medley runs. Plan was 4 runs with 90 seconds rest between (plus the extra reps at the end of the last one). 250lbs up like nothing and mentally gird myself for the “275lbs”. Hell this feels heavy. So with getting that first one done, I figured that I’d pop 250lbs up quick and easy and then take my time for the “275lbs”. 250lbs was easy each time but the other bag was noticeable feeling tougher each time. The plan for that last set was to do 1-3 reps on top of what I did at the end for the heavier bag assuming they were powerful and not outside of 60 seconds. My thoughts on this was more to do the planned 1-2 and then take a short rest and then do the “extra” reps within a 60 seconds time frame. I knew that I needed to try for at least one rep. The first extra rep went up like one of the better reps really so I kind of took a moment to collect my thoughts and decided I’d try one more. That one was the toughest of the day. After that was done. I knew I had to weigh that sandbag. It felt way too heavy to be 275lbs. Turns out I was right. See, this bag had been 306lbs and at the time of the contest in March, it was labelled as 275lbs and I had assumed they took weight out of it. That was an incorrect assumption as it is still 306lbs. So a 31lbs misload. Also means any 275lbs sandbags I’ve done since middle of March to now has been 306lbs. I think I’ve found the true 275lbs but I don’t trust it to hold up to roughhousing so I’ll probably bring in my own for next time if needed. Then it was on to carries. So as you can kind of guess, this meant that when I did that 150’ run with drops every 50’, it had been 31lbs heavier than I had thought. Today I was to do 275lbs for 2x100’ with turns at 50’ and only rest 30-60 seconds between the two runs. Seeing as how I did that with 306lbs, I was going to stick with that. That I was using contest weight (3rd bag in the shouldering medley and 1st bag in the carry medley) for stuff for multiple reps/sets had me feeling a bit better. I’d just picked this damn bag up and over my shoulder 6 times already today so picking this up two more times to my lap wasn’t sounding that bad. The three picks for 150’ was way worse. My plan was do to these with the 30 seconds rest to work that conditioning aspect and I was able to do that. So from there last thing was glute ham raises. A little different this week. First set was to be done for max reps (1RIR) with good form and control and then I was to rest 2 minutes and do a second set to match that rep total but use rest pausing to get there so that no set was to true failure. Right knee was a bit sore and some swelling (to be expected considering) but was fine once I got into position. I’ve done 2x20 before but not with a more controlled eccentric. Got 25 reps and maybe I could go more but I was feeling like I’d start to ingrain bad habits beyond that. Endurance on these does seem to drop off over sets. Did about 15 seconds for the first rest pause and 10 seconds for the last one. Put stuff away and stayed to stretch out (to hopefully have right knee not so temperamental on the drive home) before heading home.
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