Axle Push Presses (beltless)
26x2
56x2
86x2
116x1
146x1
176x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
26x2
56x2
86x2
116x1
146x1
176x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
206x1
Axle Strict Presses (beltless)
26x10
56x8
86x6
116x4
146x10
146x10
26x10
56x8
86x6
116x4
146x10
146x10
Seated Arm Over Arm Pulls (1.5” rope, uphill)
285x68’
285x68’
285x68’
285x68’
285x68’
285x68’
285x68’
285x68’
Sled Drags (alternating forwards/backwards)
195x2 minutes
195x2 minutes
195x2 minutes
195x2 minutes
195x2 minutes
195x2 minutes
Stretching
Comments: I seem to be less stressed now as I get closer to competing. I’m keeping busy with work but just letting stuff slide off me like water off a duck’s back. Reassessing expectations and plans. If I don’t compete, I get rid of potential outcomes that I’d like if they happen. I’d leave a potential next step (Arnold invite) out of the question for next year outright. Potential alternatives aren’t there so in either case, I’d be waiting until March 2023 at the earliest to compete again in anything. I think best thing would be to do kind of a soft reset for two weeks to get feeling fresh and restless and then do off season prep (4-10 weeks). I probably need to take a little time to consolidate what exactly is the plan and outcomes I want in the more likely outcomes. Not immediately pressing but would be another good distraction from thinking about the upcoming competition as that will do nothing but stress me further than needed when right now the main thing is working towards recovery. Can’t get stronger in the last week (outside of fatigue masking performance lifting) but can shortchange things. Surprisingly, this planned workout didn’t change from what was sent after my rage quit workout. Some suggestions were given as far as adjustments potentially the night before. I say surprisingly because with how I was feeling at the beginning of the week, I had mentioned that if I had to press axle again, I’d be very likely to chuck the thing into my neighbor’s yard. But rest and things I enjoy seem to get me levelheaded, even with stupid work stuff and my own hang-ups with myself and how I feel I should be doing performance wise. But I was a little slow moving with getting to start this workout because I was bit worn from the work week and still a bit hesitant with the experiences with how axle had felt the past two weeks. Weather wasn’t looking nice and it has been getting darker out quicker these past two weeks. However, I couldn’t start the workout right away. Apparently, some creature got sick on my patio and right where I’d be standing for overhead stuff. Judging by the vomit, it was probably a large cat or something similar. Something that eats a variety of things. Like some grass and mostly what looked like dry/wet food and hair. But I’ve cleaned up cat puke before and this was not that. So I’m thinking something that takes advantage of food left out for dogs/cats. An opportunist. I tried a shovel at first and that barely did anything so I had to get the hose to blast it off. And then dry it down so I didn’t eat it slipping on water and vomit residue. Then it was time to train. So first thing was unfortunately axle. The first half of this workout was axle so there was that. First part of it was push pressing. Singles with somewhat normal rest. Initially posted as 65-70% for 6-8 singles based off bar speed. So kind of like the deadlifts from Wednesday as far as judging volume. The suggestion if not up for it was to reduce the weight 10% and maybe do 10 singles. So option 1 being 201-217lbs for 6-8 and option 2 being 170-186lbs for 10 singles. With maybe bad weather, I didn’t want to deal with odd starting weights or jumps so I just started with empty bar and did 30lbs jumps with the plan being option 1. Because that was the first plan and my thinking is that obviously that is the best option. It can be a little tricky when knowing this is prep but also deload. I didn’t want to use a lot of support gear here, especially if it felt tougher than I would’ve liked with that stuff on and made me angry. Need to keep mine like a monkey inside a piñata, hiding amongst the candy hoping the kids don't break through with the stick. I did however wear knee sleeves, elbow compression cuffs and wrist wraps. The sleeves and cuffs more to mitigate joint discomfort so hopefully doesn’t cut into the recovery they need from a tough competitive season of training and the wrist wraps because that has been suggested for me to use even when not going for max or with deload for overhead stuff. Also the knee sleeves because of other things for the evening. Working up was feeling mostly fine. Last weight before the working sets did feel heavy in my hands so not too thrilled with that. I was also making sure I was walking out the weights rather than just standing up and pushing them. I feel that I rush things doing that and I want this to feel like I’m getting the movement feel fluid and normal. The positives here is that weight felt better after a few unracks as far as how it felt on my body. There were times in the past two weeks where it didn’t feel any easier which tells me recovery isn’t there. Still seemed to be some balancing issues with getting stable to initiate leg drive and weight seeming to feel tougher for that. But this is more than 100lbs less than my max at my best so these would go up without much trouble regardless. Compared to the past two times, the form felt more natural and fluid to me. Like it should. Not feeling stuck out in front. I had an idea while I was doing these. The first four singles I did these how I’ve been doing them forever, thumbless/false grip. Then for the next 2-4 (depending on how I feel), I’d try with thumbs wrapped around. The reason being that I’m going to see if thumbs around the axle improves my racking ability with the axle from the belt to shoulders portion. So I needed to see how things felt to press. There was a little bit of hesitancy to attempt the unrack honestly but not so much with pressing. I did feel the bar speed felt a little slower on the second set like this but it was more a hesitancy issue so I decided to do more for familiarization and the next single was back how it should. Then for the last one, I decided to see how it felt to unrack with thumbs wrapped around and then switch to thumbless. Needed to see how difficult that was to do. It wasn’t so I have options. Stripped weights back down to the bar to work back up with strict pressing with the axle. Strict pressing just feels way better with thumbless grip so did that. No belt on these either. Plan was 1-2 sets of 5-10 reps with 5-6 RPE. Suggested was 55% but if I felt off I could go with 40%. I definitely missed the RPE notation but I knew this was to be for blood flow stuff. I think if I had saw the RPE stuff, I’d probably have done lighter weight here just based on feel. I still feel that I stuck to that, just more at the higher end of that (especially the second set). I’m definitely out of strict press practice. Form felt different. Not sure if good or bad. I think part of it is most of strict pressing when it was done these past few cycles have been with bands. Bands can ground you. So this felt less like I was pressing in a more natural groove and more like a fixed plane. Like I was doing this on a smith machine. Certainly a lot of anterior deltoid focus but not really getting my head through. So I wonder if this is laxness in my mobility or just that with bands, this has been the groove that was dug and what felt the strongest right now. Questions for later and during the down time after competition. So after the pressing, it was time to do some other stuff. Plan was arm-over-arm form work. Since setting that up takes time and with weather not looking great, I felt it was best to put everything away from pressing first so that if it did start raining, I wouldn’t have a bunch of stuff to dry off. Plus the weights I use to anchor my rack are the best ones to use for loading and unloading stuff that needs to be reset. Goal for the day was to work on getting fast motions down on the arm-over-arm. As I mentioned at the last session with these on turf, couldn’t really do that. But I know I can do that when it is on street, even uphill. So written as light weight for 3 sets of 80’. I can use a lot more weight compared to turf setup, especially with thinner rope (this rope width will be contest thickness). So number listed was for the lightest weight I did last session. Timing was to do 20-30 seconds on these. So set things up but found I only had enough rope for 68’, so I decided I’d do 4x68’ instead so that I was getting closer to the volume distance wise. I had my father come over to eat the rope for me and assist with resetting the course. It took about 3 minutes to fully reset the course each time. Over the sets, my time improved by about 3 seconds from the first set to the last set. Short, quick strokes here and getting the legs involved. Blacktop is not kind on the posterior. I was kind of surprised I didn’t have blisters on my rear after these. It was really quite dark out after this and I had one more thing to do; sled work. Plan was 3 sets of 2 minutes of work, alternating between forwards and backwards dragging. I was to take 2 minutes rests between sets. So I had to deck myself and the sled out in lights and reflective stuff. This was fine enough, though I feel I could’ve done this all as one big 6 minute set with how used to this stuff I am at this point. Put stuff away and ate dinner before stretching out. Two more sessions to go.
Comments: I seem to be less stressed now as I get closer to competing. I’m keeping busy with work but just letting stuff slide off me like water off a duck’s back. Reassessing expectations and plans. If I don’t compete, I get rid of potential outcomes that I’d like if they happen. I’d leave a potential next step (Arnold invite) out of the question for next year outright. Potential alternatives aren’t there so in either case, I’d be waiting until March 2023 at the earliest to compete again in anything. I think best thing would be to do kind of a soft reset for two weeks to get feeling fresh and restless and then do off season prep (4-10 weeks). I probably need to take a little time to consolidate what exactly is the plan and outcomes I want in the more likely outcomes. Not immediately pressing but would be another good distraction from thinking about the upcoming competition as that will do nothing but stress me further than needed when right now the main thing is working towards recovery. Can’t get stronger in the last week (outside of fatigue masking performance lifting) but can shortchange things. Surprisingly, this planned workout didn’t change from what was sent after my rage quit workout. Some suggestions were given as far as adjustments potentially the night before. I say surprisingly because with how I was feeling at the beginning of the week, I had mentioned that if I had to press axle again, I’d be very likely to chuck the thing into my neighbor’s yard. But rest and things I enjoy seem to get me levelheaded, even with stupid work stuff and my own hang-ups with myself and how I feel I should be doing performance wise. But I was a little slow moving with getting to start this workout because I was bit worn from the work week and still a bit hesitant with the experiences with how axle had felt the past two weeks. Weather wasn’t looking nice and it has been getting darker out quicker these past two weeks. However, I couldn’t start the workout right away. Apparently, some creature got sick on my patio and right where I’d be standing for overhead stuff. Judging by the vomit, it was probably a large cat or something similar. Something that eats a variety of things. Like some grass and mostly what looked like dry/wet food and hair. But I’ve cleaned up cat puke before and this was not that. So I’m thinking something that takes advantage of food left out for dogs/cats. An opportunist. I tried a shovel at first and that barely did anything so I had to get the hose to blast it off. And then dry it down so I didn’t eat it slipping on water and vomit residue. Then it was time to train. So first thing was unfortunately axle. The first half of this workout was axle so there was that. First part of it was push pressing. Singles with somewhat normal rest. Initially posted as 65-70% for 6-8 singles based off bar speed. So kind of like the deadlifts from Wednesday as far as judging volume. The suggestion if not up for it was to reduce the weight 10% and maybe do 10 singles. So option 1 being 201-217lbs for 6-8 and option 2 being 170-186lbs for 10 singles. With maybe bad weather, I didn’t want to deal with odd starting weights or jumps so I just started with empty bar and did 30lbs jumps with the plan being option 1. Because that was the first plan and my thinking is that obviously that is the best option. It can be a little tricky when knowing this is prep but also deload. I didn’t want to use a lot of support gear here, especially if it felt tougher than I would’ve liked with that stuff on and made me angry. Need to keep mine like a monkey inside a piñata, hiding amongst the candy hoping the kids don't break through with the stick. I did however wear knee sleeves, elbow compression cuffs and wrist wraps. The sleeves and cuffs more to mitigate joint discomfort so hopefully doesn’t cut into the recovery they need from a tough competitive season of training and the wrist wraps because that has been suggested for me to use even when not going for max or with deload for overhead stuff. Also the knee sleeves because of other things for the evening. Working up was feeling mostly fine. Last weight before the working sets did feel heavy in my hands so not too thrilled with that. I was also making sure I was walking out the weights rather than just standing up and pushing them. I feel that I rush things doing that and I want this to feel like I’m getting the movement feel fluid and normal. The positives here is that weight felt better after a few unracks as far as how it felt on my body. There were times in the past two weeks where it didn’t feel any easier which tells me recovery isn’t there. Still seemed to be some balancing issues with getting stable to initiate leg drive and weight seeming to feel tougher for that. But this is more than 100lbs less than my max at my best so these would go up without much trouble regardless. Compared to the past two times, the form felt more natural and fluid to me. Like it should. Not feeling stuck out in front. I had an idea while I was doing these. The first four singles I did these how I’ve been doing them forever, thumbless/false grip. Then for the next 2-4 (depending on how I feel), I’d try with thumbs wrapped around. The reason being that I’m going to see if thumbs around the axle improves my racking ability with the axle from the belt to shoulders portion. So I needed to see how things felt to press. There was a little bit of hesitancy to attempt the unrack honestly but not so much with pressing. I did feel the bar speed felt a little slower on the second set like this but it was more a hesitancy issue so I decided to do more for familiarization and the next single was back how it should. Then for the last one, I decided to see how it felt to unrack with thumbs wrapped around and then switch to thumbless. Needed to see how difficult that was to do. It wasn’t so I have options. Stripped weights back down to the bar to work back up with strict pressing with the axle. Strict pressing just feels way better with thumbless grip so did that. No belt on these either. Plan was 1-2 sets of 5-10 reps with 5-6 RPE. Suggested was 55% but if I felt off I could go with 40%. I definitely missed the RPE notation but I knew this was to be for blood flow stuff. I think if I had saw the RPE stuff, I’d probably have done lighter weight here just based on feel. I still feel that I stuck to that, just more at the higher end of that (especially the second set). I’m definitely out of strict press practice. Form felt different. Not sure if good or bad. I think part of it is most of strict pressing when it was done these past few cycles have been with bands. Bands can ground you. So this felt less like I was pressing in a more natural groove and more like a fixed plane. Like I was doing this on a smith machine. Certainly a lot of anterior deltoid focus but not really getting my head through. So I wonder if this is laxness in my mobility or just that with bands, this has been the groove that was dug and what felt the strongest right now. Questions for later and during the down time after competition. So after the pressing, it was time to do some other stuff. Plan was arm-over-arm form work. Since setting that up takes time and with weather not looking great, I felt it was best to put everything away from pressing first so that if it did start raining, I wouldn’t have a bunch of stuff to dry off. Plus the weights I use to anchor my rack are the best ones to use for loading and unloading stuff that needs to be reset. Goal for the day was to work on getting fast motions down on the arm-over-arm. As I mentioned at the last session with these on turf, couldn’t really do that. But I know I can do that when it is on street, even uphill. So written as light weight for 3 sets of 80’. I can use a lot more weight compared to turf setup, especially with thinner rope (this rope width will be contest thickness). So number listed was for the lightest weight I did last session. Timing was to do 20-30 seconds on these. So set things up but found I only had enough rope for 68’, so I decided I’d do 4x68’ instead so that I was getting closer to the volume distance wise. I had my father come over to eat the rope for me and assist with resetting the course. It took about 3 minutes to fully reset the course each time. Over the sets, my time improved by about 3 seconds from the first set to the last set. Short, quick strokes here and getting the legs involved. Blacktop is not kind on the posterior. I was kind of surprised I didn’t have blisters on my rear after these. It was really quite dark out after this and I had one more thing to do; sled work. Plan was 3 sets of 2 minutes of work, alternating between forwards and backwards dragging. I was to take 2 minutes rests between sets. So I had to deck myself and the sled out in lights and reflective stuff. This was fine enough, though I feel I could’ve done this all as one big 6 minute set with how used to this stuff I am at this point. Put stuff away and ate dinner before stretching out. Two more sessions to go.
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