January 28, 2023 – Week 14, Day 4

Hip Airplanes (0-10-0-10 tempo)
bwx5/5
bwx5/5

Paused Cossack Squats (5 seconds)
bwx5/5
bwx5/5

Safety Squat Bar Squats w/ bands (+28lbs/+58lbs)
No Bands
65x3
Add Bands
65x3
115x3
155x3
205x3
245x3
295x3
350x3
315x3

Paused Stone of Steel Roll-ups (2 seconds, full squat, tacky towel)
140x2
175x2
209x2
244x4
244x4
244x4

Husafell Carries (taken from 20” box, turns at 50’)
Staggered Grip
150x100’
225x100’
300x200’
300x200’

Hercules Holds (hook grip)
230x10 seconds
340x34 seconds
280x74 seconds

Comments: With what was planned, I had intended to get out to train a little earlier but found that I needed the extra sleep of sleeping in an hour. I took the accidentally walking and training on the same day and spent Friday working through my lunch (mostly) to try and get work done to not feel so far behind. I felt I wasn’t able to concentrate during the many hours that the tree service stuff was going on around my house. Drive out thankfully wasn’t bad like last week. I think this might be a first as far as this training cycle with the contest prep in full swing where I didn’t feel “nervous” about something. Everything felt within my capabilities without any hype I guess. Even though I was about an hour behind schedule, there was still a good bit of people there. Rather than the copper sleeve, I just stuck with the ACE bandage wrap as the copper sleeve is too loose and keeps sliding down unless I tape it to my upper arm. The usual warming up with off with hip airplanes and Cossack squats with the pauses and holds. These have gotten to be a good bit easier for me. Previously with the hip airplanes, I needed to take a rest between sets and sides due to how taxing these were for my lower legs to balance. Now I can hold a conversation, not need rest and get distracted and miscount how long I’m in a hold or what rep I’m on.  Cossack squats again felt better than last week which had already felt better than the previous week. I’m thinking the addition of the knees over toes stuff and deep squat holds in the previous workout might have something to do with that as that is really the only change that has been made recently. Good enough that there isn’t a hesitancy like before expecting the dull ache in the left knee. Feeling like I’m doing more than just sitting down there and getting the hips, knees, ankles and hamstrings feeling good. Then it was on to the stuff requiring weights. So this will be the heavier week for the squats with the ssb. Kind of surprised the change made from the rep sets but not complaining. So plan would seem to be heavy triples and progressing on the heavy week and speed work with pauses the lighter week. Both with bands it would seem. So plan was to work up to a top triple with 2RIR or so using the same bands I used for the paused speed work last week. Work up in 2-3 rep sets and then take off 10% for another triple. I had decided to work up in triples the entire time this week. I was initially thinking 295lbs but figured that 335lbs was probably more likely. So working up in 40-50lbs jumps with the triples and things were feeling decent. I got to 295lbs and that felt fine enough. As mentioned, I was thinking 335lbs for this but I thought that might be calling it short and thought 345lbs. Then I just added 5lbs to that for 350lbs as that would be easier math for the down set. Little heavier than I was expecting it to be but the reps were strong enough and within the parameters for the proposed RPE (goal I believe is to be able to progress 10-20lbs each session). Down set felt fine. Feels heavy but moved fast. So squats done and then moving onto the event specific things for the day. Ditched the ACE bandage wrap at this point as it would impact/get in the way on the rest of what I was doing. Stone roll ups again. The light week. I’m sticking with the stone of steel and tacky towel for these because less clean up and I’m using lighter weight that I can actually adjust to be small increases vs dealing with big jumps on the stones with a lot of dust/grime. For this time around was to do them either 4x3 or 3x4 with 1-2ct holds at extension rather than just a brief hold like last time. I did the same jumps as last time doing doubles and snuck in a 2.5lbs plate for the top weight. I felt that the holds would add significant difficulty to what I was doing last time. After the first two working up sets, I ditched the shirt I had on and just did bare skin. I had thought it would be a good shirt to use but the fabric was too slick and stretchy (despite having a decal). As was the case last time, the first set felt the worst and then got a lot better on the following reps. Mostly just the breathing and the intraabdominal pressure of the movement. I had to take a little breather at the bottom of each rep that first set to get my head to clear before going again. The extensions are feeling good though and controlled. Husafell carries after that. I was a little surprised with some of this. I guess you could say I was a little surprised for the inclusion of both this and the last item for the session due to how things went last time and my proficiency. For the husafell, I’ve felt this is a light weight for this and that I probably only needed to stick to 80-90% contest to work on being ready for a long time of walking and last time I went further than I was expecting with 90% contest considering the work up to it. So part of my thinking after that and seeing where I was and what “gave” on that set had lead to thinking about working on either getting better and the hold but still have it be taxing or working on multiple sets of submaximal distances with shorter rests to get used to fatigue but also trying to move faster. Sounds like Drew took both ideas to heart with the sled drag and bag hold last week and what was setup for today. So this was to do contest weight for 2x200’ with 2 minutes rest. I feel that at this point, the only thing that needs some testing/work is the initial pick up because it does require some maneuvering of the implement to secure the staggered grip. Off the box for now to just save the lower back and work the carry. So I was somewhat expecting this but not at contest weight. But again, contest weight is relatively light. First set was smooth. I rushed rest (was more like 90 seconds rest) so there was fatigue for that one and it was definitely requiring more effort to finish out that one. Still felt like I had a 50’ length in me on that last run even with the fatigue. So still in a good place here. Last thing was Hercules holds. I was a also surprised this showed up again. One training cycle it was every other week and another it only showed up once when this was contested. Getting things coordinated last time was a pain in the butt and that was with people I knew and did this kind of stuff haha. This had been really the only reason to try and get out to train earlier was to try and secure assistance. I asked if two people would be staying any later to assist and they couldn’t due to having plans or already being at the gym for many hours at this point. So I set things up but was prepared to just do general grip work for this if need be. George indicated he’d help but I knew I needed more since he just had his biceps reattached last week. Thankfully, he was able to recruit assistance of the other three people in the gym (we decided after the warm up that it was better to have 4 people spotting/assisting). The plan for the day was more weight than last time for the 30 seconds hold (still RPE 8 or so) and then to beat my time from last time that I had soft set with the contest weight. As expected, there were issues with getting the weight released and such which led to some pre-exhaustion on my part to maintain balance (big reason I wear knee sleeves on these now). Accidentally did 4 seconds extra on the heavy set because of reasons lol. The contest weight set I went very close to failure. I maybe had 3 seconds left in me when I let go. So very close to 75 seconds on this. I was very thankful for everyone that helped me with the Hercules hold and put stuff away before drinking a protein shake and stretching. Drive home was good until got to second to last exit and there was a traffic incident so I had to take a detour around it.