January 14, 2024 - January 20, 2024 - Week 5

January 15, 2024 – Week 5, Day 1

Dynamic Warm Up

Bench Presses
45x15
95x8
145x5
195x5
245x5
295x5

Chest Supported Barbell Rows
95x8
145x8
195x8
Added Straps
245x8
285x8

12” Log Strict Presses
90x2
115x2
140x2
165x2
165x2
165x2
165x2
165x6

Standing 12” Log Lockouts
165x3 seconds
195x3 seconds
225x3 seconds
255x3 seconds
285x3 seconds
305x3 seconds
325x3 seconds
353x20 seconds

Stretching
 
Comments: It was probably a good thing off work this day. I kind of used Sunday to recover from Saturday and then with the expectation of Monday off stayed up later Sunday before falling asleep. I didn’t realize I guess how much Saturday had taken out of me with the those two exercises on top of pushing the wide pulls. I woke up earlier on Sunday to use the restroom and felt stiff and dehydrated. My left wrist was achy too. Fell back asleep and felt better when I did wake up. But lower back was feeling pretty stiff so I knew I needed to move around. Thankfully it was windy as a bastard out so there was a lot of dead branches and such that I had to pick up and that seemed so I got some movement in that way in before walking. Weight the same as last week. Continuing to tweak the diet and get the calorie count right. I’m going to attempt adding some more small calorie changes as the addition of just 130 calories of yogurt seemed to be a push that got me up 10lbs over 6 weeks’ time. There has also been periods of stagnation where I’ve finally bumped up but 3 weeks in a row seems to be the longest at this point. I’m giving myself until middle of March to get to 285lbs. If I can’t get there with forcing food down, it isn’t sustainable and I may just need to stick to 265lbs class. I got 2 months to get that sorted I guess. Monday woke up a little earlier but still some stiffness. Not painful, just been unexpected to have stiffness in my back for quite some time. I should note that I’ve not really had much in the way of discomfort since returning to training with Mr. Westerling and I’ve only iced my knees after the first day of Nationals before bed to help with getting tendons to calm down so I could sleep. So I think noticing when other stuff is off because joint discomfort is no longer the norm here. Being off work seemed to be a good thing for rest but also with weather. Snow was the plan apparently for later in the day but I had only thought there was to be snow tomorrow. Guess both. I wasn’t aware of this until later anyways as I had intended to train around lunch time in the first place. Cold as the day before but not windy. So tolerable. Mobility stuff per usual was fine. Wore my warmups to help with warming up faster and did everything in the garage. Starting off with bench. Plan for the session was work up in 5’s to a top set of 5 with this not being a max. There wasn’t really a suggested here like the first week with 275lbs. I figured that high end would be 20lbs increase. I was somewhat uncertain with that seeing as how incline log work went last week. There was no real aches in my shoulders here. I was kind of expecting some since this motion seemed to have that as well as the impact stress from a 250lbs sandbag on each side of my neck. I should be able to do that. I set things up so that I was doing 50lbs jumps and then decide how the last set feels and either go with 10lbs to 20lbs. 245lbs felt ok. Not amazing but it certainly felt a bit better than how 225lbs was initially feeling last time. But I was still waffling between 290lbs and 295lbs and just went with 295lbs. I’d feel real stupid if I messed this up. I feel I’m still getting used to this grip and form as I seem to need to adjust things at times. I got the set done. Not an absolute max but likely need to do 10lbs at the most for next time. I do feel it is important that if I’m to be doing 300lbs or more log and axle that I need to be doing 300lbs or more on bench and front squats for reps to facilitate that. Chest supported rows up next. 5 sets of 8 reps to a top set for the day. Compared to last time, notes said to aim for something challenging. So I figured I could get closer to what I’ve done on these before. Same as bench with doing 50lbs jumps. I had tried to do the same weight as the bench last time but found that my arms and such were not up to it at this time. It would seem that I’m still not quite used to it after doing the sandbag lifting. Probably because I jumped up 25lbs on that and not repeating the session like how I did with stone of steel stuff for the last prep. It didn’t feel like a good idea to push this so I went up 40lbs for the last set. Hopefully I get used to these in this session. But I may need to lower expectations here at this time. The lighter weight stuff is feeling easy. That was enough of in the garage unfortunately and it was now time to go outside. Log strict pressing was up next. Warm up as needed and do 5x2 at 65%. Axle had been surprisingly good last time after the screw up with log incline. It hadn’t felt the greatest as far as pressing at the start. Log had felt good last time besides the initial pressure on the chest. Things were feeling pretty good. The second reps weren’t feeling as I guess crisp as I wanted them but it didn’t seem off. Usually I get better as I go and then the rep set I kind of surprise myself with how I’m feeling. I was surprised this time but not with how well. It was feeling tough and I called it at 6 reps there. I mean, this was just bonus reps really. But it was a little concerning considering 15lbs less I got more than double this rep output quite convincingly. But I did push the benching and rowing this time around and the sandbag work required more effort compared to the time before. But it was enough that I was wondering if I misloaded by like 20lbs. Also not wearing a belt yet at this point (hard belt that is). So a little bit of a damper there. Last thing was lockout workout. Following from axle with starting with log press weight and then doing 30lbs jumps up to 285lbs and then 20lbs jumps. I could tell this might be tough today. Initially thinking when I had this planned was to match the axle weight but I concluded that was likely not smart considering how tough that had been on the axle and last time I did the log I misloaded the top set by 10lbs. It had started to snow a little at this point. I really needed to focus on this as being lackadaisical in any part of the bracing was going to be not a good time. I actually messed that up initially going for 305lbs. That was a bit embarrassing. And I’m to be pressing that in June if I hope to do well. That miss made it clear that I needed to not go for 365lbs here. Judge how 325lbs went. That I didn’t screw up so I figured I’d do 353lbs (160kgs) just because. I almost lost it right away but I fought like hell for balance in my everywhere and managed to get it. Held for what I thought was 24 seconds before putting down but was 20 seconds. Oh well, just at the limit. I then had to eat like 5 meals at once to get caught up on food intake before putting stuff away and stretching.

January 17, 2024 – Week 5, Day 2

Dynamic Warm Up

Front Squats
45x10
95x5
145x3
195x3
245x3
295x5

Romanian Deadlifts w/ Hip Circle (straps)
135x5
225x3
315x3
405x3
495x3
551x5

Hyper Extensions
bwx10

Hyper Extension Holds (Neck Harness & Plate)
10+45x45 seconds

Crunches
bw+10x25

Lying Leg Raises
bwx25

Stretching
 
Comments: Even with a day off work on Monday, still feeling like a long week where nothing is going to get done as far as work. I guess me also thinking on things. Thinking on how log press that I didn’t feel like I had many reps there on the strict pressing last set as well as the weight gain and trying to stay in the SHW class. Kind of set myself that if I’m not able to get close to 285lbs by March with the most recent diet adjustments (and feel comfortable at that weight) then I will need to stick with weight my body seems to want to be at. Even if this doesn’t necessarily work out, this increased food consumption may be something to consider for an actual “bulking” offseason plan. My lower back had been feeling pretty stiff from Saturday training as mentioned Monday and it seemed to be easing up. My upper back and shoulders were really feeling the training on Monday. Then got another snow storm Tuesday so had to do some more shoveling. So not really getting much rest to those areas. This was tougher than the first snow this year since it was staying frigid temperatures so I didn’t have the luxury of warmer weather and sun to help with melting stuff. It was cold enough that stuff heated up by the friction of the shovel against the pavement that melted stuff was then refreezing. Ended up using the rock salt stuff I had saved and needed to put that down at times rather than at the very end when I was done due to the risk of slipping. My knees were feeling pretty tender even coming to Wednesday. Partially that and maybe due to the big drop in temperature as well as moving heavier weights every session. My meal timing was off on Wednesday and I think I was also realizing there was another snow storm for the end of the week. So I started training a little later to allow for my stomach to rest and I guess get my head into it. Mobility warming up wasn’t bad. Just cold and slight joint aches. But thankfully not as bad as I was expecting doing the movements. First thing for this session was front squats. Warm up as needed and do triples up to a top set of five reps. As with last time, notes said to make sure that it was smooth and powerful. Similar to bench and rows, I set things up so that if feeling good, it was 50lbs jumps all the way up with allowing myself to do 295lbs as the top set. If not feeling great then I could do less but at least 285lbs. 275lbs had felt pretty good other than the breathing issue on the last rep. I know that that will continue to be something until I get used to heavier front squats again. But I also know that as long as my knees are feeling good, this weight will feel less compressive and restrictive. Which is good for my overhead pressing. I was not really feeling like this was going to be a good session with my knees and hips aching. The way I do these with the straps tends to work for me but today it just wasn’t. Not sure what it was with how I set them but they kept getting in my face. I swapped them around and that seemed to take care of that issue but they then felt weird in my hands. So I went back to how I had them and hoped for the best. 245lbs felt fine as far as moving the weight but it did feel hard on the breathing. Which isn’t a good confidence booster when planning to do more weight and more reps. Again, I was having those little doubts with thinking the choice I had set for myself was going to be too much. Bargaining and then finally biting the bullet and putting 295lbs on like I intended. Really tell a difference from how this kind of weight felt on my body now compared to how it felt on the deload for the last show. The breathing was an issue but the weight felt easy on my lower body. I got two reps before I had to stop and get a breath and rebrace and that ended up being what I needed to do to get through the set. I guess I’ll need to be more mindful of this as I try to put on weight but also just in general. Been noticing that I need to control my breathing more with how tight I’m bracing I guess now. The right side strap I got a little loose on the last rep but still fine. Arms looking huge in the video on these haha. Then the deadlift portion of the session. The heavier of the two variations that are making up the off season. The wide pulls to work the start and build up the hips and these rdls to work the top range. With how these feel, I’m trying to treat them as TUT floating rack pulls. I knew from last time and how the wide pulls went that I probably had a big jump in weight still before I got to the point where gradual progress would make more sense as far as increase. The warming up seemed to indicate plate jumps as opposed to 40-50lbs jumps so I went for that this time. I initially was thinking 515lbs to 545lbs for the top set of 5 reps after working up in plate jump triples to 495lbs. I was being mindful of my midsection and making sure I didn’t get a cramping sensation like I did last time with these. 495lbs felt comfortable and I kind of knew that I needed to expand the range to 545lbs as the low end to go for. I knew that 585lbs would be too much at this time (would also be the most I’ve attempted for an rdl) to safely get the set done but I wanted to do a little more than 545lbs. So I settled on 551lbs or 250kgs. Just because (I think I like swapping to a kilo goal for things). I’ve only been in this weight territory once before with the rdls and I had been using sawhorses at the time. I’m actually not sure if the dinky rack I got can really handle much more than this going forward. I guess a good but bad problem finally being strong enough for safety concerns. But man was this feeling heavy on my body. A bit different with how these are with breathing compared to regular pulls. So a lot of pressure built up. I was a little worried that I’d get lightheaded similar to the front squats. But I took what I had learned from the wide pulls and the front squats with rebracing and breathing at the top of the motion and got it done. I believe I’ve got these feeling about the same difficulty as the wide pulls now. From there it was time for the hyper bench hold with the neck harness and plate. Warming up for it with hyper extensions again. I wasn’t expecting much here as this tends to be tougher to hold compared to the wide pull days. And this had been a tough session weight wise. But I guess I had something click for me on these finally with not only getting the hold but also with getting the midsection to brace in a way that was supporting but not fatiguing. Got to my goal of 45 seconds on these. So that was a nice feeling. I’m not sure if I should stick to this again for another session (assuming these continue) to make sure I’m consistent (and this wasn’t a fluke) or to increase the weight on the neck harness and build up again (assuming I can get 30 seconds). The abdominals stuff was next. The moving vs the bracing of the alternative week session. The crunches the same with a set of 25 reps with option of weight. These had been a little tougher than I would’ve like last time with the weight but that could’ve been from the stomach cramp from earlier as well. I moved the weight placement a bit further from where I held it last time a few reps into the set and this increased difficulty as well as allow for more ROM on the bottom of the lift so I could have my thoracic spine moving as well with flexion and extension. I tried to move to the lying leg raises quickly (I had already started cooking dinner) but got an ab cramp as I was about to start and get into position. Oh bother. But it wasn’t something that would keep me from doing these (it was an upper ab cramp and these were lower ab). As I noted last time, these do tend to feel a little rough at times after doing heavy pulls that can compress the spine. My lower back tends to not like traction kind of exercises. Some reps it feels it and others it doesn’t. Doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason. Just slow down and adjust. Put stuff away while dinner was cooking. Ate and then stretched out.

January 20, 2024 – Week 5, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

Sandbag Tosses (16’)
30x1
30x1
30x1
EMOM
38x1
38x1
38x1
38x1
38x1
38x1
38x1
38x1
38x1
38x1

Frame Carries
(16” pick)
180x50’
(18” pick)
276x50’
376x50’
476x50’
(20” pick)
568x6’
568x50’/50’ (turf)
568x6’

Stretching
 
Comments: Again, winter weather decided to play havoc with my event training. And it has been on the day that I seem to enjoy more. Last time it was an option to train before it hit and stay home and I got through it without incident. This was not going to be one of those avoidable scenarios. I had initially known of the snow but was only expecting 1” at most based off the predictions. But then it became a thing with it being up to 6” so a possibility of being snowed in. So had a backup plan. But you know I don’t like deviations from the original plan. I at least got to get in some walking Thursday which felt good. Been windy and cold so wearing thicker coat. The threat of snow caused work to close but due to teleworking, means I was still to work. Which was fine. At least it would be if my cellphone hadn’t decided to stop working as a phone. Combination of work stuff and trying to fix the phone and eventually realizing that was a lost cause and having to get a new one. Which was its own headache with having to move stuff and revalidate and login to everything. Odds are I’ll be finding things that still need to be resolved in the coming days as I they pop up. I waited until the plows came by and spent Friday shoveling snow and putting down rock salt (got from my parents as I used up all mine). I kind of knew that I’d be able to get out to train on Saturday but I’d probably have to go later. One to get some rest but also to hopefully give time for roads to clear. There was some more snow so I had to do some more shoveling before I went out to train. I guess it was light enough to leave but I didn’t want to compact it or have the walkway hazardous for mail deliveries. It should hopefully be warm enough to start melting tomorrow. So a slower start to the day and packed up three meals worth of food for the gym as well as getting gas (because I have to go into the office Tuesday all day ugh). Once on the main roads, conditions were good. The real test would be what condition the walkway and parking lot were for the gym. I knew they were open from seeing Instagram stories from people that go in earlier. The parking lot and walkway weren’t really that clean. The walkway not for a lack of trying. The snow on the roof of the buildings with the high wind kept blowing down. The toss tower was also not dug out. It had the snow from not only this snow but also Tuesday. So I had to do a bit of shoveling here as well before I got started with warming up. There were people at the gym but they were kind of doing the tail end of their stuff. I wore my warm ups for the warming up to get my body warm because I’d be outside for a good bit. Knees were feeling achier than I would’ve liked. But kind of expected having to shovel snow three times in less than 24hrs. I did the ankle and knee mobility stretching as well as my calves were tight. Starting things off was bag toss. Assuming I felt it was safe enough to do it. Light bag for 10 tosses done EMOM style. I felt that the working weight had gotten heavy enough that I should and could do warming up tosses beyond just swings, upright rows and high pulls. I put down a rubber mat and did 3 tosses with 30lbs. I was initially going to do only 1 but it felt like a good idea to do a few with the unique conditions. I was a little nervous with the EMOM because of the weather conditions. I’ve done stuff in a downpour but this was a little different in that footing wasn’t guaranteed to be sure. I had put down some rock salt but didn’t really help with the shade and the fresh snow getting blown down from the roofs. While the snow and wind weren’t helpful for the training, it was pretty badass looking/feeling haha. All the tosses cleared the height marker but it wasn’t the perfect toss session with the slippery conditions. Two that didn’t go well had been when I apparently sunk too low and scraped the bag on the ground and another I got a bunch of snow in my face from a wind gust and I essentially just used upper body to chuck it as my feet didn’t feel sturdy. But I was ok with most of those and glad that no misses in these kind of conditions. I’ve not done much in the way of above 30lbs for more than 10 tosses EMOM style as of late from the last training cycle with them so encouraging to see that I can keep up the pace for double the usual. Took a bit of time to put the stuff back in the place and clean up before moving on to the frame carry. Frame carry was going to be a little different. I could’ve stuck to what I had been doing as far as doing 50lbs jumps. But I also wanted to get to working on the big heavy frame as early as I could. So what was 18lbs more on that with a higher pick height? I had gotten permission to use that frame indoors as long as I controlled the drops on rubber. No one really uses this old frame because it isn’t really for everyone at 568lbs empty. I like to work up to it on other stuff rather than go cold. But this also meant that I had to clear a lot of things that were being stored in it. I had a plan with warming up but found that the Titan Fitness frames were apparently taken by someone who wields to fix them up so I went with the other setups to start. I was feeling the breathing was a little off but that issue seemed to clear up with 476lbs with the hard belt oddly enough. The big frame is heavy enough that I can’t really not count moving it to get into place as a set of some sort. It was probably a good thing to get a short pick and carry with it to kind of get used to what was to come. As rest before the working set (50’/50’) I weighed the yokes for my own curiosity and to confirm some things (one yoke was 15lbs lighter than thought and the other was 25lbs heavier). Then time for the frame run. I knew this wouldn’t be the “best” run I’ve done because been away from this frame for a bit and I was going to be running on turf with it for the first time. I also had to be mindful of the turf when I did the drops. I knew that if things felt like they should, this was going to be comfortable. That first pick to move it usually feels the roughest of the picks (perhaps as bad as the one putting it away haha). Things actually seemed to go well here. Moving well and the repick was pretty quick. No damage to the turf either. Took a few moments to get myself recovered before putting it back in the corner. I had some food before stretching out and then ate after that before driving home to eat some more.