Sunday, June 29, 2025

June 28, 2025 – Week 5, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

Sandbag Tosses (13’6”)
30x1
35x1
40x1
45x1
50x1
55x1
30x1/35x1/40x1
35x1/40x1/45x1
35x1/40x1/45x1
40x1/45x1/50x1

Zercher Yoke/Sandbag Carry & Loads (47”, with run backs, turf)
230x50’/200x50’
320x50’/225x50’
410x50’/250x50’
500x50’/275x50’
500x50’/275x50’

Rolling D-Handle Hangs (2” handles)
bw for 5 seconds
bw+35 for 7.70 seconds/bw for 17.96 seconds (30 seconds rest)
bw+35 for 6.86 seconds/bw for 12.83 seconds (20 seconds rest)
bw+35 for 3.90 seconds/bw for 6.40 seconds (20 seconds rest)
bw for 13.03 seconds

Backwards Sled Drags (turf)
415x75’
415x75’

Stretching

Comments: Work continues to be stressful but I guess thankfully Friday was not so bad considering things. But it isn’t just work. Just the constant deluge of crap with all levels of government. It is frustrating and stressful seeing stuff deteriorate so quickly. But this isn’t about that. A slight break in the heat finally. I slept in a little later just because I knew there was still some stress rolling around in my head that I needed to sleep off and I wanted to hopefully see if my knee was feeling up to training today. I’m feeling pretty comfortable with driving the new car. I still get a little concerned with how big the car is to what I’m used to driving and being spatially aware of how much space I have in a lane or parking. There were people actually training strongman today. While volume of training was going to be lower for me, it was going to require more setup. I did not get to start training as quickly as I would’ve liked as other people were training and get pulled in different directions with assisting on things. But I also kind of needed to wait to get stuff to setup anyways. Lower body needed a lot of foam rolling. I was kind of surprised by that considering usually this day needs the least amount. Neck rehab stuff was fine and did mobility stuff. Knees were feeling ok. Even though it was considerably cooler, it was more humid and I was just sweating standing around, which isn’t great. So first thing was bag toss. I’ve not done this with real intent in over a year. I’ve done some backwards tosses overhead to see if things made sense with the toss for distance but it was quite clear one of was better than the other with the weight. I had got the sandbags weighed out and set at 5lbs jumps from 30lbs to 60lbs with option to add 2.5lbs and 5lbs if needed. Show is 5 bags starting at 20kgs and ending on 28kgs (2kgs jumps) over 13’6” (well as close as the meter to feet conversion works). So decently heavy bags but a good bit lower than most tosses are in the US. I wasn’t sure how these would go but I had some hopes. One was that the neck rehab has helped and that I’m not getting tension or pain in my shoulder on these. I did some band dislocates as part of my warm up. I generally do a bit more warming up with getting flow and bounding but I felt that I was going to be in the heat a lot and since I had to setup the tower myself (since the previous setup broke) that I should probably go with light and work up and hopefully that gets me feeling ok enough. This is also going to be like the penultimate event on the final day too so not going to feel fresh. So the plan for the session was work up in singles and then do 3 sets of 3 with tosses as ascending weight. Work up and see how things are feeling and kind of hopefully hit a decently tough throw without a miss and then work on going for multiple bags. I tend to have issues with getting the power out put for several attempts and chasing down the bag tends to give me more rest then I’d normally have. The time limit is only 45 seconds for this. I also need to get used to the likelihood of my glasses and headwear coming off from doing the triple extension several times violently. I did not bring my sunglass lens but I guess I thought it was going to stay cloudy. But honestly, it wasn’t an issue I had with sun in my eyes. But I need to remember for next time potentially. Granted, this will be inside at contest. I’m definitely out of practice and not getting the full height if I was treating these as EMOM singles or a max toss. I do feel that the high pulls and the powell raises were helpful in helping me maintain pulling form and get better extension in the upper body. But I know I’ll need to get everything to synch up together. Plan is have this week be event focused and the alternated week being working variations. I started with 30lbs and worked up to 55lbs, which had been my goal. I didn’t feel like 60lbs would happen for sure so stopped there. So from there moving to the three bag series. I wasn’t sure how these would go so I started with the three lightest bags. I was definitely moving slow off the mark. Not trying to rush. It is hard to gauge if I should be trying to throw fast or not as the lighter bags are quite easy but with this series, the last bag is still 4lbs under the first bag of the event series. So that went well enough so I decided I’d go up a bag so everything 5lbs more. First two were fine but 45lbs bag I didn’t time right and it went into the band. Thankfully the band is the thickest one so not going to move or snap and also didn’t knock over the setup either. I was then able to get it over. I didn’t want a miss but I didn’t want to go down to the first series again as I knew this was a technical issue. So set it up again. Made the corrections that time and got closer with the 45lbs and no issues. That had felt good so I figured I’d go up another 5lbs. So now I was doing a little over the first two bags in the series after the first bag tossed. I hesitated a little after the first toss as I wasn’t sure if it had gone over. Second bag I knew it had and then with the third I brought the bag close stopped to treat it more like a max single toss. Just got it over. I need to work on getting my ankles and lower body more into these and load the hips. But I’m pleased with my upper body extension on these. This was a good start to these considering my worries. So put this away and got ready for the one event that I knew was going to be a bastard to do and recover from: zercher and sandbag. The inside concrete area was in use but I had kind of planned to do these on turf so I could actually get the full 15m for each thing. Not enough space on the concrete. I also didn’t want to do this on the uneven payment outside in the sun. I had hoped that my EMOM and EOMOM stuff had conditioned me enough for what this suck was going to be but I guess not. Initially I was thinking of just doing sets of these but breaking in half to build up and then do just one set in the final week for competition test. But I figured that may be too taxing to recover from. This is the only event that is 75 seconds time limit. Run yoke zercher style 15m, run back 15m to sandbag to carry 15m and then load over the yoke crossbar and then repeat to bring it all back. Working up I felt that having 90lbs jumps with yoke and 25lbs jumps for sandbag worked and just do half the course (so 45m total) on the working up sets. Add support gear as I went. Using the grip shirt here. Cutting the sleeves off definitely made it easier to take on and off as well as having it easier to “breathe” as far as sweat. Working up I could tell this was going to suck. More so because the part I felt was going to be easier (sandbag carry) was not. The zercher carry is really slowing me down and pre-fatiguing things for the sandbag. It could also be with my deadlift weights increasing about 150lbs from two weeks ago. What I ended up doing was my planned weight but I had to break it into two sets. I just couldn’t function after the first set. But I tried to take as short a rest as I could before doing the second set. Which ended up being 2.5 minutes after checking the video. The zercher carry while slow, was solid and I didn’t feel like I was going to pass out which is great. The sandbag on the second run I was so slow as I just felt everything in my posterior chain fatigue hard and trying to go any faster I felt like I’d stumble and lose control. I was surprised that my second run was actually faster overall then the first one by a second or so. I guess I was a bit more efficient on the carry of the yoke and pick of the sandbag the second run. But I was dead after the second set. I had been foolish in plans to think that I could’ve done these for 2 more sets with short rests as I had initially planned. Considering it took me over 40 seconds both runs, unless I get a lot faster even with immediate recovery, I’m not likely to finish this event in the time cap. Looking at getting distance hopefully with the second leg of the yoke depending on if I can adapt to 95lbs more and probably best case is distance on the second sandbag. The 275lbs I used is a really tough bag since it is 25lbs underfilled 300lbs. I don’t have a 130kgs bag so this will work for that as just 5kgs under. In retrospect, I probably should’ve done 225lbs bag paired with 500lbs zercher and then done 50lbs/25lbs jumps to finish up the training. I’m going to have to think on what adjustments considering the difficulty here going forward. Speaking of making adjustments that weren’t expected is the grip work. For the contest, it is 50mm rolling handles for the Hercules hold. 50mm being about 2” with the conversion. I had gotten some handles with knurling that kind of revolved but not that well. They had been relatively cheap to setup for the previous show. However, didn’t end up coming to pass but I had seen what the intended handles had been and they were not knurled and were smooth with easy revolving handles. Much tougher then what I had. So when it was announced it would be a Hercules hold 2” handles, I bought something similar to that. Now I don’t know if they are going to be smooth or knurled handles. Prep from last time seemed to be good for getting grip up to par so that was what I was going to do. Warm up and do a RPE 9 set aiming for 45 seconds or more. Did just bodyweight for a 5 seconds and it seemed to feel like how the other handles I had did so I assumed I could put the weight on there like I did. Wrong. This became quite clear when I was feeling like I was immediately losing it after 5 seconds. Well damn it. I took weight off and reset and did no weight but even that was way too much as I didn’t get to 20 seconds there. Woof. So change of plans. I’d do these “drop sets” with weight added and no weight for sets and try to get over 45 seconds combined. I know that I tend to have a big drop off in time after a first set effort. I didn’t know how long I was resting between the drops so didn’t know until afterwards that I had taken longer on the first set by 10 seconds. Second set was decent compared to the first but the third set was a big drop off and clue to stop there. I was planning to be done but showing the setup to someone else there it was feeling easy again so I did another set at bodyweight but got humbled again haha. I can feel my forearms being really tense from these. I was wise to get these handles and plan to work my crush grip this prep for this event as this is really tough. I will need to rethink how I want to work the prep on these going forward as I don’t think I can hit longer times with my bodyweight but Hercules is a pain without at least 2 other people. It was about an hour later than I was expecting it to be at this point. I had also not expected to be sweating so damn much either. Last thing was some more leg work. Backwards sled drag. I had liked doing these last prep but not having supersetted. I plan on only doing these twice. My hope here was this would help knees feel better going into this prep since I know that power stairs will beat them up. Just 2 sets of 60-75’ here. I was not sure if I wanted to do 335lbs with a max of 405lbs. But I think I was annoyed enough with how things went with the zercher medley and the rolling handles that I just put all the weights that were nearby on it so it was 415lbs. Slow and steady. Took me about a minute for the first set going into it with not much and then about 10 seconds faster the second set. So that was a good end there. Downed my shake before I put stuff away and headed home to stretch as it was already like I said an hour later than I wanted it to be.



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