August 2, 2025 – Week 10, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

Sandbag Swings
60x9 (miscounted)
60x8

Sandbag Tosses (13’6”, 10’ away)
30x1
40x1
45x1/50x0
45x1/50x1/52.5x0
45x0
45x1/50x1/52.5x1 in 34.96 seconds
45x1/50x1/52.5x1 in 32.97 seconds

Yoke/Power Stairs (17”)
235x50’/50’ -- 214x3
335x25’/25’ -- 264x1
435x25’/25’ -- 314x1
535x25’/25’ -- 364x1
635x50’/50’ -- 414x3 in 46.17 seconds
635x50’/50’ -- 414x3 in 41.87 seconds
635x50’/50’ -- 414x3 in 44.70 seconds

Seated Safety Squat Bar Goodmornings (19” box)
65x3
95x10
105x10
115x10

Dumbbell Walking Lunges (on turf)/Chest Supported Dumbbell Rows
10’sx14/14 – 50’sx10
20’sx20/20 – 75’sx14 (miscounted)
20’sx20/20 – 75’sx15

MAG Grip Pulldowns (drop sets)
150x10/120x10/90x10
150x10/120x10/90x10

Stretching

Comments: Woke Friday to notifications on my YouTube about being tagged in a post. Never had that happen before. Turns out someone happened upon one of my recent videos and thought I was ridiculous. They left comments (I have all comments held for moderation) and posted about me to have others laugh at me. It had me a bit hot under the collar as reminds me of when I was bullied in school for just existing and being me. I feel that I live a fairly inoffensive existence. I do tend to need a bit longer to process my feelings/emotions and after doing so I fell not anger but pity. Took actions to make sure I don’t get notifications or similar harassment and move on with my life. Thursday and Friday would also be when I started to feel like I had done work this week. I mean, it was grueling stuff in the moment but I was surprisingly feeling fresh the following days and sessions. As the Irish proverb goes, may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead. For this last day of training this week, it didn’t look so bad on paper comparatively. But looks can be deceiving. My plan was to get up at my work time to go out and train. I even went to bed early. But my body had other plans and I ended up oversleeping by 90 minutes. I wasn’t going to fight that as recovery and rest are needed with dealing with training and work stress. I lost two coworkers last month in my unit and will be losing another at the end of next week. Drive out was a bit slow around the usual spots where stuff gets congested and a fair number of cops out on the highway as well. It was thankfully like 10 degrees cooler than it was the past few weekends. It might have actually benefited me coming in later as there were friends/competitors from out of town training that were near the end of their preps (pro/am shows) so some stuff was in use and a bit crowded. I’d have to wait a good bit to do stuff if I came on time. It was good catching up though. Foam rolling and neck rehab before some mobility stuff. Starting out with bag toss stuff. So not quite into bag toss. I was to prime things first with taking the heaviest bag and doing swings with it. 60lbs was fine and I was pleased it didn’t feel heavy to do this. I wanted this to be more an active intent in that trying to actually swing like I’d be loading my hips and then extending as if I would be trying to toss it rather than just treating it like a kettlebell style swing. Apparently so comfortable I miscounted the first set. From there it was on to bag toss. The toss tower and almost all the bags were out from people using them but I had to adjust the height to get it to contest spec for me since show is lower height. Plan here was to do about the weight of the first three bags in contest series twice. Which I didn’t think would be a problem. But that was me thinking that doing 40/45/50 was it when it would actually be 44/48/53. And I had not been consistent with 55lbs this prep. The other thing was clarification on distance the bags are starting at. I had assumed it was like 5’ away from looking at videos from last year but it is actually 10’ so that adjustment did throw me off at the start. It took me a bit to get things sorted out and I didn’t let the misses frustrate me. Just treated those as warm ups and partial attempts. Fine tuning. I know there is still hesitancy with making sure the bag is going over. My friend Calvin had brought his own 50lbs bag as he thought we didn’t have one so I was able to use that with 2.5lbs weight added rather than be doing 55lbs as my last bag. Use the opportunity while I got it. I was close with my first attempt at the series but just not quite there. But I felt like it was possible. When I missed 45lbs because of angle of throw, I knew I needed to change up strategy. Not try and walk backwards with it. I know I’m not going to finish the series in the time limit at this point. The walk back is throwing me off and I’m losing height. So just picking up the bag and tossing it closer to the setup and then setting up there. It isn’t fast but the tosses are going. I was quite pleased that I got the 3rd bag over. The gym owner did notice and said I’m getting no ankle extension. I know, this is something to work off season. Second run through Calvin let me know that a bag was “good” as far as going over so there was less hesitancy with moving to the next bag. This was good. I will need to review the rules to see if I can potentially just chuck multiple bags closer to the setup once the whistle goes as that could potentially cut down time and give me a solid shot at trying the 4th bag in the series. Put this away as I got the yoke into power stairs setup. By the time I did that, I was pretty much all alone in the gym. The yoke and power stair medley coming back for another week was another bit of the initial sticker shock with the first week of training. Not so much as the zercher and sandbag at the start of the week haha. The plan for the day was essentially 90% of what I did last weekend but for 3 sets of the competition run. I wasn’t too sure of myself initially as it felt like it took quite a bit out of me to do just the one run last weekend. But it seems perhaps selling myself short in that able to do pretty much all the contest events minus Hercules hold in one week multiple sets so I have to believe I can do this. I’ve done everything else asked of me this week. The setup from last week had worked pretty well with being inside on the lanes. I did alternate where I started and the setup for the power stair was a bit different so as not to be in the way and potentially keep things sturdy. The only reason I’d have liked for someone to be there would’ve been to just be able to film so I could see the full run of the yoke with the drop and turn. Knees were a bit achy for the picks on yoke but I wasn’t feeling like I was really slow or that I couldn’t pick up pace. First run wasn’t too bad. Second run felt better but I did cut my right hand on a sharp edge of the yoke so I did have to patch that up before the last run. Final run I could feel the fatigue of everything on the yoke so that wasn’t my best run on the return. Power stairs were pretty good but could also tell there was fatigue. A more stable box setup to load to probably would’ve had me a little faster. I know there is still some hesitancy in the repick because I’m worried about catching the yoke trying to go fast right off the block with the higher pick to spare my knees and back. It does feel possible to complete the run in competition but the power stairs are still a bit of an unknown honestly at that heavy a weight. So the stuff needing the goofy shit was done and it was more gym work stuff. Next up was seated gms with the ssb. It has been a really long time since I’ve done seated gms. The plan was 3x10 and that form more important than weight at this time. Idea being this was more to work mobility and range of motion in the hips and spine. I went with a wider stance so as my ROM would be greater and not be stopped by my torso hitting my thighs. It did take me a bit to figure out how to actually get under the ssb to start the movement. I didn’t use much weight here as testing out but I could tell I could do more and added weight each set. Still felt comfortable by the end. Well as comfortable as these could be as I was having to watch the testes with motion going until my abs touched the box. From there we moved on to something I knew was going to be terrible for me. One of those supersets where one thing was easy and the other was something that made me regret the choices that lead to this moment. This one was going to be walking lunges into chest supported dumbbell rows. The walking lunges being with dumbbell weight and going 40 paces total. I’ve just gotten to doing these again with 20lbs in a back pack for 24 paces in a set so this was going to be not fun. I know this movement is detrained and lagging where it should be. My knees were killing me initially just trying to do with 10lbs dumbbells after the yoke and power stairs. It would’ve been just as tough with no weight honestly. The chest supported rows were fine. I just haven’t done them in a while so I just went by what I did the last time I had these for higher reps as a superset. Thankfully, the knee pain evaporated when I got out the 20lbs dumbbells. I kind of feel like this would’ve been just about as tough if I didn’t have any weight with the reps in the set with this movement and how slow I move. This was about 90 seconds of work. I was a bit out of breath moving on to the rows and I miscounted my reps on that first set. I could’ve done more for sure. Second set with the lunges was even harder but I think I moved a bit quicker because I wanted it to be done. I’m just glad my fatigue didn’t cause me to lose balance or seize up. I took a little longer to start the last set of rows after that just to make sure my head was clear and I didn’t miscount reps again. That set felt even easier than the first. It was a bit later in the day than I was expecting at the onset of training but I had just one thing left. Some more upper back work. Pulldowns with a neutral grip and doing 30 reps with triple drop set. I’ve not done pulldowns at the strongman gym before so I had to kind of guess. I went with the plate loaded one as that seems to be the one most strongman athletes end up using vs the cable towers. I elected to do 30lbs drops. I wasn’t sure if I picked heavy enough weight but it was apparent I chose correctly with the fatigue factor by the end of the second set. Again, about 90 seconds of work and less than 15 seconds rest between the sets with taking the 30lbs off. Survived my first week. I truly don’t know what is in store for me. Put stuff away after slamming shake and liquids and then driving home to stretch when I got back.