November 1, 2025 – Week 9, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

Heel Elevated Safety Squat Bar Squats (4-0-4-0 tempo)
65x6
95x5
125x4
155x3
185x2
215x1
245x5
245x5
245x5
245x5

12” Log Clean and Push Presses
86x5
111x4
136x3
161x2
186x1
211x0 (didn’t attempt press, clean felt off)
211x4
211x4
216x4
221x4

Yoke
200x50’
290x50’
380x50’
470x50’
EMOM
560x50’
560x50’
560x50’
560x50’

ATG Split Squats (20”)/Ab Wheel
bwx10/10 – bwx12
bwx10/10 – bwx12
bwx10/10 – bwx11 (miscounted)

Rower (2 minutes rest)
500m in 1 minutes 45.00 seconds
500m in 1 minutes 48.60 seconds
500m in 1 minutes 47.80 seconds

Stretching

Comments: I could’ve gone for a walk after work Thursday as the storms went through quicker than predictions had. They could’ve had Trick or Treat stay the same date. But I had kind of already committed to the idea of making sure I got stuff done that I had been behind on doing outside of work and aim for recovery with sleep. Friday was much the same as the last day in office before going back to homebase for the next four weeks. It does look like they intend to keep this going beyond this year from the e-mail provided but nothing confirmed if I’m approved for that. There were a lot of strangers in the neighborhood for Halloween stuff so I also felt it wasn’t good idea for a walk after work. I had two encounters with people ringing and pounding on my door that night despite not having lights on or decorations. Never happened in the 9yrs I’ve lived in this house. It was a bit tough to get myself to fall asleep and I stayed up and woke up only 30 minutes past my early wake up time for in office stuff. I figured that was way too early and not enough rest as I was anxious about my right knee being achy. Used restroom and back in bed and zonked out for about another 2hrs. Ok, so now I’ve had enough. I had caught up on the Rogue Invitational the night before and caught the first event of Day 2 before heading out to train. This was going to be an after noon start time for stuff. Drive out wasn’t bad. I was surprised there were still people doing stuff when I got there today. I did help with moving some sandbags around (just on to cart to be put back) and my left hamstring was feeling pretty tight. Foam rolling was really needed on my right calf and once that eventually calmed down, did about the normal amount of stuff for everything else. Neck rehab stuff was fine. I made some adjustments to the movements with my knees, hips, ankles and abs that seemed to be a good change up. Then the stretches for the hips, ankles and knees and dead hang for decompression. I was tempted to put on fans but again, I didn’t want to freeze anyone out. Heel elevated ssb squats to start things off. But adjustment to what I’ve been doing. Similar to how tempo work popped up for the Spanish squats, that was the name of the game here as well. Advised to do 4x5 with 4-0-4-0 tempo. Hope that would feel better with knees. I’ve not done tempo style squats in quite some time so I wasn’t too sure what to expect. The controlled eccentric is one thing, the controlled concentric is were things get tough as no point where I got full power. I figured that what would make the most sense from past experience was lower reps and smaller jumps working up and adjust how I feel on whether I’d be doing really light weight or just light weight here. My right knee was grumpy with things today like it had been with front box squats on Wednesday. Specifically the left side of the knee cap. My potential working weight was 215lbs here if I was not feeling like I could handle the fatigue of the tempo work but my hope had been to do 245lbs here. I felt comfortable enough with 215lbs that I stopped at t single and added 30lbs for 245lbs. First rep I did get a little light headed from the strain on the concentric and had to get my bearings before doing the remaining reps. I did take a longer rest period than I usually do with the squats just to make sure that I was recovered enough as I know that tempo work really takes it out of me recovery wise. A slight tweak in form was to push up on the handles during the lift. I’ve seen both cues used with pulling in/down and pushing up. The idea with the pushing up was to treat as having a log or similar implement in the rack position and be active. Squats are being done for leg drive here for overhead and deadlift in most cases for training. At times, there were reps where this weight felt effortless and comfortable and I felt solid. The controlled concentrics were killers here. It was going to be tricky to gauge some things needing my legs later in the session. Well I guess not much later as pressing was next. Log this time around. It is a good alternative to the circus dumbbell on the opposite weeks I think. I swapped out a fresh shirt with some decals on it for log. Plan was to do 4x4 with 205-215lbs this week after last time. The last session I had been a bit off with my knees aching at the start but seemed to finally get myself feeling ok despite maybe not having the strongest pressing. I’m quite a bit off the mark with log but my hope was that I’d be moving better this time around. At least that was the hope before doing a bunch of tempo squats beforehand. The other thing was trying to change the form up with my lap and clean. Ms. Funk felt I was doing extra movement that didn’t really translate to any benefit with going into such a deep squat position and then rolling up as I was still carrying the log pretty low on my person standing up with it. After that comment, I had to think on why I was doing all that. I came to the realization that it had to do with working around injuries that required me to change up my form from 8-10yrs ago and never really going back. I had pulled my left biceps in prep for 2015 SC Nats and I had to find a way to keep training and not make things worse and this style seemed to be the way to go as not using as much biceps. This ended up being reinforced about 2yrs later when I pulled the right one a bit more severely. The other part of it was the belt I was wearing at the time was thicker and I needed to get the log past that or I was screwed. I don’t have as thick a belt (well not using that thicker belt right now) so the suggestion was to go from a higher position. With the warming up this time, I did 25lbs jumps rather than use the kilogram plates. I’ll likely stick to the lbs here going forward. It felt a bit weird with the clean but fine enough I guess. My knees weren’t killing me immediately this time around and I felt a bit more comfortable with my pressing on the log. Not as many reps warming up. I got to my proposed working weight and my first attempt I didn’t feel great. The clean didn’t feel right and I bailed on attempting the press with how it felt. Like last time, I didn’t freak out but I reset and got my thoughts under control. I figured that I should revert to my old clean style if I wasn’t feeling like the new one was going to cut it. That one didn’t feel great or confidence building. I made a poor decision in choice of shorts for today as they were feeling quite slick so I wasn’t really getting any help in the deep lap here. The press didn’t feel so strong. I spaced out these reps to make sure I wasn’t missing or getting in my head. I decided to do the new style the second rep. It felt like how the first attempt where I just bailed on the press did but I let weight settle for a good bit and then went for the press. While it had felt off to me with the clean, the press was stronger that second rep. Third rep I did the same thing but the log did roll a little in front of me initially on the dip but still went up. Then finally willing myself to get on with it to get the fourth rep in about 75 seconds start to finish. Seeing as how things were going to feel today, I committed to that that. Now I didn’t keep my hands on the log like I had by the end of the session last time as I kind of felt I had to reset reps a bit with the new style of clean and commit to it but I did increase my pace by doing the second set in about half the time of the first. My legs weren’t as impacted as I had thought but I was really nervous and having bad indigestion from said nerves so it was pretty much waiting between sets until I stopped belching that I was got back to pressing. With how the second set went, I decided to add weight. This had kind of been my plan from the start if stuff was feeling good. Just little bit of weight added and lie to myself that it was the same weight as I tend to go better as I go on multiple sets with things like these. So added 5lbs for the third set. First two reps went fine, third rep a little tougher so a slight pause going for the fourth but that went up well enough. So why not add another 5lbs? Just telling myself this is only 211lbs and not 221lbs and I’ve already done 3 sets of it. The 216lbs set had been slightly slower pacing (about 6 seconds slower) than my fast 211lbs set was and if I deduct the time I spent on the last rep with it overhead doing the light march in place for dominance, I’d say it was same time. I’ve never really had many times where working on my reps with log clean and press every rep has been worked on since most times the weight has been such it was a near max or above effort. I’m feeling more comfortable with the press but I am about 50lbs off what my best on this would be. But I’m glad it is feeling comfortable again in some regard after taking so much time away from it. From there it was on to yoke. Dropping 2 sets from the previous week and still sticking to EMOM rests. But adjusted here with the weight. Suggested was 20-30lbs more than last time’s runs. I decided I’d do something different. I’ve been doing 100lbs jumps here and keeping it 25’s on the yoke. But I figured that I needed to use bigger plates as likely what is going to be the case at the show and I need to see how my low clearance runs handle with larger plates potentially clipping the ground. Likely doing plate jumps in warm ups as well. So with doing 90lbs jumps, that meant I had an extra set working up. That was needed as I was definitely not feeling like I could go into top gear right off the bat. I did the first run as a walk at casual pace and then went a little bit faster the next set and then started to try to actually go fast by my last warm up set. So top weight being 35lbs more than last time at 560lbs. The setup with going more push forward didn’t quite feel like it was clicking last time. But it seemed to feel better with this week. If I went by feel, second set felt the best and I would’ve sworn that was my fastest run of the day. Also felt like my first set was really slow and about the same as my last set with fatigue. But that feeling is a lie. Apparently, I actually got faster as I went and the time of my faster and slowest is less than half a second. I’m feeling more comfortable with the slight staggered stance for start on yoke so pleased with that. As I had started training late with getting out to train late, it was getting close to 5pm and that would mean eating dinner late and going to bed even later. Which may be beneficial with tomorrow being the time shift back an hour. But I decided I’d move on to the next thing and put away yoke weights and such when I was done with everything. So from there was the same superset as last week with atg split squat regression and ab wheel. No changes to ab wheel but plan being more reps with the split squats. It was suggested I could adjust the box height if I was feeling good and no pain but to also try and get up on my toes a bit on the forward foot at end of ROM. I did elect to lower the box by 4” and this did seem a little risky considering how the right knee was feeling and how these had felt last time. But it does appear to be a good call. There is definitely a mobility discrepancy between my left and right here. It was a struggle to get any kind of ankle movement in my right side whereas my left side was nice and limber. It could also be the left side hip flexors are tight and fighting me on the right leg forward. Ab wheel felt the best it has so far this training prep. I did apparently miscount the last set by one rep but not a big deal. A slight change with the rowing to finish things up. Instead of just straight rowing a distance for time, I was to do sets. 3 sets of 500m row with 2 minutes rest and keep track of the times for each interval. I was prepared to do it that way with recording on my phone but the machine appeared to have a setup for this specifically. I’m not 100% sure if it gave me the times for each interval or it did an average unfortunately. But trying to go fast each set certainly felt more taxing than rowing the entire time. It wasn’t like I was fully recovering with 2 minutes anyways so it was kind of extending the set with elevated heart rate. Adding up the times would be about 10 seconds faster than my total time last week. Downed my shake and put away the weights before driving home to stretch, catch up on the Rogue Invitational and just decompress.