November 15, 2025 – Week 11, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

19” Cambered Squat Bar Box Squats
85x10
135x8
175x6
225x4
265x2
300x1
331x5
331x5
336x5
341x5
346x5

Log Clean and Push Presses
12” Pitbull 
86x5
116x4
146x3
13” Beast Metals
176.5x2
201.5x1
226.5x4
226.5x4
226.5x4
226.5x4

Yoke
180x50’
180x50’
270x50’
270x50’
360x50’
360x50’
460x50’ in 7.18 seconds
520x50’ in 8.10 seconds
520x50’ in 8.04 seconds
520x50’ in 8.17 seconds
520x50’ in 8.10 seconds
520x50’ in 7.79 seconds

ATG Split Squats (14”)/Ab Walkouts (kneeling)
bwx12/12 – bwx8
bwx12/12 – bwx8
bwx12/12 – bwx8
bwx12/12 – bwx8

Concept 2 Rower Power Pulls (10 pulls, 45 seconds rest)
1 – 99m
2 – 101m
3 – 105m
4 – 105m
5 – 111m
6 – 112m

Stretching

Comments: It has been an odd second half of the week. Sciatica stuff still present but seems to be tolerable and improving for the most part. It has not hampered me in any lifting stuff but can feel tension if sitting or standing too long in one spot. A little reminiscent of things back around this time in 2019 when I withdrew from a contest the night before as being at a charity event was just too taxing. It had been the right call but it hurt back then. Thursday was last day for work this week as funeral/celebration of life for my uncle who passed last month was Friday. I didn’t expect that I wouldn’t know most of the people there and Thursday night was a preview of that. I had not expected to have this be so draining on me as I ended up sleeping until close to 12:30 on Saturday. I got up briefly at 9:30ish and just felt like nope, not yet. I felt that the rest was important and I’d figure out the plan once I had my fill of Z’s. There were somethings I had to consider and figure out upon waking to see if it made sense to still train today. Most of the workout could be done at home besides the row stuff but not sure on figuring out that part of things. At issue was potential traffic issues going out to training anywhere beyond immediate vicinity because there were demolition plans for a bridge in route to the two gyms I’d use. However, that wasn’t scheduled until 11:00PM with lane closures starting at 7:00PM so I figured I’d go out to train and not screw up the schedule for the rest of the month to try and get back on track. Driving out was surprisingly smooth considering it was early afternoon. There were people training but not strongman stuff. It would appear other usual suspects that don’t do strongman stuff also trickled in later than expected too. Soft tissue work started things off and wasn’t too bad for anything really. I guess getting over 12hrs of sleep will do that. Neck rehab stuff was ok, was feeling tight in shoulders but seemed to feel better by the end. I didn’t do the knee and ankle warming up I usually do this day. I’ve not been doing it on Day 1 sessions and I’m not really noticing any difference in how I feel warming up or the session in general. So just did the stretching part and then dead hang. From there, on to the weights. Some changes to the session this week. The first time this prep where not doing ssb squats. Notes were to use the cambered squat bar for box squats (parallel) and work up to 5x5 with something that felt like RPE 7.5/8. It has almost been a year since I last did a cambered squat bar box squat and I knew from the last time it can be a little tricky figuring out what I had in the tank as it could wobble back and forth quite a bit. I had to figure I at least maintained what I could do since then as been squatting twice a week and a good bit more volume on various things for the legs but just not sure how things would go with the sciatica stuff and just really doing a typical box squat in so long. I did have to figure out box height. 18” seemed a little under parallel and 20” was too high so went with 19”. The first set with just the bar did not inspire any confidence. It felt ugly and rough. I had only intended to do 5 reps and move on but decided I needed more reps here to get used to things again so do my higher rep plan with dropping 2 reps per set. I was going with the warm ups with the plan of using 315-320lbs here which is about what I had done for sets of 5 reps (3-4x5) last time. Putting on a hard belt for 265lbs felt pretty darn good. But I didn’t feel like a whole other plate added was going to be in that range (would be 10lbs under what had been my top set of 5 from then with 2-3RIR). So I decided I’d do 300lbs for a single and then do 331lbs/150kgs for my working sets and hope I didn’t go too heavy. First set felt fine but I did want to make sure that I could gauge things correctly here so I did keep weigh the same for the second set. After that set felt better, I decided I’d add 5lbs per set. These felt pretty decent and unlike with the ssb squats, there wasn’t a rep where I felt like I’d get lightheaded thankfully. I may have very well been ok with doing 355lbs for the working weight this time around. Just have to see what the plan going forward is going to be. From there, moved on to log. I swapped out a fresh shirt with some decals on it. Plan was to do 4x4 with 215-220lbs this week. So 5lbs more than last week. I had gone a little off script last time with initially doing 211lbs and then adding 5lbs to the last two sets getting it to 221lbs by the end. There had not been much difference really after getting the first rough set out of the way and I think this one is more coming down to confidence and getting used to multiple cleans. Especially with the adjustment to my clean style building back up. So my goal was to do 226lbs for my sets if I felt up to it. I did decide to throw in a wrinkle to this as well for no reason other than I wanted to. Essentially, I wanted to use the big log. The gym has a 176.5lbs Beast Metal log that is about 13” diameter. It is slightly longer than the other logs as well and it is unbalanced due to the distribution of material from front to back. This is equipment by someone who didn’t do strongman essentially. But it makes for a good training apparatus to get used to competition logs at bigger shows that tend to be heavier weight empty. Granted, local shows are usually not going to use this kind of log (the 85lbs empty logs work fine). I think I wanted to just to do a tougher implement and be thinking about lifting this a bigger level show and that it will get me to not panic when the weight is feeling tough and not smooth. But I had to work up to it. So the first three warm up sets were with the usual log and 30lbs jumps. Then the big log. Knees were feeling fine and pleased no issues with my back on these. The big red log was a bear to move and I was maybe reconsidering this choice. The large openings means I didn’t get contact bruises on my forearms but also means more torque needed to roll the log up. I wasn’t feeling 100% confident going for the working weight but I knew from the previous two log sessions that that doesn’t mean I won’t do it. I told myself to get ready for it to not feel great that first clean and just press it anyway. Don’t waste the effort. And I did just that. I took my time with the reps here as I didn’t want to screw up and get my timing down. The issue isn’t the pick or the pressing but making sure that I don’t drain myself on the clean and get out of position. Second press went up better than the first. Just over 60 seconds to get these done. My hope would be that I’d feel better as I go on these and cut that time down. I was not planning to add weights to these sets since this was where I should be and it wasn’t feeling super easy. Second set started out good with the first two reps. I didn’t feel quite comfortable enough to try and do these with my hands on the log and following the weight down. My pace got a little disrupted after the second rep as I was a little off balance on the release. The press on the third rep wasn’t as strong so I was a little concerned going for the fourth rep. The weight rolled out on me on the dip there so that was a tougher rep too. But half way through these. Third set I could tell I was getting fatigued with this style of clean. First rep presses were good, the last one rolled out a little on me even with a slight pause to try and get things stable so that was a tougher rep. Going into the last set, my hope was to get a good three and then know I can press through the last one even if it was a little rough. And if feeling good, try and string them all together. So first rep felt really good and easy on the press so I decided to follow it down to go right into the next one. That was a mistake. This apparently caused my glasses to escape my face. I had to figure out if they were in a somewhat safe spot before continuing. Going from 20/20 to colorful blurs is a bit disorientating so I had to take a second attempt at the dip on the second rep before I felt stable enough to press. I decided I needed to slow down to compensate for the visual impairment. I reflexively went to my face to adjust my nonexistent glasses before going for the third rep. Pick wasn’t the best as got caught on my knee sleeves. Press was just ok. But only one more to go and then done. Had to let it settle before I could feel confident to press. And it didn’t end up being the toughest last rep of the day either so I guess that is good. From there it was on to yoke. A change in intent this time around. Still doing multiple runs at 50’. The change up being that focus was time based effort. So it has been doing many runs with increasing weight on EMOM timer. And that has been good with building back repeatable endurance and strength. But trying to get faster. I’m not very fast and getting older is going to do that. I know that I’m off my times when I used to be obsessive with it. But I think I stopped really tracking it since often I was alone and it was more trying to get in the distance and then I fell out of love with yoke when I kept hitting a wall above 800lbs on it and just felt frustrated. But I’ve been enjoying yoke since I’ve been working with Ms. Funk and I can tell that my mechanics are better. Anyways, the plan here was to work up to a weight that about 8 seconds to complete the 50’ run and then do that 4 more times. I wasn’t too sure what that would be as I was about 10 seconds on my runs at times with the 580lbs last week. I figured 500lbs is what I’d be capable of. Been noticing my last few sets tend to be faster so I figured I should do more sets warming up to get ready as I may be using less weight for the working sets this time around and didn’t want to go too light get my speed focus just because I wasn’t ready for it. I did not do full speed on any of the plate jump warm ups. Just making sure back was good and stuff was moving fluid. I was initially planning on doing 450lbs as my testing set to actually see what I was doing today but decided to go with 460lbs so that it was balanced. I was thankfully able to have someone time these. My back up plan was to use my own EMOM timer to gauge if I was under 9 seconds (which as the slowest I could be). A little bit of hiccup with communicating commands but I adapted to it. I was not expecting to be so far under 8 seconds with this weight. So I decided to add 60lbs to it and see if that slowed be down to be in the time range. This may have actually still been on the lighter end with the times plan as just over 8 seconds here. Could conceivably say with how close times were for the 3 of the 5 runs that within human error of being the same time. Outliers were the third set and then the darn last set. I’ve no idea how I was able to make that one sub 8 seconds by a decent bit. Had me feel like I was sandbagging the entire time. This still a good bit off what my best times speed wise have been but these feel about where I’m at lately and sustainable if that makes sense. After putting that away, I had the superset left (besides rowing). The plan was to do 4 sets of 12 on the split squats with same height as last time (as seemed to be my toleration limits) and then 4 sets of 8 on the new ab walk exercise. But the setup I had got adjusted as the boxes I was planning to use were being used. I had already thought of trying 15” instead of 16” but that was already being used. So 14” was available and I really didn’t want to try and mess with adding mats to it and such that could make things unstable. So just had to hope it was good. And thankfully, it was. No real issues here. I feel I got better with the ab walk too with the ROM. I did these all with essentially no rest back to back because I could and because it was getting late. The rowing stuff was changed up a good bit from what had felt like conditioning. This was more a power based thing. 6 rounds of this where I’d do 10 pulls and then rest 45 seconds and record the distance. This is a lot easier than the conditioning such haha. I figured I’d probably get around 100m per set just based off how it felt doing the longer sets. That ended up being the case here with only my first set being under that. Meant to leave quickly after that as it was after 7PM at this point but a friend walked in and he has been dealing with similar back issues I’ve had so talked a good bit about that before leaving. Dark out but uneventful. Not much traffic so no issues with the lane closures coming home. Started cooking up dinner once home and stretched afterwards.