March 2, 2025 - March 8, 2025 - Week 1

 March 3, 2025 – Week 1, Day 1

Dynamic Warm Up

Axle Push Presses
46x3
76x3
106x5
131x5
137x5 (misload)
157x5

Slingshot Dips
bwx20
bwx20

Paused Push-ups on Kettlebells (5 seconds)/Paused Chest Supported Dumbbell Rows (3 seconds)
bwx12/40’sx12
bwx12/40’sx12

Axle Seated Overhead Lockouts (5” ROM)
26x3
136x3
186x3
226x6
246x6
276x6

Paused Prone Dumbbell Retractions (2 seconds)/Single Arm Dumbbell Overhead Triceps Extensions w/ bands
10’sx10/17+mbx15--15
10’sx10/17+mbx15--15
10’sx10/17+mbx15--15

Stretching
 
Comments: I spent most of Sunday getting some thoughts together after feeling a bit down with how deadlift went and then seeing how poorly the SC pro/am portion of the Arnold had gone. A little disheartening to want to put in the effort to get back to that contest if that is how things are going to be. I made sure I got in a walk and soft tissue work as well as regular meals but I also had to debrief my mind of the training from the past week as I didn’t really get a good time to put it in writing until then. I don’t like that build up and I know if I hold on to it too long and not when planned it will stress me out or make me apathetic to doing the routine in the first place. So I knew it was important to get it done and adjust things. I knew that this offseason setup wasn’t the most ideal thing but it fit and it got me doing new stuff. The most important things though being that I was away from the strongman stuff long enough to feel like competing again and not completely loathe the thought of deadlifts like I had at the start. I will need to do somethings different next time and bit more planned out I think. It was pretty obvious I needed to deload and I think I need to space out the workouts in a way where I can recover better or put in planned deloads if I’m keeping intensity and consistency high with the sessions. Partial deloads don’t generally seem the way to go for me as I remember before with recovery that every day is kidney and liver day. The stress is going somewhere. After Saturday, I decided I was going to make the deload week more of a transition to contest prep than I previously intended. Test some things while making adjustments. I was surprised that my weight dropped some more from last week. 266.6lbs which is essentially 1kgs away from what I was the week after 2023 SC Nationals. 120kgs class (formerly 265lbs and under) seemed like a good bit away at the beginning of the year but now it seems a viable option. But I need to see if I can get myself through a competition prep and contest under my own plan first. Warming up I did a bit more on some things vs other things. I’ve kind of just did a set of something and moved on but this time I did some circuits of exercises. That did seem to be a better use of my time getting ready. Axle is the leg drive based pressing I’m continuing to use. My basis for this and not just doing barbell is the hope that I will be moving from this prep to another prep and odds are that next competition will have a pressing event in it. So keeping axle and log in this prep just so it isn’t so foreign in a 12 week prep besides the cleaning of said implements. With axle stuff, it is running a bit differently from everything else. Most stuff that is the events are rotating on a 2 week rotation. But the push press is going to run on a 3 week rotation with it being modified 5/3/1. Attempting 3 cycles of that with no deload besides this first week and the last week. Trying this out while I got the chance really. I was initially thinking of doing a top single to base the weights for this but I felt like it wasn’t a good idea and just estimate and get the rest and recovery in. So this was really light. I didn’t bother with any support gear whatsoever. Left upper pec was feeling a little off but things were feeling good. I’ve not really done reps beyond 3 here in a while. Trying to focus on my ankle and knees with how they move and trying to keep aware of my body placement. I got a little off balance in the middle of the second set of 5 reps. I adjusted the plates which inadvertently led to a 20lbs misload. It felt really good but I kind of knew there was no way a 25lbs jump felt that easy compared to the set before. And I was right. But the good news is still light and not really taking away anything. Comfortable and good. It will be for real next time. Into the garage for the next few things. Since I was deloading, for dips, I elected to not do them weighted and just wear the slingshot and do higher reps. The slingshot for higher reps is quite deceptive in they can cook the triceps while sparing the shoulders (which I feel need the rest). Keeping eye on the shoulders and neck here. I think not having weight dangling was also a good idea after the QLs seized up last week. I can’t confirm it was the weighted dips traction but better to give that a break as well until next time. Next was a pairing of old and new. Push ups with holds in stretch (hands on kettlebells) supersetted with paused chest supported dumbbell rows. Swapping of the guard really as won’t be doing rows on Saturday/Sunday going forward so moving here and dropping the push ups as adding some more pressing stuff incorporating chest on this day and secondary press day. I felt it was best to not elevate my feet and wear a weight vest. Definitely can see that these can be rough on the chest and shoulders with recovery as these concessions still made these tough to get the reps I did. Controlled eccentric and concentric (like a piston) with the paused rows made light weight feel challenging by the end. I kind of wanted to hurry things up but knew to stick to it. I could feel the heat coming off my body from doing them this way. Even though I’ve done rows twice a week for this, I’ve missed these haha. So normally I’d finish up with another superset but I was adding in another exercise I’ve done about a decade ago when my pressing overhead was at its strongest. So besides dips I was doing a lot of seated lockouts with 8” ROM. Most of the time it was with a log. But I’m doing log stuff on another day (and when I was doing log lockouts, it was with log push pressing and barbell strict pressing) so keeping this to axle since already out. Plan was to see how these felt and if viable for the training plan. Work up to a decent weight to start and build from there depending on what I get in the following weeks. I felt the best thing would be to do no support gear here as well and leave a fair amount in the tank. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting that I’d be feeling as strong as I did here considering how pressing has felt. But didn’t want to overdo it. This is intense work and I need to make sure I stimulate and not annihilate. Superset of prone dumbbell retractions and single arm overhead dumbbell triceps extensions (with bands) to end the session. I was initially looking at changing things up here but the exercise replacements I had in mind didn’t feel like how I was expecting them to be so I’m going to stick with these for a bit longer. Last time I had kept things the same as far as the weights. Reps were decreased for both exercises this time but some modifications. The prone retractions were now for 2 second holds. Surprisingly, these felt easier than doing the 1 second holds for more reps. I guess getting used to it. Or less stress before getting to this point. I increased the weight on the dumbbell and that seemed to go well. Put stuff away and ate dinner before stretching out.

March 5, 2025 – Week 1, Day 2

Dynamic Warm Up

Skater Jumps
bwx5/5
bwx5/5
bwx5/5

2.5” Thick Bar 18” Block Pulls (straps)
167x5
217x3
257x2
307x1
EMOM
350x1
350x1
350x1
350x1
350x1
350x1
350x1
350x1
350x1
350x1

Trap Bar B Stance Romanian Deadlifts (3 second eccentrics)
55x3/3
105x12/12
105x12/12

Single Leg Stepdowns (foot to rear, 12”)
bwx10/10
bwx10/10
bwx10/10

Landmine Bar Twists
25x8/8
25x8/8
25x8/8

Stretching

Comments: Feeling ok after Monday session. I mean, most of that was light I feel. Like 50/50 actual work and lighter stuff. I forgot to mention that I’m scheduled for a deep tissue massage next week which will be the first I’ve had in 5yrs. Last one was before the 2020 stuff and just never got back into. My siblings pooled money for one for Christmas gift so not going to let that sit. Get work done before pushing the weights for the contest prep cycle. I was not expecting it to rain so much today but didn’t really effect things here. This workout was changed a good bit from what I originally planned as this was to be testing of front squat and pushing the accessory lifts that I was working on the past three weeks. But after the deadlift didn’t go as planned (and even before that I guess), I was not digging how I was feeling doing stuff and worries about muscles and joints and I decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation to stick to the rigid schedule here. So this would be a light break-in session for the new stuff. I had a feeling I’d probably change things during the session as this was not as set in stone for me as say the upper body sessions. The warming up/mobility things I adjusted here. I liked the way my knees were feeling after doing the circuit Monday so I stuck to that and did another pairing for bracing stuff as well on top of static stretch stuff. Then to the session. The first exercise was initially one I was going to do this week. Skater jumps/hops were something I did in contest prep for SC Nats 2022. I’m not sure of the efficacy for the event for that particular show but I thought they may be worth doing now since I’ve been acclimated to box jumps and such. My thinking here is that need to land with soft knees and explosive lateral movement for say hip adduction/abduction. Reason I wasn’t initially going to do them this session is because I’m not sure exactly what style of throwing I’m going to be doing for the sandbag toss for distance event at the competition. I have a feeling it will be spinning throw that makes the most sense but I’ll test out how I’m actually doing this Saturday with spin throws and overhead throws. If I’m committing to spin throws, I think these will be helpful to get that power transfer going. Took a little to get the feel of these down again. I didn’t want to just do side to side with little amortization as I also wanted to work on absorbing and giving hard push offs too. So some of column A and some column B. Then on to the weights. The deadlift event at this contest is indicated as being 18” pull with truck tires using a 2.5” thick bar. I know my straps would work on 2.375” from past experience but I wasn’t sure about 2.5”. So I did end up getting a bar to spec. What I figured would feel most like contest would be using my bar extenders and wagon wheels and putting the wheels on crash pads. This does feel a bit like how some implements using tires have felt to lift. I was expecting to need more adjustments with getting to 18” but it looks to be that the compression was enough that the pads were all I needed. Plan here was just light stuff. Get used to the setup and do 10x1 with 50-60% of what I think I could do. The bar thickness is a little off-putting with getting the straps on and with it being out in front. More so than an axle. So probably a good thing I got this bar for this contest prep. Singles here were quite easy. This wasn’t something I needed to really be amped up to do. I was glad I wasn’t so burnt from the deadlifts Saturday that it affected things here. These felt comfortable like they should and I got a lot of touches at strapping onto this size diameter bar. It takes me less than 10 seconds to get setup and I can probably cut that in half if I really wanted to. Next week I’ll work up to a conservative single to see where I’m really at here. Contest is 660lbs and I know that is doable for me. Now if this were a regular session, I’d probably take my time with tearing down and moving on to the next thing. But this was going to be lighter stuff and I felt it made more sense to just kind of keep moving right along and getting work done so I can get to eating dinner and cleaning up sooner. Another deadlift variation in the form of b-stance trap bar rdls. I’ve liked these when I’ve had them before. Starting these real light with plans to work up in weight. 3 second eccentrics. With the farmer’s walk event as it will be, I’m trying to have this be more an accessory for that with grip and stance. No support gear of any kind. Work these until I get up to the above 300lbs and closer to 350lbs weights on that. These can be almost calming in a way and I can tell that I’m getting a good grip session over the course of the sets as while one side gets the rest, grip is getting a short rest. Another reason for these. The b-stance lets me adjust my position and where I’m placing stress in the lower body with my feet/ankles/knees. I kept these almost comically light for this session. I know my hamstring tendons have been getting beat up with the training I’d been doing. I know I can do a good bit more but will build things up over a few sessions I think. See how things are recovering as it goes. From there moving on to single leg exercise. I know that the work effort put in with the past few weeks have been taxing on my hamstring tendons so I figured I needed to do a change up here and give some rest. I’ve done mostly bodyweight single leg exercises before that were more so single leg than just other leg doing work and being support. My plan was to use an exercise that I had done before when I had to do heavy deadlifts and farmer’s walk in a prep that I recall not being so harsh on my knees. And that was step downs with foot to the rear. Really it has been those and lateral style in the past and those had been more so a thing for me in a few preps in the last few years. I figured I could go right back to these since I’ve been doing the split squats and I had been doing step ups in the prep before that. Turns out I was wrong. The emphasis is different with step downs and step ups. I was just not able to tolerate the discomfort at a certain joint angle. I guess the knees have had enough of my buffoonery it would seem. I was a little frustrated with this and attempted to see if lateral style worked better. I was then thinking about doing step ups instead and maybe do Bulgarian split squats. But I recalled that I can always make adjustments as needed. So I lowered the box height from 18” to 12”. That seemed to put me back in a tolerable ROM and keep to it. Happy I was able to find a solution here. As far as next time, I’ll have to see if I can tolerate an increase in the ROM (I can make it 3” higher safely) and if not, I’ll work on weight at the shorter height and then go back to try and increase ROM. Ideally get back to doing 21” on these but 18” would be fine too. I kind of wanted to wrap things up here. I was initially going to do the last two things I did last week with the ab wheel and banded lying clam shells. Then thinking I’d add in hamstring band curls seated style. But eventually went with what I’m thinking of doing if I find that rotational swings for the bag toss work best and that is landmine twists. It has been a bit since I’ve done these as well. I figured I’d test out the attachment I got so that I’m not grinding up my floor and barbell ends when I do exercises like this. It was a little haphazard and I do need to have it in a corner to keep it stable. These were pretty easy and I kept things loose. But cautious with how these would feel tomorrow with how my QLs had gotten really tense last week. Put stuff away and ate before stretching.

March 6, 2025 – Week 1, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

12” Log Strict Presses w/ bands (head through on last rep only)
No Bands
87x3
Add Bands (+25lbs bottom/+40lbs top)
87x3
117x3
Add 5 seconds hold last rep
145x3
145x3
145x3
145x3
145x3
145x3

Band Assisted Pull Ups (2-2-2-0 tempo, pin 15)
sbx6
sbx6
sbx6

Paused Close Grip 3-Board Bench Presses (1 second)
45x5
95x5
135x5
185x5
185x5
185x5

Incline Dumbbell Triceps Extensions (3 second eccentrics)
10’sx6
31’sx12
31’sx12
31’sx12

Paused Leaning Dumbbell Lateral Raises (1 second)/Paused Half Kneeling Band Face Pulls (1 second)
18x12--12/lbx12
18x12--12/lbx12

Stretching
 
Comments: Now this session, I had every intention of doing the workout I had originally put down for this day for what was to be the last week of the off season prep (is now first week of contest prep). It was close enough really to what I was going to be doing so I could just stick to it and be no worse for wear for next week. My intent was also to increase the intensity of the session from Day 1 and Day 2 to be more inline with actual workout intensity. But I got a feeling to just change the first half of the workout to be like how I’ll do this contest prep. One to make sure that certain things worked and felt good and the other being I was feeling a little tired of all the incline log bench presses and I didn’t care for how I felt last week one bit. I don’t feel like that this week but it was a bad mental taste so figured I’d just swap what dangling keys I had in front of me. I did a little bit of the circuit warming up stuff but obviously a bit different from the first two sessions this week. No lower body stuff really needed to be done. Foam rolling, bands and bodyweight stuff for the upper body. Really windy today outside. Besides Day 1, the rest of my training days are kind of alternated (light deadlift/banded log with board presses/ fingal fingers and farmers vs heavy deadlift/log/banded zerchers, leg press and Hercules hold). Generally, log strict press is like riding a bicycle for me. It has been many months now and I was doing it with lighter band tension. I seemed to feel really strong (not strongest mind you) with my log press when I was doing alternating banded sessions and heavier sessions without bands. Focusing on the lean back style and head through only on the last reps of the working sets with holds. I feel like this is a good switch from incline log press to these and keeping myself in the loop with log so that not so strange when needing to do this for an actual event. Log strict, axle with lower body drive. I checked to make sure the bands were still hitting the tension I had measured them years ago at. Plan was 60% of my projected max (242lbs) for 6x3 with no head through until the last rep of the sets and holding lockout position for 5 seconds before putting down. I wasn’t too sure how these would go considering like double the band tension I had been using on these. I was going to be essentially using 20lbs less (common theme with pressing) than I had when I last did these sessions. But that is where I’m at right now. But working hard to rectify that. I didn’t feel like I should wear a hard belt for these or wrist wraps. I definitely didn’t need them. I know these weren’t perfect reps each set. It will take time to get used to balance point on these lean back style pressing but I did feel powerful. It wasn’t like these were bad when I wasn’t perfect on the lean back reps but these felt nice a crisp when I was on point with them. From there it was on to band assisted pull-ups. I’ve not been doing vertical pulls for a few months now. And when I was doing them, they had been the band assisted kind. I know I can do pull-ups with weight but it would be lower reps and I’m trying to get myself feeling stronger and get better muscle control of things. I tend to find that the band assisted keep me from “swaying” with momentum when I pull up to the bar. My plan is to do most of the pull-ups with band assistance and eventually getting to doing regular pull-ups at the end so that I can have this like dips back in the training program. So I needed to do these in a way that was not terribly taxing to start but still difficult. So that meant a lot of band assistance but really making these slow. So 2-2-2-0 tempo it was. The concentric and eccentric aren’t that bad but that hold at the top is where things get difficult. I was initially worried I was doing too much with how the first felt. My intent was to leave 4-5RIR on these and was hoping for 8-10 reps. 6 was where I stopped. I forgot how annoying getting onto the heavy band setup is when I have it up this high off the ground. The second set felt easier by a good bit and then third set felt about in the middle. I should hopefully be able to improve on these next week. Another new addition to the routine with board pressing. Well, kind of. So I initially got a gymnastics bar pad to use to makeshift a shoulder saver bar when I was going to do incline pressing instead of log and board press stuff. That only was about 1 board height and my boards are currently propping up the yoke toss tower in the backyard. But I have the foam slant boards and those fit together great. So I can make a 3 board height with hard foam stuff combine with the bar pad. I wanted to just see how things felt with doing these close grip with pauses. I want to try to keep these manageable considering I’m doing lockouts on Day 1 sessions. These are to be every other week though. I wanted these to be similar to how the b-stance trap bar rdls were as far as difficulty. These felt ok warming up. Doing the presses to this height I could feel the triceps in that sweet spot that I feel needs to be worked to get pressing back up. This did take a little longer than I was expecting as I was making dinner between sets and had a kitchen mishap and had to clean up a mess. It is good to see things are working out as planned in the training at the moment. It will be a different story as I get more sessions in at 100% intensity. The rest of the session was essentially the same as last week. Incline triceps extensions with 3 second eccentrics. 3x12 so a drop in reps. I went up 5lbs from last week and that increase was noticed. Again, these seem to feel better than the lying version. Which is why I kept doing these and changed my mind from doing just band pressdowns. I got through these fine enough. Smaller increases I imagine going forward. Superset to end the evening. Leaning laterals with pauses and half kneeling band face pulls with pauses as well. I was initially going to use the same weights as last week because I had just changed the week sessions and there was likely more shoulder effort involved. I also felt it was probably best to just do 2 sets of each because of that. Shoulders tend to be what gets fatigued first for me and harder to recover. I did decide to add 1lbs to the dumbbell I was using and try to increase the tension on the face pulls. These didn’t feel as “enlightening” as last week but still good work. Put stuff away and ate dinner before stretching.

March 8, 2025 – Week 1, Day 4

Dynamic Warm Up

Depth Drops to Box Jumps (12”)
18”x1
18”x1
24”x1
24”x1
30”x1
30”x1
33”x1
33”x0
33”x0
36”x0
36”x0
36”x0
36”x0
36”x0
36”x0
36”x1

Sandbag Throws (overhead style)
35x21’7” (foul)
35x24’1”
35x20’6” (foul)
35x23’3”
35x27’9”

Sandbag Throws (rotational style)
35x23’8” (foul)
35x29’0”
35x28’2” (foul)
35x34’8”
35x25’0”

Fingal Finger Muscle Cleans
300x4
300x3
300+15x3
300+15x3

I-Beam Farmer’s Walks (18” pick, loading weight)
117x25’/137x25’/157x25’/177x25’
117x25’/137x25’/157x25’/177x25’

Seated Band Hamstring Curls/Backwards Sled Drags (turf)
sb’sx40/330x75’
sb’sx40/330x75’

Stretching

Comments: I had decided to transition to contest prep a week earlier than planned because of how I was feeling at the end of the off season prep and I didn’t want to devote anymore time/effort to that when I could be trying out new stuff that wouldn’t have any pressure on me with the first week. I knew I needed to not go full bore this week as this was to be kind of a deload week for lower body stuff in the first place and need to see if some of the ideas even make sense. With my younger sister coming into the last two intense event session weeks for her competition (this week and next), it doesn’t make sense for me to be trying to push 100% on this stuff (at least not everything) as I’m still a good bit out and I got to see how the pieces work. I take the duties as being a coach very seriously. And I wasn’t really sure how long it would take for what I was planning to do either but I was in no rush. This was the least organized of the sessions for this week as I just had rough guidelines really and wasn’t sure if I would be sticking to them or not. I ended up doing a good bit of my warming up before then being a coach for a few hours. So I had to warm up again for my session. I’m not sure what I’m doing with box jumps. My initial plan is to not include them but then I felt maybe I should as something to keep in the mix. I kept them in for this session since it was one of the items from the offseason I did want to see the finish through on since I had done 12 weeks of the 3 variations. Bounding stuff to warm up. Seemed to be fine with doing 2 singles at each height. Plan was a top single. I had thought these would be my highest jumps but not really. I seem to like the seated ones best for height. But these are I feel are probably better than my regular box jump. I just get tripped up with the depth drop and redirecting. 33” I got first try but I wasn’t satisfied with it as it wasn’t a balanced land. I think realizing it wasn’t a secure a platform to jump to is why I couldn’t get myself to commit to it after that and I decided to move on from there. I felt like I had to try 36”. These are definitely something where I get a mental block and have to override it. The previous setup instability and then just how any distraction of people being near me throws me off when going for these kinds of jumps was frustrating. But I stuck with it. I didn’t care if this ended up being an above parallel landing. In the span of about 5 minutes, I missed it 6 times but got it on the 7th. I wouldn’t do this on something like a max deadlift but I kind of needed to get over it and do it. I wouldn’t have been able to have this many chances if it was wood or metal plyo boxes. Then on to actually testing some events for this competition. Sandbag toss for distance up first. I’ve not had enough experience with toss for distance but seeing as how just about every highland games athlete does a rotational toss style, I figured that would be the ticket here. But don’t want to go off assumptions. With the competition, the setup is 8x8 space to throw from and the lane the bag needs to land in is 10’ across. Foot fault out of the box, 0. Bag fouls, 0. No redos, only one attempt. So there is some pressure on this one to find what works and drill it so that don’t take a goose egg. I setup cones to get the box dimensions and the lane and set markers at 15’ intervals to 60’. I knew I wasn’t getting that far just from how my attempts last week inside on the turf were. Plan was to do 5 tosses overhead style and 5 tosses rotational style. Regardless of if good or not. See what feels like what and average distance and from there pick what I’ll focus on. Also attempting variations on things to see if that works better. I was kind of surprised that I fouled the same amount on both styles. I would’ve thought I’d have screwed up the rotational more than the overhead. That’s not to say that I didn’t have trouble with coordination and spatial awareness with the rotational style. Same percentage of good/foul and 5’ greater average results with the rotational style. I feel like I could get a little more out of the overhead style with increased mobility in the thoracic spine and getting my lower back to not be so tense but that could be a losing battle here and seems less strain on my body with rotational style. I also feel like event fatigue is less a factor compared to overhead style with how I seem to rely on things. I was pleased that I got one toss over 30’. I’ll need to watch some more throw videos I think to try and get this ingrained. I feel like I’ll be doing this weekly, just not sure if keeping same intensity each week or varying. But plan is contest weight bag next time. From there I was back inside to setup another event; Fingal Fingers. It has been since 2021 that I’ve really touched this. Today I was just going to see how things felt and use the lightest of the fingers at the gym. This event is such a pain to setup by yourself as the implement is darn heavy to move by yourself. I eventually had to ask for help to get the pivot pin situated. I’m seeing I’ll need assistance for this one every time if I need that for the lightest finger. Plan was to not walk with the finger but to essentially do muscle clean and presses. 4x3 is what I had indicated here. No support gear and testing out my new receiver gloves. I’ve kind of learned that wrist wraps can help with the overhead portion but hamper that transition from the floor to the shoulders with decreasing mobility. I did get to finally try out something I’ve been wanting to do for Fingal fingers with doing backwards gator walks with feet in those fitness discs. Who knows what kind of warming up you’ll be able to do or if you don’t have one to work on. It’s okay but definitely not good enough to replace. Could see it as a warm up coupled with medicine ball clean and presses. I was a little nervous with the clean with it being crushing strength and biceps. But I was fine and these went up easy. So easy I did an extra rep apparently. I had an idea after that to see if I could perhaps load weight on this setup without having to swap in the next finger. The gym has three fingers (300lbs, 400lbs, 500lbs) and they get 2” bigger in diameter as you go up in weight. When I did my last competition with a finger, they had loaded weight to make if feel like a set weight in the front and I found it quite challenging compared to heavier weight at the gym. So I may need to see if I can get up to 500lbs. But if I can add some kind of weight to the lighter ones, I could perhaps not need to worry about that hassle and stick to the 400lbs finger for prep. The sandbag didn’t fit in the 300lbs pipe but it probably could for the 400lbs. A 15lbs slam ball was able to fit and that little amount of weight was noticeable immediately. Not 100lbs more but enough that it feels like somewhat in between. It does need to be reset every rep but that is fine with me as I will most likely be doing EMOM singles as I expect it to be heavy. I couldn’t fit a bigger slam ball so stuck to 15lbs. Like I said, may not be an issue with the 400lbs finger which I intend to use next time. I had some help with tearing down the setup thankfully. I may need to set this up first thing to make sure people are there and try to catch people before they leave. Though the 400lbs isn’t as difficult to get to. One to one last event. By this point, I had already washed my hands of rust, dust and grime for the third time. Farmer’s walk is back. Contest is a bit unique in this event in that starts really light but increases 50lbs per hand every 25’. And you have to add the weight to the handles yourself. Max distance in 90 seconds with these factors and no drops in the 25’ range or you are done. 50lbs jumps gets heavy fast. I wasn’t going to be doing that for this first session and likely not until much closer to the show as I feel I need to build up my ability to repeat picking farmer’s at this kind of weight again. But I did want to see what I’m dealing with time wise with having to add my own weights. I also didn’t want to go full speed as trying to see if my right hamstring is chilling out on me. Also, all the farmer’s handles (besides the Jenkins one) have been rewelded so that means I have the 18” I-beam handles again. Oh joy. So plan would be empty handles and do 25’ and add 20lbs to each handle and repeat that 3 times. So last run would be 60lbs heavier than what I started. Then do it one more time for good measure. I also didn’t have any support gear for this one. This event is going to be as awful as I thought it would be. I could tell immediately that my steps and the muscles that were getting sore and fatigued matched the motion I felt doing the step downs on Wednesday. So going to need those for sure. Lower back was feeling fatigue as were my legs. Grip was fine and dandy. I move a little faster on the runs the second set rather than purely casual pace and it felt like less fatigue issues that time though still lower back. I was able to complete that second one in a little over 60 seconds. So I should have time to get in 4 runs and have time for a 5th in contest, which is the most I’m expecting to have a shot at budging with that being 400lbs per hand. Last bit was just a pairing of exercise I’ve been having my younger sister do with hamstring curls and backwards sled drag. I do the stuff I tell her to do too. Next week plan is to do ghrs instead of leg curls but I may hold off on that as I want to make sure my hamstrings aren’t getting irritated in the tendons from them and recovering. Someone else had been doing sled drags and I told them to just leave it out as I’d be doing them later. I wasn’t sure what weight was on there but it looked like enough for what I wanted to do. This ended up being pretty good. I feel I may need to keep in sled drags just to keep my legs conditioned for the farmer’s walk event. Downed a shake, put stuff away and stretched my calves before driving home and finishing up stretching.