May 31, 2025 – Week 1, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

Axle High Pulls from Blocks (9”)
47x3
91x3
135x3
179x2
223x2
245.5x2
256.5x4
256.5x4
256.5x4
256.5x4

Zercher Yoke/Sandbag Carry & Loads
Z – 175x46’
S – 200x46’
Z – 276x46’
S – 200x46’
EMOM
Z – 375x46’
S – 225x46’
Z – 375x46’
S – 225x46’
Z – 375x46’
S – 225x46’
Z – 375x46’
S – 225x46’
Z – 375x46’
S – 225x46’

Seated Leg Curls (2-0-2-0 tempo)/Monster Mondo Deadlift Start Leg Presses
100x5/300x10
150x5/480x10
200x15/660x20
200x8/660x12
200x8/660x12
200x8/660x12

Wide MAG Grip Cable Rows
100x5
140x20
140x20

Stretching

Comments: It has been a week. A lot happened. The invite does appear to be legit. Indication was invite being extended to me despite 4th place finish due to how close the competition was. So with that, I’m aiming training towards the possible worlds competition. Which is its own headache in that I had already got training setup and now have to shuffle things around to get in offseason training and then prep with 7 events. As well as secure the necessary leave to go. I already have the week after the competition approved (I had guessed when it was an was a week off with leave selection) so I need to see if I can get 3 more days off work with potentially giving back days that following week or later (I don’t need September days). So while stressful, also exciting. But speaking of work, the loss of my previous supervisor is already apparent 2 weeks into this current nonsense. Which has me leery about trying to figure out the leave. Also the people at the top are trying to get rid of the full-time telework that has been in place for the last 5yrs at the end of summer. No details other than beginning of August. Nothing about what that means so just causing confusion. Using the same crap of in-person collaboration. Policy changes and a contract for a vital service (has been something for over a decade) ending means next month is going to start of damn rough too. But that can wait until it becomes and actual thing. I got my thoughts in order for training for this Day 3 session and went to bed with plan of getting up at work time to go train. That didn’t happen. My alarm wasn’t going off and I eventually got too suspicious that it was taking too long to get to wake up time. Power had gone out at like 1:00AM so reset my clock and alarm to midnight. So I ended up oversleeping an hour. But I probably needed it. So about an hour behind to my day. Well that also didn’t end up being the case. I ended up being part of a six car accident on the way to the gym. Everyone involved in the accident appeared to be fine. Allegedly two vehicles drove off without sharing information. My brakes didn’t work like they should and I hit the car in front. Their car only a few scratches but the front of my car was crumpled. Drivable but probably not safe. I don’t have a car to drive for a good bit it would seem. Thankfully my dad was able to take me to the gym after putting car at a repair shop. Ended up at the gym about 4hrs after that so it was about when I was planning to already be done. Not really anyone doing strongman at this hour. I had my protein shake before I started training as this was when I’d normally have it after I was done. I didn’t want to be waiting until like 5:00PM to eat after nothing since 9:45AM. Now that hopefully the nonsense for the day was done, I could train. Foam rolling starting things off and then doing neck rehab stuff, lower body warming up and some stretching. While also dealing with stomach being upset. First thing was a new one for me with axle high pulls from blocks. Breaking the axle pull from floor to shoulders into parts to focus has been a thought of mine for some time but usually this idea was shot down with coaching. Well now I’m the captain so I can try out the things I want to. I’ve done high pulls only few times before and didn’t really like them. I strained my forearm the first time I did them because I was using metal plates and couldn’t drop the weight on the floor at the gym (this was like 20yrs ago) and then when they were programmed by others, it was usually where it was so light I could probably just upright row it. For these, I wasn’t sure if I should be doing them with mixed grip like with how I start axle or if I should do them double overhand. I eventually went with double overhand as seemed less likely for me to pull something and get a bit of grip work in. I used the wood blocks to setup things and used the kilogram bumper plates. Plan was to do 4x4 and have like 2-3 reps in the tank. I had no idea what I’d actually be good for here. I wanted to try and keep things without support gear for most things this week and potentially the next 3 weeks after. Certainly a learning curve here. Need to get collars that stay secure on these. I feel like my third set was my best as far as getting it be like I was pulling back and up. Plan is to do these and aim for 2.5-5% increase each time. From there I moved on to moving event stuff. So worlds has some medley events and two of them are quite similar in that sandbag carry and loads are components of it. But one has a zercher yoke carry alternated with sandbag carry and load. I’ve not really been training sandbag carries in over7 months so that is going to be rusty and zercher yoke stuff like more than 20 months at this point. And just from how the cold kind of put me on my duff, I know my conditioning is not where I need it. So need to get good fast. So borrowing from one my earliest training programs that had alternating EMOM between two different events, I felt that was the ticket. So warm up with both things and then do the 10 minutes of work. No weights listed yet for the show but I have an idea of what they might be so assuming that, I’m starting things off with about 67% of those weights. I wasn’t moving super fast on these as I was aware I had many sets to go. The little voice in my head told me to stop after 3 couplings but I just said do just one more until I was done. Shirt was drenched after that and my forearms a bit raw from the tape on the yoke. After how that had whooped me, I realized that I need to drop some things from training to survive. Initially, I was going to do stiff leg deadlifts with the axle for similar reps as the ssb gms from Wednesday. But I felt it was an error to do so after how I was feeling and my hamstrings still feeling the deadlifts and gms. I’ll save them for another block. So moved on to leg pressing. Well, not quite just leg press. The protocol is an MST one for leg press with deadlift start position with breaking in session and then tough session and then lowering the reps range and starting again. This was to be solo but I’ve noticed my knees feel better on these if I do some kind of leg curl. So I supersetted these again. Plan was to do 20 reps on the leg press with like 5RIR and then same weight for 3x10-12. So leg curls with tempo I was going to what felt good and then like half the reps for the superset. I did what I expected here and thankfully my knees held up. I was initially talking my self into just doing the rep set but did the bargaining to get myself through the remaining sets. Another soaked shirt but I only brought two today. Last thing was some rows. Lighter stuff for 2x20. More MST stuff. Plan being wide grip on the row to work upper back and get some reps there to help with all the picking up of sandbags I will be needing to as well as deadlift assistance. This was to be just a breaking in session here so like 6-8RIR. The MAG attachments are a little strange but they do feel good for the grips. First set I was wondering if too easy but fatigue was hitting hard on the second set. I did not plan for it being this late for the training today. Got home and stretched before getting dinner ready.