May 4, 2025 - May 10, 2025 - Week 10

 May 6, 2025 – Week 10, Day 1

Dynamic Warm Up

Axle Push Presses
2 Second Pauses
46x2
76x2
106x2
136x2
136x2
136x2
No Pauses
166x2
166x2
166x2
166x2

Sling Shot Dips/Pull Ups
bwx20/bwx10
bwx20/bwx10

Overhand Band Pullaparts
µbx15

Band Shoulder Dislocations
µbx10

Underthand Band Pullaparts
µbx15

Single Arm Band Triceps Extensions
µbx30/30

Stretching
 
Comments: This week did not start off on the right foot. While a bit worn from Saturday session mentally, I was feeling ok. But woke up Sunday morning with painful tightness in the left side of my neck. So much so that I ended up taking anti-inflammatories and analgesic gel to try and get things to calm down. Did soft tissue work as well as research on what the issue was. The discomfort and swirling emotions about what to do essentially had me paralyzed with indecision. I did weight myself (260.8lbs so getting very close to 255lbs range again) but that was about it besides watching videos and reading articles about the pain (and watching anime). So it was a bit of a lazy day and a pity party for one. I had felt that it was probably wise to get it checked out so I know what I’m dealing with but by the time I figured I should do that on Sunday, it was too late to go to the orthopedic injury clinic. So plan would be to do Monday and see what was up. Another day of nothing besides work then as after work to get checked. X-rays done and I got assessed. Nothing wrong with the shoulder despite it feeling like ac joint or possibly shoulder impingement. Apparently I have the neck of someone in a traumatic car accident and walked away. I kind of knew that from the last time I got x-rays for my neck in I want to say 2011-2013 and thought nothing of it as not a big deal made of it other than saying my neck curvature was the wrong way. But apparently I have like no cartilage in the bottom 3 vertebrae of my cervical spine. So prescribed meds to get inflammation down (I made sure to have the medical provider check that not on the list of banned substances for this upcoming competition) and given script for 30 days for physical therapy. The PT stuff not a great time for it and not keen on going through the whole bullshit I had last time with my spine and billing/coverage issues. Now that I know what the problem is (advised I shouldn’t have any exercise restrictions) that it is my neck and not my shoulder, I’ll be doing rehab exercises during my warm ups for training. I also don’t need to drastically change my upper body sessions. As initially I was going to do nothing but rehab exercises for my shoulders if it was that. But since not the case, just going to do what I was going to do and hopefully meds and the new habits/exercises take care of the rest. It has been raining off and on as of late and it just so happened to not be raining for training today. As mentioned above, neck rehab stuff was part of my warming up besides what I’ve been doing. Since the neck rehab stuff seems to get stuff warmed up pretty good, I didn’t feel the need to do some of the shoulder stuff to get ready. I did alter the plan with axle push pressing here. I was initially going to be doing the 5/3/1+ day to finish out but felt it was best to rest/recover and treat the fingal finger session as the last heavy press day. This would be more just keeping some movement in plan. So then I was looking at doing a deload session with 3x5 working up to “60%” in 10% jumps. But I felt like a new lease on life so said screw it, I’ll do something more intent focus than going through the motions. So I did pause push presses for some sets and then increased the weight to do some rebound style with no pauses for some more doubles. No support gear of any kind. Not bad. From there moving on to a superset. Dips pulling back but wanting to do higher reps so slingshot added here. Elbows were a little uncertain here as I guess used to me doing a bit more weight before coming in to do these. The pairing was with pull-ups. No band assistance. This was what I was curious to see as I’ve not done regular pull-ups in quite some time. I’m sure I could do them before today but this would see how they feel. Plan was to leave 2-3RIR. It did feel a little weird not having something to rest my legs on for sure. With how they were feeling initially, I wasn’t expecting to get a solid 10 reps both sets here but I did. So that’s good to know. Last bit of the session was just doing some band stuff with the micro band. Really light and more just for movement/mobility and blood flow. The left shoulder did feel the pull aparts as there is tension still in the neck and upper back. I was actually worried with the dislocations as I thought for sure that would really irritate things like how the overhead toss did but it actually didn’t and felt decent. Single arm band stuff to finish up and right arm definitely felt a lot more fatigue compared to the left arm. So done pretty quick here all things considered. Put stuff away and cooked up dinner. Stretched out before bed.

May 8, 2025 – Week 10, Day 2

Dynamic Warm Up

Paused 2.5” Thick Bar 18” Block Pulls (straps, 2 seconds off blocks)
170x1
220x1
270x1
330x1
330x1
330x1
330x1
330x1
330x1
330x1
330x1

Inverted Rows
bwx15
bwx15

Bulgarian Split Squats/Single Leg Seated Band Hamstring Curls
bwx15--15/abx15--15
bwx15--15/abx15--15

Standing Glute Med Isometric with Swiss Ball/Copenhagen Planks
bwx20 seconds/bwx20 seconds
bwx20 seconds/bwx20 seconds

Stretching

Comments: Well the meds are certainly helping. Not 100% obviously but there is not much remaining of what I was feeling on Sunday. I think sometimes we get used to a discomfort and not realize how much it was dragging you down when you get some relief from it. I do know I got to be careful with the combo of meds here in that making sure I got food in my stomach so I don’t get a panic attack with the prednisone and be ready for bed time with the muscle relaxers. Getting to sleep as been a little tricky but I’ve been feeling like when I do it has been restful and restorative. I need that with the stress and also to make sure I’m recovered for competing. I feel mood wise I’m on the right track. I got bruises on my chest, neck and back of my right hand that still need to clear out. This won’t be something I’ll miss from this prep from doing fingal fingers haha. The session for today wasn’t much changed from what I had planned to end on from the start. But always a little apprehensive as I get close to competing and wondering if I got things right. I did change up my warming up order as it seemed to make more sense to start with the neck rehab stuff first and then full body/lower body stuff. Just habit of working from toes up from past stuff. Streamlined things a bit with the warming up for the neck rehab. I’m already thinking of ideas to have the neck stuff be part of regular training be it competition prep or offseason. I mean, I got that fancy neck harness and I’ve only really used it for just one thing when it has other stuff. But that’s for another time. I really do with that the Natural Strongman would put up something about potential events for Worlds in the event I qualify for it next weekend. I like to be able to plan things out. I got a rough idea of what I’m going to do if I don’t or decided not to if I want to try and qualify for Strongman Corporation Nationals this year as well as if I decide I’m going back to offseason (and trying something new with that). But not really anything for if I qualify. I know they don’t release all the events upfront as I think last year the final event wasn’t announced until 6 weeks prior. Oh well. It just things I want to think about to distract from other things. So got warmed up and moving around. Upper body stuff with neck good. Triceps (especially the right) had been acting tight in the morning and early afternoon but stopped being dumb by this point in the day. Calves were feeling a bit tighter than expected so spent some time there. Soft tissue work doing more with foam rolling to help with stuff. Knees felt a little achy at the end of things. But plan was naked joints for deload. Workout today did require some setup compared to the previous session in that some items needing to be the special setup. I could’ve just done the thick bar on jack stands but I wanted it to be like the block setup so that I could have the bar/weight feel a certain way. Plan here was to work up in smaller jumps compared to the plate jumps to 50% of contest weight (which also is hopefully my 50% at least) for 6-8 singles with normal rest between them. I’ve done this before for a contest but that time I had some band tension added. I didn’t feel that was conducive to things since I had just done band tension pulls the week prior and this had been done after my last heavy deadlift session instead (and I had been feeling really beat). But I did feel that just ripping up the weight was probably not the best thing as I know it won’t be that easy at show. So I felt like I should do 2 second pauses just breaking the weight off the foam blocks and then pulling violently. Maybe a little worried that the hold and bracing would be stressful to the lower back here but had to fight that feeling of being so fragile. I feel that as I went, that I got better with the intent and the different aspects more concise, precise and direct. So mission accomplished for what I wanted to be feeling here at the end of the pulls. I also pulled what I did on Saturday where I thought I was moving on to the end. Now not entirely my fault in that I added this to the session recently. Initially I was going to just do some lat pulls where in deadlift stance and getting lat contractions. But then figured I’d do the inverted rows again. Then took them out and put banded rows. Well after having something similar in my neck rehab stuff, I decided to put the inverted rows back in. So that meant needing to teardown the deadlift stuff to setup the inverted row stuff (I could’ve worked around the setup if I was doing the supersets to finish up). I think I was thinking these might be too much energy or effort but that is comparing to how these were when I did them like 22 weeks ago after not doing them for a long while. Last week these had been pretty easy. Even better this time around. Not sure why I was worried. From there supersets to end things. The level of difficulty to be very easy. I’ve not really done these since the previous “offseason” block before this so a little rusty. Bulgarian split squats with just bodyweight and single leg seated band leg curls. The split squats were obviously going to feel less good compared to leg curls since bands and I’ve been keeping up with them in some capacity. Split squats weren’t so bad honestly. Little bit of knee creaks. Leg curls were easy. Last thing was another superset. Isometric based stuff for the hips and legs. The one being to push a medicine ball to the wall with hip abduction. I had to do these as part of my lower back rehab stuff years ago and they struck me as quite challenging and intense but safe to do. I had these in mind to use earlier in the prep based off recent training plans but found that I was needing more benefit from other stuff and it hadn’t taken that long to get my hips and glutes involved in pulls again. Not as difficult as I remember these but I’ve gotten better and I’m not dealing with the back and nerve issues. The other side of it was more working adduction with the Copenhagen planks. I’ve liked these but just couldn’t really see a way to shoehorn them in. I was trying to work these area more dynamically with the events but I felt this was probably the best place to put them to work muscles but not stress joints. Feel easier than they had in the past after not doing them. Maybe I’ll do them more often as well. Put stuff away and stretched out before eating dinner. One more training session to go.

May 10, 2025 – Week 10, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

Box Jumps
24.5”x2
24.5”x2
24.5”x2
24.5”x2

GHD Back Extensions w/Bands
abx5
abx5
abx5
Kettlebell Bulgarian Split Romanian Deadlifts (contra-loaded)
65x12/12
65x12/12

12” Step Ups with Band TKEs
lbx15/15
lbx15/15

Backwards Treadmill Pushes (10-degree incline)
nullx5 minutes
nullx5 minutes

Stretching

Comments:  Welp, the last one for this prep. Friday was a bit stressful with work and my schedule is really going to be packed for work stuff to make up for being out of office for 3 days. I’m also not really going to have much in the way of breaks coming back either. Stayed up a bit late Friday I think since I knew I could sleep in. I was somewhat thinking about going out to train in Lancaster but thought it was better to just do stuff at home as I could and then I wouldn’t need to spend money for gas and travel. Could sleep in more and still have plenty of day. I will need to spend time this weekend getting travel stuff ready and collect thoughts as I imagine I won’t really have time for that this coming week. Stomach was acting up a bit after breakfast with a lot of indigestion but thankfully that went away. But I did wait a bit to start training. Soft tissue and foam rolling stuff and then neck rehab before moving on to lower body base mobility stuff and then stretching. Feeling ok. Calves were feeling a little tight. Bounding stuff to start as box jumps. I don’t have access to as much stuff that is really “safe” for box jumping and plan wasn’t to push things here. Just to keep something in. About 75% of what I’ve done for my best triple. I was initially going to do 3x2. I’m not sure why I get hesitancy with doing the jumps at home more so than the gym as it feels like it is higher than it is. I think now that I’ve realized that I stagger step before my jump that I’m leaning into that more so that I feel like I’m comfortable. Squaring up doesn’t feel natural I guess for me. As it usually the case I feel better with these as I go, so I did an extra set. Still a deload in the height and the volume/reps. No throwing this time. If I was, it would’ve been with something light or a medicine/slam ball. Didn’t want to deal with emptying sand out of my throw bag so didn’t bother entertaining it and hopefully the warming up movements and box jumps keep me feeling “springy”. To kind of deload my zercher stuff against bands, did back extensions against bands. I didn’t get things to be the right intensity for this with the setup I had. This would’ve been better setup at the gym. I didn’t want things to be too tough setting up the bands and getting into position. Didn’t realize the first set I should probably anchor the back of the setup with moving fast against bands. I added sandbags and weights after that. But doing that wasn’t really enough to keep things stable as not weighing down the front part was causing me to still move back even with some 180lbs of weight and getting further away from the dumbbells I anchored the band too. So chalk that up as a misfire for next time. Moving on from there to some unliteral stuff. The exercise was indicated to be one leg rdl with weight in offset side only. The balance factor with the one leg is always a hassle and I’ve found that I get a good bit more with taking some of that out of the equation such as doing b-stance. But I didn’t want to do that this time. I figured I’d try out a different verification where I was using the little rolling support I do for my Bulgarian split squats to do that for the non-lifting leg for the rdls. I also didn’t want to make things difficult to get setup into position here since this was a rdl so I put weight on my kettlebell handle which would have the pick height elevated a good bit. These were interesting with how they felt. Left side felt much better balance wise whereas the right side it definitely was trickier. Would be interesting do these in some capacity like doing the split squats. From there doing some more unilateral work. Been doing a lot of step downs this training so this was step ups. The main thing though was the band distraction that would make it so I had to do a TKE at lockout to hopefully get knee function in a good spot. A little tricky with setup with the band tension but I made it work and it felt right. Left side better side on these as far as how the knee felt as I knew right side there would be the creaking/crackling happening. I definitely could’ve done both unilateral exercise with no rest between sides (like I did on Day 2 with the split squats and band curls) but I felt I should do appropriate break between sides since not supersetted and I may try doing these as their own thing in the future. That covered the lifting part of the day. Inside to do backwards treadmill stuff. Plan was same as last week with 2 sets of 5 minutes. The treadmill I have can’t go as high on incline which is fine. I think I was better ready for what to expect this time and also not supremely drained by the training at this point. 5 minutes does feel like a long time here on this but it wasn’t like I was wondering why I was doing it at 30 seconds like last week at least. I felt fine enough after the first set. I had purposely not put anything away that I had setup for the session (beyond the mobility prep) so that I had something to do as an active rest before doing the second set. Second set I feel was better (similar to last week) and I just counted in my head to break up the chunks and pass time. I did end up counting fast by like 90 seconds somehow. Oh well. Ate a sandwich and cooled off before eventually stretching out after my stomach settled some more. I managed to mostly survive my own training and just go to live through another week and see where the cards fall.