Monday, June 16, 2025

June 15, 2025 – Week 3, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

Axle High Pulls from Blocks (9”)
102x2
146x2
190x2
234x2
278.5x4
278.5x4
278.5x4
278.5x4

Zercher Yoke/Sandbag Carry & Loads
Z – 235x46’
S – 200x46’
Z – 335x46’
S – 225x46’
EOMOM
Z – 435x46’
S – 250x46’
Z – 435x46’
S – 250x46’
Z – 435x46’
S – 250x46’
Z – 435x46’
S – 250x46’
Z – 435x46’
S – 250x46’

Seated Leg Curls (2-0-2-0 tempo)/Monster Mondo Deadlift Start Leg Presses
110x5/400x10
155x5/600x6
220x12/800x15
220x6/800x8
220x6/800x8
220x6/800x8

Wide MAG Grip Cable Rows
140x5
170x5
200x15
200x15

Stretching

Comments: It was probably a good thing that I didn’t train Saturday. I had a disagreement with my new/old supervisor at work that stressed me out. I ended up sleeping like 12hrs Saturday so I had like no day to do anything really. I had planned to do some chores but rain made that not the best thing considering I was going to do stuff with the roof gutters. Ended up doing nothing but organizing paperwork and workout stuff. Also watched some strongman stuff. Even with how I am at this time, I feel like I could’ve placed well at the competition yesterday. But I decided which basket I’m putting all my eggs in for right now. Body weight is up over 3lbs from last check. Lol ok I guess. I was feeling confident enough with my driving in the new car (just around the neighborhoods) to go out to Lancaster solo. And thankfully not much traffic on the day. I didn’t get out there quite as early as I expecting but that was ok. Not many people at the gym today. Thankfully there were some working big fans and it wasn’t as beastly humid and hot. In either case, I did bring two extra shirts after last week. I mean last week my soaks were soaked from sweat and grime. Left forearm is still feeling the pressure from the zercher carry and whatever. It is finding it hard to recover with other things. I decided that I’d take out stuff in my warm ups that seemed to irritate it to hopefully help that. It did have me a little nervous that this session would reaggravate it. Lower back disc pressure wasn’t present at all so that was a good sign and just hopefully showing that just from a tough lower back focused session on Thursday. I didn’t feel like I needed much foam rolling today. Knees a little achy with the warm ups. I may not attempt some lateral movements going forward. Right adductor felt a little “off” with stretching but I didn’t pay it much mind as didn’t seem to be present. So, first thing was again axle high pulls from blocks. I made a slight change here as while I still want this to be axle focus, I didn’t want hand sweat on a slick implement still be an issue. I didn’t want to keep chalking up and trying to keep things for the most part these first four weeks minimal support gear. I had used liquid chalk the past two times. I decided I’d use the knurled axle at the gym instead. At first, I wasn’t sure if this was a good move. But as I went up in weight, I saw that the knurling was a good thing in that I could pull and hold a bit harder and higher with it. Not once did things feel off balanced. So this was good and I felt strong. One more week here I should be able to go up another 5kgs. I want to keep this in mind with these more Olympic based lifts as things in the future even with off season. From there I moved on to moving event stuff. Back to the brutal pairing of zercher carry and sandbag carry with load. These past two weeks of doing alternating EMOM of two event pairings was quite brutal and I knew that I’d need to make some kind of change to make any meaningful progression in weight from the previous session. Either add support gear or increase rest. I figured the increased rest option made more sense since I’ve done that before. So instead of EMOM, it was now EOMOM. I was going up by 60lbs on the zercher carry so that was a decent jump there considering my ceiling on that is a good bit lower than yoke (650lbs vs 1012lbs). I was also not sure on the event details (need to ask promoter) so I wanted to make the load portion tougher on the sandbag to one be more like the sandball but also in the event the load height is higher for the zercher stuff. I’m not sure if the yoke for the zercher will have two crossbars like I’ve seen the yokes at the show had last year. One yoke at the gym has that so I figured I’d use that one for this session, especially since it would make my plate math easier with 100lbs jumps. So this wasn’t ideal. One was that there were a few sandbags out which I guess were from the competition the day before. I hope not from the one guy that was lifting sandbags before I got there. So I had to move those. The yoke crossbar was upside down as it was being used for the competition the day before. This is the tallest and heaviest yoke. So this was very frustrating to get setup by myself. On top of that, I was feeling the weird tension/sensation in my adductor on the right side when I was bending down to move sandbags and such so I was feeling a little anxious and freaked out about to be honest. But I finally got things setup and picking up the sandbags how I normally do did not bother things in the adductor. I mean, I had just done all those high pulls and didn’t even think about it. So five pairs of each with the added rest. The increased weight was noticed but not as much as I was expecting to be honest here. Zercher actually felt more comfortable this time around but it was getting challenging with the arms handling the strain by the end. The load was now the toughest thing with it being 11” higher than it was last time with the 25lbs increase in the sandbag. Front carry and then popping it up and over was tricky. That was the only thing I was worried about screwing up with the fatigue from the sets as moving with the weights was fine. The longer rest was nice and was more so helpful in giving me time to wipe off sweat rather than needing to catch my breath. Forearms didn’t feel that bad honestly besides the raw skin from the athletic tape on the crossbar. The bit easier stuff after putting the event stuff away. Swapped out a fresh shirt for the machines. Supersetting tempo seated leg curls with deadlift start leg presses. I don’t really have a plan with the leg curls like I do the leg press. But I figured I’d try to match the energy. So since lower rep range for leg press (15 reps now), I figured I’d try to increase the weight on the leg curls. So this was to be kind of the tiptoe week here with it being 3-5RIR on the top set of leg press for 15 reps and then doing 3x8 with said same weight. 750lbs had felt too easy last week for the proposed 20 rep set so I felt I had to increase the weight here for this. Ideally, the 20 rep set weight would’ve been this week’s weight for top set but I knew that was going to be too light. So I went with 50lbs jump so even 800lbs. With the leg curls, I added 20lbs to the full stack. This was sufficiently challenging as I got stopped at 12 reps here on the top set. Leg press this felt decent enough. I honestly probably could’ve done another 40lbs and it still being with 3-5RIR for sure. Likely 880lbs for next week to finish out. I didn’t feel like I could just go back and forth like last week with the weight and the sets so I did take a bit of a breather and walked between pairings. Last thing was some rows. Supposed to be the lighter session to see how things feel with going at 2x15 for the sets. With how these were last week, I had a feeling that if I was feeling good that I’d probably have similar things with feeling stronger. So I set things up to give myself the chance to do 200lbs for the sets of 15 with leaving a good bit in the tank (5+). There was some tension in the right adductor with setting up (which makes sense in that I’m doing these to help with sandbag pick up) so there was some anxiousness here. But other than some tension in the left forearm (less than last week), these went well and how they should. This is another exercise I’ve been enjoying with training. But this is more an offseason one with the event focus I have. I mean, it is seven different events. Got to trim from somewhere. Downed a shake and modified some of the weights of the throwing bags before stretching and heading home to have BBQ with family for dinner. Hopefully the adductor thing is just a little annoyance and goes away with some quality sleep and rest.



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