August 2, 2026 – Week 16, Day 3

Dynamic Warm Up

Axle Wagon Wheel Squats to Pads (27”)
35x15
125x2
191x2
257x2
301x1
345.5x1
389x1
422.5x2
2 seconds pauses
312x2
312x2

Log Clean and Push Presses (one clean)
12” Pitbull 
86x5
116x3
146x2
13” Beast Metals
176.5x1
198.5x1
220.5x1
242.5x1
clean every rep
215x2
215x2
215x5 in 60 seconds

Keg/Sandbag/Keg/Sandbag Carry and Loads (52”)
240x26’/255x19’6”/275x13’/300x6’6” in 48.20 seconds
240x26’/255x19’6”/275x13’/300x6’6” in 48.87 seconds

Stretching

Comments: I meant for this to be a Saturday session but the week got away from me. Day 2 session went later than planned and I was kind of playing catch up on sleep and getting other stuff during the week outside of work. Short of it was ended up not walking Thursday (did do some ankle stuff and a ton of soft tissue work) and then walking late on Friday after the heat had died down followed by loading stuff into my car for this weekend (sandbags and such). I was holding too much stuff in my head and I was worried I’d forget something for write ups on sessions and just planning purposes. A friend had sent me a little information based meme about autistic people and handling stress being similar to someone consuming alcohol. A cumulative effect not felt right away and that did seem to put things in a way I was noticing and understanding. I’m still learning things about myself. I figured it was for the best to just let my body take the sleep and rest it needed and if that ended up being where I was getting up after 9:30AM, I’d reconsider training Saturday. Well about 10:00AM I finally got up and I decided to check weather forecast to see if shuffling days made sense. My normal M-W session would have much higher chance of falling on day with thunderstorms when I’d be training so I decided to take another rest day here and get caught up on everything and hopefully be refreshed for training on Sunday. Raining a bit but that’s fine. Weight has been down since I got back from vacation with family last month but seems to finally bounced back from whatever funk I was in as weight is up 4lbs from last week. Slept well enough and it was definitely a difference from how I felt yesterday vs today. I was still nervous about the session though but not paralyzingly so. Rain seemed to clear up before I headed out to train. Drive wasn’t terrible going out (coming back there was a bit of congestion at spots and it was raining). No there really doing strongman stuff I think. Not really expected being Sunday. So good for me in that what I needed wouldn’t be in use. It was unfortunately humid so I was sweating good bit here. I didn’t miss that haha. I’ve not been to the strongman gym in over a month. Foam rolling stuff felt fine. Need more on the right side for the calves and quads. Upper back I needed it today. My chest had no soreness doing stuff to get the neck and such feeling good so I guess that deep sleep Saturday was good for something. No issues with the other mobility stuff other than feeling like I was going to overheat. Dead hang felt fine and then on to event work. Axle squats to boxes. It has apparently been close to a month this I last did these. My knees had been achy at that time and they had felt even worse doing box squats at home the week the power went out. This was an iffy one as I wasn’t sure how weight on my back would feel on whatever disc symptoms that popped up last week. My knee has been feeling better (well at least back to how it was before last month) so that was at least something. With dropping to masters, I actually have a shot at getting a rep on the mercy weight (190kgs). Things had not been consistent and gone well with other things to give the open mercy weight (230kgs) a chance in hell. Assuming no issues, the mercy weight for masters I should be good for based off training when things have felt good. I was worried that they wouldn’t feel good. The original plan had been to do 415x4x1-2. The change was to have it be a top double leaving 1-2RIR with working up in doubles and then singles. My hope was to hit right around the contest weight here for the double. This would be the last heavy session on squats until show time. Initially, I was trying to do the fast drop with a shoulder width stance to try and get bounce off the pads. But it was feeling like not the way to go to be consistent as there was risk with losing tightness and getting out of position. My last single told me that was the case. This honestly felt like my limit for the day with how that felt but I decided to try a wider stance with more hip focus and control. So less quad dominant. Well, that apparently worked and I was able to get the twofer with something left in the tank. I had been sweating like crazy here and had a big fan on me the whole time. I took off a good bit of weight here for two sets where I paused right at the boxes for 2 seconds each rep in the same stance/style. Those went well enough. No back issues and no knee issues. I feel that I just got to get through a yoke session to know if I’m good to go on everything. With how much I was sweating, I took my time putting stuff away rather than moving on to the next thing and leaving stuff for the end. That next thing was log. I know, I already did log out of the rack strict and with floor pressing against bands this week. And I had done heavy log clean and press the week before that had not been kind to me. But one does what one must. My thinking was that I wanted another heavy touch on log with the movement of a clean and push press (I will do another heavy log session before show time out of rack) for few reasons. One to see if I felt better training inside at gym setup vs at home. Another being trying to get a similar setup to world’s with a heavier empty weight log and higher pad pull height. And finally, to see if I could do a deep lap and feel comfortable with my normal lifting shoes. That would hopefully help with my knees and save me some luggage space. I did some stretching with the log on my thighs to get my ankles and calves to not be so damn tight. I was only feeling ok on these today. I forgot how rough that Beast Metal log is after not using it for a while. My hope was that I could do the mercy weight for master’s here and not have it be an absolute max on this log after squats. The clean was very rough on these but I did manage the rep I needed. I contemplated doing a second rep or going up in weight or doing just cleans with more weight but decided it was best to move on to the next thing with less weight for some reps. Which was apparently a good thing. This I wasn’t too sure with the plan but aim was to either do some sets and then a rep set for time or just do the rep set for time. I figured I needed more reps without a worry about time. It is good I did go down in weight as I eventually figured out how I’m supposed to clean this log on these sets and finally got the press clicking on the last set with doing reps in a minute. I paced myself there and with my setup there wasn’t really any recovering to do another rep if I wanted to as the log came off the pads. I know this will need work this off season. I had already gone through both of my shirts being soaked at this point and tried to dry out the least wet one. I took an intermission here since it would take time to setup the loading medley. But also because I had to build one of the implements. My last show I got a discount code for a purchase from a company that did sandbags and got one of those eventually after it was pretty obvious a replacement 250lbs sandbag was not high on the priorities for the gym. I had filled it to 150lbs and put in my car to finish the job at the gym to hopefully be something to kind of cool down and let me get some food and fluids in. This thankfully was not even close to as bad as stuffing the husabag. A little heavy but that’s fine. This was going to be my last time touching the medley before the show. And I had to bump up the weights considerably. I had found out that the kegs at the other gym had been light. The event does change with it being master’s as each implement is a different weight vs same weight for the two sets on the open. I was initially thinking about doing a lighter set and then a heavier set but decided I’d do what was easiest to setup and closest to contest without going over. The height will be 2” lower so maybe that helps with it being a little light. I was darn sweaty and didn’t have a fresh shirt to chalk up so didn’t bother besides liquid chalk for my hands. I figured this was going to be rough and rude awakening with not doing this in a month and with it being way heavier than what I’ve done. The first keg I figured would have some hiccups with going at it cold. The fabric on the new sandbag offends me but I got over it. Just feels dense. That didn’t feel like it went over as easy as it should so I did slow myself a little on the next keg. I got it upright in one motion but it wasn’t quite all on so I had to shove it to be sure. 300lbs sandbag was a tough pick after all that but I got it up high enough to go over. And then I had to set it up to go again. The first two implements I feel I was moving better and even though the pick on the second keg felt a little more labored, I feel that I was good enough efficiency wise to be on a faster pace than the previous set. Well that was until I got to the 300lbs sandbag. I fumbled a bit with it to get the pick and it wasn’t as secure in my lap to pull it up high. I had to keep adjusting it in the lap and eventually just stood up with it at the bar. And thankfully it didn’t move the yoke and I was able to shove it over. About a half second slower than the first set so I know that if I move like I was doing on the other stuff and not peter out here that I can shave at least 3-5 second off here. Downed a shake before putting everything away and driving home in the rain. Filled up the gas tank before hitting rough traffic near home and finally stretched out. I got to survive 4 more harder workouts and then I should be as ready as I can be.