Incline Bench:2451 2651 2851 NEW PR!!
Pullups:551 751 901 NEW PR!! 1001 NEW PR!!
Standing Press: 1551 1751 1901 1951 NEW PR!!
DB Unilateral Bench: 603 803 903 NEW PR!! 1003 NEW PR!! 1103 NEW PR!! 120*1 NEW PR!!
Well that was a good session…I decided to start my max-out week today, instead of Monday. I figured this way I could bag a few records, then rest the weekend, before picking up fresh on Monday. Otherwise I’d have been going for the records from today at the end of this coming week after 3 days of record attempts. Not sure I’ve ever set this many PRs in one session. Although the unilateral bench thing Ijust don’t think I’ve ever really tried. The pullups were surprisingly easy, thought I may have trouble breaking 85, but nope. Standing Press was a bit shaky, I got it, but I think literally any other day I would’ve missed. Good sesh. though.
Kept it REAL easy here. Just wanted to keep myself loose, legs are STILL sore from sprinting &squatting on back to back days. Fortunately it’s mostly my quads, so hopefully doesn’t influence deadlifting tomorrow. We shall see
[center]March 26, 2012 Lower WHARGARBL!!! WITH VIDEOS[/center]
BB DL: 4001 4451 4751 [b]5051 NEW PR!! 5151 NEW PR!![/b]
Trap-Bar DL: 4051 4951 5151
[i]Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. As I transition out of my 20s I keep thinking to myself "someday, maybe it’s today even, there will be a day when I am never stronger over the course of my life. I will look back on it 30 years from now and say “I never lifted more than I did that day”. I don’t know if today’s that day; I hope not. But still at some point I’ll hit a pull/bench/squat/whatever that I’ll never surpass. I may not know it at the time; in fact I probably won’t. Nonetheless that day will come. Today was hopefully not that day. I got the 475 easily, then decided to just go for 505 instead of ramping anymore. That went up fairly easy. I was actually surprised how easy. I decided to go for 515. The horror…I locked it out…but my form was…rough, to say the least. I hadn’t really planned on doing two pulls above 500 on standard deadlifting. Still though, felt great. I’ll probably forget the form I used in a month or two, but I’ll always remember pulling 515…until I pull 520. Worth noting, I was 205.5 lbs here.
Hit trap-bar deadlifts after sort of just for fun. Tied my old record. Considered breaking it with 520, but figured I’d save it for another day, I was getting hungry and I didn’t want to tax my CNS anymore than I have to. On to the videos![/i]
First the non-horrifying. 505
Now for the horrifying, my form on 515. I actually started laughing as I locked out
Bench Press: 2751 2951 3051 315X 3151
DB Incline: 902 1052 1152 120*2 NEW PR!!
So I always do better without a lift on benching for some reason. I just have a hard time controlling the weight on the way down if I get a lift off. Kind of surprised I got this high on benching this bulk. Was not expecting to get past 300 again any time soon. Decided I wanted to max out on db incline (gym only goes to 120 lbs.) so I crossed that off my to-do list finally. Good session, and the max-out week continues. No videos here, since 315 isn’t particularly prodigious, and given that my PR is 340. Albeit that was at 231 lbs, and I’m 205.5 here.
[i]This went well, record is 400 @ 231, I was 205.5 here still for the 385, the former was a 1.73x BW squat, this one is 1.87. Working towards 2x still. No extra exercises here. Saturday I’m doing O-Lift PR attempts. And now for the best story I’ll probably ever get out of the gym:
So I had 365 on the bar and I went to go get a drink from the fountain before doing the set. I come back not 30 seconds later and some dude is unloading the bar. I say “hey dude, still using that”. Unfortunately he has headphones on and can’t hear me. Even more unfortunately he’s decided to unload the 3 45s and the 25 from one side of the bar without taking any plates off the other. He takes the last 45 off and the bar flies up narrowly missing his face, and dumping the weight off the other side. Loud noise, people staring, etc. He looks at me finally and I say “you can’t take all the plates off one side. Also I’m still in here. I need you to rerack the bar and load the weight back up for me”.
Then I walk away and start talking to one of my friends there, we’re kind of laughing, didn’t want to be too mean. So we’re looking at this guy, and he puts the empty bar back on the rack and starts loading weight back on it. On one side. I say to my friend “There’s no fucking way…no. fucking. way”. Yup. one 45…two 45s…3 45s. At this point my friend and I are both shouting, but again dude’s wearing headphones. He starts to slide the 25 onto the bar and me and my friend are screaming at him and the dude looks over to us, as he pushes the 25 on…and the bar dumps and pegs him in the chest. Fortunately a trainer was there and she jumps on the unweighted side and throws some weight on to counterbalance it. To the dude’s credit he stuck around in another corner of the weight room working out for a while. In retrospect I kind of feel bad for being blunt with him after he dumped the bar the first time. If I had known he would’ve done it a second time I probably would’ve cut him a break. Poor dude’s not having a good day. [/i]
Hanging Power Snatch: 1351 1552 165X
Hanging Power Cleans: 1701 1901 2051 2151 [b]2251 NEW PR!![/b] 230X
Push Press: 2251 2351 2451 255*1 NEW PR!! 260*X
Can’t believe I still can’t get more on the snatches…form seems to be holding me back. I’ll be posting videos after youtube processes them. Power cleans however I got a record which I’m happy with. Push Press I hit 255, even if it was sketchy. And thus ends my bulking cycle, I accomplished most of my goals; my back’s definitely thicker, I learned the o-lifts, I deadlifted over 500 lbs, got very close to standing pressing 200 lbs (I’ll probably do that when I go back to the gym this coming week), and I got very close to my goal on push pressing, so I have something to keep shooting for.
Now I can go back and look at form. I feel like on the cleans & snatches after I jump when I land my feet are WAY too wide. This gets me lower without actually dropping my hips when I catch the weight; since it’s a power snatch/clean I don’t want to be dipping down. But this also has the added effect that a lot of my energy is spent not exploding UP with the weight, but going towards moving my legs out to the side.
I don’t do ‘easing back into things’ after taking my weeks off. Deadlifting was hard, but I managed. Now that I’m done with the bulk I can focus on form, as I said in my previous post. I dropped the weight back on the cleans and focused on not landing wide on those last two sets. It’s amazing how much easier they are with good form. I almost clipped my chin on that first rep of 185 I did. I’m going to build back up on the weight using better form on the jump & landing. Added in glute bridges as well, trying to focus on the contraction with them, and hip drive. Did some abs after, can’t forget about the wide-stance anti-rotational chops, I need to do them some point this week. Won’t be going to the gym tomorrow, I have a friend in Boston Visiting. Wednesday will be my heavy/upper day.
I cannot describe how sore I am. I’m never taking another week off from the gym. I hear people talk about how much stronger they come back after…me it takes about 3 weeks to get back to the levels I was at before. Never again. I literally can’t even lift my arms over my head after this. Fuck taking weeks off.
DB Rows: 12010 12010
Rope Pullups: 4 abs are shot
Wide-Stance Anti-Rotational Chops: 50*10
So sore I can’t even cough without doubling over. My abs are gone. My chest was so sore I couldn’t bench today. Again. Never taking another week off. Ever. My body is just completely racked with DOMS right now.
First time back doing conditioning in a while, had an odd problem on last few seated jumps, it was like I couldn’t get off the box so I had to reset a bunch of times. Odd. I actually feel like I’m doing better on the plyo clap pushups lately, like I have more spring.
Deadlift: 4053 4053 4053
Bench Press: 2503 2703 3001
Pullups: BW*10 (slice on left pointer finger stopped me)
Odd week, had some stuff going on Monday so wasn’t able to lift. Getting frustrating the last few weeks with stuff getting in the way. From here on out I should be good though. Just wanted to get in a double session here. Sprinting tomorrow, squatting Thursday. Going to sore as hell Friday. I had torn open my pointer finger tip on my left hand on Sunday, it got pinched by a tripod. Still hurts pretty bad, so I did as much as I could here.
It was GORGEOUS out. About 55 degrees and breezy, perfect for sprinting. I didn’t even break a sweat. I wish I had a few more recent sprint sessions under my belt, I would’ve stayed out longer. I could’ve done 1500 meters in this weather. As it is though I didn’t want to destroy my legs before squatting tomorrow, and I’m just getting back into sprinting season.
A tad sore from sprinting yesterday, but not too bad. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll be sore though. Easing back in after the off week & record week that I took, so realistically it’s been a few weeks since I squatting anything. Going to go back to full strength next week hopefully. Focusing more on form with the snatches now. I love the chops…seriously might be my favorite core exercise right now.
Fun session, been about 3 weeks since I inclined at all so it took a bit of a hit, probably be back up in a week or two. Pullups went well; finger’s feeling better. All the racks were taken for the start of my press work, so I started in the seated press. Didn’t realize it was actually harder than standing press, but it definitely was.
Felt like I’ve had to exert extra effort on the jumps, I think I’m psyching myself out. I may record a video of them next time I do them to see if something’s different with my form. Hopefully I’m not just getting old.
Taking it ‘easy’ or maybe less ball breaking is a better term. I’m on a cut so I’m not going to have as much protein/materials to repair if I was going hard on deadlifting with 3 reps at 475 or so. I need to look at form on the hanging power cleans, I’m leaving my feet STILL even trying to focus on not spreading them so wide on the catch. Your feet should barely even leave the ground, and I do it constantly, with both feet moving about 2’ out to each side. For unilateral deadlifts I need to drop the weight big-time and just build up, it’s completely different feeling from a deadlift. Finished with bird-dogs. Feels good to be doing more stability work. Here’s 2 videos on how to do hanging power cleans:
Solid workout here, decided to throw in the 1.5 pullups since I haven’t done them in a while. Got back into the swing on push pressing. Same with paloffs. Going great. Starting to pick up again after taking that week off.
Squats: 3203 3303 3403 3502
Hanging Power Snatch: 1153 1353 1503 1602 NEW PR!!
7kg mb slam tabata: 18, 21, 19, 19, 18, 17, 20, 20
Good times! Focusing on throwing my hips back when loading up for the snatch instead of bending my knees. Didn’t think it’d make as big a difference as it did. HUGE difference though. Finished off with a tabata since I am cutting and didn’t get to sprint yesterday on account of shitty weather at the track. Left me toasted.
