Wild west!
1 Like
10/8/2025 Wednesday
Had a 3-hour block of calls scheduled from 5AM to 8.
Pretty miserable, although it’s pretty close to my normal routine. Except that today’s sched doesn’t enable a morning lift.
Not to worry, I’ll try to make a gym trip late-morning after or between meetings, and O-lift. Which I’m looking forward to.
I’m a little worried it won’t go so well today, because I barely slept - it would be optimistic to say I got 4 hours last night; and all of it was on the couch.
I’m still a little sick, coughing all night, and my 4yo is sick, he was in my bed coughing and thrashing all night so I headed for the couch.
2 Likes
Gym trip late morning:
20 rounds EMOM
-snatches. Ranging from 95 to 135 lbs
20 rounds EMOM
-Clean and jerk. Mostly at 135lbs but early reps as low as 95.
This was amazing. Solid effort.
All the snatches of course are power snatches plus overhead squats. But whatever.
Limiting factor on c&j was fatigue and the front squat portion (i was dropping atg after every clean).
3 Likes
10/10/2025 Friday
Wow. The year is almost gone… what a blink of an eye it was.
OK, today’s training objectives were met yesterday, Thursday. I had meetings throughout my usual training times today, but took advantage of some freedom yesterday and did this:
-Surfing. Had a great time. Also a decent workout. Was thinking about how much tiny upper back muscles matter when you’re lying on a board.
Gym trip:
-1 mile run time benchmarking. 7:27, but I think I paid about a 20-second penalty in dealing with the damn treadmill warming up. The treadmills at my gym are so high tech you can’t just jump on and go. Anyway, I’m running a Spartan with a friend in a few months, and then running competitively a couple months after that, so 1-mile times are way less important than 3-mile and 6-mile times, but I wanted a benchmark so my buddy and I (who live 3000 miles apart) can coordinate.
-Bodybuilding.
Classic stuff. 3x8 or 3x10 or 3x12 or 2x20 on basically everything.
DB bench, seated DB shoulder press, DB rows, triceps ext, curls, pullups, wrist therapy, glute machine, quad ext machine.
This isn’t how I normally train but definitely I can see it being a great way to do so! For me it’s not as fun as an EMOM of something full-body. But I need to have this in my life occasionally so everything gets hit. Plus I did Oly the day before so repeating that wouldn’t have been wise.
Good stuff.
5 Likes
10/13/2025 Monday, indigenous peoples day.
6 rounds, going every 6 minutes:
-half mile run
-300ft sandbag carry, 100lbs
That’s 3 miles run and 1800ft of bag carry in under 36 minutes. Felt good.
4 Likes
10/15/2025 Wednesday
Work calls started at 0400 and continue. This was planned, so I got a session yesterday that “counts” for today.
Gym trip. O-lift focus.
Snatch training - all kinds of drills and supplemental stuff working on my catch position.
Actual snatches up to just one at 135lb.
Clean and jerks, very light (was way off my game), front squats, jerks, push presses, various shoulder stuff.
6 Likes
10/17 Friday
Late entry - it’s been a busy day.
Starts with yesterday Thursday 10/16 - afternoon gym trip while a kid is at a thing.
All kinds of drills and supplemental stuff working on my catch position for the snatch. Some actual snatches too. A lot, but light.
A LOT of movement. a lot of overhead squatting.
Energy level wasn’t great, didn’t have fun… wrong time of day, but beggars can’t be choosers.
THen today, a mile walk to the park, a few rounds of pushups, dips, and FFE lunges, then a mile walk back (nice easy therapeutic sesh); then surfing in the afternoon.
5 Likes
How’s this coming along, you seem to be getting out regularly, assuming so decent improvement?
1 Like
Definitely figured out enough of the basics to catch a wave pretty reliably and stand up for a few seconds.
Not skilled or balanced enough to do what I see others doing out there but enough for it to be fun.
Still just using the cheapest, first board we bought when we moved out here too.
1 Like
10/20/2025 Monday
LOL forgot to log… It’s been a long day.
Yesterday (sunday) we took the dog to the beach and had a blast. She’s an incredible swimmer.
Then we took me to the airport. I flew to the mainland for a work trip - I’ll be here through Friday.
I got in around midnight local time, barely slept, did go to the hotel gym though, and the hotel gym was nice.
Today I just did a mile run and some bullshit not worth logging.
Tomorrow I’m going to make a better showing of it.
3 Likes
Tuesday 10/21
Hotel
Misread the schedule for today’s activities and shorted myself on gym time.
Just as well.
15 rounds EMOM of something I found in my log from a previous hotel trip:
45lb dumbbells
3 snatches left
3 snatches right
3 squats with both DBs in a front rack position (90lbs).
Happy I was able to keep it up forall 15 minutes. Knocked out a set of pullups and booked it out of there due to time constraints.
4 Likes
Wednesday 10/22 hotel
LONG day yesterday. Then I could barely sleep. Up every half hour to pee, it seemed like - probably all the salty restaurant food they keep feeding us. I’m strongly leaning toward bailing out on whatever dinner they have planned tonight, so I can just each chicken and rice in my hotel room.
Run 1 mile.
5x5 squats with double 50lb DBs (100lbs).
A set of BSS with a 50lb.
3x6 bench press with 50s (so weird how much more comfortable benching is than squatting for me. I hate squatting.) The bench pressing was too easy so after the first set I made it an incline.
3x5 pullups and 3x10 knee raises - alternated with the bench pressing.
3x6 standing DB shoulder press. Used the 40s.
Some biceps curls, because I mean come on.
Some triceps extensions, but not too many and super light because these feel weird to me.
Was that all? It felt like more.
And a nice hotel room breakfast using the leftover potatoes from Monday’s dinner, and 3 eggs.
5 Likes
Thursday 10/23 still at hotel
And btw this being at a hotel thing is really getting old.
So ever since I got here I figured I’d ditch a team dinner one or more of the evenings, and just eat healthy food in my room and be alone for a while. I bought rice and chicken thighs and am ready to go.
Yesterday would have been the day.
And at 4, when we wrapped up work, they took a poll: who wants to go out and do this scavenger hunt/tour of vegas, and who wants to be a party pooper and stay home? I voted no, along with only a few others, so I figured if the group is going, I’ll be a good sport and go too.
It was… kinda fun… kinda silly… food was decent, but again, yet ANOTHER night of restaurant food.
So this morning - just a mile run on the treadmill, a bit of yoga-mat work (stretching, silly things like hip and shoulder mobility, etc) and a couple minutes doing wrist therapy and a set of 10 pullups. And some super-light shoulder flyes.
Felt pretty silly but a) the gym was crowded and b) I just didn’t have much more in me, or much motivation, and doing ANYTHING was better than NOTHING.
7 Likes
Catching up to 10/29/2025.
Friday I got up at 3:30 to get to the airport and flew home. No training, obv.
Saturday was a busy non-training day.
Sunday was a massive outdoor project. Counts as a workout LOL.
By the end, my very fingertips were bruised. The meat of my hands were bruised from swinging a hammer against a concrete posthole to chip it away bit by bit for hours. Forearms, etc. And all of this was in a kneeling position over a deep hole. LOL ridiculous.
Monday didn’t train, both due to the previous day’s efforts and due to a 4AM work call.
3 Likes
Tuesday 10/28:
O-lifting session:
Snatches. Up to 135lb.
Took a video at 135, sadly I powersnatch it - pretty much a tall snatch tbh - and then after recovery, perform a deep overhead squat. BUT on the plus side, all the weights leading up to 135 I felt like I was doing a better job getting UNDER the bar. I just focused on pulling it into my belly (sounds weird but IYKYK).
I’ll put the video up here in a bit.
That tall catch made me realize - if I’m not extremely comfortable OH squatting a weight, I’ll never be able to dive under it blindly during a snatch. So stop kidding myself into thinking I just need a magic cure. Instead, start getting comfortable under a heavy overhead squat.
So to finish the session, I did a few sets of OH squats with 115lb. Some sets I dwelled at the bottom for several seconds each rep. This was HARD.
And finished with a set of front squats at the same weight.
Some big old dude came over and fist bumped me afterward. He must have been impressed with my suffering under the overhead squats 
5 Likes
Wednesday 10/29/2025
-1 mile run
-half mile KB carry, left hand
-half mile KB carry, right hand
-1 mile run
For the carry: That’s a 50lb bell. Pretty miserable. 10-pushup penalty every time I had to set it down. Did around 3 or 4 of those drops on each half-mile. Right hand was weaker than left.
A moment worth recounting came at the end of the second carry. My fingers were giving out. Zero strength left. But I’d already done enough drops and just needed to finish. The end was in sight. I literally imagined squeezing my soul into each fingertip of my right hand - mind over matter kind of thing. It helped but was an extreme effort of mental exertion.
4 Likes
So my Murph bar has just been raised. A 50yo colleague of mine told me he trains Murph. I asked him about how he splits up the calisthenics and he told me he could do all 100/200/300 in 14 minutes. That’s more than twice as fast as I was going! Essentially if I removed all rest from my current EMOM murph setup I could get there.
I can gain a little efficiency by doing bigger rounds, but yikes that’s going to take some improvements.
OK, challenge accepted. It’ll be part of my spartan race prep. Murphs and O lifting for the foreseeable future!
5 Likes
That’s pretty wild if the rep quality is legit. I’ve done 50/100/150 and 40/120/200 each in 10 minutes, those were both pretty much constant movement. I’ve also done 100/300/500 in I think 46 minutes. But yeah that is a crazy standard.
1 Like
This week has been insane. I feel like its been 18 hours per day of nonstop effort (mostly mental), minimal sleep, abd constantly feeling rushed.
Regardless:
Yesterday 10/30 an abortive gym session. Can’t explain why but everything was wring and I didn’t get a good sesh. Overhead squats sets of 6. Thats about it.
Today 10/31 half murph. Sucked.
Walking home after, I was slower than an old couple on the other side of the street - clear evidence that I’m not in a good spot right now.
Itll be better soon - this is a temporary alignment of everything stressful hitting at once.
6 Likes
Haha don’t put too much stock into this. Old ladies regularly smoke me on my walks, especially when I wear the weight vest. If they have the arm pumping power walk thing going, forget about it.
I’m rooting for you dude. Your log plays out like a Dan John book in real time - kettlebells, sandbags and pullups one day, barbell snatching the next. Very fun to follow along.
2 Likes