My programming has been less than ideal this week. Actually, it’s been awful. But I didn’t want to miss any training days and I know I won’t have access to the weight room for the rest of the week. So I got done what needed done. I’ll make sure to get in as much conditioning work done as I can while I’m away, and hopefully some pullups, too.
Had to go a little lighter on the upper body stuff tonight; my shoulders just weren’t having it. But I feel good that I did get all of my strength work in. Now for some time away with my wife. And some golf.
As awesome as last weeks squats felt, these were that bad. Heavy. I imagine it’s from a remarkable lack of sleep recently.
I’m not sure I’ve gotten 8 combined sleep hours in the last 4 days. Coupled with a couple of 8-hour drives over the weekend, I think I’m wiped out. But, again, I got it done.
Logging this here, just so I can look back and remember it fondly some day:
At a local Italian restaurant the other day I ordered a hoagie and the young guy that took my order asked me “Do you lift?” When I replied affirmatively, he said “I can tell.” I am not a young man. Nor am I an old man. But I am a man who looks like he lifts. Evidently.
Trying something slightly different with my bench press. We’ll see if it works. This is getting frustrating. It’s never been good, but now seems like it’s going backwards. But there may be reasons. No worries.
I only do the carries in the summer when I can get outside. I love 'em. I have the Rogue farmer handles and they’re the best accessory I’ve bought since building my weight room. I wish I had a longer stretch to walk with them, though. Turning around with those suckers is a chore. It hasn’t killed me yet, though, so I guess…
I’m pretty sure I’m just pushing it too close to failure too often. To put it in RPE terms, I’m spending too much time in the RPE8-9 range, rather than the RPE 7-8 range, because I really want to push it. I think I just need to leave the ego at the door and trust the process. I tend to do this with my squat, too.
I noticed with my deadlift that, because everything over 315 lb feels like an RPE 11, I thought I was overshooting. When I watched some video back, it was obvious those lifts were actually much easier than they felt. So I had been spending much more of my time on the DL in the RPE 7-ish range, and it’s been shooting up.
My program calls for me to stay in those ranges, I just get greedy. Especially if it starts moving up even a little. Then I think I’ve got to start slamming more weight on the bar.
Also, my arms being 8 ft long doesn’t help matters. But that’s just an excuse.
I’ve been doing my pullups very slow and controlled, with a dead stop at the bottom. I think I’m actually starting to get better at them. I’ve just been putting a certain amount of time on the clock and doing as many as I can in that time, trying to always leave one in the tank. My total number has been increasing. I’ve also noticed my biceps tendon hurting less than it used to while doing these
*So, I’ve had my first ever deadlift “injury.” On the third rep of my first backoff set, my lower back felt like it just caved. Popped. However you want to say it. But it was followed by a wave of pain spreading over my entire back. So that ended deadlifts for the day. I was able to grit my teeth through it enough to finish the rest of the workout.
I woke up this morning barely able to get out of bed or walk. It’s very stiff and painful. I’ll get in the weightroom today and see what I can do. I’ll get it moving around a little bit and see if I can put it under any kind of load. We’ll start there and see if we can work through this.
Thinking back through what happened, I think maybe I just lost focus on that rep. The weight wasn’t much of a backoff from my top set PR, so if I wasn’t paying attention to holding my lower back rigid, it probably wouldn’t take much for it to be compromised. My buddy was over lifting with me, so that may have added to my distraction, as I lift alone 99.9% of the time. I need to work on my mental game, obviously.
Tried to get in the weightroom and move around a bit a few times over the weekend. I could not get my back loosened up. The pain is constant, and much worse than the back tweak I had in January. I tried some squats with just the empty bar. It hurt, but was do-able. Tried 135 lb and just standing up under that weight hurt so badly I had to rack it. Frustrating.
I’m going to see my massage therapist tonight to see if she can help me get it loosened up.
Sorry to hear about your back mate. Hopefully it is just a minor muscle pull and with a few days rest and some movement you will be good to go. I find just walking really good for me when my back is stiff.
I just came from my massage therapist and she thinks it might be a torn ligament. Of course there’s no real way to know without imaging, but it doesn’t really matter.
Despite having broken half the bones and/or joints in my body at one time or another, I’m not really usually this fragile. In fact, half the reason we all do this lifting nonsense is to be less fragile, I think. I just seem to be on a bad run here through the first half of this year. The good thing is through it all I continue to make progress! Imagine if I wasn’t having these repeated setbacks! Oh well. Head down and soldier on.
So, I’ve been going in the weightroom each day since Saturday and doing some empty-bar or light stuff just to keep my back moving and start putting it under some load. This was the first day that I felt I could go a little heavier, so I slowly started adding some weight. I got up to 315 lb on the squat, and decided to call it there. I don’t want to go full meathead and end up prolonging this injury. I feel really good about how heavy I was able to go without a ton of pain.
I did some stiff-legged deadlifts instead of regular deadlifts to prevent me from going full meathead. They also felt pretty good, but I stayed very light.
The overall general pain I was feeling has become isolated to the lower portion of my left erector spinae. Consequently, I’m assuming that’s the area that I injured, whether that be a ligament or something else. Luckily, I have lots of ligaments, so we shall continue on.
