Added some more weight to the power snatch this workout, and will continue to do so as my tech gets better. I’m gonna keep it in the activation zone though.
Reps on military press felt really good today. I felt much more stable in the MTZ than usual.
Tried to use a shrugged bench set up that I read about in the livespill. Felt better on the incline, but I have to make small adjustments to make it work for me on the flat bench.
-Neural charge WO
power snatch
explosive push up - triceps attachments is sore when contracted in this manner
vertical jump
Stopped when I started to feel like killing. Don’t know if I should do one round more?
BTW I had zero cramps for the last two days, and one today.
Did military for my press today. Forgot activation exercise.
Felt really dominant of the weight even though I added some.
Did military press again today. My rep performance was worse than yesterday, maybe because I’m not used to the pressing frequency yet. Remembered the activation exercise today. Thumbs up haha!
Feel insanely hungry today!!!
Thats usually a good sign, when not related to emotion. Hard to judge though. I feel insanely aggressive today. Not “I’m gonna kill you aggressive”, but rather “let’s get shit done, and I will tell you how to do it” aggressive. Aggression without anger.
I have bettered my overall rep performance over this week. I can really feel the difference on CNS freshness! My cognitive function is really over the top right now. One of the other students at my school said to me that it was like I was on speed because of the speed at which I solved the tasks given to us. Compliments are always nice. Positive reinforcement and all that haha.
Did lat/biceps yesterday. It was at my parents place so I did do as many exercises as I’d like to. Did 2 lats and one biceps until I felt like I was done. I do get sore from only training them once a week.
NCW yesterday.
Today was press. I have seen that the template for the week has changed, but I like the OH/bench emphasis thought, and can’t see a downside to it, so I’m keeping it. So today was OH emphasis. The small gym was really crowded, so I had to use a really crappy bar for the first two presses. Thankfully I got the olympic bar at the time I had to do flat BP. Other than that I actually had a good workout, and learned a good lesson:
-Don’t bring your own music! I didn’t bring any today, and I felt much more “in the zone”.
The pain at my triceps is gone, but now another problem emerges. I’m doing two waves this week, and my grip-endurance for BP apparently SUCK! I always grip as hard as I can. When I release my grip I can feel the energy going into my wrist and down my arm. When I can’t grip the bar properly the bar is getting in a wrong position in my hand, which makes it hurt, making the whole arm/shoulder unstable. So I had to stop at the second wave.
-Maybe I should switch to the suicide grip and see how that effects the reps?
Regarding the cramp: Today they are small in percieved pain, but very frequent.
Press today. Trying the suicide grip really made it hard to focus on acceleration, and volume.
Did two waves on 1st exercise, one on the second and none on flat BP. Suicide grip literally streched my hand to weakness. I would need to stretch and pratice to make it work for me.
I’m gonna try normal grip with gloves next time and see how that works for me. Then we will see where I go from there.
Did Military press, for the last two days. Thurdays workout was a little weak, but the one on Friday was really good. I’m really looking forward to training lats and biceps tomorrow.
Did 3 lat exercies and 1 biceps exercise. I have though about doing some lat/bicep work after the NCW. A little puzzled about how to structure my training week when doing this. An extra day of NCW between the upper body pressing emphasis day?
For NCW today, I have spread some light BW exercises over the evening. Made sure to include pressing.
Had a press WO with emphasis on military press yesterday. Got one cramp while i trained, gotta pull myself together and see a doc soon, so I can train legs again. The only work my legs have gotten over the last couple of weeks is some hard bicycling.
Back to the training session: My shoulder joint helt a but achy from the added volume last week, but I was able to press without pain, and I can feel the movement becoming easier to stabalize the more I pratice it. Even with loads as heavy as these. For bench I decided to give the suicide grip another chance, to see if I just needed some stretching on my thumb to make it work.
Turns out this was the case. The recruitment pattern changes a little bit when changing grip, so I need some more pratice with it to stabilize what would be my MTW properly. I’m probably like 10 pounds lower with this new grip, and speed is a little bit lower too. But this will change with pratice.
For the record I’m actually better with suicide grip on incline bench now.
Did this weeks second pressing session. Emphasis on flat bench. Tech for grip style is still improving. Although I am trying to do 3 waves this week to accumulate more volume, I can’t do this on the bench with this grip yet. When I hit the MTW I had to gradually reduce the weight for the waves, which I only did 2 of for flat. I haven’t praticed this grip so much, so my new flat bench, pressing style is still very sensitive to fatigue. Incline bench on the other hand is going up. It’s getting kinda close to my flat bench, which I expect will take of number-wise, very soon.
I’m reducing # of waves to 1 next week, so I will be more fresh and focused when I get to flat bench.
Did some fragmented NCW yesterday. Did OH pressing today. Haven’t had a cramp since monday. Good sign. I will begin adding leg pressing patterns in next week if they still have not reoccurred. I’ll start by adding in front squat on lower body emphasis days.
Military press again today. Felt pretty good after the third wave and rep performance was still getting better, so I added an extra wave, which means I did 4 waves total. After the fourth wave my fatigue level was were it is usually at after the third wave, which means my work capacity is expanding. Also today I noticed that my acceleration in the bottom of the lift has improved.
I also noticed that I’m getting better at using my back to stabilize my body. The two improvements might be related because I figure that if I’m more stable I have a stronger base to press from thereby letting me focus more on acceleration rather than stabilization.
Notes on body comp:
Fat levels have stayed pretty much the same even though I haven’t been fantastically good at following a good diet. I also haven’t been able to work legs because of the cramps. That tells me I’m messing with powerful stuff here. I can’t wait to see what happens once I start to add in leg work.
Tricep size seems to have improved quite drasticly compared to what I would normally expected of a 3 week run. I identified my triceps as my weak point earlier in the log, so it’s nice too see that it is improving. Overall I think I look a bit bigger, but I’m not sure if it’s just because I feel great on this program.
In the start I feared that I might lose some biceps size on this program, but I haven’t experienced this yet.
God bless T-Nation for releasing such amazing articles for free.
Had cramp yesterday = crap!
Did a lat/biceps yesterday - goood session!
Gonna do a NCW in a couple of hours.
NCW consisted of:
Push press
forward jumps
plyo push ups
Upper body pressing emphasis. Extra emphasis for military press. More grip ecsperiments: Rotated wrists slightly inward. It might be useful in adding a more stable base to military press. When the weight gets too heavy 225 lbs it hurts my wrists and actually gets unstable. I hurt my thumb so I couldn’t do suicide grip today, and that is why I tried it. Got very angry earlier today and that really hurt my focus. I was pretty much out of my zone for the entire first exercise.
Still a bit sore from the workout saturday. Hope it’s gone tomorrow.
Upper body emphasis = UBE
Have mixed feelings about todays session which was UBE. On one hand my Military press went REALLY well. On the other hand my Flat BP went equally bad, even though I think I found out how to make the wrist pain go away (= no more suicide grip). I keep squeezing the bar a until I have untensed the rest of my body. It helped, but then again I dropped the exercise pretty early cuz it was not working for me. Did some dips instead.
I mententioned earlier that when I first started to add in inc bp press again, that these messed up my pressing on the flat. So I’m thinking that I DROP the weight when I get to flat BP in order to have a couple of sets to get the proper pressing pattern down.