Saturday we got almost 3 inches of rain. Sunday and Monday evening I had to rake and shovel all the flotsam and washed out gravel. 1 sided repetitive moves like that aggravate my hips and back so I decided to use the Repetition Method for training today.
4-23 Legs
Clam, reverse clam, laying adductor, McGill curl up, psoas eccentric. x 8 reps x 2 sets
Single Leg Kneeling Hamstring Curl
x 8 reps x 5 sets
Single Leg Glute Thrust
no weight x 5 reps with 3 count eccentric and 3 count hold at top
Bottoms Up Dumbbell RDL
55’s x12
High Step Up
20 medicine ball x 8
Low Step Up
same ball x technical breakdown
3 rounds. I thought really hard about a fourth.
Neck Harness Extension
40 kettlebell x 25 reps
Reverse Hypers
90 x 25
Suitcase Walk
55 x “down” and switch hands for “back”
4 rounds
Seated Calf Raise
3 count down, 3 count hold at top x 12
Donkey Calf Raise
x 20
Thrice
Good music in the gym today. I coulda done 1 million reps.
-Use fat gripz on stuff you already do.
-Use 3, 2, or 1 finger to hold on to deadlift warm ups.
-Focus on holds and slow negatives if you use grip machines.
Cuban Rotations on bench and shoulder center drill to get going.
Bench Press Isometric
Press bar into pin near the top x 3 count x 3 pushes x 3 sets
Press Bar into pins slightly lower 3 x 3 x 3
Pins way way up, like right at almost full extension 3 x 3 x 3
5 pushups after every set
Bamboo Bar JM Press x go until it got sloppy, then close grip bench until almost failure
Chest Supported Row x go until sloppy, take off some weight and mid back shrug until almost failure
4 paired sets, added weight and lowered reps each time
Cable curl till sloppy then incline dumbbell curl till almost failure
3 times, lowered weight to keep reps almost the same
Rear Delts on Reverse Pec Deck
x 20 x 2 sets
It was hard to push the bar into the pins way way up at the top. Hopefully my CNS learned something.
Still a little tight, and maybe a little sore from all those reps Tuesday so I kept it brief and intense. After that decision I started to get little Phantom Pains in my legs and back in anticipation.
I did the same lower body warm up I’ve been on recently.
Box Front Squat
Ascend
235 x 1
255 x 1
270 x 1
Inverse Curl
+130 x 4
+120 x 4
+110 x 4 maybe PR?
+100 x 4 surely a PR
+90 x 4 bonus
Cable Pull down with semi supinated handle x 12
Dumbbell Shrug x 8 mTor reps
45 Back Raise hugging medicine ball x 12
3 rounds
Hang off reverse hyper for like 30 deep breaths x 2
Good workout. A little voice said don’t go crazy, get out of here with the 255 front squat, but then I remembered, I’m Alexander, he’s no Alexander. The lifts felt good, no hip or crotch pressure and no back rounding. I think that’s 5 pounds above what I front squatted last year when I was doing front squats. Adductor knee rolls and neck harness extensions are no joke.
Johnnie pulls 705. Pretty cool series of vids, to see the workouts over time instead of just a big lift at the end. Jackson is huge but he’s just like everyone else, in the heat of the moment he feels so good he decides to go for an extra rep. At the beginning he was intimidated by deadlift. And thought people would think less of him if he lifted “light.” He almost cried (7:00) when he had a little lat issue that messed up one of his sets.
Bryant said they used a pretty basic strategy at first and will start messing with some more exciting stuff in the future. I hope they film and release it the same way.
Dip Machine x 15 or less (lazy tricep)
Overhead Tricep Cable x 20 or less (long tricep)
Rope Triceps x 20 or less (medial tricep)
3 loops
Rear delt on pec deck x 15
Bradford Press x 15
Gironda delt raise x fail around 12
3 rounds
Cuban Rotations face down x 10
Dumbbell Shrug face down x 15
3 rounds
Cool workout. Right pec felt a little weird after 285, and every rep of the exercise was a PR so I didn’t go up, but bench felt pretty solid up to there. Gironda raises were fun.
Alright! My woman finished Grad school with her Master’s in clinical nutrition. Her family has been in town with lots of ceremonies, events and pictures. Eating and sleeping haven’t been great and I’ve been drinking heavy. Back and hips are tight. I’m a huge puss when it comes to deadlifting anyway, so I was a little gun shy today.
To have a good workout I went to a new lift. Excitement!I
4-6 ME Lower
Snatch Grip Deadlift, Plates on Blocks
Do some doubles
305 x 1
325 x 1
Single Leg Kneeling Hamstring Curl x 10
45 Degree Hyper/Dead x 12
Dumbbell Shrug x 8 mTor reps
1 easy round then 3 good rounds
Upper Back Extension with SSB x 25
Single Leg Ass-Blaster x 10 then x 10 together
4 rounds
Seated Psoas Raise + Hold x 5
Leg Raise Off Bench, slow lower x 20
Sidebend x 12
Twice
120s on dumbbell shrugs. Upper back was working in a good way on snatch grip deads. Definitely felt stronger and less twisted in upper back after this year of focus.
Y-Raises and arm circles against a mini band to get going.
Slight Incline Dumbbell Bench
Go up
85 x 8
Flat Dumbbell Bench
40s x 20 reps
35s x 20 (needed a rest/pause!)
30s x 20
JM Press
Go to technique breaks around 8 or 10, then close grip x 3 good sets
Pec Deck x 35
Rolling Tricep Extensions with Kettlebells x 25
3 pairs
Shoulder centration drill
Wrist Roller x backward, forward, backward, forward
Dumbbell Rear Delt Raise x 20 ish
McGill Curl Up x 8 Psoas Eccentric x 8
Three times
The chest region didn’t feel particularly strong today. Looking back, I tied the 8 reps of incline dumbbell that I did last time. But that was like 40 days ago and I haven’t been messing with db incline much so I’m not gonna cry about it.
Here’s 600 + raw bencher George Halbert showing a pullover motion to build up the little muscle under the bicep and practice using lat/serratus to move the arm instead of the bicep. And a band uppercut to train proper curling and shoulder flexion motion and rehab the bicep tendon.
This one shows a drill to learn how to properly stabilise and centrate your shoulder to take pressure off the bicep/elbow.
Once you have stability and pressure off the bicep you can use these Band resisted arm circles to build up the ROM that you can properly move through.
25% of the time, Dorian Yates wasn’t going to failure!
"T: Did you employ periodization in your training?
Dorian: No, not really. When I was younger, still guilty of overtraining, I’d go all out all of the time, until I noticed a pattern of my getting sick. I’d get really bad sore throats, colds, my immune system would get really run down, then I’d have to take a week off from training to recover. That was the pattern. Then it evolved into me training really heavy for six weeks, then backing off a litle bit for maybe two or three weeks.
T: Your body forced you into it, once you began listening.
Dorian: Yeah, it wasn’t planned, but it was something I noticed. I couldn’t work out that way fifty-two weeks a year.
T: For instance, the way you trained in your workout video, Blood and Guts, you didn’t do that five days a week all year 'round, right?
Dorian: I’d work out like that for probably five or six weeks, then back off, short of failure, no forced reps or any high intensity techniques like that. I was probably still guilty, in those two or three weeks, of overtraining. I thought I was backing off, but I probably wasn’t all that much."
