Great news Doc, you’re already using many of the principles and ideas. You’re lifting heavy weight, medium weights and light weights to develop different “strength qualities.” Reps of assistance work to build hypertrophy. You’re doing some jumps to develop other stuff that the weights don’t do so well.
By cycling through Wendler templates and rotating through different lifts and exercises you’re changing things up over time. You’re even going in 3 week waves, which is like my favorite conjugate thing. 5/3/1 is a solid program. It can teach you a lot lot.
Oohhhh…so the main principle is really just bringing up aspects of strength (explosiveness, endurance, etc. etc.) together at the same time? If that’s the case, I think I should change my mindset towards the first two working sets after the 3 warm up sets. I currently treat them as extended warm up lol. Maybe I should start lifting those more explosively
Some Russian (Verkoshansky, the guy who “invented” plyometrics, and pioneered the conjugate method for track) talked about lifting a full can of water, and “feeling” that weight and knowing how hard to try when you lift it. Like how much force to produce. Then if you got tricked and lifted a half full can of water with the same force, it would move really fast and powerfully. So lift light weights like heavy weights and they go fast.
Another Russian guy (Prilleprin) did experiments on how many Fast Reps to do, at what percentage, for a good workout. Conveniently, if you did 5 x 5 with First Set Last as your back off work in the 5/3/1 program you’d be super close to following Prilleprin’s recommendations.
That said, blasting warm up weights up is cool, just don’t sling/bounce them around like a jerk off and ingrain poor technique.
Get loose. I’ve been working on that piriformis stretch, that shit is tight! Right now everything is just feels like one solid chunk of meat and I’m not sure whats supposed to lengthen and whats supposed to shorten. That said, I felt pretty greased up today so Ill keep working on it.
Single Leg Curl, Kneeling x 8 with 2 pauses
Band Knee Extension x 15
4 times
45 Back Raise x 12
Step Up x 10
Single Leg Ass Blaster x 10 hold at top
4 rounds. Ascending medicine balls for weight.
Sit Up on Stability Ball x 15
Reverse Hyper x 10 knee together, x 10 knees out froggie style
4 times
Seated Calf x 12 hold at top x 3 sets
Donkey Calf x 20 x 3 sets
Pretty tough one for some step aerobics. My feet and shins are still sore from sled drags.
So @FlatsFarmer I went to the chiro last week and turns out my left glute was pretty weak/not firing. I attribute this to lots of sitting at work and long drives between jobs and the shop 8hr+ is common.
After a couple days of doing a few sets multiple times a day it’s a huge difference. The excersizes are…
Glute bridge
Lay on the ground legs bent at 45degrees feet on the floor.
The trick with this one is you try to roll your hips up towards your ribs just an inch or two. Then once your hips have rolled forward a bit and core is engaged you squeeze your glutes as hard as u can and only come off the floor like two inches. Do 3x10 second holds with a reset between reps. A few times a day do your 3x10 sec. Can also be done seated
Glute activation while standing
Good one for work or when lower back pain is creeping up but you can’t do bridges
Find something to push against about an inch above knee height give or take. Now with this object (couch, bed, dresser, guardrail, door frame)
On your right side lift your right leg up to 45 degrees and using your core and left glute push laterally into the object on your right. Focus on squeezing the glute hard and really push sideways. Again 3x10 seconds for both sides.
Driving gets me too, something about sitting on my left hip to cock up my right side for the pedals. Maybe I should just get a mini van so I can sit straight up. 8 hours! I feel for you man!
I had to try out both moves and I love them. Especially the standing one. If I’m on my left foot, my right knee is bent, with my right foot in the air. And I’m pushing my right ankle, side of my shin and side of my right knee against the object. Does that sound right?
I like that short short range glute bridge to keep the good hip tilt. When I do that seated I roll my hips under and stay on the chair? Like stay on my butt?
Did the chiro mention anything about what muscles were working instead of your glute? Thanks again for the info!
Yeah u got it flats, the standing one I find myself really pushing the side of my mid-shin/knee and the more u do it the better the contraction.
I’m Really like 100% better from thinking I had a kidney infection or searching for something really wrong. Turns out my hips are slightly higher on one side with a slight twist in my lumbar spine. We aren’t talking much out of wack to create major discomfort.
I’m not sure what muscles were taking over but it’s probably a combo or the QL and Hammies compensating and being tense.
That seated contraction, you stay on the chair. Another tweak to that is you can try to pull ur belly button to your spine and squeeze your glutes to the point you rise up a little but stay in contact with the chair. I actually do that one when I run through the awesome abs series or articles by Ian King.
Thanks again man. I tried some sideways hip drive move into the wall before, but you were supposed to put your shoulder into the wall and it didn’t work so great. It just tightened my back. Lower leg is much better!
Josh Bryant periodization video was sorta cool. He briefly talked about Linear, Reverse Linear, Undulating, Flexible Undulating, Block style, etc. He gave a positive quality for each one. Then he said debating which is best is a Circle Jerk. And that you should play the field and Experience Them All. Take the best stuff and blend it together, Bruce Lee style. Don’t be dogmatic.
If you sign up for his newsletter you get an 8 week deadlift program.
I really like Bryant’s tone. I love his enthusiasm.
Dumbbell Shrug On Incline Bench x 11
Then Row in that position x 11
Then Standing DB shrug x 11
Then Standing DB row x 11
Then Neck Harness Extension x 25
4 loops. Holy Traps
Rear Delts on Reverse Pec Deck x 12
Side Delts, Dumbbells, leaning over incline bench x 12
Press Dumbbells x 20, 17, 15, 15
4 loops
Band Tricep Pushdowns x 25
Rolling Tricep Extensions on Decline with kettlebells x 12
PJR Pullover with single Kettlebell x 12
4 loops
Metabolic stress with isolation moves. This is a fun workout.
Some kind of strange looking brown duck showed up in the driveway Friday night and then was in the duck pen, swimming in the pond Saturday morning. He’s cool looking with a long neck and long legs. If he sticks around I’ll call him Troy Brown.
Today I did some stretching (focused on piriformis and hip flexors) and then walked the dogs. I’m pretty sore today.
Apparently I’m the last one to know about the Westside Barbell instagram. At a glance, there was some cool stuff over there, including therapist guy John Quint working some hip and shoulder stuff with a couple lifters and a new machine to do Razor Curls for hamstrings.
One of the biggest questions we get @westsidebarbellofficial is how to increase muscular endurance and injury prevention. Our go to answer for both of these is banded work. Many coaches and athletes employ this work, but not necessarily in the volume they need. Our base number for banded work is 300 repetitions, performed 40-70 each set. At this rep range, we exhaust the muscle and attack primarily the tendons and ligaments. As these are high/ultra high reps, the angles must be changed constantly to avoid accommodation.
Here are some examples to add into your rotation where you are weak/injury prone: Tricep extensions Overhead tricep extensions Tomahawk tricep extensions Face pulls Archer pulls (bow and arrow) Body pulls High row Straight arm pulldown Front raise Upright row Tear(palms up or down) Seated leg curl Lying leg curl(belly down or up) Adduction Abduction 4 way neck
My woman just got a job as the outreach dietitian for a local Hemp/CBD company. Her first assignment is to go to an expo for seniors at the mall and set up a booth. It’s pretty cool, she just showed up and convinced them that they should create a position for her at the company. She’s pretty hype. I guess we’re a hemp household now.
7-25 Lower, Down week. Friday workout on a Thursday.
Get Loose
Devil Abs
Seated Psoas x 5
McGill Curl Up x 6
Psoas Eccentric x 6
Suitcase Walk
3 times
jw glute move
Inverse Curl x 6
Hack Squat 1.5 Reps x 6
1 easy easy round and 3 rounds with no failures
Stir the Pot x enough
Reverse Hyper x 30
Neck Harness Extensions x 25
1 easy easy round then 3 rounds with no failures, zero pukes
Definitely got some quad action going today. Knees and patellas un-phased! I just stayed above parallel for depth and used the slow nature of the down, halfway up, back down then all the way up execution to stay tight and keep my back against the pad.
For awhile I’ve been doing adductor pullbacks to try to tune up my crotch, reverse clams to try to suck my femur into my hip socket and hip thrust to get the glutes pushing.
Doing it like this, with the band pulling against my knee is kinda like putting them all together. The band pulling away, really makes the hamstrings and lower ass muscles work. I never got into the Spanish Squats (squatting with the bands behind knees) but I wonder if they make yo “pull your femurs tight” while squatting. I put the roller between my legs and squeeze and roll back with that. And I loop the band around furniture so I don’t need a homeboy to help out. Then the deep breathes are supposed to help ingrain the good alignment. Also, my right side is the problem, so I’m laying on my left side.
What ever it does, it has helped my be more aware of my adductors, how much my knees and toes and turned out and I’ve felt my quads working lately, so it’s worth passing along. Also my ribs on the right don’t stick out (or rib flare) so far.
Here’s a stretch for the quads and hip flexors. Dude makes a good point about extending the hip, not arching the lower back. When I do this move, I go a little slower and try to get some internal hip rotation (like in a reverse clam shell motion) which lets my get more hip extension, and less low back arching, and then more hip flexor stretch.
Tricep extensions
